This is good news, not bad. Congratulations.

So after a few abortive attempts in the last couple of years to get off this damn rock, Ol' Sidey now has a job offer for New Zealand. So a few weeks of visa bureaucracy and I'm outta here.

Thanks, I know it's good, I'm all excited, though it is tempered with a little bit of sadness....on the third hand some of that sadness is that I didn't do it years ago

My uncle went to Australia when he was forty and spent the rest of his life there. His biggest regret was not doing it when he was twenty.

So after a few abortive attempts in the last couple of years to get off this damn rock, Ol' Sidey now has a job offer for New Zealand. So a few weeks of visa bureaucracy and I'm outta here.

Good luck to those who stay with trying to continue to bring some sanity and reason to the way things are done in Ireland. I've been fighting it for the last 20 years and it's time to retire from the field and build a life elsewhere with what remains of my fast-fading youth.

Today, The Irish Times launches Generation Emigration, a conversation – on the web and in print – with Ireland’s mobile citizens, wherever they may be in the world Introducing the project, its curator CIARA KENNY looks at how the internet has made the world a smaller, cosier place for emigrants...

So after a few abortive attempts in the last couple of years to get off this damn rock, Ol' Sidey now has a job offer for New Zealand. So a few weeks of visa bureaucracy and I'm outta here.

Good luck to those who stay with trying to continue to bring some sanity and reason to the way things are done in Ireland. I've been fighting it for the last 20 years and it's time to retire from the field and build a life elsewhere with what remains of my fast-fading youth.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2011/1021/1224306205653.html

Last year I read a story about a guy who was travelling from Cork to Belfast twice weekly for work. He explained that he was desperate to pay off mounting bills at home and would try anything to alleviate the situation, so he had no choice but to make this extreme commute. Over the course of the next 6 months, it became apparent that he wasn’t the only one travelling a long distance for work. We’re all aware of the deluge of migrants heading to Australia and North America right now, but there’s a whole other brand of Irish who can’t find work locally, yet have too many ties to pack up and leave Ireland entirely. A growing number of these are finding work elsewhere, whether it be the UK or further afield, but are returning on a routine basis. For this collective, the term semigrant has been coined.

Maybe we might need a Semigration thread thread too?



http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/generat ... spiration/

The Commute is on RTE 1 tonight at 9:30. Actually I'll stick that in the Bubble TV thread too later on.

Personally I know a guy, bought in his home county of Roscommon about 3 years ago now. He's a qualified secondary school teacher but could only find work in North Dublin, resulting in a car trip to the train station and then two trains and a bit of a walk to and from work every day.

PrimeTime Investigates
PrimeTime would like to speak to Irish people living in Dubai:

I’m working on a programme for the Prime Time Investigates strand which is looking at how the recession has affected people across Irish society. We will be looking at how some people have suffered enormously as a result of the crash while others continue to live lives largely unaffected by the downturn.
I have heard a lot of anecdotal evidence of people who have lost their jobs but still have high mortgages and have been forced to go abroad to places like Dubai to secure work. I have heard about people making difficult decisions like leaving wives and children at home in Ireland while they work abroad and am seeking to talk to people who might be in that particular circumstance and might consider participating in a programme like this.

I can be contacted on [not sure I can post numbers or emails].

RTE 1 at 9:30 - The Commute

Follows families that are coping with the recession by travelling long distances

Does a double income family with no kids have a genuine claim on our sympathy because they work in different places during the week?

Is a single man who teaches in London and flies home on Fridays to train with his county hurling team really a victim of the economic downturn?

The Commute purported to tell the stories of what it called “extreme commuters”, people prepared to travel long distances for work.

Their numbers have increased since the recession began, though not nearly as much as those of the unemployed, and while their lives and lifestyles are clearly not ideal, their problems are insignificant compared to many others in the country.

In fact, many are not commuters at all. They’re emigrants with opportunities not enjoyed by the last wave of people to leave our shores in the 1980s.