jad n rich

I have been reading this forum for 4 months now and have lost track of the amount of My life is shite in the UK let me emigrate, all be well threads. So just for once let an aussie born and bred tell you about our week. Not a week of just arrived I have plenty of UK money to spend and everything is new and exciting. More day to day hum drum.

Monday. House sale collapses for third time, contract one, finance not approved, contract 2 UK buyers not approved by FIRB. Contract 3 subject to sale of the pruchasers townhouse, they are so sick of their aussie whinging neighbours they want to go back to a house, but alas their ausie whinging neighbours have denied the 73 year old lady buying the townhouse permission to keep her tiny 10 year old companion dog so shes pulled out.

School year 3 and year 5 tests are on next week, teachers have been priming kids all of the last 3 weeks, Note here results are not released to parents public. Anyway we get letter from hospital Jacks operation hes waited for for 9 months is next Wednesday Test day! so we have to cancel, back to 9 month waiting list then. Yes we do have private insurance but the child specialist we need works in a public hospital and as most of the others qualified have left to go into the lucrative bum and tit job market.

Work, usual 60 hour week, however as a builder we are being threatened with legal action because dust is pouring into a clients house from the neighbouring building site. It seems the attempts to sue the developer for the dust failed so we are the next target. For those who dont understand the climate, we have had virtually zero rain the last 3 months, now its august we get westerly (desert) winds dust blows in badly even our house is full of it, just wait till the bushfires start, they will it was 31 degrees it is still winter, yesterday lunchtime. La de da just another day really.

Guy building next door has a 56 metre block frontage despite this he the smart one, hes only a teacher, has decided to put his driveway 1 metre from ours, both drive ways back up a hill on a slope with a 6 foot fence inbetween so no visibility, ending in one driveway crossing right over the other he is now considering that yes we may be right that could be dangerous.

Its 7.31 sunday morning, 2 doors up as usual, the old fart neighbour has been mowing the brown dust that is now lawns since 7am. Kids up, dog up, me up wife up, lovely. Could go for walk on beach which is only 10 min drive away but the combo of wind and sand will actually sandblast your skin and face so why bother. Never mind the pool is full of leaves and the super large house needs its weekly half day clean, lucky me to have such a big house!

Might read yesterdays papers, nope too depressing, full 2 page spread on child abductions and how parents must take all precautions. See one was in Brisbane drug crazed 21 year old woman takes 3 and 5 year old from childrens front garden and threatens to put them in cage and chop them up, thankfully they were rescued.

Wife reminds me 2 of the 3 cars we need, not want - need. Must be serviced, try to juggle lifts for everyone this week then. Will probably mean one of us missing a days work and therefor pay.

Same shite different bucket alright. I'm off to kill the lawnmowing one up the road before I have to sue him for dust

Don

hard luck!

jib

If this post was about the price of lettuce, it would have had a lot more replies

Badge

Exactly - life still goes on even in Australia.

However, I suppose people take the line that a shinier bucket will make the sh*t better to bear...

BM

Pollyana

Of course, we only want to know about the good things in life otherwise our rose-tinted specs start to slip.....

Vegemite Kids

I'm being incredibly nosey here I know but why did you have to cancel the hospital ?

Was it not possible to come to some arrangement with the school for jack to do the test after (or before) he's been for his operation ??????

ABCDiamond

I agree, after all these test results are only for school use. It's not as if the childs education needs are based on the results. Well, not in my childs school anyway, not sure about others though.

Badge

couldn't agree more. I would not want to have my child's performance used as a stat so that schools can squabble over each other in some sort of league..

If I was a UK parent, I would be having a quiet word with their school's headmaster...I'd would want to see an allround education, like I had, not some sort of stat race...

BM

Phoenixuk2oz

Yep...couldn't agree more. Life has its cr*p days just like anywhere else in the world

But hey...guess wot.....we're educated people on this site...... so most of us can deduce this for ourselves

Also....4 wot it's worth: I also live in Qld and it was 22 degrees here yesterday.....and my neighbour didn't mow the lawn this morning

jad n rich

Nope your not nosey, the test is very important for our children. One has dyslexia and recieves only half an hour of help a week and we are fighting for more to be done. Jack is seven but is yet another of the children who have been classed as gifted and really age 12 in learning terms. Dont worry I am not big headed enough to believe the tiny blonde one is ready for grade eight high school but I do know he sees grade 3 as a waste of time. Anyway test is important because we plan to demand the results and get some action education wise. Well we can hope anyway. Otherwise agree I would not give a hoot about the test

Dreamaway 10

HI JAD N RICH.
just reading this thread Sunday morning here in the UK thinking I will look at Expats to see whats going on and I read this thread.It sounds Bloody Awful where you are.
Is it really that bad?.Your Newspaper quote sounds horrific and scares the hell out of me.
Thanks though for giving us an insight into what your life is like in OZ.Pretty c--- if you don't mind me saying.Hope your just having an off week!!! :scared:
So okay point taken. SAME S--- DIFFERENT BUCKET may well be true.

jad n rich

Hi its not really awful at all, we live in Twin Waters its a very upmarket waterfront estate. It just won some world class award. Probably was a bad week but I think thats the point, having a beach and sun on your doorstep does not wash away lilfes problems.

I would say neighbours in many estates are very anal, too much time on hands, people living right on top of each other, doors and windows open, we would like acerage but I dont have the time with my work hours to look after it.

Child abductions are a huge problem here not just in QLD all over OZ, nobody can take too much care at the moment.

The points about the weather are quite important, I have said this before, we get droughts, bushfires, dust storms, severe storms the likes of which nobody in the UK would even imagine, the blue sky and hot sun bring a lot of dangers as well as nice postcard weather. As for house contracts crashing could happen anywhere usually our system is quite straightforward but not this time Anal people gone power crazy over some old dears poodle.

As for being sued, when you take on your own business, you put yourself up for it, we get ridiculous threats often, I would not be laughing if I thought any court of law would blame me for drough type dust, some people are just dickheads everywhere, here included. Litigation is profitable, actually my worse threat was from a 70 year old who kept running after my excavators with a broom, worried about mess might get on his pale pink tiled driveway, now he was scary.

I just think it was a fair post, after all we hear of all the horrors of the UK often enough

lindseyden

Hi Jad n Rich

Yes we all know thats it's the same all over but for just a few things. I am sitting here at the computer on a Sunday morning in the middle of summer looking out on to the greyest most miserable morning ever. I am in my pokey 3 bed semi dreaming of my big house that we promised ourselves by the time we were 40 (passed that) never having a cats chance of even an extra bedroom where we live now.

I actually love getting up early in the mornings but it makes you really grotty when the weather is gray day after day.

I'm afraid that I too would have put my sons op first before tests.

There's not too many people coming over there thinking everything is going to be rosy, this site won't allow us to believe that. LOL

Anyway thanks for your comments it is good to hear both sides of the story even if we say we don't want to.

Hope all goes well with your sons op when he does get it.

Lindsey

ABCDiamond

Child abuction is also a greater problem here in Australia than in the UK.

UK
"The offence of child abduction is part of the 'Violence Against the Person' category of police recorded crime. It is only a small proportion of the total category offences (just 0.1% in 2002/03). Yet the total child abduction offence numbers police recorded increased by 45% in 2002/03 from the previous year, to 846 offences. This Research and Development Statistics Directorate (RDS) publication examines the main types of offence that make up the total number of recorded child abductions across England and Wales in 2002/03." Source: http://www.crimereduction.gov.uk/violence12.htm

Australia:
"650+ child abductions per year. Most of the victims are between the ages of 2 to 11. Out of those 81% were taken by a parent, the remaining 19% by other family members. " Source: http://www.hug-ur-kids.org.au/parentalfact.htm
[I]

MikeStanton

That needs to be adjusted for the population differences - after all, this provides a more representative figure for the probability that a child will be abducted.

Assuming that the % of children in UK and Oz is the same, then

UK: 846 offences in population of 59.5 million
Oz: 650 offences in population of 20 million

ie a child abduction in the Oz is more than twice as likely than in UK.

And before anyone mentions it, the larger geographic area of Oz is irrelevant, because Oz is very heavily urbanised.

Edit: the numbers that ABCDiamond quoted - at least the Oz number - does not take into account abductions that are not related - shiver - to custody issues.