Threads like this crack me right up. It's like when you were a kid on a Saturday evening and the man on World of Sport would be reading out the football results - you could tell what the score would be just by the tone of his voice. Same deal on here - the down-on-oz brigade seem to be getting mugged and stabbed by feral packs of delinquents, the happy-to-be-here, do not.

To the OP - you'll learn bugger all from this thread because your question, like so many on this forum, is far too general to be answered seriously. For every person who's been escorted to a reclining train seat and offered a free massage by a cheeky young lad, there's another who's had a machete shoved sideways up their jacksie by a four year old. It's all bollocks for the most part and even if everyone on this thread said it was like Beirut Borstal - you'd still be seeking a second opinion.

Kids today, eh! Pfffft.

You're not wrong..

However..I admit that I find Australian kids certainly less aggressive. I'm not talking about teens pissed up - you take your chances in both countries, as I think Quoll seems to think.

I've found myself on public transport with a bunch of yoofs and felt that I needed to keep an eye on things only for one of them to dress down the others and pull them up.

I think younger Australian children are not quite so diffident - certainly not surly or 'won't talk'.

We had a visiting girl from the UK visit her Aunt here in Melbourne and I'd forgotten how timid in some ways English kids can be. She was about 7 or 8 but seemed more like 5 in some ways. She seemed a little out of sorts with mucking in - but of course, around here, kids grow up on acres of land and get used to all the things going on just in their backyards. I realise it is different in the burbs so it's not really a valid comparison.

I do have a memory of a time years ago, and it was largely circumstantial : when I was a teen working over summer in the US on this particular occasion I found Brit teens alot more immature than their US and Australian counterparts. To be fair, that was partly because most of the Australian teens were recruited for sporting acitivities whereas most of the Brit teens were recruited to work in the kitchens - where they worked and sang soccer songs - and very embarassing it was too. I was about the only British 'teen' who had been recruited in a sporting capacity.

I still have this lasting impression of the Australians actually making an effort to get on with American culture -and take an interest in it, even if privately they thought aspects of it a bit silly - (which we all did at times) whereas the Brits were openly rude about it. What I still vividly remember was the Australians' leadership and tact. It was one of the only times I have been embarassed by the behaviour of my fellow countrymen and women and their relative ineptness (away from the old cliched behaviour found in the Med and at Bondi)... And it wasn't as if my fellow Brits were the fine upstanding men and women of their generation who felt they well above their colonial cousins...they were well down the pecking order in this place(!) Just an episode..

Isn't that what forums are for?? to discuss and debate and too get peoples views and thoughts and that's the beauty of forums and free speech. Its certainly not going to make or break my decision on whether or not I come to Oz, just the same as asking whether or not my clock radio picks up BBC radio 1. They are just questions

Yea I know - wasn't a dig at you as such, just the cyclical nature of the discussions. And I will fully admit to being guilty of this, just as much as others on this thread.

As someone who left the UK largely because of the young people there and their behaviour and one of my sons getting bashed by local thugs and the police not doing anything about it I can honestly say the kids in Oz are way, way better. I teach in a government high school in perth with a large concentration of British migrants and I am ashamed to say they cause quite a few problems. Aussie children are not as 'hard' as British kids (of course this is a general observation and there are exceptions on both sides) Assie kids generally seem a bit sweeter and happier. However, Aussie kids swear a lot and in that, they are equal with British kids. However I just feel there is an extreme attitude in Britain where children are not raised to respect elders. The way children behave on buses and on the street in Britain is appalling, and at times agressive and threatening.