Rascal

How long have you got?
Weather: crap mostly.
housing standards: Crap
Education: Crap and way behind UK
Roads: Crap, no proper road network to anywhere
Employment: Totally crap, longer hours than UK, less holiday entitlement
Wages: Crap
Taxes: High
Attitude: Mostly insecure and insular and nowhere is as good as NZ!
Cost if Living: High
Choices: few
Cost of Power Bills: High, way too high, learn to be cold indoors or go outside for a warm
Driving standards: Totally shite, boy racers, etc
Now thats just for starters, I have to go shopping to the local supermarket, has about the same choice as the Uk Kwik Save but double the price. There's no "buy one get one free here, its more like buy one pay price of two" Lol
Valitus, I am now convinced you are a Kiwi!

valitus

Sounds good to me :scared:


So when are you leaving?

lapsed kiwi

I think you've missed the point. One of the very best things about NZ is that only 4M people live here. If it had 60M, it wouldn't be much better than the UK.

Crap houses - buy a better one
Drivers - not much worse than UK and a whole lot better than a lot of countries
Weather - sh1te compared to where? Certainly better than the UK. Not as good as Oz, especially if you enjoy droughts and forest fires.

HiddenPaw

Can't you just accept that one man's meat is another man's poison? Neither point of view is wrong - it's just that people want different things out of life.

thunderbird65

I am trying to find the article in the west australian which asked why 120,00 migrants entered oz or wa and 62000 left again.


I have never stated i hate oz, i heard it was the 'lucky country. the best place in the world etc etc. so because i could try it for myself and my family and i looked in the papers for anything that ran the uk down to justify our move we gave up our very comfortable lives I a plumber gasfitter, to see if we could have an even better lifestyle in Perth. Perth very beautiful and if forced to we would live there ok, BUT we have a choice and for us we never had a better lifestyle, we were far better off in the uk, ie wages opportunities, close to europe sea and countryside. So having seen and experienced it ourselves we now know where we personally will be better off and returned.

For us after several months of BBQs and beaches the novelty just wore off and the place was quite boring, i wouldnt say i hate perth though. ok for a holiday but we dont need to do Oz anymore


Same as someone recommending anything really. whats suits them doesnt suit everyone

valitus

Does have a point and if the education system was that bad he can spell sh1te properly

lapsed kiwi

Hey, I'm not the one with derogatory comments about someone else's country as part of my signature block

Rascal

They are just my observations of living in NZ, same way as you are entitled to put some about Uk or your beloved NZ.
BTW did you leave NZ to earn decent money so you could return wealthy enough to build/buy a proper house with CH?

Englishmum

I always ruefully smile when I see people complaining bitterly about their council tax. Over here in New Jersey I have a very modest 3 bedroomed house - no bigger than the average house in England. We live about 18 miles west of Manhatten and the land our house is situated on is worth more than the actual house. Our housing tax has gone up by at least US$1000 *per year* and last year was $13,000...

This week our local council is sending out postcards informing residents that they have just done a re-assessment (as house values have increased since they last did one in 2001). A loose rule of thumb is that if the reassessment has increased by 38% your taxes will go up, and if less than 38% they will go down. A couple of residents in our town have said that theirs has gone up by 66% and another by 50%.

It's just expected that you will find the money in your pockets to pay for it; no discounts for single people/elderly or students whatsoever.

Need I mention the high cost of healthcare over here in the US as well? And that it costs around $100,000 for a student to take a first degree? (It takes four years in the USA). And that most people only get 2 weeks annual leave, three weeks if they're lucky or have worked for the company for at least five years.. (New Jersey is also the most populated State in the US....it's like living in Greater London).

I too want to leave the US...preferably London but happy to go somewhere else just for a few years.....husband wants to stay here until our son goes through college though.

Hayley

Sorry to hear you are stuck in the US for a while longer Englishmum- I had been wondering what your situation as you seem so 'english' but didn't want to stalk your posts.


I wonder how many of the people who are on BE or have enrolled are hoping to move back or have already moved back. I only joined this site because I knew that I wanted to go back to england but was scared to do so. I have made some good friends on here and since they have all moved back to blighty they kind off drop off.. they are having fun so i can't blame them

All this nonsense on this thread about people moving away from england and never returning. Just looking at how many unhappy sods are in OZ for example makes me think otherwise.

lapsed kiwi

No, I just left for an OE which went on longer (22yrs) than planned (5-10). I admit I didn't compare salaries before making the move. My house here doesn't have CH as such, but we did install some heat pumps, which cost about 1.2% of the cost of the house and are fantastic. Quite easy to budget for if you're buying a place. I've always preferred to fix a problem than whinge about it, but each to his own.

Rascal

Oh I quite agree with you there. I too would rather fix the problem rather than whinge about it, but considering I am moving out of NZ in January 07, I consider my plight to have been well and truly fixed.

Dirk1971

New Zealand was so great you decided to leave for 22 years....

JAJ

Just bear in mind that if your children return later on and you want to join them, you may not be able to do so. Parent visas are expensive and have other requirements too (balance of family, health criteria etc).

And even if you don't want to move to Australia to join them, you may find your ability to spend extended vacations in Australia is limited if you are not a citizen.

Also, if you plan having more children born in the UK later on, they will not be eligible for Australian citizenship if you don't take out citizenship yourselves. It is a very bad idea to have siblings with different nationality rights - can cause all kinds of problems.

You appear to be very confident about your future plans, despite the fact that circumstances and intentions can change greatly.

JAJ

Australia is quicker in most cases:

- usually applications are approved within 3 months; and
- usually the wait for a ceremony is no more than 3 months.

For most people it takes 3-6 months from application to swearing in. However you can only decide to move back after being sworn in as a citizen. If they find out you are seriously planning to leave before then your application can be refused. So be careful.