slapphead_otool

I know you were hanging around for low tide.

Look at that scum mark......

creepycrawley

Everything Australia does is always good in the eyes of you people, isn't it? It could rape and pillage and you and your ilk would be going ''...and that's what the UK would be doing if it had any sense...''

Yawn, yawn, yawn.

That's not why. It's because Australia hasn't had any money in its coffers until recently and in any case what's the use of having a ''booming economy'' if it doesn't show up anywhere useful like having infrastructure that looks even vaguely decent. There's a difference between not going over the top and having places that look down right tatty, wouldn't you say?

slapphead_otool

1. Creepy, how long have you been in Australia, and where else have you lived?

2. You cant go telling the world “Australia hasn't had any money in its coffers until recently” unless you can back it up. Do you want to rethink that comment?

3. As for: There's a difference between not going over the top and having places that look down right tatty, wouldn't you say?” - I take a guess that you are a quite young. Do you remember the UK in the 50s and 60s? Before we became Uroflash and eurotrash.

We didn’t spend money we hadn’t got in those days. The trolley buses were old and dirty, but got people to work. The trains were pre WW2 rolling stock, but they worked and were cheap.

The shops looked tatty back then, but we couldn’t afford any better.

creepycrawley

So if Australia is as minted as you lot keep banging on about it being (any of you lot actually hoping for a change in the law so that you can just marry Australia and be done with it?) why are the trains in Melbourne a disgrace and unsafe at night (most Victorians think so according to a recent survey), the shop premises that aren't Westfield owned (e.g. most of them) scruffy and run down and why when a whole load of paint falls off a tradie's truck in the street does it get left there, spread across the road and railway line, rather than being cleaned up asap as it would be in the UK?

If Australia is minted why is housing so inaffordable around Melbourne? Why are prescriptions so expensive? Why are groceries so expensive? Why is a Mars Bar $2 rather than 50p as it would be in the UK? Why is the beer down the pub so bloody expensive compared to the UK?

I fail to see where the real world advantage is of Australia's supposed financial health. All of this talk of debt and natural resources is irrelevant to the working man on the street.

NedKelly

At least they were open!

Amazulu

All this does not change the fact, that for the time being, the UK economy is f**ked.

Amazulu

Looks like West Croydon.

creepycrawley

So unless one came to Australia via Dubai they are in no position to judge?

Have lived in West Sussex, Surrey, London and Edinburgh.

What's it to you?

slapphead_otool

Exactly, and I don’t see ho it is going to get any better, unless Creepy has some secret plan he is keeping from the world.

Falkland Oil seems to be the current saviour. Knowing the UK:

1. The Argies will demand 75% of revenue. We will give it them.

2. The EU will say it is a common resource, and take 60% of what is left. The UK will let them.

3. A French oil company will buy the rights for cash up front, and the money would have propped up the NHS for 6 weeks, but the UK will give it as aid to India.

4. The French will then send 7000 French workers to the Falklands. They will open French shops, radio and TV stations. Alliance Francais will run French classes, and within a generation the Islanders will be French speaking.

slapphead_otool

Putting it into perspective thats all. so you have only lived in the UK and Melbourne?

How long have you been here?

creepycrawley

Five years. Not long enough to judge it yet? How long until I reach that ''seminal'' moment when I go back to the UK, see Australia on the pub telly, exclaim in a somewhat wanky, dewy-eyed fashion ''that's home'' and cause the dart's team to stop and stare? Fifteen years? Twenty years? Thirty years? How much of my life, oh wise slapphead who knows everything, should I waste waiting to see what you see in this place?

I mean, clearly, it's only a matter of time before one falls in love with Australia. There's no ''if'' involved cos it's objectively marvellous and the best places IN THE WORLD to live, right?

slapphead_otool

Just to prove my point:

Incredibly, 50 years after India took independence from Britain, we are still giving them aid. Despite have more millionaires and an economy 50% larger than Britain (The IMF's figures put the Indian economy at $3tr compared with Britain's $2.2tr.), Britain is giving India just under a billion pounds worth of aid.


India has bigger armed forces, nuclear bombs, and is part of a space race to the moon. Why in god's name is the poor British taxpayer picking up the bill……

slapphead_otool

No mate, but you can hardly stand on a soap box and say “That's not why. It's because Australia hasn't had any money in its coffers until recently”

You only arrived here recently.

See what I mean? Not point scoring, just pointing out the obvious. Unless you are going to provide economic figures, and your comment was objective rather than subjective…..

creepycrawley

The trouble is that when you say ''Australia is great'' that automatically is an obejective statement yet when I say ''Australia is shit'' it's automatically a subjective statement.

Jesus, the convicts got a better deal than this.

''You will spend the rest of your natural life in Australia until you jolly well learn to love it as much as messers slapphead a tool and doomandgloom and BAY do. Do you have anything to say?''

''Er, yes, could you not just shoot me at dawn? I'd prefer that''.

creepycrawley

Five years? Recently?

How long do you think the average human life is, mate?