Australians least likely in world to take annual leave
This little article appeared on the Sydney Morning Herald website this morning:According to the Vacation Deprivation survey conducted by Expedia, a company I use on a regular basis to fly me cheaply about the globe. 'Australians are the least likely in the world to take their entitled annual leave', citing financial pressures such as the credit crunch and raised interest rates. Other Australians believe work commitments were holding them back from sun, sea and surf, so the complaint goes.
Bollocks. I've read some crap in my time, and a lot of that has been grace au Sydney Morning Herald, but quite frankly I grow more cynical each day. What does this article actually tell us? Not very much.
Australians are materialistic and pragmatic. They are not deep thinkers and certainly not the philosophical type. We are hardly alone. So typical of a rich, bored nation to cite financial reasons as hindering enjoyment and the ability to take holidays. Like many other nations about the globe, Australians love working because they feel the need to buy useless crap, or perhaps two bits of crap, in different colours, to fill their homes up with pointless rubbish.
How else to you expect to pay for this consumer lifestyle without working harder every year? Australians love sinking thmemselves into debt for their entire lives, paying off houses, cars and successive extensions to properties, and such topics are bandied about freely in conversations to the point that not owning property in Australia is perceived as a disability.
The managing director of Expedia enlightens us further by announcing that 'the image of Australians being laid back and holiday-rich was a thing of the past'. My opinion is that we've never been laid back and never holiday rich. There is no such thing as a laid-back capitalist culture. It's a freakin' contadiction in terms.
The moral is this: if you want to go shopping every weekend for the rest of your life buying stuff you don't need and won't use and wasn't even available a year ago but has now become a necessity to justify the fact that you work your entire life to pay bills and thus by paying a lot of bills you feel very justified, well then go ahead. Feel fulfilled.
How about changing your lifestyle? I take plenty of holidays. I am neither clever nor more intelligent than the average working man. I am neither lazy nor hard-working. I am not under financial pressure because I don't want to buy things. I have no credit crunch.
Funny thing though. When I found the offical Expedia 2008 Vacation Deprivation Survey Results, Australia isn't mentioned anywhere in the document. I looked for past surveys but Australia is a glaring ommission. Austria, yes. Us, no. We don't appear among the contol group.
So what am I supposed to think? The Sydney Morning Herald doctors a reputable company's report? A national paper somehow analyses non-existent data and then publishes not only a false article, but one that makes me more arrogant than ever in my belief that I can never return to live in Australia again?
I've contacted the Sydney Morning Herald and hope that they can provide the data I requested. I don't want to believe they would fabricate an article, especially one that clearly plays into my prejudices with gusto.
My moral for living is simple:
Work enough to have time for your friends and yourself
Don't buy crap and get yourself into debtTake a lot of holidays
In two weeks time I commence ten weeks' holiday. I worked and I now intend to enjoy myself.
Sydney Morning Herald, I await your response.
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5 comments:
So much bollocks in one little article! For a start, if people get paid leave, why would not taking it enable them to buy more stuff or pay their mortgage off? Sure, they might end up with a larger payout when they quit their job, but most people don't tend to think that far in advance!
Additionally, it ignores the fact that a reasonable number of workers in Australia (sadly not me!) still get leave loading - a percentage added to holiday pay supposedly to make up for paid overtime they normally do, even though they don't (and who gets paid overtime anyway? I don't get that either).
This means you actually get paid *more* money when you're on holidays than you do when you're not on holidays. When I did used to get leave loading, I would take a holiday from work if I was feeling poor because it was a great way to bring in more money and get to lounge around at home at the same time!
So the idea that not taking leave is money-related for salary earners is crap. However, I can believe that it may be due to people feeling pressured by colleagues and employers to get things done - or simply that they've fallen into the trap of feeling good about being a martyr to the cause of making a lot of money for someone else.
I think really what's going on in the report (if indeed there was any mention of Australia) is that it was written by Europeans who think that if they've not managed to get to Greece or Spain or wherever at least once a year, then they've actually not had a holiday at all.
Australians tend not to go on international holidays to sunny places every year, partly because it takes so damn long to leave the country and costs an awful lot of money, but also because it's sunny enough here most of the time.
In my experience most people will take their leave and lurk around at home, maybe going to the beach a few times or even going on a short trip within driving distance of home. They might even be really radical and fly to another part of the country. It's still a holiday - it's just not an international holiday.
If I lived somewhere which allowed me to be in an entirely different culture after less than an hour on a place, you can bet I'd go on a lot more international holidays! But right now that sort of timeframe will get me to Melbourne or Brisbane ... yay ...
Anyway, do tell what the SMH responds with! I'm willing to bet you 1 Turkish lira that it's nothing at all!
To date, the SMH responded and quickly avoided any responsibility be moving me on to the the AAP, Austrlaian Associated Press.
The AAP responded by suggesting I contact Expedia, the people who conducted the survey.
However, I stressed that I am not questioning the information in the report itself.
Rather, where did the AAP find this information within the report? As far as I was able to see, Australia is not mentioned at all.
I dispair at both the SMH and AAPs attempt to take no responsibility thus far to justify the data in their article.
More will hopefully follow.
mr heywood come backk !!!! :D:D when are you coming back to istanbul ?? and my new english teacher is ms doryne :S:S :D
can ozturk
Nice to hear from you guys...
I'm missing you... but I'm not going to be back until next year.
This year is for study so that Ill be a much nicer and better teacher next year. No more shouting and all that.
I hope you all had a great summer holiday and please say hello to all the 7A students... Don't worry about your new teachers, in a couple of weeks you'll love and them and will forget about me.
I miss Paylşım Saati!
Mr. Heywood, as being a fan of your articles, I am still waiting to read the new ones. Hadi ama!!
ASLI XXX
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