Radio 4 interviewed some people this week who are finding it hard to move staff to the SE where work is; one sales manager was operating from Nottingham as could not afford to move his family down; another had moved his family down but it was tough to afford rent. 30 years ago my ex husband's school could only find teachers if it put them up in school flats - which is where we started married life as the so called London weighting even 30 years ago no way reflected the difference in house prices between north and sough.
However everything currently points to the SE doing better and better despite things like BBC moving to Salford and supposed Northern Powerhouse - the educational figures are amazing and differ from when I was a child in the NE. My brother's children go to the academically best private school in his area of the North and that school's results are only the same as my sons' by no means best academic school in London. Why would Yorkshire children not be as bright even in private schools? Presumably because those who are bright move to London or are harder working immigrants although there are many immigrants in areas around Leeds, Dewsbury, Bradford... may be it depends on the immigrants - rural pakistani farmer against hindu from African who was highly educated and in business both now in England. All interesting stuff.
My advice remains buy when you can and what you can.
(I won't continue the debate about the better off of us paying more tax and a ahigher % than ever in history but we all know I'm right - we are talking about amounts paid, not ath Janice on £14k a year pays x% tax
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2015/04/george-osborne-has-squeezed-more-from-the-rich-than-any-uk-chancellor-ever/
and
" The highest paid 3,000 people in the UK pay more income tax than the bottom nine million, according to official Government statistics.
The figures show that the very highest earners - amounting to just under 3,000 people with a declared income above £2.7 million - will contribute 4.2 per cent of the total Government revenue from income tax in the current financial year.
By contrast, Britain’s nine million poorest paid workers contribute less than four per cent of the total income tax receipt.
In all, 29.9 million people pay income tax in the UK. According to the new figures released by HM revenue & Customs (HMRC), almost one-third of income tax payers contribute less to the Exchequer than the top 3,000 earners - equivalent to 0.01 per cent of the total.
The figures were disclosed in a Freedom of Information (FoI) request to the journalist Fraser Nelson as part of his investigation into growing wealth inequality in Britain. His findings will be broadcast in Channel 4’s investigations programme Dispatches, entitled How The Rich Get Richer, which is shown tomorrow [Monday].
Mr Nelson, editor of The Spectator magazine, said yesterday that the new figures ‘blow apart’ Ed Miliband’s claim last week that Britain had become a ‘zero zero’ country where the richest pay zero tax and the poorest work on ‘zero hours’ contracts.
“In the last tax year, the richest were shouldering a greater share of the burden than any time in history,” said Mr Nelson. “And this was achieved after the top rate of income tax was reduced from 50p to 45p in April 2013.
“It is now harder than ever for Ed Miliband to justify bringing back the 50p tax. Indeed, now that the richest pay such a great share of income tax, the British government is financially reliant on a small number of highly mobile super-taxpayers.” )