I'm definitely being unreasonable! Comparing lives with Australians!

[teulie]

Watched a lot of Love Island Australia and MAFS Australia this year and follow a lot of the people from it now. Seeing all their stories all year and today for NYE, the sunshine, the beaches, the groups of girls all just having the best time being young in such a beautiful country with the best sort of lifestyle and it makes me feel sad!

I'm in my late twenties married with two kids, boring job, normal family life style but I look and think god could I of done that? Could life of been like that?

One of my old friends is currently in Australia so I'm seeing their insta stories all day everyday and it's made the pining worse than ever, I've never even been there and I find myself just wishing I could do life again and be born there

Amsterdam is lovely, but just for a weekend really I am not sure it would be cool to move there.

I had family emigrate to Aus, within 10 years they'd all come back home.

You do all know that Australia is a really big, diverse place, and that not everyone lives swanky, beachy, outdoorsy lives? There are plenty of impoverished people struggling to live healthy and fulfilling lives in Australia too.

Ever looked into life in the western suburbs of Sydney? Or what life would be like in a large but insular regional centre? Or somewhere a bit more remote? What if your nearest supermarket / pharmacy / cafe was a 40-60 minute drive away? Or your nearest major airport a 4-5 hour drive?

What if you had to catch all your own water or have it tankered in? What if when driving after dark you always risked crashing into kangaroos? What if you're not bright or outdoorsy or well off... and as a young person you get sucked into the very prevalent drug culture?

These things are common in Australia and have a significant detrimental impact on life in comparison to say the wildlife or weather.

The education system isn't all that great. Or that many extra curricular activities available compared to here. Life always looks better in the sun and we've had so much rain I think it's easy to forget what we have.

So, @teulie - are you coming back to the thread you started?

Or did you just want to start the first Australia bashing thread of 2024?

Nailed it.

That is utter, utter rubbish I’m afraid. There are SO SO many extra curriculars and the education systems are similar, although Aus does do better in the pisa ratings but I suspect that is because we have a smaller population. Making statements like this makes you look frankly silly as well as misinformed.

And many people move back to the UK after trying Australia. Just as many Australians emigrate to the UK....

This makes it sound like you’re drawing the conclusion that the UK is therefore better.

Likewise, many Australians move back to Australia from the UK. Many Brit’s move to Australia and love it.

Don’t forget that for many, home ties and homesickness play a big role in where people end up.

They try somewhere else, but end up deciding home is preferable - not because their home country is objectively better. But because it’s familiar, it’s where friends and family are, and it’s simply preferable to them.

Small-minded people will whinge about their adopted country, say how much better everything is in their home country, and think they’re the absolute oracle on it all (this thread is littered with such people. Hint: you’re not the oracle, it’s just your opinion).

I lived in the UK for 13 years, and then moved back to my home country. I like both countries, but home won out for me.

I can't think of many other counties or cultures in the world where it would be acceptable to use such stereotypical, racist descriptions. A few pages in and Australians (and specifically children in some cases) have described as sexist pigs, having no culture, having no taste, being uneducated, racist and mysoginistict. Replace Australian with the name of almost any other cultural group and this thread would be on fire. It is incredibly bigoted (at best) to decide that an entire country of people meet these descriptors and galling to read people complaining of racism while they deliver such a racist rant. If you would not find it acceptable to classify all people from a particular region / culture / religion in a particular way based on your one holiday or experience then please apply this same respect to Australia.

OP we have a rich and diverse culture and a lovely climate in Australia. There are wonderful strengths to Australia as there are to all areas of the world. Don't believe what you see on Instagram as it's never real life. The grass will always be greener anywhere that a person doesn't have to contend with the struggles of daily life.

I always assume it’s the same people who go to Rome in August and complain about how hot it is, or say Paris is unfriendly.
it’s good that we don’t all like the same things!

So unlike The Black and White Minstrel Show, which graced British TV screens in the 70s...

Iirc, it ran until 1978, a run of approximately 20 years. It had 16 million regular viewers in its heyday.

Despite some protests over the years, the BBC failed to understand how offensive it was, and it was only canned because by 1978 variety shows in general were less appealing to audiences than they had once been.

@ilovepuppies2019
You haven't seen the threads on America/ Americans then...

MNers love a bit of New World bashing.

They bang on about the lack of ‘culture’, and in doing so, wipe out entire indigenous cultures. It genuinely does not even occur to them. And I bet most don’t even go to the opera, themselves.

We have a symphony orchestra annual sub, and can walk into town (at least in summer) to see the opera, ballet, theatre, to galleries and museums - if we’re talking Eurocentric culture.

But on top of that we have our hugely prevalent and embraced indigenous culture, as well.

If you went to / lived in Australia and couldn’t find any of these things (assuming you actually, genuinely wanted to find them), that says more about you than it does about Australia.

‘Class’ is the big issue in the UK, and these threads do nothing more or less than prove that.

Tbf the U.K. gets loads of bashing on mn too. Particularly over the pandemic, it was off the scale. Still now tbh

I say all three countries U.K., Aus and US have pros and cons, and each of us might find happiness in one over the other for different reasons

Generally I think we’re fortunate to be in any of them, and if you enjoy where you live then lucky days

Neck chains were not phased out until the 1940s and continued to be used informally until the 1960s. Policemen were paid per aboriginal they brought back in chains.

Another system established by British settlers for the first 100+ years after they arrived. Australia was eventually founded in 1901, then spent the first half of its first century rather busy, doing stuff like sending its young men to Europe to be used as cannon fodder by the British military. In the scheme of things, reform happened reasonably quickly once there was stability.

Indeed. Actually, a friend of mine who has lived out there said the thing she missed most was the "green" of England

In my opinion it's not a beautiful country! It may be sunny.

But I found the people

Misogynistic
Racist

They have no understanding of other cultures because it's miles from so many places, so they often can only travel to other cultures for a week or more, no weekends away in other cultures.

I think the way that the aborigines are treated is appalling.

I wouldn't live there if you paid me.

There was also David Badiel blacking up in the late 1990s and early 2000s (for which he has since apologised). Also Matt Lucas And David Williams with the execrable Little Britain in the 2000s.

People should take the fucking log out of their own eye.

Honestly we probably wouldn’t have you - to get a visa you need an education and a skill and your post suggests you have neither.

It’s so funny, I wouldn’t dream of saying “I met a dodgy chav once in the U.K. so therefore everyone else in the U.K. must be the same” or “I met one American who had never left the country, and therefore all of them have never left the country”
“I met one white supremacist in America and therefore they’re all racist”
Do you realise how dumb it makes you sound when you say “the people are racist” because you once met one racist person?

@Ozgirl75 where in my post did I say I lived there?

You've not hit a degree in detective work have you?

I've family there, visited there, they're all racist and misogynistic!

Do you realise how dumb you sound, with your ridiculous assumptions.

Go back read my post, slowly and try your very hardest to understand it.....

Oh and I can assure you @Ozgirl75 the relatives that emigrated did not have degrees!

You do know over time requirements change? Or are you so dumb, you don't understand that?

Ever heard of £10 poms? How dumb you don't know about those and other requirements!

Typical "Australian", you've proved my point!

<head in hands>
Calm down, I’m just a stranger on the internet.
You said “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me” and I said “we wouldn’t have you anyway as you need an education and skills”
You seem fairly stupid and aggressive. However, I would not extrapolate from that that all British people are stupid and aggressive.

@Goodlard so your racist, British relatives moved to Australia and took their racism with them... and now all Australians are racist? Got it.

But you think it's ok to call me dumb and I suck it up?

Keyboard warrior, fairly typical of what I've experienced!

You epitomise my thoughts...

I do not think k the aborigines are racist, not one bit!