gocebe

I think people are being slightly disingenuous when they give their reasons for wanting to leave N.Z.
Economic concerns are certainly valid but many people will tolerate a reduction in disposable income as a trade off for happiness. The problem is that a lot of people do not appear to be happy here.

I personally find N.Z. to be a strangely joyless place and find it hard to put my finger on why. I suppose the uneasy marriage of miserable presbyterians and cannibalistic natives was never going to be a barrel of laughs.

I don't think I'm the only one to have a sense of this joylessness. Look at the suicide stats. Happy people don't top themselves. I've visited some of the poorest countries on earth and suicide was virtually unknown.

Dustybin

might be something to do with all the moaning foreigners....

gocebe

the people with the best sense of humour that i've met in N.Z. ARE foreigners!

Genesis

Mmm, I tend to agree with that. Strange sense of humour kiwis.

aalls73

I'm with you on this one i think it's disgusting that they are allowed to charge gst on food items, i have found that in NZ although your bills are SLIGHTY cheaper you get stung in other areas!

bro69

Actually you have to be slightly happier to commit suicide they say you need to be wary of the smiling depressive.

It seems to me there were lots of people on this forum who were forced at gunpoint to move to NZ I am sorry for your traume, if they ever let you move somewhere else I hope you find happiness. I doubt it as there is always something to moan about.

I wonder why people call me a whinging POM.

love30stm

me too

Justcol

I think once you've succesfully left the uk and got it out of your system
there is never a need to return there.
I personally would look at lots of other places rather than go back. There are
things i miss about the uk but they would be be enough to draw me back.
I could do with a bit of civil unrest down here to stir up the masses but even
the recent strike actions we've had dont cause much of a ripple.
Maybe if National introduced a Poll tax that might do the trick

Laloo

According to Business Week:

Worlds Top Most Livable Cities

Auckland 5th
Wellington 12th
London 39th
Birmingham and Glasgow joint 55th



According to Mercer:

Top 50 Cities: Quality of living ranking

Auckland Joint 4th
Wellington 12th
London 39th

Top 50 cities: Eco-City ranking

Wellington 5th
Auckland joint 13th

No UK city listed


Am I missing something?

JohnThePom

I'm sure someone will explain the global conspiracy to fix the results....

Justcol

The problem with those surveys is they all someone elses opinion.
i can easily think of 10 or 20 cities that i would rather live in than auck or welly.
Their criterior to define "livable" and "quality of living" is probably not even
close to mine and i am a city boy through and through. I now what makes a good city and i dont see any of it in auckland at all. Welly would streets
ahead of auck in any list of mine.
As for the "eco city" who gives a crap? If you want eco move to the country.

cleverchap

I was reading an accounting magazine the other day and it had an article about the Greek financial task force set up to gather revenue. They found that in Athens suburbs only 392 households had registered they had a swimming pool (incuring additional tax) when the actual number found, by using the police helicopter and google earth, was nearly 18,000!!!
They also found over 1000 luxury sports cars costing over 100,000 euros each, registered to people that had filed tax returns stating their salaries were under 10,000 euros per annum.
The task force was set a gathering target of 1.2 billion euros per annum, but in the first 6 months had raised over 1.8 billion.
No wonder the Govt had no money.

Laloo

On an indfividual basis, of course you will have different opinions and preferences. These organisations have got to look at a set of criteria which are worked out statistically and come from different sources. You can take a look at the organisations websites to see the criteria used in determining which is the best city in the world. You're obviously not going to agree with everything and neither should you.

By the way, New Zealand has also been rated as the safest country in the world.

When deciding on which country and/or city to live in, you would be foolish not to take into account the results of these surveys as part of your research especially if you have not lived in there yourself.

lapsed kiwi

Personally, I can't think of a city I'd rather live in the outskirts of than Auckland. I'm not a city person and don't want to live in one, but being a rather specialist techie I need to live within commuting distance. Show me somewhere that has the climate and coastline of Auckland, and is a/the major city of a country, and I could reconsider. And it needs to be affordable to live in a nice house within 45-60 minutes commute of the CBD. The closest I've been to so far is Vancouver. I'd like to visit Seattle sometime but not sure I'd like to live in USA.

Bo-Jangles

It's also pretty foolish to base your immigration plans around what is essentially a desktop paper shuffling exercise, for which there may be a particular agenda or motive for producing the report in the first place.

I find it quite hilarious actually that when we're living in the UK pre- emigration thoughts, we mostly manage to rub along without knowing all this stuff about the place that we've been born and raised and couldn't care a fig where 'we' stand in all these charts, surveys or statistics.

If the survey validates and confirms your own ideas and impressions, then it's a jolly good survey and must be true. If it tells you something you don't want to hear then it surely should be dismissed as bunkum, rubbish or flawed data.

The Mercers survey puts Auckland as 13th place for the eco-city, with Aberdeen at just 0.1 point below it. How many people in the UK would think to move to Aberdeen (unseen) on the strength of this?

As for the OECD? Who knew? Whoever heard of them or took any notice before they decided to emigrate?