Rip Off Britain vs Australia

Whenever I call my dad we only ever talk about two things. One: United. Two: the cost of living in England. ‘Just another example of rip-off Britain’ he’ll say.

‘Got my car taxed. Rip-off’ ‘Renewed my TV license. Rip-off’ ‘Cigarettes have gone up. Petrol has gone up’ etcetera etcetera ad nauseum. ‘At least United are doing well’, I’ll say to change the subject. ‘Yeah and have you seen the price of the tickets? Rip-off’ I give up.

Now though I think I may have something that will finally make him change his tune, or at least stop whinging about ‘rip-off Britain’.

I’ve recently moved to Melbourne, Australia.

I can already hear the knowing laughs from all the ex-pats who have tried their luck down under reading this. You already know what I’m going to say.

I had been preparing myself mentally and financially for the general cost of living in this country for a long time; asking people who have either been here before or are still here, what the lay of the land is. ‘Isn’t it supposed to be expensive in Australia?’ I asked and I’d get comments like: ‘Yeah but it’s a very liveable place, especially Melbourne’ and ‘the food might be expensive but it is good food’ and ‘as long as you’re prepared you should be alright’.

Luckily I am prepared, financially I mean, because if I wasn’t it would prove to be a very short stay indeed. Here’re a couple of examples of what I mean.

I go to a restaurant on Bridge Road near to Melbourne’s CBD a few days after arriving and to my delight find Bulmer’s Original cider on the menu for a very reasonable $7.50 (£4.87). Ha, I think, all those worrymongers making out like you can’t get a reasonably priced drink anywhere and here I am paying roughly the same as in England for a pint bottle of Bulmer’s.

And then the waiter brings it out.

It isn’t a pint bottle. It’s a tiny 330ml bottle, barely enough for three large swigs from a glass. Oh, I think, maybe they were right. But all isn’t lost. Then I consult the menu about something to eat. Fancy a garden salad? Not for $22 (£14.30) I don’t. How about a risotto? $24 (£15.60) okay? I quickly realise I’m not going to do any better so just order this. For interest’s sake I check out the price of a steak. Cheapest one? $55 (£35.78).

I finish my Bulmer’s way ahead of my meal coming out so I go to order another one. ‘Yes sir?’ the waiter dressed in flannel shirt and torn jeans says, ‘Can we have some water for the table please?’ ‘Certainly sir’ he says. I think I see a smirk at the corner of his mouth. He knew. That waiter knew it wasn’t ‘for the table’.

I go into a mobile phone store to get a SIM and some credit to get me started a couple of days after this. I ask for $30 (£19.51) credit. ‘That will last you 30 days’ the girl says to me. ‘I think I can make it last longer than that. I don’t really call anyone,’ I say with a smile. She looks puzzled. ‘This is a 30 day recharge,’ she explains. ‘What does that mean?’ ‘It means that the credit you don’t use within 30 days expires.’ ‘And then what happens?’ ‘Then you have to recharge again.’ We stare at each other for a few seconds. ‘As in another $30?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘So that’s basically a contract isn’t it?’ ‘No because you’re not locked-in.’ ‘Oh I see.’ I leave the store.

What she meant was that I have two options. One: I pay $30 a month. Two: I don’t use a phone.

In the UK we can get handsets for free if we sign up for a phone contract. And we get unlimited this that and the other on top. In Australia? Pah. No chance. True enough you can get a decent contract at around $30-50 per month but you want an iPhone with that? That’s another $40 a month on top sir.

Fair enough. I’m in another new country, they may speak the same language but things are still done differently. It’s all part of adapting. That’s what I’m telling myself.

My dad thinks petrol is expensive in England? He ought to see the prices here. Actually maybe he shouldn’t, he’s already had one cardiac arrest.

To use the freeways here, and to get anywhere fast in Melbourne outside of the CBD and inner suburbs it is almost essential to, Breeze (a private company that won a government tender to build the Eastlink Freeway) charges you 54c per section of the road that you travel on via a little gadget placed on your dashboard that bleeps when you go under a sensor.

Cinema tickets for an adult: $18.50 (£12) more for a big screen or 3D films. Sweets and a small drink: $11.30 (£7.35).

The list goes on. Generally speaking it’s more than in England.

But…

There is of course the other side to the coin. That being that wages here are good. Very good in fact.

According to Average Salary Survey the average annual income for a professional in Melbourne in 2011 was $78 720 which is over £50 000. The same site has the average salary for a person living in Manchester in 2011 at just £30 996 per year.

Immediately a stark contrast emerges. It is easy to see why, when people here are forking out $50-70 for a nice, but certainly not fine dining standard, Saturday night meal they can do it nonchalantly with a smile on their face.

The British economy is in a stalemate situation with consumer spending power at a permanent low ebb and the cost of living ever rising. The Australian economy on the other hand, whilst to a certain extent relying on its fruitful mining industry, is certainly ticking over in a much healthier fashion.

A columnist in Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper said last week that it is a source of national pride that Australian workers are paid well and that spending power is good. Unfortunately in England we cannot say the same.

It is telling that the backlash currently circulating the media around Melbourne and Australia as a whole against the retail sector for being uncompetitive, is not one borne out of financial necessity, (these people can afford to shop on the high street, they are just choosing not to – instead going online for massive savings) it is simply borne out of a sense of frustration that retailers are being greedy.

Of course when I next speak to my dad on the phone I won’t mention any of the part about the wages here being higher, the point is not to have a balanced argument to present to him, the point is to stop him whining about ‘rip-off Britain’ for a few minutes.

Whether I think he has a valid point or not is not the point either.

At least United are doing well.

BBQs and the BNP

We Brits love the sun don’t we? The first sign of it and were whipping off our pants and caking ourselves in coconut oil. One minute you’re strolling through the vegetable section in Morrisons, dreamily whistling along to a cover version of Spandau Ballet’s ‘True’, the next there’s a break in the clouds and you’re knocked to the ground by a marauding posse of topless, tattooed skinheads desperate to ransack the meat and booze aisles. To be honest I can’t blame them, we didn’t get a summer last year (rain) or the year before (lots of rain) so it’s only natural that they greet the advent of a true heat wave with such unbridled joy, but the sun seemed to bring out more than their love of barbeques this weekend.

Whilst British people choose to enjoy the sun in different ways, most of them migrate to their nearest seaside town and this weekend I was no different. On Saturday afternoon strolling along Cleveleys’ sweltering promenade I encountered a vibrant and colourful beach scene crowded with a wide variety of people. Dog walkers, wheelchair users collecting for charity, young couples, old couples, elderly women with sagging breasts, elderly men with sagging breasts, rambunctious children, kite flying middle aged men and the sum of those motley images, I thought combined to paint a delightful portrait of what can make England such a great place to be in the summertime. I happened to be with a South African girl at the time and was giving her a brief outline of what sort of place Cleveleys was and had become, and it had pretty much lived up to its billing thus far. We sat atop the steps leading down to the sea with our ice creams and for once I actually felt quite proud of where I came from. She snapped away with her camera and seemed genuinely enamoured with the place and in that moment it would have been difficult not to be.

However one thing rankled with me. There may very well have been a plethora of weird and wonderful people out there that day but none of them were black or Asian; just white. Literally there were no other races represented in my entire field of vision whatsoever. I said as much to my friend and she said she had noticed too which launched us into a conversation about race and inevitably apartheid. She explained the whole unfortunate episode to me in a nutshell, about how it affected people she knew and how the country was still a tense place and as we walked along the top of the steps I felt a genuine regretful wistfulness coming from her. I gave her my world-view; that I thought the concept of nation states was archaic and that passports should be abolished allowing free travel between countries and she agreed it would be a nicer world to live in then we dropped the topic to concentrate on the dogs in the distance.

There are lots of British people who believe that such a thing as apartheid couldn’t happen here, that we are too modern, too integrated a people for such a blatant segregation to take effect, but I believe that to be an extremely slippery slope and what I saw next on Cleveleys beach gave that belief conviction.

The beach has these thick wooden panels that help control the tide at regular intervals, which act as a barrier between areas of sand. One side of this particular barrier (the side closest to the hustle and bustle) was choc-a-bloc with white people all throwing Frisbees, playing with dogs, sunbathing, paddling in the tide, swilling down alcohol and generally doing what one would accurately describe as ‘merry making’. On the other side of the barrier all huddled together in the middle of the vast plain of sand stood a single Asian family literally segregated from everyone else. All dressed in traditional black, they had come to share in the great British party but it seemed sadly that they weren’t invited. The view from the top of the steps provided me with a microcosmic snapshot of exactly what is wrong with the country and why we may well be headed for our very own regretful incident in the near future. If I had been down on the sand level with them, I would not have played witness to the gigantic ‘BNP’ logo scraped deep into the beach’s flesh. Flanked by an even bigger, more dreadful ‘VOTE BNP’ I felt embarrassed of the perpetrators. It was obvious why no other races were represented back towards where we had eaten our ice cream. The poor Asian family must have felt frightened and outcast and all of a sudden, those images that had moments earlier painted such a quaint playful picture of England, morphed into something else, something terrible. Now I only noticed the St.George’s flags flaming forth from the proud bared chests of the skin-headed men, now I only saw the intense hatred behind the knock-off sunglasses and felt utterly ashamed of my countrymen. This is exactly why I am not proud to say I am English.

These people need to realise that England, Britain, Europe, the world is changing. Countries are no longer inhabited by only one race or one nationality. Diversity in our personal lives and our social lives is the key to remaining young, to remaining relevant. The BNP cannot seriously lay claim to having any semblance of a connection with young people in this country, but unfortunately they obviously do strike a chord with a past generation. A generation consisting of narrow minded, ill informed, prejudiced white people and if the BNP get their votes, that prejudice borders on outright fascism because they are actively exercising their right as an elector to oust that which holds the key to Britain’s future; diversity.

Disgusted by the display, my South African and I walked back towards a pub and started talking about other things.

9-Ball in a ‘Post-Race’ world

I’ve heard the phrase ‘post-race’ bandied around on the telly over the past week. This ‘post-race’ society is meant to be the ‘Promised Land’, the aftermath to all the outdated and now defeated ideologies of racism throughout the world. It’s a nice thought isn’t it? I saw one black American political commentator the morning after the election almost in joyful tears at the prospect that:

“No longer will my children have to take a basketball player or a rap star as their black role-model…now we have a black man with real substance for our children to look up to.”

I have to admit I was taken in for a few minutes; I got that warm feeling in my stomach at the thought that Obama’s victory had signalled such a watershed moment. I smiled and sat back on my couch and took a sip of ‘post-race’ coffee. What a beautiful world it was in that moment.

I half-expected that if I switched over to another news channel I would be greeted by unprecedented news like: “ISRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS AGREE TO DISAGREE – GAZA DISPUTE SETTLED”. My optimism knew no bounds yet I felt in my heart that if I did go ahead and change the channel my ‘post-race’ utopian bubble might be burst by news of an anti-Obama protest by some rednecks or something.

I decided that this dreamlike ‘post-race’ world I now inhabited was simply too fledgling, too fragile to be exposed to reality and so I took the decision to safeguard it by switching to Sky Sports 2 instead.

World Pool Masters seemed innocuous enough. Here I would take in a few ‘racks’ of high quality 9-ball all the while savouring each sip of coffee I took in this brave new world. The match was between a Finnish player (I forget his name) and a Taiwanese player, Ko Pin-Yi.

Mere moments after the first break-off was taken by the Taiwanese player, my ‘post-race’ dream began being comprehensively deconstructed by the commentating duo. One was English the other American and whilst their comments were certainly in no way overtly racist; what they displayed were classic racial prejudices, the kind that people do not even realise they are displaying; the “harmless” kind.

After Pin-Yi proceeded to knock in a few balls and impress the commentators they seemed to realise that this ‘little’ Taiwanese guy might just be as competent at this majestic sport as the mighty Americans or Brits, not only that but he might just be as much of a human as ‘us’ too!

“I’ve seen him in interviews you know and let me tell ya; he makes a real solid attempt at speaking English…”

My gosh, so you’re saying that this Taiwanese guy can actually play pool as good as us and speak another language?

“…and he’s actually very congenial.”

And he’s a nice guy? No way! How can this be; is he a robot ‘commie’ spy or something? Then the English guy replies;

“Indeed. He’s certainly miles better at speaking English than any of us are at speaking Taiwanese.”

Seeing as though the vast majority of Taiwan speaks Standard Mandarin and not Taiwanese; I’m not sure how valid this short-sighted comment was.

The game progresses and after taking an early lead, Pin-Yi drops off a little and allows his Finnish counterpart back into the match; seemingly a chink in the robot’s armour, leading our dynamic duo to come up with some suitably generic excuses for his drop in performance.

“Well it must be difficult for someone like Ko Pin-Yi to come to a place like Vegas and not be put off or over-awed what with all the bright buildings and hotels…it can be quite surreal if you’re not used to it.”

Do they imagine Pin-Yi comes from one of the tiny settlements in ‘Apocalypse Now’? Do they not think that Taiwan has “bright buildings and hotels” of its own? Taipei is one of the major global cities in production of high technology thanks to its position as the capital of the Republic of China so I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t find tall buildings “surreal”.

The match carried on, with my ‘post-race’ coffee getting cooler in my hands with each passing rack. At the beginning of the 8th rack the English commentator blurts:

“They say the number 8 is lucky for the Chinese…will it be lucky for the Taiwanese?”

A typically ill-informed generalisation that the people of the ‘Orient’ (Which doesn’t actually exist – it’s a Western concept) are uniform; when actually the Taiwanese most likely have their own identity and a whole other set of beliefs and superstitions to mainland Chinese.

The real gem came as the match was drawing to a close with the Taiwanese player closing in on victory.

“If Pin-Yi wins this tournament it will be splashed over the front of all the Taiwanese newspapers.”

Now, to actually believe that Taiwan has no news more worthy of a front page splash than someone winning a pool tournament is blinkered idiocy beyond comprehension. The American commentator who came out with this probably imagined Taiwan to be a tiny little rural village somewhere in the Chinese countryside; just waiting for a hero to put them on the map. It isn’t; it’s a developed country with its own news and issues and I’m supremely confident that if Ko Pin-Yi were to win such a tournament it would be usurped by the news that Taiwan’s former president Chen Shui-bian has been arrested on corruption charges. This was the final straw and my ‘post-race’ coffee had long since gone cold so I switched over to the haven of the music channels.

After which I soon realised that what Obama’s victory had achieved was not vanquish racism at all, there was no such thing as a ‘post-race’ society, certainly not in reality anyway, and prejudice would always exist as long as people have the capacity for autonomous (however moronic) thought. Racist thought is just an inherently unfortunate but no less unavoidable product of growing up in world segregated by nation states.

Still, that little Taiwanese guy can’t half play pool.