Frantic a lot of what we read is smoke and mirrors, for instance what would be the odds of those 1/3 in Ireland knowing someone high enough up in a mining company to ACTUALLY gain employment in mining or nearby.
here lies the problem many aussie who have made the pilgrimage to a mining area...many leave for home spent with their tails between their legs...but not before reading the previous days newspaper report stating the gross lack of workers available in the very region they failed to even go close to obtaining a starter position.
IMO 90% of everything we read is ramped up in some way by financial or business or on those aforementioned by government each looking for a concession or further political/regulatory power, now if in the first instance we had a government that was quite simply 'not full of it' we would all have something to hold onto as the usual drivers of sentiment do their thing we could ignore most of it, today even this most basic luxury has passed us by it seems.
