EU Referendum: The result and aftermath...

[me123]

And let's actually look at the London wage. Whilst it's slightly better at £15470pa (£1,141 take-home per month). Renting a flat would take up all of your monthly income, so if you're single you're looking at renting a room (which can be over £500pcm in London). Given that Pret seem to operate exclusively in cities, the cost of living near work is going to be higher and it wouldn't be easy to have a decent existence without at least another wage earner. There's certainly no scope for even short term savings on a salary like that.

That's the reality of the minimum wage. For a single person, you'll only scrape by.

 

[EM2]

Less council tax, less utilities, less TV licence, less contents insurance...

You're looking at almost nothing left over once your basic costs are met. It's not a great existence; I would live with my parents if I was that badly off.

In a two-bed band C property, my outgoings for gas, electric, water, council tax, TV licence and insurance is just under £270. If you were paying that on the £500 Exeter studio, that would leave £230 a month, or about £53 a week.
A studio is likely to be band A (£43 a month less than my £154), is going to be cheaper to insure and one person will use less in utilities, so I'd be very surprised if you couldn't get that £270 down to £200. Add that to the £500 rent leaves you £300 a month, or almost £70 a week.
Yes, I agree that London would be a different matter, and you'd be unlikely to able to rent your own property.

 

[EM2]

I'm going to add that until last August, we were living in a two-bedroom flat in Zone 3, running a brand-new car, on a household income of £34k gross.
Two people on nearly £16k a year each should be able to manage.

 

[najaB]

I'm going to add that until last August, we were living in a two-bedroom flat in Zone 3, running a brand-new car, on a household income of £34k gross.
Two people on nearly £16k a year each should be able to manage.

Throw a kid into that mix and the equation changes significantly.

 

[me123]

Or take away the partner. Not all of us have been lucky enough to have found love. A single person still has most of the same expenditure (rent, council tax*, bills...) with only half the income.

*I am aware that a discount is applied to council tax for singles, but with only a 25% discount it's still an increase compared to what you'd pay as a couple.

 

[EM2]

Throw a kid into that mix and the equation changes significantly.

Indeed it does, and then you're comparing apples and oranges.

 

[WelshBluebird]

I'm going to add that until last August, we were living in a two-bedroom flat in Zone 3, running a brand-new car, on a household income of £34k gross.
Two people on nearly £16k a year each should be able to manage.

And if you are single?

 

[EM2]

And if you are single?

As I said, in London it's unlikely that you'd be able to rent your own property.

 

[Dave1987]

It might well be telling the same story as applicants for crop pickers in the rural areas. One farm manager said that many of British people that he knew felt that such work was "beneath them"...:roll:

Paul judging by your posts about how your family are educated and the area you live I think judging others in the way you clearly do is pretty hypocritical.

 

[Dave1987]

What's the incentive to improve them when:

1. there is a limitless supply of people who are happy to work at that level of pay; and
   
2. not applying for that job is evidently an economically viable course of action for Britons to take?

They were saying that basically there weren't enough applicants for their job vacancies if they did not have access to the none British labour market. If you pay enough then you will have plenty of applicants regardless.

 

[najaB]

Indeed it does, and then you're comparing apples and oranges.

I agree that it changes the situation significantly but it kinds emphasises that they are 'getting by' and not thriving.

 

[Dave1987]

Would that by extension mean that British people won't lower themselves to be paid minimum wage?

Hmmm I don't accept that. Getting paid the minimum wage for a pretty intensive job is different for getting the minimum wage for sitting on a security gate for example where you aren't required to do much for the most part.

 

[VauxhallandI]

Is it really a realistic goal to expect to be able to live in the most popular city on the planet whilst on £15k?

 

[EM2]

I agree that it changes the situation significantly but it kinds emphasises that they are 'getting by' and not thriving.

I didn't suggest anything different, but it still doesn't answer why are only 1 in 50 applicants British when everyone would be earning the same? Are non-British applicants all single, or all renting a room? There are thousands of British people that could do that work and enjoy a reasonable standard of living doing so. They are just not willing to.

 

[EM2]

Is it really a realistic goal to expect to be able to live in the most popular city on the planet whilst on £15k?

With 187 branches of Pret A Manger in London, it appears that there are plenty of people that are.

 

[WelshBluebird]

Is it really a realistic goal to expect to be able to live in the most popular city on the planet whilst on £15k?

As I said, in London it's unlikely that you'd be able to rent your own property.

A reply to both of you:
The problem is we aren't just talking about London here. It is equally difficult to get by on a low wage like that in large parts of the country.

 

[Barn]

I didn't suggest anything different, but it still doesn't answer why are only 1 in 50 applicants British when everyone would be earning the same? Are non-British applicants all single, or all renting a room? There are thousands of British people that could do that work and enjoy a reasonable standard of living doing so. They are just not willing to.

Pret jobs appeal to a certain lifestyle. 20s, childfree, house sharing, seeking access to the city centre, job rather than career.

Immigrants are probably disproportionately likely to fit that lifestyle. Probably not 50 times as likely though.

 

[meridian2]

And thousands and thousands of them do it from within the six Zones, so when clappers states that 'much of greater London is financially inaccessible to anyone is [sic] public service', are they 'very wrong'?

I wasn't thinking of Dagenham, more Zones 1 and 2, the kind of places public servants lived until about 18 years ago.

 

[meridian2]

And how do you actually plan to implement these?

Financiers and media types will not move out of London except at gun point.
Just look how hard it was to convince anyone who worked for the BBC to move out to Media City, they had to pay enormous bungs to get them to move, and many still commute from London.

London is the nation.
I know people living in less productive areas don't want to accept it, but London is one of the most productive economic units in the history of our entire civilisation.
Doing anything that interferes with its continued growth puts at risk the budget that is going to be required for any attempt to improve economic results in the rest of the country.


Social polarisation from expanding the idea of London is likely to be less fractious than the social polarisation from the forced relocation of vast numbers of public servants and those in supporting trades from the places they have made their lives to the comparatively poor north.

London is the nation? That's just silly. No one has to be forced at gunpoint to do anything. If the Tax office, or the BBC, or parts of the civil service move to Cardiff or Newcastle or Manchester, its employees move or get a different job, as they do in any organisation that relocates. All of those places offer attractive urban lifestyles or superb rural settings a short commute away. London claims to be the engine of commerce while sucking commerce from the rest of the country. Your option sees everything from the south midlands and east of the west country as potentially "London". Yet the bankers and media gurus want to live over the shop, not in Feltham or Erith, which is strictly for the drones, and certainly not Northampton or Reading. The de-culturalisation of nations and their replacement with city states in totally in keeping with the bigger EU picture.

 

[HSTEd]

London is the nation? That's just silly. No one has to be forced at gunpoint to do anything. If the Tax office, or the BBC, or parts of the civil service move to Cardiff or Newcastle or Manchester, its employees move or get a different job,

So you are essentially advocating the destruction of those departments/organisations as operating units and their reconstruction with very large numbers of new staff?
You will get massive staff attrition if you do that - all your long service employees will take early retirement to avoiding having to pull up stakes, and people with young families will likely take redundancy to avoid having to disrupt their family life.
Especially if both parents work and it is contingent on finding a well paying job for the partner as well.

as they do in any organisation that relocates.

Which is precisely why organisations don't tend to relocate.
The damage this does in experience, morale and organisational terms takes years to repair.

All of those places offer attractive urban lifestyles or superb rural settings a short commute away. London claims to be the engine of commerce while sucking commerce from the rest of the country.

Because it is better at it than the rest of the country.
What you are demanding is effectively protectionism for Manchester or wherever.

Your option sees everything from the south midlands and east of the west country as potentially "London". Yet the bankers and media gurus want to live over the shop, not in Feltham or Erith, which is strictly for the drones, and certainly not Northampton or Reading.

The bankers and media gurus are an irrelevance, they employ a small and steadily shrinking portion of the population (thanks to computer controlled high frequency trading in the former case).
In the long term Northampton and Reading will not be the edge of the London commuter belt, it will be in Birmingham or even further north thanks to HS2.

The de-culturalisation of nations and their replacement with city states in totally in keeping with the bigger EU picture.

So... this is the EU's fault?
Either way - in this case the nation is the city state.

 

[meridian2]

So you are essentially advocating the destruction of those departments/organisations as operating units and their reconstruction with very large numbers of new staff?

I'm advocating the redistribution of wealth to the whole nation instead of one corner of the country based on nothing more than self entitlement.
London is better at commerce than the rest of the country? Are you claiming people in one city are genetically predisposed to trade and finance? Or that they've hogged the business so far and will only forego it at the point of a gun?
The nation as city state is completely unprecedented in a British context. There is no reason why the UK should be a service sector country, it's a choice.

"In the UK the government is investing in creating a "Northern Powerhouse," George Osborne's favourite buzz-word phrase of the moment.
But Europe can't — or won't — do that. If a country is struggling, Europe is unlikely to lend it a hand to encourage growth, as the recent experience with Greece shows."
Business Insider UK 2015

The EU would be happy for Britain to extend its status as London's city state, and London would be happy adopt the position, as the capital's Remainers indicated after the referendum. Now the UK is moving out of the EU, perhaps it's time for a rethink of the entitlement of "provincial" Britain to a share of the nation's wealth in more than benefit payments?

 

[najaB]

There is no reason why the UK should be a service sector country, it's a choice.

Our labour costs are too high to compete with the likes of China for mass production. Our only significant mineral resource is coal so we're beating coming and going on steel production (the price for which is through the floor anyway). We missed the boat on aerospace (that said we do have world beating small satellite production). Speaking of boats, the Koreans wipe the floor with us where shipbuilding is concerned. We've been doing well on automotive production but we're in the process of divorcing ourselves from our largest market.

I could go on but basically the theme is the same - we could probably hold our head just about above the waterline based on manufacturing, but services is where the money is.

 

[meridian2]

I could go on but basically the theme is the same - we could probably hold our head just about above the waterline based on manufacturing, but services is where the money is.

Germany manages perfectly well as a mixed economy

 

[radamfi]

Reading this thread you would think that London and the SE is the only wealthy part of the UK but all but 2 regions of the UK have a GDP above 75% of the EU average with most over 90%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_policy_of_the_European_Union

 

[najaB]

Germany manages perfectly well as a mixed economy

Services account for approximately 69% of German GDP, as opposed to 77% of UK. The two economies aren't that different in the grand scheme of things.

 

[radamfi]

Even China, "workshop of the world", is now over 50% services.

 

[gareth950]

Deleted

 

[NSEFAN]

I'm advocating the redistribution of wealth to the whole nation instead of one corner of the country based on nothing more than self entitlement.
London is better at commerce than the rest of the country? Are you claiming people in one city are genetically predisposed to trade and finance? Or that they've hogged the business so far and will only forego it at the point of a gun?
The nation as city state is completely unprecedented in a British context. There is no reason why the UK should be a service sector country, it's a choice.

"In the UK the government is investing in creating a "Northern Powerhouse," George Osborne's favourite buzz-word phrase of the moment.
But Europe can't — or won't — do that. If a country is struggling, Europe is unlikely to lend it a hand to encourage growth, as the recent experience with Greece shows."
Business Insider UK 2015

The EU would be happy for Britain to extend its status as London's city state, and London would be happy adopt the position, as the capital's Remainers indicated after the referendum. Now the UK is moving out of the EU, perhaps it's time for a rethink of the entitlement of "provincial" Britain to a share of the nation's wealth in more than benefit payments?

If we all decided to, we could all sell up and move en masse to the north of England, but since people are individuals then this is unlikely to happen. Nothing to do with genetics or gunpoints, but people look after themselves first. In that context, it's a no brainer to move to where the jobs are.

With enough infrastructure spending you could build up the northern cities in a similar manner to London. This is however unlikely to happen because UK government is not generally capable of seeing beyond the next election, whilst infrastructure can take decades to get even close to its maximum utilisation. That's little to do with the EU. Indeed this problem may only get worse once we leave the EU, which unlike the UK government was happy to spend money on regional development projects. Just because the UK government could tomorrow start being more forward thinking and organised, that doesn't mean it is likely to happen. The same goes for voting, which is why we almost always have Labour or Conservative governments. Given that we now have a well-established Conservative government, perhaps people should have thought more about the consequences of leaving the EU?

 

[EM2]

Ireland tried to decentralise their Government departments in the noughties. It didn't work, and they cancelled it with only a third of the civil servants actually having moved.

http://www.decentralisation.gov.ie/PressRelease17thNovember2011.html

In the December 2003 Budget Statement, the then Minister for Finance announced the decentralisation of 10,300 civil and public servants from Dublin to 53 locations in 25 counties.
About a third of the target numbers – over 3,400 – have decentralised since the commencement of the Programme, the vast majority being civil servants.
While the decentralised offices account for less than 10% of serving civil service staff, taken together with the pre-existing regional and district offices of Departments the proportion of civil servants stationed outside Dublin is now just over 50%.
Staff relocation under the programme was accomplished on a voluntary basis, without payment of removal expenses or incentives. Other costs to the Departments involved were minimised through business planning, gradual transfers of staff and functions and risk management strategies.
In October 2008 implementation of the elements of the programme remaining to be completed at that time was deferred by the previous Government, pending a review in 2011 in light of budgetary developments.

 

[meridian2]

If we all decided to, we could all sell up and move en masse to the north of England, but since people are individuals then this is unlikely to happen. Nothing to do with genetics or gunpoints, but people look after themselves first. In that context, it's a no brainer to move to where the jobs are.

With enough infrastructure spending you could build up the northern cities in a similar manner to London. This is however unlikely to happen because UK government is not generally capable of seeing beyond the next election, whilst infrastructure can take decades to get even close to its maximum utilisation. That's little to do with the EU. Indeed this problem may only get worse once we leave the EU, which unlike the UK government was happy to spend money on regional development projects. Just because the UK government could tomorrow start being more forward thinking and organised, that doesn't mean it is likely to happen. The same goes for voting, which is why we almost always have Labour or Conservative governments.

The so-called northern powerhouse initiative shows it is perfectly possible to redress the financial imbalance in the country, it just requires enough intervention to ensure that London doesn't get first dibs on everything. That such initiatives are seen as extreme reveals just how far centralisation has taken hold as a mind set. I'm advocating the idea of a fair share of resources, not a Marxist dreamland. The alternative is a poverty index related to how far an individual is from the centre of power, which is absurd as taxation and votes are not distributed on such a basis.

This isn't a north vs south thing, the south west and Wales are just as fiscally hamstrung by centralisation. The EU has a poor track record of helping disadvantaged regions with anything more than tokenistic displays, and has no policy on unemployment rates, especially among the young. It is not a culturally lead organisation, and is largely antipathetic to ideas of national and regional culture.