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.

That In-Between Age

How often do you hear people say things like, “Kids are looking older all the time,” and “Kids grow up too fast these days”? Whilst it is true to an extent (I have to admit some 15 year old lads achieve a more convincing facial hair look than me) this apparent early ‘maturing’ can only be attributed accurately to superficial facets of their personalities i.e. the way they can hold down 3 whole Smirnoff Ice’s without puking; just like a real grown up! Or the way they carry their Blackberry like they are anticipating an important phone call any…moment…now (Of course they’ve probably just ‘pranked’ their mum so as not to waste any precious credit).

I say this because I believe there is a point in an adolescent’s life when they reach that in-between age, caught in flux between being a child and believing themselves to be a young adult. Now this age does not necessarily mean 15 or 16 etc, it simply means that stage in their lives when they are consumed by an unrelenting, fanatical drive to convey to all that they are no longer kids; nay…they are adults! However these contrived attempts to do so ultimately, in my eyes anyway, serve to fortify the fact that they are indeed still childlike in all but attire.

Case in point; I was on the train from Manchester to Poulton-le-Fylde the other day, sat on a table all by myself happily reading the news (If you can call what the monkeys at the Metro write news) when all of a sudden I am joined by a pair of girls, seemingly of around 20 or so years if their look was anything to go by. They had the typical ‘BFF’ dynamic of one of them being the dowdy one and one of them being the bubbly one. Of course these ‘friendships’ only work through a careful distribution of esteem between them; the more salacious one of course gets a larger share of male attention and the other one piggy-backs her way into ‘cooler’ social circles whilst acting as an almost omnipresent confidence boost for those tough private moments when the glamourous one stands in front of her full-length mirror and stares at her reflection; wondering “Will Jason fancy me if I lose some weight?” Before being convinced that she is attractive enough already through a quick glance at the photograph of her drab ‘BFF’ that’s stuck on the mirror.

The dowdy one wore her brown hair in an inoffensive, unremarkable style. What initially convinced me of her age was her clothing; a corduroy jacket over a light blue t-shirt that seemed too understated to be adolescent. Her friend on the other hand just looked older. For a start she had one of those massive handbags that are so popular, made of shiny black leather with a large gold buckle on it with the name Chloe engraved in Black lettering. I believe a Chloe handbag that size would set you back around £600; surely therefore this girl had to be a grown-up? Her hair certainly seemed grown up; wavy, red, shoulder-length all combed the right way unlike a tell-tale adolescent hair style at the moment; the back-combed ‘out-of-crackden’ look (It used to be the ‘out-of-bed’ look that was trendy wasn’t it?) made popular by Winehouse et al. Her clothes were decent too; black t-shirt with gold lettering with sensible brown jacket over the top. My point of course is that to the eye these two girls looked like adults.

What shattered the illusion was just the small matter of their speech and behaviour. A couple of stations went by without incident; just the incessant pecking of their whiney voices to contend with. We then reached Bolton where quite a few passengers alighted, which must have given them the confidence to up the ante in the ‘acting adult’ stakes. The red-head reached inside her Chloe handbag (Which after what came next I can only presume was a fake or paid for by Daddy) and produced a pregnancy test. You can imagine my disbelief at her wanton flaunting of such an item in the first place, but the conversation that followed it was just unbelievable.

“I’m so glad I’m not pregnant,” Said red-head.
“I know,” A typically non-committal retort from dowdy brunette.
“Do you think I should tell him I did one?” Red-head stares imploringly at the stick.
“I don’t know.” Brunette answers for it.
“No I’ll just leave it. Besides, he probably wouldn’t sleep with me again if he knew I thought I was pregnant.” Red-head clearly has her adult priorities straight.
“What are you gonna do with it now?” An important issue raised by dowdy brunette.
“I don’t know. Can you re-use them?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, if you wash it.”

At this point I think my mouth was actually agape cartoon style at the sheer air-headed stupidity of these girls. Clearly they weren’t grown ups after all; a fact hammered home by the red-head’s subsequent disposing of the negative (phew!) pregnancy test under one of the seats across the aisle.

The dowdy brunette alighted at Horwich Parkway taking all the red-head’s bravado with her, reducing her to rummaging feebly around inside her Chloe handbag. You see at this point, an adult would be too embarrassed to do anything other than sit in silence, sat opposite a stoic man who played witness to such a public atrocity as she had displayed mere moments earlier, but her inescapable adolescent pining for acceptance into the adult world beseeched her to take out some more sundry grown-up items. I was then privy to a fumbling attempt at switching a SIM card from her 2G iPhone into her new 3G iPhone, and then back again; heaven knows why! When it came time for her to alight at Chorley, the whole gruesomely cringe worthy episode was concluded with her hurriedly attempting to throw all her belongings back into her Chloe handbag, resulting in her spilling at least 4 bottles of perfume onto the floor and table. I was too mortified to help her retrieve said bottles, which resulted in her leaving a couple behind to avoid missing her station. Just as well really, the one that fell onto my lap was Christina Aguilera’s stunning fragrance: ‘Inspire’. Wasn’t very grown up of me was it?

On ward 11

My flatmate went to hospital yesterday, he’s still there today and will be tomorrow and probably the day after that too. He complained of stomach pains yesterday morning so I said, “Oh it’s probably the thai green curry.” It wasn’t. Turns out he had appendicitis and today they cut it out.

Manchester Royal Infirmary is a weirdly yellow building inside. The floors are yellow, the walls are yellow, the lights are flourescent yellow, the guy in the bed next to my flatmate was yellow.

Ward 11 contained a motley bunch of patients. In one bed there was an old man with the most wide open eyes I think I’ve ever seen; they were all bloodshot and watering and stared right into the middle distance in front of him. He rather brought to mind one of Lowry’s portraits. He might well have been heavily dosed up, he looked pretty vacant.

In the bed next to him, a young black man turned on his side. Looked like he was sleeping but every few moments an erratic sequence of noises would emanate from him.  It would begin as a slight grunt, barely audible, before rising into a more defined moan. The moan would persist for 2 maybe 3 seconds before giving in to a soaring wail that sent an eye-squinting shudder through all but the Lowry portrait man; nothing it seems could have shifted that poor sod.

My flatmate was flanked on his left by the yellow man: John, who gingerly toyed with a bottle of Lucozade like it held the secret to his life, and if he broke it his chance at discovering the secret would be lost forever. I wonder if he knew it was plastic?

The bed to his right was obscured by the curtain yet the yelps of pain from behind them painted a far more telling image of the patient’s plight than seeing him ever could. “Are you still passing blood?” was one question I overheard, followed by a sheepish verbal nod. I dread to think what was wrong with that guy.

The soundtrack of the hospital is indeed a most dreadful one; the low rumbling of machinery dotted with the squeaking of nurses’ shoes on the floor provides the constant undercurrent for the orchestra of patients to perform their symphony of cries and shrieks, punctuated by the relentless deep cough of some old man in the bed nearest the exit. My flatmate’s only contribution to this dismal concert was the occasional spattering of percussion in the form of a muted grunt.

He was having his blood pressure checked when I entered the ward and didn’t notice me until I said to the perplexed nurse performing the procedure “He’s my friend.” I told my flatmate that he looked like crap to see whether his GSOH had been cut out too. He called me a dickface, which implied that it had not, before writhing in apparent agony. During a more reflective moment after our initial greetings I looked around and was struck by the complete lack of visitors for the other patients. My flatmate must have noticed it too as he kept saying “Thank you so much”.

“What are friends for?” I said.

Bottled urine – here come the Jocks!

So the Celtic fans are in town. Will we see a repeat of the chaos the Rangers fans brought to town on UEFA cup final day? I very much doubt it. I was speaking to some Scottish bloke on the Sky customer service line the other night, a Rangers fan; he is of the opinion that the Celtic fans will be on their best behaviour tonight, “just to prove they’re better than us.”

Does that mean that this Sky employee actually thought that, up until the Rangers fans defamed the previously saintly act of destroying a city centre, doing just that was the accepted norm for all away fans? Did he imagine groups of Celtic fans huddled together planning similar rampages, only thinking better of it because their rivals had beaten them to the punch?

“Yeh! We’ll fook et rayt oop McDoogle! A’ll git the boos shiltors and phoneboxeez!”
“No McDonnally! We must resist temptation. We must not follow the same path trodden by those moronic Rangers! We must grasp this opportunity to perform slander upon our protestant counterparts! No carnage shall ensue in Manchester tonight.”

I mean come on son are you really so short sighted, not everyone has an innate desire for macabre vandalism and violence.

Do you know I actually got whacked by a posse of track-suited, blue-jerseyed idiots whilst out searching for milk! There I was striding towards Co-op, putting all my Pedestrian Proficiency skills to good use, when a marauding squadron of jocks come right at me from all angles. I felt a blow to my chest and one on the back of my leg and in the blink of an eye they were gone again. Its almost as though they were just one single being; a giant ball of flailing arms and legs engineered to cause maximum damage, whilst simultaneously acting as an impenetrable barrier. Actually, that’s ingenious! Its like a 21st century adaptation of the Roman military’s Testudo technique. Maybe they aren’t so thick after all?

Actually I take that back given the scenes of devastation that I woke up to the next morning. Walking to work through the centre of town was like being in a scene from Call of Duty! Windows smashed, billboards ripped down, bus shelters flattened, phonebooths annihilated, tyres slashed. There were still some stragglers left, floating around town like the derelict hosts of frenzied souls that occupied them the night previous. One guy was slumped in the doorway of Primark, his jeans all torn to shreds muttering to himself in a language that one can only assume was Scottish. I wonder what was going through his mind at that moment? “Oh dear I’ve gone and soiled my best slacks again! I have a job interview today don’t I? What was the score? I need the toilet but cannot seem to generate any feeling in my lower body.“ The mind boggles.

There is one image that lingers in my memory from that morning. As I walked down Market Street towards what was left of Piccadilly Gardens, the sun beamed down right in my face and cast an almost ethereal glow over the whole place. The sound of an upstanding glass bottle being gently knocked over prompted me to turn around. There stood a proud Rangers fan devouring his morning burger whilst his black dog, garbed in a Union Jack overcoat, tucked into his breakfast of cloudy yellow urine streaming from the bottle.

How poetic, how British.

‘Paint a vulgar picture’ – Saturday night in Manchester

On Saturday night I walked through town and had a couple of infuriating experiences. Firstly, you should see the hordes of youngsters chugging down alcohol at Cheadle Hulme station at half-ten; mental! There I was merrily standing, swaying on the platform all by myself enjoying the breeze and the cold when all of a sudden a trio of 16 & 17 year old girls come bounding up the stairs behind me clutching wine bottles, and digital cameras.

There they sat, in a waiting room with no door that smelt of piss, happily snapping away striking poses for each other. I tried to avoid their line of sight for as long as I could for fear of being roped into their photo shoot. Sure enough after a few seconds one girl in a green dress bounds up to me like a little brunette bunny, naïve to the perils of the thrills she so overtly advertises herself to, and asks me to take some group photos of them in the waiting room with no door that smelt of piss. I obliged for a quiet life, all the while being sound-tracked by New Order on my iPod. They then asked me if I wanted my picture taken. I say, “Nah you’re alright,” and left it at that. After this I relaxed in my original spot on the still deserted platform and settled again, hands wedged firmly inside my jacket pockets.

Five or so lads then come up, all about 17 or so, Smirnoff ices in hand, then about 5 more girls. This continued until there was (no exaggeration) about 25 or 30 youngsters, all clutching some form of medicine, all dressed beyond their years. The girls can get away with it, some of them look ok until you notice the way they shamble along, clinging nervously onto each other. The lads though, they look bloody stupid. I actually saw one kid; scrawny little sod, who had this waistcoat kind of thing on over a white long sleeve t-shirt, replete with skinny tie and almost unbelievably: trilby. He looked like a right donkey; probably didn’t have a prayer of getting into a club once he reached the city.

Anyway, I digress that wasn’t even one of the infuriating events I said happened. The first one happened as I got off the train at Piccadilly. This fat bald moron with skinny scarf dangling limp around his fat neck, eyeballs me as I near him and barges me with his fat shoulder. I mean what’s the point? I ought to have grabbed him by his stupid skinny scarf and rammed my index finger into his eye socket. I ought to have stuck a pencil in his fat neck, the imbecile. Of course I would never dream of engaging in such an act; but we have all felt this rage haven’t we? With hindsight, I’m not entirely sure what it was that so angered me. It may have been his stubborn refusal to deviate from his course, possibly his designer facial hair or maybe the pungent whiff of after shave. Most likely though was the unsettling feeling I got from his fat head, in that it seemed somehow condescending. I almost felt as though he’d made himself that way just so he could barge people in the shoulder. It’s hard to explain.

The second infuriating event took place after I exited the train station and crossed the road. An adolescent in his little black hatchback is at a red light at the pedestrian crossing, of course with his fit girlfriend (these kinds of idiots only have fit girlfriends it’s the law or something). Anyway he gets all aggressive and revs his engine at me as I cross in front of him. I stop in the road and eyeball him when he actually surges his 1-litre hot-rod in my direction. Of course he stops short of making contact but again; what’s the point? It isn’t even like his girlfriend was impressed by his intimidation either; you should have seen her, she couldn’t have slumped down into her bucket seat any quicker. I ought to have smashed his windscreen in with my foot then scraped a shard of glass into his face or something. Of course I’d never dream of engaging in such an act; but some rather more unsavoury characters just might have. It’s difficult to express how irritating these people can be. If only he’d enlisted in the Pedestrian Proficiency Programme earlier in his life eh?

Manchester: Reducing Britain’s Road Rage

I suppose as this is my first ever post I should begin by telling you where I’m from; it’s Blackpool. I’m not actually going to write about Blackpool; my unfortunate birthplace, I’m here to write about the place I now live and work: Manchester.

I noticed today from my vantage point atop City Tower how its citizens move around efficiently like ants. They alight their trams and move in one group like ants rushing from a nest, before dispersing to their individual places of work. Most people seem to walk at the same brisk pace in Manchester too, which is something I greatly appreciate and one of the city’s major plus points. As an able-bodied citizen; it is frustrating and galling to be stuck behind a pavement snail. Blackpool is literally full of pavement snails, meandering and pausing right in front of you; they know not the psychological damage they cause to the unfortunate walkers sharing the thoroughfare behind them. Blackpool, Cleveleys, Fleetwood, Poulton-le-Fylde; all breeding grounds for the psychotic road-ragers of the future. And can you blame them? I certainly can’t, being stuck behind these sloths is enough to inject a dangerous level of intolerance for the speed-shy into any virile young man; putting him behind the wheel of a car is just the next step to ensuring a deadly smash at some point in the future.

I propose; to ensure the future safety of Britain’s roads, that every youth at the key stage of their psychological development be sent on a course (Similar in structure perhaps to the Cycling Proficiency course kids used to do) to learn how to properly negotiate a pavement. They would learn about pacing, how to use peripheral vision so as to avoid agitating collisions and abrasions, how to walk in a straight line, how to text WITHOUT stopping dead in their tracks aswell as general etiquette like avoiding eye contact with anybody.

I propose that the only place for this course to be carried out successfully and to it’s maximum civic potential, is Manchester city centre, and that I Andrew Hatch take on the responsibility of examiner from my vantage point atop City Tower.

It’s the right thing to do.