Image via Wikipedia MOVING TO AUSSIE:


Australia ahoy: why are we crossing the ditch?

It sounds patronising, but sometimes I feel sorry for New Zealand. We're a curious anomaly. One day the country is rated as one of the best places in the world to live, most peaceful, best quality of life, best cities to visit, best coastline, best leisure sports. For such a small population, we do incredibly well at certain things and appear, from the outside, to be at one with the environment. Yet, at the same time, there's high teen suicide and pregnancy rates, high alcohol consumption, high rates of bullying, domestic violence and child abuse.

If New Zealand is such a fabulous place to live, why are we leaving?

Concern over the number of New Zealanders moving overseas — at stages referred to as the "brain drain" — has been openly apparent since the 1980s, with the easiest place to go "across the ditch".
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According to the taskforce set up by the government last year to tackle this problem, incomes in New Zealand haven't been equal to those in Australia since 1974. By 2008, the productivity gap had also increased to the point where Australia's per capita GDP was 35 percent more than that of New Zealand.

Statistics New Zealand has found the median weekly income fell by 1.7 percent from the June 2009 to June 2010 quarter; 4.9 percent more people received income from government transfers; and food prices went up 12 percent from October 2007 to 2009.

But the 2025 Taskforce is coming to the rescue! Their mission: to report on progress and make recommendations on how best to close the income gap with Australia. But the recommendations thus far don't appear to be having much influence. The taskforce's second report projects the gap with Australia will grow to 42 percent by 2025. To combat this, it suggests lowering the tax rate and government spending, selling assets and encouraging foreign investment
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Finance Minister Bill English was cautious, saying "History shows that reforms done at breakneck speed tend to be fairly counterproductive." Labour accused the taskforce of providing "ideological claptrap" and a path New Zealanders don't want to go down
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Taskforce 2025 says too much time has been wasted on "clever new government initiatives" to increase growth and prosperity in New Zealand. Initiatives, they claim, that focus on supporting potentially high-growth areas of the economy, instead of addressing the disincentives for business investment.

If the options (hypothetically) for increasing New Zealand's outlook were ideological claptrap versus trucking on as we are, I might start reconsidering that path I didn't previously want to go down.

Acknowledgements: MSN Travel

http://anzacbloggersunite.blog.co.uk

Related articles

• NZEI slams taskforce report (nzherald.co.nz)
• '400,000 will leave in next 15 years' (nzherald.co.nz)
• "Figure 1.2: Net emigration to Australia and the income gap" and related posts (lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com)
• NZ could lose 10pc of population to Australia: report (nzherald.co.nz)
• Considered consistent reform better than opposition (homepaddock.wordpress.com)

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Aliens' already exist on earth', Bulgarian scientists claim...





Aliens from outer space are already among us on earth, say Bulgarian government scientists who claim they are already in contact with extraterrestrial life.



"Aliens are currently all around us, and are watching us all the time," Mr Filipov told Bulgarian media. 

Work on deciphering a complex set of symbols sent to them is underway, scientists from the country's Space Research Institute said.



They claim aliens are currently answering 30 questions posed to them.



Lachezar Filipov, deputy director of the Space Research Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, confirmed the research.



He said the centre's researchers were analysing 150 crop circles from around the world, which they believe answer the questions.



"Aliens are currently all around us, and are watching us all the time," Mr Filipov told Bulgarian media.



"They are not hostile towards us, rather, they want to help us but we have not grown enough in order to establish direct contact with them."



Mr Filipov said that even the seat of the Catholic church, the Vatican, had agreed that aliens existed.



He said humans were not going to be able to establish contact with the extraterrestrials through radio waves but through the power of thought.



"The human race was certainly going to have direct contact with the aliens in the next 10 to 15 years," he said.



"Extraterrestrials are critical of the people's amoral behavior referring to the humans' interference in nature's processes."



The publication of the BAS researchers report concerning communicating with aliens comes in the midst of a controversy over the role, feasibility, and reform of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.



Last week it lead to a heated debate between Bulgaria's Finance Minister, Simeon Djankov, and President Georgi Parvanov.

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