Would You Be Better Off In Oz? - Misleading
#46
Re: Would You Be Better Off In Oz? - Misleading
No tilting at windmills here - I know what my eyes tell me. Most of the 'zizz' that used to make this forum an interesting place to hang out has gone. To be honest, the technical issues haven't affected me in the slightest, but the dearth of interesting threads has.
You call it user-friendly, I call it bland.
You call it user-friendly, I call it bland.
P.S. thanks for your message much appreciated
#47
Home and Happy
Joined: Dec 2002
Location: Keep true friends and puppets close, trust no-one else...
Posts: 93,806
Re: Would You Be Better Off In Oz? - Misleading
I sit here today in Shoreham, West Sussex having driven down the A23 in glorious sunshine and seen our wonderful countryside. The A27 to Shoreham took me in to view of the Channel with a clear blue sky. The Sussex Pad pub just ahead a great example of a good pub with wonderful food. Plentiful cows and sheep grazing on very green grass......a golf course in wonderful condition with green greens.....
#48
Re: Would You Be Better Off In Oz? - Misleading
No tilting at windmills here - I know what my eyes tell me. Most of the 'zizz' that used to make this forum an interesting place to hang out has gone. To be honest, the technical issues haven't affected me in the slightest, but the dearth of interesting threads has.
You call it user-friendly, I call it bland.
You call it user-friendly, I call it bland.
It is however, still my first stop for excellent advice.
Nic
#49
Re: Would You Be Better Off In Oz? - Misleading
Well I like it in Australia.......
No idea if I am better off financially, but I do seem to get by OK, and the number of great things to do that are completely free far exceeds those I had in the UK.
I am definitely better off in terms of moments where I just stand and look and think "does it get any better than this?"
Buzzy
No idea if I am better off financially, but I do seem to get by OK, and the number of great things to do that are completely free far exceeds those I had in the UK.
I am definitely better off in terms of moments where I just stand and look and think "does it get any better than this?"
Buzzy
#50
Re: Would You Be Better Off In Oz? - Misleading
I sit here today in Shoreham, West Sussex having driven down the A23 in glorious sunshine and seen our wonderful countryside. The A27 to Shoreham took me in to view of the Channel with a clear blue sky. The Sussex Pad pub just ahead a great example of a good pub with wonderful food. Plentiful cows and sheep grazing on very green grass......a golf course in wonderful condition with green greens.....Days like this I now enjoy 10000% more than I did before because of my Oz experience.
Just goes to show that our examples are similar - it's great that you are enjoying your life back in the UK and that many are enjoying their lives here too in Australia.
#51
Re: Would You Be Better Off In Oz? - Misleading
I'd do anything to have a seat in one of those fighters
Twas the sort of day that England does so well........even had a chat to an author of a book on the Vulcan bomber only to realise he was a Sir and actually flew the thing and trained pilots on them....he was probably one of those people standing ready to take off during the cold war Cuban missile crisis..........he was very old, very intelligent and spoke like he was still 20. Made you proud to be British.
#52
Re: Would You Be Better Off In Oz? - Misleading
I sit here today in The Basin, Victoria having strolled up to the village with my two daughters in glorious sunshine and seen our wonderful countryside. The path edged with spring flowers gives us a view of Mount Dandenong with a clear blue sky. The Oak Tree Pub has OK (!) food, but good beer and company. Plentiful cows are grazing on very green grass whilst a flock of Cockatoos swoop overhead.... it doesn't get much better than this.
Just goes to show that our examples are similar - it's great that you are enjoying your life back in the UK and that many are enjoying their lives here too in Australia.
Just goes to show that our examples are similar - it's great that you are enjoying your life back in the UK and that many are enjoying their lives here too in Australia.
Something that is priceless and I could not get in Oz was seeing my dad watch his grandson (my son) play football in a match last week. Knowing that my dad now has years and years to enjoy his grandchildren is something I am truly happy about.....and didn't know I would miss.
I wish we had such nice birds flying around here.......sparrows just don't cut it.
#53
Re: Would You Be Better Off In Oz? - Misleading
At the risk of sounding snotty, Pen - only if I got paid for it. I have considered it in the past but I'm not in the habit of handing out charity to faceless American corporations who have enough cash to go around hoovering up bouyant Internet communities so that they can squeeze them dry of any commercial value.
#54
Home and Happy
Joined: Dec 2002
Location: Keep true friends and puppets close, trust no-one else...
Posts: 93,806
Re: Would You Be Better Off In Oz? - Misleading
If your fave airport is Shoreham then a few weeks ago it was a blaze of colour and noise as it held the Battle of Britain airshow......we had numerous Spitfires, Hurricanes and many aircraft I don't know practicing all week. The Saturday of the show was great......lots of people and great weather (I got sunburnt).........Plus we had a Eurofighter display that was awesome...so loud.........traffic was at a standstill on the A27 for ages.
I'd do anything to have a seat in one of those fighters
Twas the sort of day that England does so well........even had a chat to an author of a book on the Vulcan bomber only to realise he was a Sir and actually flew the thing and trained pilots on them....he was probably one of those people standing ready to take off during the cold war Cuban missile crisis..........he was very old, very intelligent and spoke like he was still 20. Made you proud to be British.
I'd do anything to have a seat in one of those fighters
Twas the sort of day that England does so well........even had a chat to an author of a book on the Vulcan bomber only to realise he was a Sir and actually flew the thing and trained pilots on them....he was probably one of those people standing ready to take off during the cold war Cuban missile crisis..........he was very old, very intelligent and spoke like he was still 20. Made you proud to be British.
Still try and go back there to fly whenever I'm home - been to plenty of other fields now but Shoreham just has some special magic somehow
#56
Re: Would You Be Better Off In Oz? - Misleading
Hello all,
My name is Tom Blackett, and I'm the Online Editor (and occasional Spokesperson) for Visa Bureau.
Sue was kind enough to email one of my colleagues about the response that this was generating, and I thought it would be an opportunity to engage with the British Expats community.
First off, I'd like to say that we recognise that the tone of that article is wrong for the British Expats audience. It is almost relentlessly positive, and perhaps paints too bright a picture of life in Australia. (Translation, it's too much of a sales pitch!)
The British Expats community is not naive, nor is it interested in only the bright sides of emigrating to Australia. For that, we'd like to apologise.
In the interest of transparency, I would like to share our background research so that we can be entirely open about where those numbers came from. Interestingly, our original versions of this article, and in places where we use it in promotional material, the piece contains full citations. We removed them from the version on British Expats in the interests of brevity. It is an editorial decision that we regret! (You'll have to forgive the boring statistical explanation below.)
The figures in the tables are based on the exchange rate of $2.12 Australian to the pound, as provided by Oanda.com on August 2nd 2008. Oanda.com powers the exchange rate calculations on our site, among others.
Salary figures were sourced from Salaryexpert.com's August 2008 data, which is in turn based on industry and government publications. We also used an Australian State and Territory funded employment information source called MyFuture, found at my www.myfuture.edu.au
(If any British Expats members are interested, MyFuture is actually a great source for highly specific career, wage and qualification information! You can find detailed industry and occupation information at: http://www.myfuture.edu.au/services/...ction=Advanced.)
We are confident that the average salaries we listed were accurate at the time the document was created: 02/08/2008. My colleague actually still has bleary eyes and headaches from wading through all those statistics.
Our cost of goods research was from the UK Office of National Statistics (numbers circa July 2008) and from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which uses the average cost of goods in the eight capital cities of Australia.
As for property prices, these were sourced from the 2008 Real Estate Market Outlook provided by the Real Estate Institute of Australia. Our UK housing prices were, in turn, sourced from the UK's Direct.gov site: www.communities.gov.uk.
I hope that addresses where we got our numbers. However, I also recognise the feeling that we have been misleading. We painted an over-rosy picture of life in Australia in an article that reads more like a sales pitch than the kind of neutral, honest exploration of life abroad that British Expats is known for. Again, for that we apologise.
I hope we haven't alienated the British Expats community with our rose-tinted article. (What's one worse than rose? Fuchsia-tinted?) As my colleague mentioned to Sue, the last thing we want to do is alienate the British Expats audience who have been both supportive of us and a tremendous resource to people migrating from the UK.
I'd also like to point out that I've posted a version of this response on our company blog at visabureau.com/blog. As always, our blog is open to comments and feedback - even if it means taking our lumps!
Mea Culpa!
My name is Tom Blackett, and I'm the Online Editor (and occasional Spokesperson) for Visa Bureau.
Sue was kind enough to email one of my colleagues about the response that this was generating, and I thought it would be an opportunity to engage with the British Expats community.
First off, I'd like to say that we recognise that the tone of that article is wrong for the British Expats audience. It is almost relentlessly positive, and perhaps paints too bright a picture of life in Australia. (Translation, it's too much of a sales pitch!)
The British Expats community is not naive, nor is it interested in only the bright sides of emigrating to Australia. For that, we'd like to apologise.
In the interest of transparency, I would like to share our background research so that we can be entirely open about where those numbers came from. Interestingly, our original versions of this article, and in places where we use it in promotional material, the piece contains full citations. We removed them from the version on British Expats in the interests of brevity. It is an editorial decision that we regret! (You'll have to forgive the boring statistical explanation below.)
The figures in the tables are based on the exchange rate of $2.12 Australian to the pound, as provided by Oanda.com on August 2nd 2008. Oanda.com powers the exchange rate calculations on our site, among others.
Salary figures were sourced from Salaryexpert.com's August 2008 data, which is in turn based on industry and government publications. We also used an Australian State and Territory funded employment information source called MyFuture, found at my www.myfuture.edu.au
(If any British Expats members are interested, MyFuture is actually a great source for highly specific career, wage and qualification information! You can find detailed industry and occupation information at: http://www.myfuture.edu.au/services/...ction=Advanced.)
We are confident that the average salaries we listed were accurate at the time the document was created: 02/08/2008. My colleague actually still has bleary eyes and headaches from wading through all those statistics.
Our cost of goods research was from the UK Office of National Statistics (numbers circa July 2008) and from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which uses the average cost of goods in the eight capital cities of Australia.
As for property prices, these were sourced from the 2008 Real Estate Market Outlook provided by the Real Estate Institute of Australia. Our UK housing prices were, in turn, sourced from the UK's Direct.gov site: www.communities.gov.uk.
I hope that addresses where we got our numbers. However, I also recognise the feeling that we have been misleading. We painted an over-rosy picture of life in Australia in an article that reads more like a sales pitch than the kind of neutral, honest exploration of life abroad that British Expats is known for. Again, for that we apologise.
I hope we haven't alienated the British Expats community with our rose-tinted article. (What's one worse than rose? Fuchsia-tinted?) As my colleague mentioned to Sue, the last thing we want to do is alienate the British Expats audience who have been both supportive of us and a tremendous resource to people migrating from the UK.
I'd also like to point out that I've posted a version of this response on our company blog at visabureau.com/blog. As always, our blog is open to comments and feedback - even if it means taking our lumps!
Mea Culpa!
Last edited by tom.blackett; Oct 2nd 2008 at 4:03 pm.
#57
Home and Happy
Joined: Dec 2002
Location: Keep true friends and puppets close, trust no-one else...
Posts: 93,806
Re: Would You Be Better Off In Oz? - Misleading
Thanks for taking the time to post Tom.
The first poster with fuchsia coloured specs, I think!
The first poster with fuchsia coloured specs, I think!
#58
Re: Would You Be Better Off In Oz? - Misleading
Hello all,
The figures in the tables are based on the exchange rate of $2.12 Australian to the pound, as provided by Oanda.com on August 2nd 2008. Oanda.com powers the exchange rate calculations on our site, among others.
Salary figures were sourced from Salaryexpert.com's August 2008 data, which is in turn based on industry and government publications. We also used an Australian State and Territory funded employment information source called MyFuture, found at my www.myfuture.edu.au
(If any British Expats members are interested, MyFuture is actually a great source for highly specific career, wage and qualification information! You can find detailed industry and occupation information at: http://www.myfuture.edu.au/services/...ction=Advanced.)
Mea Culpa!
The figures in the tables are based on the exchange rate of $2.12 Australian to the pound, as provided by Oanda.com on August 2nd 2008. Oanda.com powers the exchange rate calculations on our site, among others.
Salary figures were sourced from Salaryexpert.com's August 2008 data, which is in turn based on industry and government publications. We also used an Australian State and Territory funded employment information source called MyFuture, found at my www.myfuture.edu.au
(If any British Expats members are interested, MyFuture is actually a great source for highly specific career, wage and qualification information! You can find detailed industry and occupation information at: http://www.myfuture.edu.au/services/...ction=Advanced.)
Mea Culpa!
To mislead someone into thinking they will earn $60k per year as a tiler when the reality is they will struggle for $42 is false advertising, it builds peoples hopes & dreams only for them to be dashed when they arrive & the budget goes out of the window. Still a cynic would say You'd have their cash by then
For the record the actual award rate for a wall & floor tiler is $616 per week or $30k per annum, a big difference from £30k.
Maybe you got your £ & $ mixed up
#59
Re: Would You Be Better Off In Oz? - Misleading
Looking at that link it gives the average weekly wage for a Tiler [my trade] as $817 per week, that equates to 42K per annum in Aussie dollars Your table quotes the potential earnings in Aus as >£30k Using your benchmark of $2.12 to the £ that figure should be much closer to £20k.
To mislead someone into thinking they will earn $60k per year as a tiler when the reality is they will struggle for $42 is false advertising, it builds peoples hopes & dreams only for them to be dashed when they arrive & the budget goes out of the window. Still a cynic would say You'd have their cash by then
For the record the actual award rate for a wall & floor tiler is $616 per week or $30k per annum, a big difference from £30k.
Maybe you got your £ & $ mixed up
To mislead someone into thinking they will earn $60k per year as a tiler when the reality is they will struggle for $42 is false advertising, it builds peoples hopes & dreams only for them to be dashed when they arrive & the budget goes out of the window. Still a cynic would say You'd have their cash by then
For the record the actual award rate for a wall & floor tiler is $616 per week or $30k per annum, a big difference from £30k.
Maybe you got your £ & $ mixed up
Its a pity as Tilers used to be like hens teeth in Ireland and in great demand....