Browner_

Good
- weather
- football and cricket
- weather, football and cricket

Bad
- Appalling quality of homes
- Ludicrous car noise and drivers
- lack of culture,pubs, intelligent conversation,sense of humour

sr71

So better than the UK then, whose maternity system is at developing world level and at times seems to be solely staffed by staff from the developing world.

JasonSouthYorks

Fair point Genesis.

And we love it too. Not been here quite as long as you yet though.

lardyl

As they have affected our family.....

Good:
- space and environment to enjoy life and grow (a secure, open, engaging place with great potential to live an active life)
- outlook and attitude to life (inc "sporting/outdoor mentality" and a positive, can-do approach to things)
- weather and number/quality of daylight hours (in the north anyway)

Bad:
- rubbish wages
- poorer choice/value/affordability in most shops, many services and in the housing market
- that you end up dumbing down - due to the overall lower "quality" of the media, conversation and discussion (IMHO of course....).Plus you have to bite your lip quite a bit............no really..........I do........


Not as bad as I thought on first inspection/before we came:

- driving, you might find that you live with it and go with the flow in the end - at least there is less apparent road rage
- drugs - meth use is very damaging to users and families and weed is rife in places but that is not on our doorstep and these are probably less chronic than in the UK.
- education, although I am still to be convinced that this will be good for our kids as teens or when they get into higher education. Must say that we have had far better support from schools and other agencies here for the kids.

Most of the good and bad are wrapped up in the same causes.

NZ is less sophisticated than Europe the US, etc and you will either come out of that change as a winner or a loser. We are happy to plod along in that environment for the forseeable but I wouldn't say NZ is a permanent home (as yet).

sr71

Driving standards are bad, but the other side of the coin is that the congestion is nothing like the UK and it is possible to have some stunning drives in very twisty roads with no other traffic - if you enjoy that sort of thing.

Less sophisticated? Outside of a few major cities the US is extremely unsophisticated. Spend a night in a country town like Barstow in California and see what I mean. And California is one of the more sophisticated states.

And Europe, yes it has history and sophistication but again the vast majority of Europeans I've seen in the Scandanavian countries, rural France, Germany and most of Switzerland are hardly living sophisticated lives. I still think it is largely down to the individual.

lardyl

oh yeah forgot another "biggie" some of the locals talk rubbish, think they can back it up with their OE "experiences", and can't take criticism of their great, clean-green, good-as, open-minded, diverse, forward thinking country......where they can't make the trains run (unlike the unsophisticated Swiss), can't keep the power on in their majory city (unlike the poor rural scandinavians), don't have real crash barriers on their roads or a proper, planned public transport system (unlike the unsophisticated French and poor backward Germans), don't have Hicksville towns, (unlike California, which just about encompasses Barstow, that incidentally I found to be a reasonable stop-off point in the middle of what amounts to a desert, unlike some equivalent places in NZ which should be more sophisticated......and it has a decent ghost town down the road to amuse the kids)........

Of course NZ is less sophisticated than these countries and states and comparing like with like your average Joe-Blow Kiwi will get less exposure to high culture, history, and all the things that the other posters here have alluded to, than your average Joe Yank, Brit, German, Swiss or French person. Its a natural consequence of where we are, our population, resources and background. Anything else is just spin and the classic one-eyed Kiwi view. If you want to make silly statements about the rural populations in these other countries then fell free to do so, "Outside of a few major cities the US is extremely unsophisticated...." right so are we thinking per capita or on a square mile basis. Not only is their (and the European) infrastructure miles ahead but the people living in those cities are likely to be streets ahead what with the standards of journalism and reporting at least, never mind access to culture and "history". And don't come up with some quazi-philosophical points about what the value of different types of history are......don't wash here, I'm afraid...

whitesand

Good:

The lack of 'in your faceness' you find in the UK.
The sense of space here.
NZ has a sense of the potential to improve, whereas the UK seems to have lost this.

Bad:

The driving.
Lack of choice in shops, especially deli and grocery items.
The poor quality of housing.

scrubbedexpat094

OMG, how long have you got

Firstly, I'm glad you've had good experiences here, I love home births

I'm certainly not saying that the UK system is perfect, it isn't. The UK system has two major problems, not enough midwives & poor management.

However, NZ has the same two problems & a whole host of others. I have been a midwife for over 10yrs now, most of that time in the UK. In the past couple of years of working in NZ I have seen more questionnable & indeed down-right dangerous practices than I ever did in the UK. I have been appalled by what I've seen, the lack of research-based care being practiced, clinical decisions made on social grounds not on medical grounds eg. c-sections performed because the LMC is on holiday for the next couple of weeks , lack of accountability, poor standards of hygiene, record-keeping & so on.

Most lay-people will not be aware of the above because they haven't anything to compare it too. Many couples who have had babies in the UK & here will like the NZ system because on the surface it looks better. Don't be fooled.

All midwives in the UK have to have a Supervisor of Midwives & have an annual review with them. I can't speak too highly of this system, it provides a safety net to both the public & midwives alike. Sadly, NZ midwives voted against having SOM's a few years ago, they missed a great trick.

Like a number of my colleagues recently, I have just given up midwifery. I was proud of being a midwife in England, not so here. Having spoken to NZ midwifery council recently, they know that they are having difficulty keeping UK-trained midwives. More nurses are having to be employed on maternity wards to make up the short-fall, however nurses aren't midwives & therefore they aren't able to offer the same level of expertise. It's a very sad state of affairs.

I could go on & go into lots of specifics but there isn't time!!!

scrubbedexpat094

I'll let my ex-colleagues in the UK know though I seem to remember that most of them were British-born be they white, black, yellow, pink or green

Genesis

The longer I rest here the more I am amazed at the quality of the houses....many are sooooooo 'shedesque'. I have a plastic type polystyrene shed..it does 'look like a real house' but the build quality does leave me worrying where it will be in 25 years........at the bottom of the gully be live behind?????? I am assured it was well built and I guess after 18 years any real problems would have surfaced. In the 4 years we have been in it it has been relatively problem free...maybe there's hope!!!! But choose your shed carefully.

lardyl

clearly SR has been to the "wrong" parts of the UK and anyway MrsL and LardyMkII were saved from an emergency section by a great Singaporean midwife, Mrs Thomas, who was pretty skillful and had a great surname to boot......

sr71

Out of the 20+ staff we dealt with only 2 were British, but that is beside the point if their standards are up to a good level. They weren't and neither was their treatment of my wife or baby, who had shoulder dystocia after a long labour and had to be resuscitated.

Clearly none of you have had experience of inner London hospitals.

sr71

How is any of that relevant to sophistication?

And you have the one-eyed, arrogant view of a boorish Brit. Don't worry, a few more years in NZ and you'll get over yourself.

Your definition of sophistication is obviously coloured by your arrogance and superiority complex.

Again, what has history got to do with it? That would mean that Egyptians and Persians are more sophisticated than the Europeans.

Sophistication is totally down to the individual. The majority of most people in this world are unsophisticated and that includes most Europeans. Just because they speak French/Italian and drink San Pellegrino with meals does not make them sophisticated. Do you have any idea how close-minded and insular many Europeans actually are?

Batty

I do - they took out my appendix in Hammersmith Hospital ...... when I had sciatica

Batty

3 great things

The sense of belonging I have that I didn't have even when I was living where I was born.

There's not much censorship and PCness is a la carte mostly.

All the other bits and pieces like scenery, doing new stuff, friends etc.etc.

3 bad things that affect (or irritate) me

High interest rates - even when they're low, they're high here.

The propensity to tar all Maori with the same brush.


I'm stuck I'm sure there is a third thing somewhere but I can't think of it at the moment.