Min wage should be lower up north to make it higher down south.

[Witchofwisteria]

Hear me out. Minimum wage should be given out on more of a regional basis. I think this would help spread the wealth and prevent poverty in such crushingly expensive places like London?

Example: If you live in Hull minimum wage should be £7ph but if you live in London it should be £15ph. Purely because you can rent a lush 3 bed house in Hull for £400-£600 pcm but in London (rougher areas and outskirts) it would be £1800+ at least.

Seems daft to keep increasing minimum wage nationwide when some areas can clearly get more for their money and therefore require less money to live a reasonable life and some require more! (London needs fast food staff, retail workers and cleaners too!) I think something similar with benefits should also happen but I don't know enough about the ins and outs of universal credit to think about the adjustments required.

Thoughts?

"How much more do Londoners want?"

Affordable house prices, affordable rent, adequate social housing. Very simple.

Of course there should be regional pay. But there is a political reason why there isn’t. One party and its clients would be very upset.

Northerners are not to blame for the price of housing in London Try blaming greedy property investors instead

I’d move to London tomorrow if they put the minimum wage up to 15 quid.

Londoners are not to blame for greedy property investors being able to invest in London either .

This isn't about blame anyway! What a reductive and childish way to look at it.

I don't agree with the op that minimum wage should be cut in the north to pay for the south. I think it should be higher all round but Londoners probably need around 20% more in their pay packet just to begin to even out the cost of housing.

2 bed flat in very grotty area of south London = £1250 per month. Decent 3 bed house in a nice area = £2500-£3000 at least. People have no idea about the cost of housing in London.

And, yes, ordinary people do NEED to live here.

Sara107 well said 👏🏼 Every one should be on a living wage!! But to think that the rest of the uk should subsidised London wages is really not on!!

Just wow!

Is there a shortage of minimum wage workers in London?

A580Hojas I don’t agree. Every Londoner has a councillor they can lobby to stop the march of property developers turning every bit of available land in London into £1m flats. The problem is that the city has been apathetic and now you are all in a terrible situation that it will take a generation or more to resolve.

A lot if supermarkets actually do pay more per hour for London stores. I know m+s do

Business could chose to pay their staff more - the minimum wage just forces them to pay a floor level.

Personally I’d rather that business paid lower paid staff more and reduced the ridiculous gap between those at the top and those at the bottom.

Otherwise the state has to continue to effectively subsidise the poverty wages, set by businesses, in the form of benefits etc.

This ^

It’s colder tup north than darn sarf, maybe us northerners need a higher min wage just to keep feckin warm

Rich pple can live in Hull too. You choose to live in London. No one is saying poor people should not live in London but they can choose to live elsewhere.
I think people should move to places they can afford. Outside London is brilliant. Move labour, skills, technology and techniques out of London and the wealth will be better distributed.

I’ve never heard such bollocks in my life. How about campaigning for all house prices to be on the same level??

Wow north/south divide alive and well.

The entire ‘north’ is not cheap. We live in York and £600 would not get you a nice three bed house - nowhere near. Minimum wage is a massive struggle in the city.

London gets a lot of care and attention from the government - of course people still struggle but it’s actually the rest of the country that needs help.

I'm really shocked at how nasty people are about London these days. I say this as someone whose whole family is up North, so not even a native down here.

People are no different from the rest of the country but living costs are much higher here. In some jobs there is likely to be some market-related increase in wages, but not for all. I agree with the OP, why would you expect someone to move 200 miles away just so they can afford to live?. That sounds like social cleansing to me.

I hate the whole "divide and conquer" thing that the papers and government seem to have achieved. There's always someone else to blame, isn't there!? Londoners get scapegoated for inequality. We're not voting the feckers in.

Oh do fuck.off. If you can't afford to live in London , move up here with us poor people.

Is this a serious post? So take more off the poor and give to those who are fortunate enough to have the choice where they live. So if you're brought up in the north we'll pay you even less so you'll never be able to afford to move 🙄

In my field of work there is a re-location fee and top up of wages for those who work in London already. Wages ARE higher in London for people with the same career as me. People I know who are teachers or work for the NHS (physio, nurse, midwife) get an extra allowance added on to their wages for living and working in London, it’s on the pay spine for their job roles I.e London 32,000 pa Rest of England and Wales 26,500pa.

I’m fine with that but completely disagree with the fact that Northerners should somehow subsidise the South by accepting a smaller NMW. Totally unfair. Families in the North are already struggling to make ends meet on NMW without further cuts. It’s quite an ignorant attitude to suggest we don’t need the money we get paid up North, we certainly do!

I think there’s so much mis information and generalisation about the cost of living etc in the north.
Friends of ours in London we’re talking for ages about moving to york and commuting to London, they thought they’d be able to get a huge house upgrade up here. They needed good schools and when they started looking they realised that swapping their large 670k four bed terrace in London meant looking at houses well over £400k in york - not even getting the ‘mansion’ they were expecting, just normal family homes (yes you can get cheaper but some areas have less than great schools).
So yes, it is cheaper but less so than some people think. Yes, there are cheaper and deprived areas in the north but they need MORE help, not less!

So you are basically saying a Northerner is worth less than a Southerner...... have a word with yourself. Equal worth: equal pay.

I think that’s exactly what the OP is saying.

*"How much more do Londoners want?"

Affordable house prices, affordable rent, adequate social housing. Very simple.*

So do Northerners. My son lives in London and can afford a nice albeit small home, which I am very happy about. My daughter lives in our upstairs bedroom, here in Yorkshire, confined to one because disability means she cannot access downstairs as our stair-lift triggers seizures. This makes even attending necessary hospital appointments dangerous. She has been in this situation, on the waiting list for a disabled, property for 2 years. She is category A but there are a grand total of 38 disabled properties available for the whole housing area - that's for a population of circa 400k with a disproprtionately large aged population. And private landlords won't even consider her disability benefits.

Wow!!! Just wow, how exactly do you see the logic in this?? Utilities are the same regardless, it’s colder north which means higher fuel bills! I’m shocked that someone would even suggest this 🤦‍♀️

To do that would mean that the contribution and hard work of Northern workers is worth less than those in the south. You are not only being unreasonable, you are being quite rude.