Charismatic

I have to say I think New Zealand is a wonderful place to live...if you’re relatively wealthy. That’s why the piece of advice we offer most often is to make sure and find a good job (or win the lottery of course ). Honestly I think people would feel much better about living here often if they could get away once a year, live in cosy little houses and not have to work long hours to make ends meet.

It’s a very beautiful and diverse country, we get about 4 very good months of weather a year and largely the problems of crime seem confined to large cities/dodgy areas.

Genesis

Totally agree. Its cool if you can make ends meet and then have some spare. If you are on the bones of yer arse its no fun. I would not be here if I was always skint. In the UK we were far worse off than here but not skint and life was a bit of a bind just making ends meet. Enter NZ and we are suddenly way better off having swapped 20 years UK equity in GBPs for kiwis at 2.64.

Charismatic

And you complain about getting a raw deal .

Genesis

Got one then too......5 months later it was over 3 to a pound


Shit 'appens!!!

I wonder when it wiil get back to the good ol' days of 2002ish when $3.80ish was on the table? New year? More like the new millenium!!!!

Stormer999

Ah well I see everybody have been enjoying this topic whilst I have been watching all of the World cup rugby warm up games Result......Southern hemisphere 1...Northern hemisphere 0 though Wales did show well with so many main stream players missing.
Wonder if this will catch any English dyed in the wool supporters.....
No way is Scotland to be lumped in with, or compared to England. It has it's own system of control, scenery to compare with NZ and in Edinburgh one of the most vibrant cities in Europe (shame about the weather!) What I am saying is take Scotlands excellent qualities out of the 26th position and I think the placing would fare a lot worse!

Buzzy--Bee

.....which 90% of the population inhabit......

BB

crap coffee

yeah. That's right. haha.... I was thinking... of Edinburgh today..... and my old life..... .. nice apartment there eh. .... but we live in a shithole here .. I mean crap NZ house.

love the scenary..in Scotland..Utterly Gorgeous.

Stormer999

It is a lovely country you can see why the Scots didn't want the English to see that! I live in a lovely bungalow in the UK but the traffic and weather mean I spend too much of my life inside it! We are both very much outdoor people who love solitude within each other company. It's the solitude that you can find in Scotland but only partial solitude in the rest of the UK. To get to Scotland from the Midlands where we live is many hours fighting the M6 snarl ups! Better the shed on the beach than the penthouse in dock side for us...

elfman

well since the UN HDI is based solely on the following three criteria:

A long and healthy life: Life expectancy at birth
Access to knowledge: Mean years of schooling and Expected years of schooling
A decent standard of living: GNI per capita (PPP US$)

then I don't think the qualities you admire about Scotland would help raise its overall ranking above England in any noticeable way.

THR

Those three criteria are inter-linked, if you can read you are likely to get a better job compared to if you can't and you can earn better money which enables you to take a better care of your health thus expanding your life-span.

Genesis

Got one then too......5 months later it was over 3 to a pound


Shit 'appens!!!

I wonder when it wiil get back to the good ol' days of 2002ish when $3.80ish was on the table? New year? More like the new millenium!!!!

simonsi

Perhaps when 2002 comes round again....

I think you really need to get your head around the long term trend in the NZ$ vs the GBP, you keep quoting rates that were someone elses nightmare overvaluation at that time.... it is all relative and no-one's particular rate is a sacred figure that will necessarily come round again. Ever.

bourbon-biscuit

Mmmm, we visited from the UK around that time (think we got 3.6:1) and ate salmon steaks every night

Genesis

I Know. I will be surprised if it ever returns to above 2.30 frankly. That said I think 2 for 1 is not going to last..just like 3 for 1 did not. There is an in between, somewhere and I can wait. 2 for 1 I believe is not the new order and there will be an adjustment. Maybe only back to 2.20. I might even cash it all in at that figure. Finally there is no trend you speak of. Only medians. There is no trend to the kiwi versus anything. It is a very, very, very, very volatile currency. Volatile things do not have trends just errant behaviour on the whole!!!

simonsi

GBP vs NZD 10yr chart

Well, umm....yes there is, stop sticking your head in the sand, appreciate that chart shows there IS a trend.... whether you like it or not...