lesleys

It's much cheaper catering for anyone working at the house. In the UK I had to buy tea and sugar in bulk if we had builders or tradies in. And devote hours to tea making which I hated cos I can't stand the smell of it. Here they never ask for tea and all I have to do is provide cold drinking water.

RedDragon2008

Flights to Bali, NZ, Tasmania

feed_cantona

Public transport is cheaper compared to where I am from.

WestLondonWelshman

Tasmania is part of Aus Red! just so you know . I saw a fortnight holiday advertised to Bali for £189 from London last year on teletext holidays...Couldn't believe my eyes...

WestLondonWelshman

p.s that was flights and all inclusive accommodation. Would have snapped it up but the wife was 6 months pregnant at the time!!!

RedDragon2008

hence the

Pit Bull.

Average wages including overtime and pay increases.


May-2000 $45,900 3.59%
May-2001 $47,793 4.12%
May-2002 $50,253 5.15%
May-2003 $53,414 6.29%
May-2004 $54,938 2.85%
May-2005 $58,583 6.64%
May-2006 $59,873 2.20%
May-2007 $62,894 5.05%
May-2008 $65,686 4.44%
May-2009 $69,493 5.79%
May-2010 $73,148 5.26%

Average wages are zooming up in Australia, recent inflation is low, compared to higher inflation in the UK and low pay rises, I think things must be getting cheaper all the time in Australia, compared to the UK. Wages have increased by about 45% in Australia, whereas in the UK they haven't gone up anywhere near this, so it stands to reason that Aussies have more spending power than folk in the UK, based on the last ten or more years figures.

old.sparkles

Sorry Pitbull - UK inflation is only higher recently- looking at history over the past 10 years, and the UK is likely to show lower rates

http://www.rateinflation.com/inflati...inflation-rate

http://www.rateinflation.com/inflati...inflation-rate

Pit Bull.

I said recent, the pay rises are incredible though, I was looking at average pay rises for the UK and all I could find was that wages had stagnated since 2007, whilst in that time wages had gone up in Australia by 20% in just four years, not even counting the last two years, the wage gap is widening fast.

Pit Bull.

I think some have had half decent pay rises, a lot haven't, I found this cutting which doesn't look good and the widening wage gap trend between Australia and the UK looks set to continue.


Average income in the UK will be stagnant for twelve years – and it won't improve for at least eight more. A typical low income family in 2020 is set to have an income 15 per cent lower than in 2008

I found this also.

In April 2011 median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees were £501, up 0.4 per cent from £499 in 2010
For men, full-time earnings were £539, up 0.2 per cent, compared with £445 for women, up 1.4 per cent
Median gross weekly earnings for all employees were £404, the same as in 2010
Median gross annual earnings for full-time employees were £26,200, an increase of 1.4 per cent from 2010
Median gross weekly earnings for full-time employees were highest in London at £651 and lowest in Northern Ireland at £451

cresta57

What a load of bunkum. Wages for some have increased with the mining boom. The cost of food, fuel, electricity & gas have shot up out of all proportion. If anything it's become more expensive to live here over the course of the last 10 years.
There are little towns all over QLD that, according to some reports, are enjoying profits from the mining boom. The reality is that the majority of renters have been forced out by the massive increase in rental prices. Agricultural & other low paid workers simply can't afford to pay a k per week to rent a shitbox workers cottage.
Gladstone is a prime example. The Curtis Island Gas project has brought wealth & prosperity according to the government. What it's actually done is turn Gladstone into a town full of contractors all paying top dollar for everything. The normal retail employees bar-workers etc. can't afford to live there any longer. Same as the fixed income retired population that recently found weekly rent had rocketed from $200 p/w to over 1k p/w.
Poverty levels have risen to over 12% of the population.
The building trade is stagnant, wages have actually dropped over the last three years. I can't compete with the guys coming up from Brisbane & charging < $20 per meter. My running costs are $28 per m anything less I go bust.
If your involved in mining yep life's good if not you might just scrape by.

You do paint a lovely picture from your armchair in the U.K though.

moneypenny20

Wished my husband earned an average wage. Mind you I wish I earned a wage so not to worry, could be worse!

Bibbs

I know lots of people not in mining, who are doing very well.

That average wage is .. well .. average.

Pit Bull.

All I'm quoting is the average, it doesn't mean everyone gets the average, some get more some get less, the average wage in the UK is £26,000 but about 20 million people earn less than that, many a lot less than that, my figures weren't about the wages, it was about the great pay rises, which have massively outstripped the average pay rise in the UK, which in turn means Australians have more disposable income to spend than the average worker in the UK has, regardless of what's gone up in price, prices have gone up here in the UK as well and inflation is similar in both countries over the last ten years or so, but recent, inflation as been low in Australia, so the big pay rises needs to be factored in when working out the cost of living, compared to the UK.

Pollyana

The very high wages experienced by workers in areas like mining though skew the "averages" - there are many more Australians getting below average pay rises than there are getting the huge ones seen in small areas of the economy. Its not balanced by any means.
The vast majority of Australians have less, or certainly no more, disposable income than the average Briton, and prices and the cost of living has rocketed here over the last 10 years, far faster than the UK equivalents. Those of us who spend a lot of time in both countries have watched it happen - we've lived through it on both sides. Statistics are all very well but they so often don't reflect the reality that only real life can provide.