Genesis

I am not sticking my head in the sand. I have agreed to days of 2.70 are no longer with us. But I do not see that graph as a trend. There are HUGE swings. It is a mountain range with huge ups and downs a trend would be a relatively unlumpy ski slope down. The ups and downs are all there for many a fiscal reason. And as we all agree no one knows what is round the corner with currency. What I do know is like many others holding GBPs we have lost (on paper) a shit load of money in the past year. I am pissed off about it as you may be aware I have a trend of losing money and for once I would like to be on the smooth end of the pineapple!!

simonsi

Come off it, any high schooler could put a line of best fit on that graph and come to a trend conclusion...

Understand the rest of yur post and you have my sympathy but the graph is what the graph is. Essentially you can hope for a step change to give some temporary relief as has hapened in the past but that is what it is, hope for temporary relief and yu would have to recognise and jump on it to see any benefit, hold out for too much swing and history shows it will disappear as fast again...

Genesis

And if it is a trend then in X years time the GBP will utterly worthless..like 10 cents to GBP.

Bo-Jangles

Most timely that today the Aussie and NZ media is all up in arms about the repatriation of homeless Kiwis back to NZ, after having found several of them begging on the streets there.

One Aussie comment in particular really chimed with me.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/vic...949156531?pg=2

londonescapee

Some of us rather like one of the large cities though innit it's pretty fab compared to other urban sprawls....

THR

How many Kiwis are there in Australia then? I think that as NZ is a small and relatively remote country then even Australia as it is a bigger country has some sort of "big world"-feel about it.

Of course, the concept of remoteness is subjective. Remote to what? London, New York? Then definetely but remote to the growing markets of SE-Asia? Not really that remote any more.

Buzzy--Bee

Most of them.

BB

Expat Kiwi

Look on the bright side though, if there weren't New Zealand wouldn't need so many immigrants. Most of you would still be stuck in the UK.

A fair percentage of you will probably end up in Australia one day anyway.

Genesis

But not all of them, yet. I know because I saw 2 people in the Mall yesterday and my neighbours have not gone, yet (on one side).

bourbon-biscuit

Ah, but those you saw in the mall could have been tourists (OK, bit unlikely in PN, but still).

Bo-Jangles

I think the mass exodus has slowed somewhat since the recession and lots came back home after losing jobs overseas, however I think I heard recently that it's still about 7,000 per week that jump over the ditch.

Bo-Jangles

Remoteness is a lame excuse for lots of things when you live down here, we're no more remote from Asia than the UK is.

This is an interesting read about the 'New Hobbitland' Taskforce which plans to catch up to Australia by 2025

http://www.citizeneconomists.com/blo...-to-australia/

THR

You must mean that that number of people visit Australia every week, not all of them emigrate there. After all, 7000 a week is 350000 a year and that is almost 10% of the population of NZ.

bourbon-biscuit

I believe the figure isn't far off 1/10 of the population, as crazy as that sounds. The climate is warmer and the economy stronger, those two things alone are a huge pull.

gocebe

Australian Permanent Residents can live and work in N.Z. but this is not reciprocal because too many PR's would leave N.Z.

N.Z. was also forced to increase their citizenship requirement from 3 to 5 years to keep people in the country.

around 1 in 10 Kiwis live in Aus.

it doesn't sound like there is the kind of equality between the 2 countries that the UNDP report suggests.