TheEmperorIsNaked

I knew what you meant!

SunnyOZ

Circumstances forced me to be away from the forum for a while. Now upon my return I am staggered at the lack of much by way of sense of humour. Is life in the UK now so serious? Is that one of the changes to which my daughter will have to adjust? Is the spirit of the Goons really dead?

It amused me to read the report on living costs in which the price of a Big Mac was one criterion. In my view there is much more to the issue than what you can buy for how much.

Living standards depend on many more factors than just purchasing power in relation to average incomes.

quoll

Nah, much better humour here in UK - when she gets back you may find she's had a bit of a humourectomy from living in Aus so long! So her biggest challenge may be learning to laugh again! And enjoying the craic.

chris955

In fairness the BigMac standard is something that popped up about 10 years ago as a universal measurement not affected by exchange rates etc. It really is pretty lighthearted to be honest.
Some take these threads very seriously and like to bombard us with links and surveys, they really dont tell the true story. The British sense of humour is very much alive and doing very well

Seabird

That is the scariest bit having also been away since 2005 in Australia! We are used to friendly shop assistants, and people that don't let doors go in your face, and smile at you rather than turn away in case you mug them. I remember seeing a guy left lying in the middle of the road unconscious with cars going round him! We certainly did stop, park the car behind him so noone would hit him and called the ambulance - he had fallen off his bike and knocked himself out. That would not happen in either Adelaide or Brisbane where we have lived/live.

Sorry, but these were factors that drove me out of the UK - just how stressed, negative and racist it was becoming and how nobody could see the good side of what they have there. May have to head back for a while eventually, and ridiculously/stupidly this is really bothering me more than the weather. Has the fact that nobody seems to like living there changed? Only two people out of tens of colleagues and friends said "I cant see why you would want to leave, I wish I would not it". Both were very wealthy.

TheEmperorIsNaked

Sorry, no choice but to go the wretched comparison route. I do it on the basis that we really do need to take on board once and for all the good and bad of all locations.
Adelaide I can speak about-36 years here says so!

A man had what turned out to be a seizure in the Mall a few years ago. People ignored him. When they couldn't get past because folks were coming the opposite way (instead of moving to the centre of the Mall),-they just waited. He was right there at their feet! Then they simply moved on.

A man froze to death in the Parklands. That bloke had actually made the front page of the local press because he and another bloke wore their iridescent vests, and went up and down Hutt street-a restaurant belt-keeping it clean. He worked out of a drop-in centre there. They knew his situation. 2010 Adelaide and he died of hypothermia...but while he was alive he was so handy to keep the streets clean...
I went to his funeral.

Do you remember him? I do.

There are so many other callous examples. I cannot vouch for all the details, so I won't list them.
The point is very simple: it is era NOT area. People in general do not have the care they once had.

Unfortunately we all seek better, thus when we leave what made us unhappy, we see our new locale as some kind of Utopia by comparison. Frankly, unless you go into a war zone, no area on this orb is 'better'; it is just different.

The other two highlights? They are at the core of this ongoing nonsense.
Both are sweeping generalisations, there is little point in going further than that, it becomes so repetitive.

ALL of this kind of stuff is to justify the decision to leave the UK! It seems to be incomprehensible that so very many are happy living there---and they are not 'wealthy'... Perhaps that is a sweeping generalisation too?

chris955

I really shouldnt reply to this sort of stuff but find myself compelled to.
We live in a beautiful area, the people are very friendly, dont appear anymore stressed than they did in Brisbane and arent filling out their migration forms. This belief that everyone wants to leave the UK and hates it here is just absurd frankly.
As far as you example in your first paragraph and the fact that it wouldnt happen in Adelaide or Brisbane well yes it would and yes it does.
If it helps with your decision to believe this stuff thats fair enough but dont expect others to believe it.

Sally Redux

I can never understand this stuff. The shop assistants etc always seem lovely when I visit. People in the community where my Mum lives have always been so kind and supportive to her. How sad to hate your country that much.

chris955

I think that is what it comes down to, they hate their country so it seems to cloud the way they see it. We have been to all corners since being back and have come across a very small number of shop assistants that could be considered unhelpful or unfriendly, exactly the same as in Australia really as you would expect. Yes it is sad.

quoll

Huh? Are you talking about the UK here? It certainly isn't reflective of where I live! I've been all over in the past couple of years and have yet to find a shop assistant that has not been friendly and as far as I can recollect not ever had a door slammed in my face although I must admit foreign tourists are usually the worst at pavement courtesy!!!

And customer service, I have found, has generally been REAL cheerful service!

As for the racism - IMHO Australia is far more racist and I have been astonished by the number of people I have met who have said that they prize the multicultural experience that their kids are growing up in! Of course it may just be Canberra that is unfriendly and uncaring in Aus but I hadn't noticed it being any different anywhere else on my travels! Driver courtesy here knocks Aus drivers into a cocked hat - occasionally I find myself driving like an Aussie unthinkingly and then feel really awful that I haven't let someone into the line etc when people are so courteous to me!

A straw poll of my long term expat friends in Aus had 75% of them wanting to return but being unable to! That said, too many Poms read the Daily Fail and believe every dismal word on its pages and consequently whinge a lot.

chris955

in fact very

Seabird

Some interesting points, thanks for the input. Just relaying my own experiences of things, sorry if you do not approve but they are my experiences.

I have been here almost 8 years so have taken the rosey glasses a while ago. Given the nature of randomness, experiences can end up being different, as can our perception of them. We find it hard as humans to separate our subconscious from our conscious thought, in fact we find it almost impossible even when we analyse a robust set of data.

So the absolute truth is unlikely in any single post here!

The "going back eventually" is a loaded comment as the reason behind it is that I have a daughter in the UK who is currently suffering an illness which may force me back. Sometimes it is worthwhile accepting people's comments without digging into them so critically.

Interestingly on the era comment, this is a massive generalisation. I find my own children more responsible than we were, but again they likely had different friends and we are relying on memory.

When we found the guy in the road, the person who was the most caring and efficient at administering first aid and calling the police was my son's then 16-year old girlfriend. The final piece of irony is that she was murdered in Southampton in June this year and we are still awaiting news on the cause of her death. I wonder if people heard anything on the day she was killed and ignored it? Guess we will never know, and that yes it can happen anywhere.

Nonetheless people's experiences are all as valid on here, and the only true picture can come from everybody sharing them to overcome the effects of subjectivity based on emotion, and the effect of chance on seeing the guy in the Rundle Mall or the guy in Colchester. Great examples of how our experiences shape our views and how hard it is to escape the thought processes we are intrinsically bound to.

chris955

The reason many of us dig into comments critically is that we dont recognise the country being discussed. If you make a sweeping generalisation about a whole country you must expect a certain amount of 'argument'.
When you say something wouldnt happen in Adelaide or Brisbane when it clearly it would you have to expect some replies. I have never witnessed what you described anywhere so I would say that but I wouldnt say it wouldnt happen in any of these places as it obviously would and does happen.

TheEmperorIsNaked

'May have to head back eventually'. I read that as 'many'. My apologies for that.

'The effects of subjectivity based on emotion'. How true.

Seabird

Precisely my point. We only report based on our observations and that is why British Expats is so important. Okay concede the choice of words was poor. Rephrase:

Based on my personal experiences, people in Adelaide between 2005 and 2010, and in Brisbane since 2010 have been more likely to help people in an emergency situation because they seem to feel less threatened by things going on around them than they were when I left the UK in 2005. I still am of the belief (note please my belief not stating as a fact) that the reason people were not walking but driving past in killing machines called cars and driving around a main lying in the middle of the left hand lane is that they were scared he may attack them. People in my experience are not that scared here, sorry. That is my experience. There may be different reasons for walking past a man in a mall, though can't imagine what they may be.

I might just live in a different type of suburb, or mix with different people etc. here. We cannot quantify those factors when stating opinions. Opinions by their nature are subjective. And they are all valid if you are to gain a holistic picture of the facts.

On my first week in Adelaide the bus driver drove me to my Hotel knowing we had only just arrived and were lost. Again an isolated incident but nonetheless one that stayed with me in the early stages of my relationship with the country, changed my perception and etched itself into my memory forming an opinion of my new home. The poster our new landlords, neighbours and now dear friends put on my daughter's bed of an anime she loved was no doubt influenced by their own experience of moving to Adelaide from Darwin, losing their home in Hurricane Katrina, coupled to a generous serving of being wonderful thoughtful people. I knew several of them in the UK too,

Based on a likely non-representative sample population of around 50 people who I told I was migrating, at least two out of three of them said they wish they could do the same and that they were despondent with the UK, two said they would not leave the country, and the remainder did not comment. All people who have gone to the UK that I know from Oz (an even smaller sub-population of 8 individuals aged between 20 and 30) moved there for career reasons, or because Australia offered less travel opportunities or culture. All but 1 planned to return. I have no statistical uncertainty values round my statements and I have no doubt that these figures are skewed by perception at the time not only from my own mind, but of those who made those comments who may have (a) had a run in with their bank (b) been caught in a cold rainshower (c) be trying to make me feel comfortable. Nonetheless their comments would have coupled to my perception of the emotion behind those comments which was all the things that go on when we migrate, and that in turn become entrenched in my memory, and form a belief.

All of our thoughts are bizarrely composed entirely of perception and past experience. Our ability to mate our thoughts to highly unassociated ideas and areas is very limited and separates genius from the rest of us!

But reading BE allows us to explore our feelings and those of others to add to our perceptions and form our ideas... what a great resource!

Thanks for adding your thoughts and opinions too.