to think that the minimum wage should be higher in London

[bottlenecker]

I really do not understand how the national minimum wage can possibly be the same in London as the rest of the country. How on earth can anyone live on that minimum wage?

Ladyrabbit
You are so right, the alternative is just awful. Slums just out of the centre of town housing the essential poor workers

ladyrabbit or people will move out of London, forcing businesses to pay a sensible wage

it has never been more apparent that London is another country altogether

I wish it was in some ways! It's the worst bit of the UK.

Don't cut it loose until I've escaped it please hunre

hunreeeal how? Please explain why it's the worst bit of the UK? I can see its flaws but there are far, far worse places to live.

caroldecker if the UK continues with things like HS2 and improves transport there is every hope that more big corporations will see the merits of moving headquarters to places like Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham etc. Germany has it right I think - fabulous national rail links and every city no more than five hours from the other by rail or road. There seems to be an equality among German cities that UK ones lack. However I think it will be many generations before the UK is in a similar situation and so we have to make sure we improve wages and living conditions for key workers.

Birmingham is less than 1 and a half hours from London by train, and you can do London to Edinburgh in 4 and a half hours. Manchester is 2 hours.
All perfectly accessible now. People choose to live in London, and can move if they don't like the pay.

Carol surely you're not saying that someone earning the NMW could afford to live in Manchester and commute to London?

Where are all the NMW jobs outside of London? Where is the affordable housing? Is it really possible for thousands of people on NMW in London to move to Sheffield, Carlise, Cardiff etc and easily find jobs and homes? Assuming they could even begin to afford the relocation costs.

Why should someone who's family have lived in Homerton or Southwark for generations have to abandon their roots and family network to move to a part of the country where their living costs can more realistically be met by their wages?

I saw a recent episode Homes under the Hammer. A chap bought a small Victorian mid terrace (just in need of updating really, it wasn't a wreck) in Wales for £25,000. How many similar homes are available for that price in Homerton or Southwark? Parking spaces cost more. It's not the fault of the workers at the bottom of the pile that housing costs are ridiculous in London but they are being punished for it.

I'm not from London, I don't live in London and I don't want to either but I can see the unfairness.

What makes London different from other parts of the country where house prices have risen greatly? There are plenty of areas of London that are cheaper to live in than the more expensive areas out of the city. It is treating London as "special" that has led to the problem in the first place! Increasing the NMW in London would just make the problem even worse.

whilst the (NMW) has ensured that people who work are fairly rewarded, with correspondingly reduced reliance on benefits.

What? WHAT?

I thought of this threat earlier on when this link popped into my inbox at work.

It's not only Londoners who struggle on low wages.

Thread, not bloody threat!

Excuse me if I piss my pants laughing at the idea that HS2 is the magic solution. Apart from the fact that fairs will be higher than flights currently are, do you really think that 30 mins off a journey will make that much difference? It won't. HS2 is a massive joke and will not deliver on half the things its supposed to.

Poorold, please don't think our houses cost £25,000 in South Wales, it's far from the truth. Our house prices are much lower that London, yes, but as I pointed out up thread we also pay out so much more in council tax, travel costs and accessing services as well as having far fewer available jobs. You are more likely to be in poverty when working here in the valleys and far more likely to be earning nmw or certainly below a living wage. This is one of the most deprived areas in Europe and that means life expectancy is lower, health is generally poorer and children struggle to reach their full potential. London by contrast has fewer pockets of extreme deprivation and more access to opportunities that can provide personal development.

The house prices are bonkers in London but the opportunities are far greater which is why more people take a risk. Out of the 8 close school friends that I went around with, 6 now live in London. There simply weren't the jobs here in Wales to support what they wanted to do. Due to circumstances in my family I was never able to move away and had to find a whole new friendship group in my late teens/early 20's as everyone I knew moved to London for work. Not one of them has decided to come back and I can't say I'd blame them, the house prices are actually a small price to pay for such great opportunities. Some of my friends started on nmw jobs and have progressed until they've reached the great jobs they are now in.

I'm not arguing that people in London should have to struggle on low wages or that they shouldn't have London weighting, just that the impact of a rise to the nmw would be more keenly felt in other places across the UK.

Out of interest, then, how much does a small two bed terrace cost in your area?
How much more council tax would you pay for that property than someone in a similar property in London?

While your friends are obviously talented and ambitious people many people must find themselves trapped in NMW jobs for life, even in London.

When you say there are more pockets of deprivation in Wales than in London do you mean that, for example, dozens of Welsh villages are deprived versus single figures of London boroughs? How is that reflected in actual numbers of people living in deprivation? Do the number of people living in deprivation in Wales really out weigh the number of people living in deprivation in London?

I'm asking all these questions because you seem to know a lot about it.

Poorold, I've just had a look on the websites for Kensington and for my local authority and every council tax band level, my council tax is higher. On the top tax band level it's over £1300 more a year. I live in a three bed terrace in a nicer area and have a mortgage of about £1k a month which is a killer.

I agree with you that people do get trapped and that's not something I want to see, but it's something which happens all across the UK and arguably more in places where there aren't as many higher paid or even living wage jobs. I think we have a huge problem with low pay in this country and to argue that it should only or especially rise in London would be ignoring the huge problems faced by many across the UK. The Welsh valleys has long qualified for European funding due to the fact it is so poor. The Joseph Rowntree foundation put the figure of those living in poverty at around a quarter of all those who live in Wales, this is further exacerbated by the Welfare reform cuts.

I'm not as versed on figures for London but I would imagine that they are relative because the living wage is higher in London than everywhere else.

I absolutely don't want to see a race to the bottom, or people in London suffer because of low wages. I just argue for a nationwide pay increase, not just London.

I'm still curious to know what is being classed as london. Inside the M25? five miles from tower bridge?
If you earn nmw you can't really afford much of anything (single, no kids +wtc = about £250 p/w) It's the same for a lot of cities, being on nmw limits the choices you have, and forces you to make them.

Raising nmw in London wouldn't help because it's not the wage thats the problem it's the competition for housing. Raise it to £15/h and you'll just see rent's rise accordingly. and why should a cleaner etc command £10/15 p/h as nmw they can't and never would as the knock on effect would be quite large.

The price of food and drink in central london is high because it's a tourist trap and a commuter city, but again nmw earners are going to be on a budget so it's not really an applicable argument for an increase.

If you have a job in the centre of the city your going to have commute in for a nmw job, c'est la vie.

According to the New Policy Institute's 2013 report London Poverty Profile 28% of the eight million people who live in London live in poverty. That's around 2.2 million people.

Wales has a population of just over three million so around 750,000 are living in poverty.

I'm not having a go Bump (and this isn't directed only at you) but the equivalent of two thirds of the entire population of Wales are living in poverty in London.

bump
you can't compare kensington borough because there will practically no NMW earners living there. The expensive areas in London tend to be conservative boroughs and council tax is very low.
The cheaper boroughs like Tower Hamlets etc will have much higher council tax but cheaper housing although not that cheap.

Kensington is the third cheapest council tax borough in London out of 33 boroughs.

London Council Tax

WelshBandD

Council tax is not more expensive in Wales

We should abolish the NMW altogether and get young people into work.

In a nutshell, yeah you are being unreasonable!!! FFS, if you find it too expensive to lie in London then commute like thousands of other bloody people (my own husband included, the company he works for have people who commute from all over the country). Why do people think that because London is te capital city that immediately gives them more rights than everyone else?
I'd love to go back to work but with the cost of childcare & living expenses I cannot afford to do it.
I'd love a bigger place to live so hubby & I can have a second child but we can't afford it so for now we're staying put in our 2 bed flat, that I might add, we can afford.

If you think minimum wage is bad, you should have a go at temping where if a company doesn't like you they can let you go with 1 hour notice (this has happened to me before so I know it's true)

Ideally, we'd all live in a world where everyone got fair wages, everyone could afford their dream house & dream car but not everyone can.

I'd love to live within an easy walking distance of my friends & mum but because she lives in Godalming, Surrey there's not a chance in hell that on minimum wage (or in my case a one wage household as I'm an SAHM) that we could afford even a cardboard box there, let alone a 3 bed house. So we did the next best thing, we moved a bit further away & got a place we could afford.

I get sick of the "I'm a Londoner, woe is me, everything is more expensive in london" attitude!!

Julia
FFS, if you find it too expensive to lie in London then commute like thousands of other bloody people

Umm...I don't earn minimum wage but thanks for the tip.

Julia

Sorry I meant I don't find it too expensive to live in London, this post is not about me.