How Long before you realised that Australia was or was not the place that you wanted to spend the rest of your days ?

[bluequay]

20 minutes ago, jimmyay1 said:

I always love to visit the uk, am fortunate that my relatives live in a beautiful area, national park etc  so it’s always gorgeous to enjoy the countryside etc.

i feel like the uk has changed a bit over the last few years but I guess Aus has too.  On my last visit which was very brief (4 days - on our way to Europe to see other relatives lol) it was great to catch up with folk but something felt a bit off compared with previous years. Londoners looked particularly joyless and stressed compared to every day people in Melbourne. 

But I can feel at home in both places. 

I think the cumulative effects of the last 16 years, The GFC, Austerity, Brexit, Covid and now the Cost of Living crisis is really showing, as a nation we need a few years without a crisis to get back on our feet.

[Blue Manna]

7 hours ago, bluequay said:

I think the cumulative effects of the last 16 years, The GFC, Austerity, Brexit, Covid and now the Cost of Living crisis is really showing, as a nation we need a few years without a crisis to get back on our feet.

In the 90s Britain was an exciting place to live. Britpop and all that, it was a great place to be.

It seems to have lost its way lately.

We have an election in July, and I'm really not sure we'll notice any difference.

I haven't given up hope. But it just feels less than it was.

[not a hillbilly]

Even tho I've lived most of my life in Oz, I always feel "I'm HOME" when I visit England.  I have 99.9% English ancestry but also felt at home in Holland despite no Dutch ancestry.

Would go back to UK if I could afford to as I retire in 10 months & the UK has many more & better museums & art galleries.  Unfortunately I can't travel alone anymore & tours there don't go where I want to go.  Looking to move back to the Big Island or NZ after 16 years in "North Antarctica".

[FirstWorldProblems]

15 hours ago, Blue Manna said:

In the 90s Britain was an exciting place to live. Britpop and all that, it was a great place to be.

It seems to have lost its way lately.

We have an election in July, and I'm really not sure we'll notice any difference.

I haven't given up hope. But it just feels less than it was.

It’s going to get better.  
 

There won’t be an instant improvement in public services because of the twin headwinds of 1) the incredibly high cost of servicing the interest on the UK’s national debt (10% of all government spending goes here) and 2) the dramatic slowdown of GDP growth.   I fear undoing the damage is the work of a generation.  Hopefully the country and the electorate can be long sighted enough to hold the course.  
 

What will change instantly is an improvement in policy.  We wont be subject any more to a constantly changing government area of focus where they waste money and effort to appeal to a small fringe of voters they (mistakenly) believe to be sufficient to keep them in power, all whilst failing to do the basics. 
 

With that will come a cessation of the kind of division and hate-stoking we’ve endured from our government and that has to be a better environment in which to live.  
 

Whilst I find Labour 2024 to be rather uninspiring (with the exception of a handful of impressive female MP’s in  shadow cabinet roles), I do find them to be sensible and they seem to have policies for the betterment of the people (as opposed to the gaslighting the other mob do). A moderate government doing sensible things with a long term plan would be good for the U.K.   

An obviously this is the beginning of the reversal of Brexit which is the  most impactful single thing we Brits can do to impact prosperity.  But with polls showing that 1/3 of people still support being out of the EU, a few years of honest PR around the benefits is needed. People don’t like having things done to them. We want people feeling positive about it.  
 

I shall by then be living in Australia watching with interest!

[Parley]

I can't imagine any leader from either party campaigning to rejoin the EU.

Obviously if the people reject it in a referendum then the leader has no choice but to resign.

David Cameron learnt that lesson the hard way. I doubt another leader will want to repeat the experience after such a short time.

Work better with Europe -yes. Rejoin the EU -No.

[FirstWorldProblems]

33 minutes ago, Parley said:

I can't imagine any leader from either party campaigning to rejoin the EU.

Obviously if the people reject it in a referendum then the leader has no choice but to resign.

David Cameron learnt that lesson the hard way. I doubt another leader will want to repeat the experience after such a short time.

Work better with Europe -yes. Rejoin the EU -No.

I agree it's not happening soon.  I suspect it will a multi-year project and it won't be overt.   It'll start with working better as you say, then publicising the benefits of that enhanced working, then five or ten years down the line rejoin (a critical failing of Cons and Labour for decades).  Assuming of course that the EU is still performing well in ten years time.  

 

[bluequay]

2 minutes ago, FirstWorldProblems said:

I agree it's not happening soon.  I suspect it will a multi-year project and it won't be overt.   It'll start with working better as you say, then publicising the benefits of that enhanced working, then five or ten years down the line rejoin (a critical failing of Cons and Labour for decades).  Assuming of course that the EU is still performing well in ten years time.  

 

I think getting us back in under the current rules will be a very hard sell, it will take major compromise on both sides. We have lost the concessions (rebate) that we were lucky to have, and I believe all new members must accept full currency union and a lot of people in the UK have some weird attachment to sterling!!

[Blue Manna]

39 minutes ago, Parley said:

I can't imagine any leader from either party campaigning to rejoin the EU.

Obviously if the people reject it in a referendum then the leader has no choice but to resign.

David Cameron learnt that lesson the hard way. I doubt another leader will want to repeat the experience after such a short time.

Work better with Europe -yes. Rejoin the EU -No.

Australia has very little influence in the world. You generally only hear about Australia when someone gets eaten by a shark or attacked by a kangaroo. There are benefits for that, but it was nice to live in a country that had influence, that was important, that people listened to, that was a leader in the world. I don't believe the UK is that country any more because it left Europe, and I don't believe Europe is the power it was because the UK left it. Europe and the UK are both less since they split.

Can they rejoin? That's going to take some doing.

I don't think the division will decrease with a change in government. I think that's social media and I can't see that going away.

I can't see us having a long labour government either. Attacks like that on Angela Rayner will escalate. 

Public services are shot. People are struggling under inflation and won't accept higher taxes. I struggle to see how a change of government can fix this.

Britain is broken. Best to leave and watch it sink from afar.

[Ken]

On 23/05/2024 at 17:36, FirstWorldProblems said:

It’s going to get better.  
 

There won’t be an instant improvement in public services because of the twin headwinds of 1) the incredibly high cost of servicing the interest on the UK’s national debt (10% of all government spending goes here) and 2) the dramatic slowdown of GDP growth.   I fear undoing the damage is the work of a generation.  Hopefully the country and the electorate can be long sighted enough to hold the course.  
 

What will change instantly is an improvement in policy.  We wont be subject any more to a constantly changing government area of focus where they waste money and effort to appeal to a small fringe of voters they (mistakenly) believe to be sufficient to keep them in power, all whilst failing to do the basics. 
 

With that will come a cessation of the kind of division and hate-stoking we’ve endured from our government and that has to be a better environment in which to live.  
 

Whilst I find Labour 2024 to be rather uninspiring (with the exception of a handful of impressive female MP’s in  shadow cabinet roles), I do find them to be sensible and they seem to have policies for the betterment of the people (as opposed to the gaslighting the other mob do). A moderate government doing sensible things with a long term plan would be good for the U.K.   

An obviously this is the beginning of the reversal of Brexit which is the  most impactful single thing we Brits can do to impact prosperity.  But with polls showing that 1/3 of people still support being out of the EU, a few years of honest PR around the benefits is needed. People don’t like having things done to them. We want people feeling positive about it.  
 

I shall by then be living in Australia watching with interest!

You may be right that Labour 2024 are sensible, but they won't remain in place. The looney left will take over the Labour party once again and by 2028 they'll be kicked out and replaced by the Conservatives again. Nothing will be achieved in the interim.

[FirstWorldProblems]

3 hours ago, Ken said:

You may be right that Labour 2024 are sensible, but they won't remain in place. The looney left will take over the Labour party once again and by 2028 they'll be kicked out and replaced by the Conservatives again. Nothing will be achieved in the interim.

Unfortunately I think this is an all too likely scenario.  I do hope not though.  Perhaps Murdoch will finally breathe his last and our media can become less of a malign influence.  

[Canada2Australia]

Hopefully the UK will remain indépendant from the EU for good.

[Bulya]

1 hour ago, Canada2Australia said:

Hopefully the UK will remain indépendant from the EU for good.

It will rejoin. It’s been a disaster. 

[Rallyman]

We have a trip back to uk in August and September, we are considering a move back going to see how things are , will be semi retired 

[Blue Manna]

On 25/05/2024 at 04:25, Bulya said:

It will rejoin. It’s been a disaster. 

It's the elephant in the room.

I worked on a project once that was a complete disaster. I asked my boss when we were going to cancel it as it was an obvious disaster. He just shook his head and said it's too big to fail, and it's become political now. 

We supported that failed project for years, pumping more money into it and keeping it alive with resuscitation.

Many years later we quietly replaced it with a project that worked.

Brexit will be like that. Too many people are invested in it. Not just politicians and businesses. Everyday people. It divided the country and was bitter. 

Slowly we will move back to Europe. But not for many years. Even labour aren't trashing Brexit. They realise the wounds have just scabbed, not healed.

[Bulya]

5 minutes ago, Blue Manna said:

It's the elephant in the room.

I worked on a project once that was a complete disaster. I asked my boss when we were going to cancel it as it was an obvious disaster. He just shook his head and said it's too big to fail, and it's become political now. 

We supported that failed project for years, pumping more money into it and keeping it alive with resuscitation.

Many years later we quietly replaced it with a project that worked.

Brexit will be like that. Too many people are invested in it. Not just politicians and businesses. Everyday people. It divided the country and was bitter. 

Slowly we will move back to Europe. But not for many years. Even labour aren't trashing Brexit. They realise the wounds have just scabbed, not healed.

Long-term it’s inevitable.  

[ramot]

Trying , but failing, to understand what Brexit and failed projects have to do with the thread title? 

6 hours ago, Rallyman said:

My post attached to you by mistake, not sure how.

Edited May 26 by ramot

[Blue Manna]

19 hours ago, Bulya said:

Long-term it’s inevitable.  

Ten years plus, assuming EU still exists then. I have my doubts. At least in it's current form.

[Blue Manna]

19 hours ago, ramot said:

Trying , but failing, to understand what Brexit and failed projects have to do with the thread title? 

Thought that was fairly obvious?

Many posters are from the UK, and the state of the UK surely must/may have an effect on whether you are happy about your situation in Australia.

We don't live in a bubble, we are often in contact with people from both countries, and if the alternative to what you currently have is better or worse, surely that must influence your current mood?

No?

[BendigoBoy]

I was back in the UK a couple of weeks ago to ship the very last things we left there in 2016 over (COVID got in the way of doing it any sooner). 

I don't think I ever realised just how Australian I am until I got to Paddington to catch the Heathrow Express, only to find the tunnel was shut.  There were quite a few other folk there in the same predicament.

Without any hesitation I just called out and asked if anyone wanted to hop in the Uber I'd just ordered to get me to Terminal 5.  No catch, no charge (I just bill it back on my expenses - no issue).  They looked at me like I had a second head for a while until they realised I was deadly serious.  On the way over to Heathrow, a couple of the folk who jumped on board explained that it was just very, very unusual for them to see those random acts of kindness post-pandemic.  Worlds apart from where I am in regional VIC: if anything, I think we've come out kinder from things these last few years.

I just thought it very, very sad that the natural response in the middle of the day to someone looking to do a good turn in a perfectly traceable manner would be to think there was a catch.  Just makes me all the more certain about where I'll be seeing out the rest of my days...

[Marisawright]

1 hour ago, BendigoBoy said:

Worlds apart from where I am in regional VIC: if anything, I think we've come out kinder from things these last few years.

Worth pointing out, that could just be the difference between city attitudes and country attitudes anywhere in the world.

[jimmyay1]

"very, very sad that the natural response in the middle of the day to someone looking to do a good turn in a perfectly traceable manner would be to think there was a catch."

That's London for you. Suspicion of strangers runs very deep, there's huge anonymity and coldness when out in public in London, which even people with loads of friends and family there feel.  It gets a hold of you after years there. 

After the best part of two decades living there, when i moved to Melbourne i had to unlearn the habit of a type of constant watchfullness and suspicion which you tend to develop over time living in London.  Took a while. 

People in Melbourne (in common with many places in the world) are much more open and less "hard" in dealing with their fellow inhabitants. 

London is particularly bad for this even in compared to other very large cities worldwide.  

 

 

Edited May 27 by jimmyay1

[BendigoBoy]

19 minutes ago, Marisawright said:

Worth pointing out, that could just be the difference between city attitudes and country attitudes anywhere in the world.

Mebbe.  Mebbe.

 

[Blue Manna]

1 hour ago, jimmyay1 said:

"very, very sad that the natural response in the middle of the day to someone looking to do a good turn in a perfectly traceable manner would be to think there was a catch."

That's London for you. Suspicion of strangers runs very deep, there's huge anonymity and coldness when out in public in London, which even people with loads of friends and family there feel.  It gets a hold of you after years there. 

After the best part of two decades living there, when i moved to Melbourne i had to unlearn the habit of a type of constant watchfullness and suspicion which you tend to develop over time living in London.  Took a while. 

People in Melbourne (in common with many places in the world) are much more open and less "hard" in dealing with their fellow inhabitants. 

London is particularly bad for this even in compared to other very large cities worldwide.  

 

 

I'm a different person when I visit London. If anyone tries to stop and talk to me I assume they are a distraction for a pick pocket. They're probably not, but there's no one in London I want to talk to. I'm not familiar enough to give directions, and the other likely options is one of those awful surveys or they are trying to sell me something. I always move fast and am very aware of everyone around me. 

Outside of London, life is slow. I walk less fast and I'm happy to talk to anyone.

[Ken]

On 26/05/2024 at 15:50, Bulya said:

Long-term it’s inevitable.  

I think it's far from inevitable that the EU will ever want the UK back. What's in it for them?

[FirstWorldProblems]

1 minute ago, Ken said:

I think it's far from inevitable that the EU will ever want the UK back. What's in it for them?

Sending a message to other member countries that if you leave, you'll want to come back perhaps?  And we'll accept you back, but on lesser terms than you had, and you'll do it because it's still better than being outside the worlds largest trading bloc.