If you have made your decision, then perhaps better all round if you just stick with it and stop picking at scabs.

Perhaps you are right. My interest in this debate is to gather as much information as possible about both countries, but I am no interested in any bullshit or bias when it comes to either, and cutting through that takes time.

Is there really any point 'debating' something like this though? It comes down to where each individual feels happiest.

Yep - doesn't seem to stop the question being "debated" on a regular basis, usually with the same conclusion.

Mars, is the best. right. That's all agreed. End of this round robin. Next?

I can just see the Martian forum in a few years time. Actually Mars and Oz, similar soil colour surely?

What are the childcare subsidies like?

Sorry, I'm using the word debate in its academic sense. I don't mean argument, discussion or deduction, but a long-term process. So my interest in this expat issue is very broad. I don't think anyone can disagree with your last sentence; I certainly don't. The question I ask myself is: where would I feel happiest? What elements of life is it more important to get right, to feel happiness?

Sorry no idea of her name but it was some woman who said something along the lines of 'in Britain I cannot afford to have more than one child because of the poor childcare, but I would have two or three kids under the Australian allowance. Fact.'


My best advice on that is that you cannot analyse your 'happiness' to that degree, it is not a case of giving marks out of 10 for a number of criteria that come together to equate to 'happiness' but it is more about your state of mind and just how you feel being in one place or another.

I am much happier in the UK than I was in Oz, and the reason for that is nothing tangible like cost of living, weather, size of my house, it's not even that my extended family are here.

I just feel happier living here, I can't really explain why, I just do.

I do agree that for some in Australia the standard of living is high, very high. Bear in mind that when half the population earns less than $44,000 a year I doubt they have a high standard of living.

As others have pointed out though you yourself show an obvious bias and label opinions fact. If your heart tells you that you should be in one particular place and you wont be living hand to mouth then go there. Dont analyse it to the nth degree, we are a long time dead.

First para: I cannot vouch for this, I'm still here, (for another 118 days!), but I am pretty damn certain that this will be my outlook!

Second para: that's it. Simple.

Perhaps adding that I may well get my chilblains again!, things will get me down sometimes, polishituns will anger me immensely, but I will be home.
Home. I did not cultivate this, it is something that has run in my subconscious for 35 years. Circumstances of the last 2 years brought it to the surface.

I have not got to this age and outlook to have any illusions about anything or any one.

[QUOTE=pommybird;10816164] My wife's sisters have stopped at one child because they cannot afford a mortgage and two children at the same time. This is because the childcare assistance is not adequate in the UK. In Australia the government pays up to $7500 per child per year (around £400 per month). One of her sisters pays £750 per month for one child, with no assistance because she and her husband earn around 50k per annum. So two children would mean £1500 per month on childcare = impossible.

Here I know a couple earning $150,000 and they still get half their childcare costs paid. So in other words, the Australian childcare is much higher, and the threshold at which they stop paying it is much higher. As I said. So it's not a question of "some woman" blithely choosing her country on where the childcare is highest. First, she does not qualify to move to Australia, and second, she literally cannot afford to send two children to childcare in the UK = one child for them. She could, however, and has stated so, afford to have another child under the Australian system. Which is kind of what I wrote the first time around.

I think the problem with your posts is that you make either situation sound universal in each country when in fact you are just talking about individuals. Most couples we know have 2 or more kids, a mortgage, holidays, nights out etc etc. Their situation is no more universal than your examples but you word it in such a way as to say that in the UK people cant afford more than one child whereas in Australia you can.

[QUOTE=chris955;10816485] I'm confused? Who actually wrote what?

...............anyway-have we now got to the stage of some kind of UK 'One Child Policy' to prove the UK is the pits?

Gawd awmitey! Is this ever going to stop?

Last week that bozo on am. TV put up some sort of graph to show how Australia is better than 'the Brits' at this and that sport.
Not better than France/Sweden/Oomegoolieland-nah! 'Better than the Brits'.
And again today-this 'arvo' I think,-same: 'better than the Brits'.

I hope dental care is 'free'; I have ground my teeth down to bloody stumps!

[QUOTE=chris955;10816485] I know that anyone earning £50k or more gets no childcare help in Britain (and maybe a lot less, I don't know the cut-off), and that the going rate for childcare costs £750 per month. I also know that people earning £100k get $7500 (currently £4500) childcare per child from the Australian Government, which probably works out to 50% of overall annual costs. Those are the cold, hard, demonstrable facts of policy. The unavoidable conclusion, based on the factual policy of the two states' childcare assistance policy, is that one receives substantially more help from the Australian Government than from the British Government. This means that my wife's sisters cannot afford to have more children in Britain, but could if they lived in Australia. The issue is of concern to the British Government, and it tried to provide more assistance in a recent budget, but because the country is bankrupt it was a small gesture.