rkh001

check this out.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23408570-details/Australia+aims+to+lure+a+new+wave+of+'%C2%A310+Pom s'/article.do

Wendy

Interesting - it says:

New rules from September 1 will offer an extra five points towards a visa for those who pass a basic English test.

Yeah right, scoring 7 in all 4 bands on the IELTS test isn't that 'basic'.

I can see a lot of disappointed people coming up

datamile

Being british is a long way from getting 4 7s. I see plenty of posts here where people don't know the difference between advice and advise etc.

Wendy

Exactly.

jad n rich

UK media keeps reading this as australia wants poms, not quite sure about that.

The language factor is more to do with australia takes a massive amount of immigrants from many countries, particuarly our asian neighbours. Think poms only make up approx 20% of immigrants, many of the rest come from countries where english is not the first language. Think the new rule is simply wanting to make sure their english skills are good enough to integrate.

Dont really think australias targeting one race at all, it takes immigrants from 260 countries, not just UK.

JAJ

There are only 193 sovereign states with general international recognition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states

JackTheLad

And don't get me started on the number of ways people spell the word "definite" or "definitely".

Mrs JTL

Swerv-o

And the continued abuse of poor apostrophe's...

S

Wendy

for definate

moneypenny20

Don't get me started, please. I struggle so much to turn a blind eye to all that. I make all sorts of excuses for people I know nothing about

JackTheLad

jad n rich

You need to tell australia that then, we found that figure I think the exact figure quoted was 263, but it was from a link to a government website, something to do with multicultural australia. About a year ago.

Just thinking back on that, the bumph that came from the australian census last year, that also had mention of 200+ in relation to immigrants origin, perhaps that was in relation to languages spoken in australia but remember reading that too, nothing to do with kids school, def the census.

Anyway the kids assignment got a VHA I might tell the school too LOL.

renth

British Expats gets a mention if you choose to read all the comments.

"I think Mr Cook would be very surprised at the numbers going. My wife, who has been a nurse for 10 years, has finally had enough and we leave for Brisbane with our young family on Sept 21st - and to be honest, even that is too long to wait. A quick look at britishexpats.com will show the extent that people are willing to walk away from this sorry mess of a country."

Kapri

"had of" instead of "had have".

Grayling

'Would of' rather than 'would have'.

G