My job only exists in London

[ILikeyourHairyHands]

I see this all the time on threads. Unless you're the Prime Minister, Queen, keeper of the ravens at the tower, a genuine pearly queen or jellied eel and pie and mash slinger, I reckon that's utter bollox.

There may be more opportunities within your chosen career in London but outside very specific roles, your job does not only exist in London.

Mine does. In fact there are only five people in the country with the same job title as me. HTH.

My husband is about to be made redundant because we are too geographically remote. His job now only exists in London.

if you work for some government departments than the position concerned is only in London

My job exists outside London, my company has offices across the UK. However, the London office is the base for the UK team, and deals with the national and international projects, which, for the most part, are the bigger, more interesting and more challenging projects.
The regional office deal with local, regional issues. Still the same field, but much smaller and generally less complex.

I believe the pay structure is the same across the UK, but I want to work on the projects that interest and challenge me the most, so I stay in London.

I also grew up here, my friends and family are here. Absolutely no reason to leave. Which is good, because I love where I live and I love working in central London.

FCA for instance

I think OP is missing the point spectacularly. You can do the same job elsewhere but after a point in your career for many fields like law, banking etc, there is a concentration of jobs in London. So there are a) more opportunities b) more INTERESTING opportunities c) more financially lucrative opportunities.
If he wanted a much much lower paying job that was much less interesting he could move somewhere else but why would he?! After investing in one’s career, DH has a medical degree, two Master’s and a PhD why would he settle for a job that was not as interesting?
Same with me. I have two Masters and a PhD too. So again the centres of excellence for what I do are in London and the South East. I was fortunate enough to get a London job straight out of my PhD. Why would I move elsewhere?!
And finally, look you can’t do major international conferences remotely. That’s not how multimillion pound collaborations work. Do you buy a house by looking at it remotely? No? Why? Because before you make a major investment it is important to get a physical feel? It’s the same with big international collaborations. It is much easier, more productive for people to meet face to face. ESPECIALLY when big grants, big money and in the case of DH people’s actual lives are involved.
For someone urging us all to leave London I fear OP’s imagination of the working world is quite limited. It’s not just men in suits typing on a computer and talking on the phone.

There are loads of jobs that only exist in London!

Do you live in London?

Some jobs really are not only available in London. Some jobs really are only available in London.

I'm not sure why that's hard to understand.

Well - for as long as the international financial services corporates still have their UK head office in London, that's where my job is. OP - YABU

In the international business arena, the UK is London - and maybe Edinburgh. You may not like that (I don't much), but it is true.

There are very few jobs in my line of work in the U.K. outside London. I think you have had a sheltered life op.

The queen of England is the queen of England, no matter where she is

There's no where else in the UK where our industry exists. Full stop.

I had to change profession to move out of London. Not because my job didn't exist anywhere else but because for that particular type of specialism in a big corporate, most HQs were in London or Manchester. Probably only 2 or 3 similar roles in the city I now live in so it was either wait years for one to become vacant and apply, or take a different direction.

What about if you work on the London Underground? (Flippant)

Hmm, I do debt financing for sovereigns with IFI guarantees. Not much of that in say Bristol... I would have to effectively ditch 10 years of specialisation plus all the contacts at law firms and IFIs globally if I left London. I could go to Singapore, Frankfurt or NY but that's about it. It's not that there is no work but it would be quite different and probably pay about 1/4 of what I'm on now so not very attractive.

Why do you think this? We’ve been overseas for nearly 12 years and one of the reasons we stay is that we don’t really want to live in London...DH has always watched the job markets in other big UK cities but I’d say in 12 years he’s seen about 2 that might be worth applying for (if I remember right Bath and Edinburgh). Lots in London. So why do you think this? You’re being blinkered to other people’s experiences!

"HainaultViaNewburyPark

My brother is a tube driver. I think that’s quite London-specific (and it certainly can’t be done remotely)."
Forgive my ignorance as this is possibly a stupid question but is it not the same skills nd experience needed for driving the Newcastle metro or the birmingham or Sheffield trams?

Many government organisations are situated in London. People who work in government advisory roles, the media and for particular government departments and infrastructure services would not be able to carry out their role outside London. If you are, for example, a health economist for the DoH, or work in the security services, how do you do that job elsewhere?
It's funny how we lambast politicians for being out of touch but it's OK for "Government departments" to be run solely by Londoners. This concentration of power in the SE is part of the reason for Brexit.

"My brother is a tube driver. I think that’s quite London-specific (and it certainly can’t be done remotely)."
Forgive my ignorance as this is possibly a stupid question but is it not the same skills nd experience needed for driving the Newcastle metro or the birmingham or Sheffield trams?

I think that's the issue with this thread.

The JOB of driving the London Underground tube trains ONLY exists in London. Obviously.

The transferable skills to obtain a new job elsewhere in the country will be the same.

But if you want to drive a tube train - not a tram - then you need to live in London.

There are plenty of similar-but-not-the-same jobs outside of London for loads of careers, but if you want a particular career, you may need to live in the capital in order to have a fighting chance of being successful.

Yes but that's a bit of a pointless argument as it tends to be people saying they couldn't possibly move out of London. Otherwise there are lots of equivalents across the country. You couldn't work for the lake district tourism board anywhere else. You couldn't work for a specific law firm that only has offices in Leeds and Birmingham anywhere else.

denial, I don't think anyone is arguing that it's OK, just observing the facts as they presently are. You can't be the Clerk of the House of Commons anywhere but London. That may well not be fair or reasonable, but it's true!

Denial? Damn autocorrect- I mean@senua!

I don't get why people don't get this.

Most government departments, financial services firms, law firms etc are based in London, because it's the capital city and they all want to, or need to, be near each other.

Because we're talking about big departments and firms, they have more jobs and end up having specific roles which are only done in those big departments or headquarters.

For example, my job is very niche and the majority of the roles are in big law firms, which are predominantly based in London. The job does exist in law firms outside of London, but in such a limited way that if I took the role of X in a law firm in Norwich, say, I'd be about the only person in the county doing that role, and there would be absolutely no chance of job progression. So career-wise, London is the best place to work.

Now there's nothing special per se about London, other than it is the capital city and it is where all these departments and firms are based. They could all decide tomorrow to move en masse to Chichester. But all that would happen is that property prices and all that in Chichester would go up, and you'd end up with the same problem there as you have in London.

It's really not rocket science. Big government and big business have specific roles.