Doreen

Anyone going to the show at York this weekend???

We are going on Sunday - anyone up for a meet?

Cheers Doreen

Pastor Flaps

Were going tomorrow and will post our findings of the show on Saturday.

PF

cresta57

A couple of questions:-

Did anyone go?
Was it worth a visit?
Is anyone going in the morning?

I fancy a day away from the painting and decorating, gardening and general sorting out of 15 yrs worth of accumulated junk. I wish I didn't have a yard like Steptoe's!!!!

HeatherS

We went today & I would say go if you're not too far away; you get loads of stuff to read when you get back from removalists, migration agents, pension advisors etc, & there's a lovely guy from South Australia immigration dept who is promoting STNI. We were there for 3 hours inc the seminar which didn't tell us anything that we didnt know already so skip that!

Heather & Chris

scoobydooathome

Went today, was good if you at the Visa stage loads of info ect ...

Any Nurses wishing to apply are being advised to front load SK47 ect with Meds and Police as these are being processed by return post if all OK ...

Lots of information re shipping and banking, the Commonwealth bank of OZ confirmed there are no banks charges if in you have 20k in credit per account i.e. each adult, otherwise $5.00 per month plus additional costs if you go over (set) amount of allocated transactions per month, not a big issue to be honest

Met other Nurses today, had a bit of a chit chat about OZ ect,

Was surprised at how many of us wanna bee's are heading to Perth,

Lots of opportunities for South Australia re, Visa's classes,

Was worth going even if it was to talk to other's in the same boat

Good luck,

cresta57

Cheers for that Heather I think we'll go in the morning and visit the Yorvic centre in the afternoon then. Not been for a good few years and my folks have never seen it.
Sean

HeatherS

You're welcome Sean! We dropped the kids off at the National Railway Museum (spent some quality time with their Grandma!) & they loved it ; it was free too so even better!!

Heather

Boomie

Can't go to York still problems with the car.........andy going mad!!!!!!!!

would loved to of gone...........any information you found out that you feel would be of interest to us would be most greatly appreciated.

Still going to Brum H......look forward to meeting ya.

Love Lisa
X X X

hevs

Yes Lisa, still going, lets hope your cars fixed by then!
x

icklepickle

We went yesterday and found it to be very useful.

We went to the seminars on Canada and New Zealand and found the NZ one useful (basically answered questions from the audience) but the Canada one not so good, she just read out the immigration policy and then couldn't answer half of the questions from the audience.

Other points relate only to NZ.

Felt quite sad seeing the little box that the cat would have travel in - daft really. The cost was about £500 with no need for quarantine.

The pensions info was very useful, basically you have to transfer within four years or you get charged tax on each years growth and then capital gains at the end. If you are still in serps you will still get a UK old age pension although it will not be index linked. Endowment policies are a problem because it is a bad idea to cash them in because you loose the terminal bonus however if you don't then you become liable for the tax and capital gains same as the pension. If you transfer your pension over to NZ then you can take it whenever you want to.

Spoke to NZ immigration dept and found them very helpful, they suggested what seemed to be a simple way forward for us. Then spoke to immigration consultants who were very negative about same route and got totally confused but will post a separate thread to find out the truth of the matter.

Spoke to bayleys estate agents about housing and learnt that yes the housing is often styled like American suburbs, big wide roads, low level housing but the areas are very community based and have a small town attitude (she said the her boyfriend went over to visit and said 'OMG it's just like America' but then found that complete strangers new exactly who he was chatted to him in the street to welcome him).

The immigration dept have a list of town websites that will give you details on each town there are to many to type in but I could scan it if people wanted to see it.

Regards

Doreen

Hi

Went to the show on Sunday and found it really useful. Got contacts and info on pensions, transferring money, and checked out other shippers. Now have 5 coming out to see us in the next few weeks - will let you know our views on the shippers thread!

Made contact with a guy in Brisbane who told us about two good places to go to in Queensland for assistance with business, start-ups etc. Will pass on details soon (at work at the moment - surfing!). The queues were unbelievable for the on-the-spot assessment for immigration - seems there's a whole load of people behind us!!!

Views on the Aussie dollar (from the various financial investors)was that it would continue to get stronger - aargh! The consensus of opinion was that the dollar was finally coming into balance with other currencies and had been undervalued for too long. I guess futures are the only safe bet at the moment.

If it makes you feel any better, pity those people who are about to make their final payments on European properties, Spain etc. and due to the change in the Euro are having to find an additional £25K in some cases on top of their final payment!

Last Monday of 4 at work, whoooohoooo!

Doreen