beketamun

just out of interest, what will they be paid as a newly registered nurse ?

lots of Aussie super schemes are invested into the UK and Europe...airports, shopping centres etc. Might be a good way to get your money over and spread your investment if you're looking LONG TERM, aiming for a lot more return than a UK bank account at the moment. https://www.ft.com/content/54fc3dcc-3798-4f4f-97de-a4b924ebd68b

If i ever went back it would be to Scotland, but it would not be until our careers were finishing and we could live a very easy life, somewhere Speyside but within reach of relatives and where family came from. Sorry i don't know how old you are, but you raise a good point....cost of living is low, it's quiet like most of Australia, the cold isn't a problem when you originate from there...but is it great for a young couple with careers looking to build and accumulate? Not so sure.

I think what's happening with your family is the same question everybody asks when they move to Australia.....family deaths will inevitably occur one day, and when they do, can i really do anything to help if i'm on one side of the world or the other? Have you changed your perspective since you moved to Australia, or is the question only raising itself now that difficult times are coming closer and you're feeling panic? Lingering illnesses are the worst, you feel guilt but you don't know what/when the outcome will be, so do you sacrifice your own life to make yourself feel that you've done more? Would your relatives even want you to do that if it put your own life plans in jeopardy? We have a separate fund for emergency flights, and the understanding is that for a parent or sibling we will return asap if need be...but would never consider moving back there because of sentiment, we would lose so much and it's unwise just because you feel "useless" for that period of time. If you've not started a family yet, you could live for another 60 years....what would your kid's futures be like and where have they got most chance of having a better life with financial security for themselves? I think you know that answer already. I had a 17 day trip home in January, same as a lot of people after covid border closures and an awful lot of post-covid crap and death issues to sort out. Whilst there i had a good hard look at the place, caught up with people, cast a very critical eye over the UK and how the towns were doing, genuinely considering if we should move back here for a period or take a job back in England. Taking out the sentiment, it was a very quick realisation to see that it would have been an unbelievably bad decision to make. The few months since then have just confirmed it...massive debts to pay back, public being shafted, inflation, real wage cuts, hopeless politics....and they were starting from a low base anyway. They have not reached the bottom yet. A friend recently had to make the trip back to Aberdeen for a sibling's death, they were in the UK for only 2 whole days for the funeral and then came straight back to Australia....a crazy jetlagged trip. All about compromise and a sensible level of sacrifice, but i dont think you should throw your whole careers and futures into doubt over something that is inevitably going to happen one day. Of all the people i know who've returned from Australia to the UK, the only one's who've done really well are the ones who never intended to stay here anyway....young women who did the travel thing and went back to get married/have a family. The ones who moved back to the UK out of sentiment and homesickness...they seem ok but none enjoy the lives they had here, certainly not from a financial, quality or contentment perspective. You seem to have a plan...don't ruin it. I think if you genuinely miss the UK (which you don't appear to), then go. If it's just a sense of impending guilt and regret, you have to put head over heart and soldier on because it happens to us all. When you've made your money and the kids are settled, then's the time to start looking at long trips home for enjoyment, with none of the pressures.

Why would you disagree, it's not even controversial? There hasn't been a new town in the UK for 50 years.....what was the last new town created in the UK? Redditch, MK? It's ok sticking a housing estate on the green belt, or a flood plain....but any existing town with streets 100 years old has nowhere to expand to, that is the exact problem with the economy. Nobody wants to fund the infrastructure support costs which would need to be drastic, and builders are only looking at their profits from house sales.

it's something you don't see in the UK, everything is finished...no new towns since when, nowhere to put new streets in existing towns? The expansion of Australia is relentless and they're pretty good at making new societies from scratch right down to base infrastructure.

They will expand, has Devonport had an influx of people since the pandemic? On the South Coast NSW they're seriously looking at re-shaping services (schools, hospitals, GP's, Dental, service industries) due to the influx of people.

His GP surgery is the pitz, a new supercentre that doesn't answer the phones, doesn't have online booking, made their staff sign non-disclosures so they couldn't talk about how bad it is, and they're constanting churning staff. Everyone's just waiting for them to sell themselves off, the GP partners pocket the cash and they disappear into the sunset. There was a recent judicial review which was dismissed into a similar case, and that could open the floodgates. https://www.brownejacobson.com/health/training-and-resources/legal-updates/2022/03/judicial-review-outcome-london-gp-practices-to-be-taken-over-by-operose-health Here i have a docket for an annual blood test. When i get the results they just write you one out for next time, then you choose which place to drop into. Never had to wait more than 20 minutes in 10 years.

Also, your friends would have moved on with their lives I really enjoyed a recent trip back but the novelty wore off quickly this time. Apart from family things, I'd only go back in summertime now, I'd tour round, and I think i'd enjoy it a lot more knowing i'd never have to live and work there again.

Kiddy A&E was excellent, first choice for everything.

It was an enjoyable thing to nip off the M40 at Banbury in January for me to fill my dad's fridge up with decent Waitrose food ! If only the whole country was like that. He's currently got a CT scan booked in with a pre-scan blood test required. He can't book a blood test appointment on the NHS website until 5th May, 2 weeks after his scan....that is, to make a pun...scandalous, when you can walk into any number of places here and get one in 20 minutes. I'm originally from Worcestershire and I will go back for summer holidays...but it's not a good comparable place to live your life out. You'd be better off qualitywise and healthwise over the border in North Wales, or somewhere like Inverness in Scotland..if it weren't for the weather.

I saw a poll that says a majority of Germans want tougher sanctions on Russia even if it means much higher energy prices for themselves I suppose being the wealthiest country in Europe helps a little if they can absorb a lot of that cost to protect the poorest in society..

Yes, it's hard to fathom why the shock has hit the UK harder than anywhere. One theory is that the UK's energy sector is all privatised and many large UK pension funds, including the state pension, are invested heavily in funds that have energy company shares. Any state intervention to lower prices will damage the share value, thus damaging the pension fund values. Basically the people will pay the price one way or the other. The UK needs to be energy secure and the pussyfooting around over the last 10 years cannot be repeated, there is basically no viable national energy policy and it should have been a national security issue instead of trying to use Chinese loans to pay French state-owned enterprises to build our power stations. It seems unthinkable that we would privatise UK energy companies because they're seen as inefficient, but then choose a French state-owned company as the most efficient partner at a massive cost which has stalled the UK into indecision and kicking the can down the road? Australia is terrible at Federal level...they have a difficult job to transition a huge industry out of fossil fuels but have been basically kept in power by that industry support with a wafer-thin majority. It's not progressive politics, though the majority of workers seem to have already accepted their industry will shrink and reckon they have 5 years to get out and retrain or retire. It begs the question, how many Aussie politicians are being paid off to sustain a dying industry, the level of corruption in politics here is almost seen as expected. The gas companies have done well recently with the war, they can basically name their own price for a ship of fuel and are getting back a lot of lost profit caused by covid. I expect Australia to become an energy exporter only to places like India and China, well after they've minimised using fossil fuels here. The interesting thing about solar is that the whole economic market structure is being skewed by the vast take-up across the nation, to the point where instead of selling your excess energy back to the grid, you may have to pay them an administration charge for the right to do so. I think ACT and some parts of SA (?) are 100% renewable already but the future is unclear. The theory is that if the people are supplying the energy to the grid, the less profit is available for energy companies to invest in maintaining the network and systems that manage the grid and delivery systems. It makes economic sense to ask for a service charge, but isn't intuitive when people thought they could clean up by making their own energy and selling. You only have to fly over Sydney and see the amount of solar on roofs to see the change that is happening.

With your industry experience, can you say why the price rises have been so much higher in the UK than they have in Europe or Australiia?

Agree. I checked my dad's energy bills and he won't go up at all as he's locked in to a deal with a big supplier for the next 18 months. The price hikes will catch people one day, but initially only those who don't have a deal locked in, or are coming up to expiry. It is true that some smaller companies cannot maintain the deals that customers have already signed, so have gone bust. They've had a ludicrous situation in the UK where some very small energy suppliers have been allowed to form and act as suppliers, such as local councils with a few thousand customers. All done in good faith and by not chasing profits for shareholders, they could offer undercutting deals to beat the big companies when wholesale was cheap, but had no financial strength to protect customers against large wholesale rises.

i think it's tax and duty free under 39 quid or something? It was less than that. I just don't bother, might as well carry stuff and send the rest via Amazon or Ebay, or just order from a UK site?

It was marked as personal birthday gift, as per the guidance.

I wish you could tell me ! Handling fee was because they outsource it, then drop it at the post office for collection upon payment.

Yes, much better to carry than send. I sent a used David Pocock Brumbies shirt that he'd signed and written a message on....a proper gift for a rugby fan to stick up on his rugby club wall. The 'effin UK charged him 35 quid tax and handling to pick up from the post office. Never again.

you'll be surprised. People will come for the sun, because it's Australia, and because hotels are very expensive here. I had a friend in the UK who did the same with a pokey little home in Warwickshire....3 small beds, 1 tiny bathroom with toilet. The Americans flocked there to visit Stratford. In return, he kept getting 4 bed villas in Florida with a pool...nobody ever complained they were short changed. He reckoned it was because the Americans liked the authenticity of living in the UK "how the British live" so the expectations were different than if they'd booked a 5* Marriott. "Hey we went to England and stayed in a house with only 1 garage, and you couldn't even fit a car inside it...it was so quaint".

I suppose beaches in cities are a good example with population density, but I've never paid to park at a beach anywhere on the South Coast....I think Byron Bay was the only place I've ever had to pay and that was definitely a parking deterrent because of sheer volume, the infrastructure can't handle the incoming tourists in a place that is miles form anywhere. I was more talking about normal city and town centre parking that have reduced parking availability (usually for housing or commercial development) and then started charging parking fees for the remainder, but making sure that people have to go there to work with pretty poor public transport services. There is the climate change argument, but these are just revenue raising exercises and pretty obvious, the same as speed cameras that do nothing to improve safety. The UK had the same problem with a flood of speed cameras across the country and they brought in a rule saying that speed cameras could only be used where there was a demonstrable safety risk that would be reduced by their introduction, and that the first option should be to improve highways design rather than leaving an unsafe road and just charging people for the speed they were driving. Suddenly the cameras starting disappearing again because they were unjustifiable under the new rules. How local governments raise funds and predict future budgets funds is a growing issue, the change from occasional stamp duty to regular rates addresses some of that, but funding is being cut and will be likely to be cut more in Australia, which has had a traditionally high level of local services investment.

I think it's more that Australia had free parking, and now local councils have jumped on the revenue raising aspect of it. UK went down that route years ago. I remember Birmingham charging 25 UKP per day to park on a derelict city centre dirt car park 15 years ago. The tradies were all working on an adjacent local city project and charged it straight back to them.

Went to Berry this weekend.......talking about money ! Not been since the bypass was built, but it seems to have improved the village and the prices are eyewateriing.

You get the USA, it's 52 states are very independent and far more diverse than both Australia and the UK. There are parts which resemble both, parts which resemble one or the other, and many others which are alien to both due to climate, geography, environment, religion and the culture and living necessities that have evolved in the the last 300 years. Cultures within cultures. My BIL became American 20 years ago now, and worked in all 52 states in that time. His biggest comment is that the Brits think all Americans are the same as them because they speak the same language, but the American way of thinking is completely different and the British cultural and social outlook is far closer to that of your average German than it is to that of your average American. Let's not forget that America fought a war to get away from British influence, and Australian Federation was the start of breaking away from being told how Australia was to be managed from afar, whilst retaining the relationships to absorb or reject advice under self-determination. It's no different to those poms who come to Australia and don't make a success of it, putting the blame on "Australia" rather than realising that they may have just made bad choices in where they went, or how they decided to live there lives here, or even how suited they were to any sort of emigration anywhere in the world. You fit in and make a success of it, or you may as well try somewhere else or go back to where you came from and try again there.

I actually like the soft teeny ones in a prawn cocktail, they go much better with it....nothing worse than a tiny bowl with 3 big prawns hanging over the side. The big ones are much better in a prawn curry, or as a fresh plate? Less : Pub or club fare over here is very bland and boring, Indian restaurants are nowhere near as good as UK. Less processed/packaged meals. Less bread/biscuits/unhealthy snacks. More: Chinese restauarants, Australia has a far higher standard and much more variation, UK tends to be Hong Kong/Cantonese-biased and then condensed into hybrid fried rice/curry/stir fry junk. More fish, More fresh meat of better quality, more seasonal veg and fruit.