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?

Easy solution is you cap housing benefit. £100 a week maximum wherever you live in the country. The only reason London is so expensive is because the government subsidizes property as a growth investment. Take away the free money (over a pre-agreed period of time) and eventually the housing market in the SE will start to stabilise to sensible levels.

So if you were born in London, grew up there, and your friends and family live there, but you don’t make enough to afford life there, it’s just tough luck and you should just up and move potentially miles away?

Yup. Just like the rest of us have to. No-one HAS to live in the South. Maybe if more people didn't live in the South, it would get cheaper?

So if you were born in London, grew up there, and your friends and family live there, but you don’t make enough to afford life there, it’s just tough luck and you should just up and move potentially miles away?

Err yes! That's actually what people are having to do who were raised in the regions where there are few good jobs! Loads of young people are deserting run down towns and rural areas because there are no good jobs for them - they're having to relocate to London and other big cities just to get decent jobs. That's because too many employers have abandoned the regions and concentrated on London.

£100 rent isn't a lot. We have a 3 bed semi through our local HA in a deprived area in the NW and our rent is £101 a week.

What I find crazy is that there are several high rise flats locally, built in the 60's so not new and modern and the rent for one of these is higher than for this house, doesn't include anything extra.

If the HB amount was capped at £100 per week then at least a quarter of the country could end up on the streets. Far too low.

If the HB amount was capped at £100 per week then at least a quarter of the country could end up on the streets.

No, they really wouldn't because the landlords would be forced to accept lower rentals if they wanted to rent out their houses. As someone posted above, as long as it was phased in over a long enough period, the market would have to adapt. Without housing benefit, there'd be so few people able to rent at higher prices, so the landlords would be sitting on empty property.

Haven't rtft but just to add another view - I get paid (not hugely, but a bit) more than my counterparts in similar jobs in other parts of the country (not London wages) because I live on a Scottish island, and we're waaaaay North. It's to pay for the difference in prices between here and mainland Scotland, and we also get subsidised travel to the mainland. Price houses here are significantly above market value too, so wages have to reflect that. It's not as simple as North vs South.

Different minimum wages would probably have the effect of moving more work to regional areas with cheaper minimum wages.

As others have pointed out the government doesn’t pay wages... A possible government lever would be larger tax free allowances in high cost areas.

My thoughts: renting isn’t a good measure when most people want ti buy. So how do you save for a mortgage when you’re breaking wven on £7 per hour.

Also apart from rent and tube travel EVERYTHING else costs the same. So lets start lobbying for less extortion from landlords and fairer price travel.

This method is better because rather then continuing to line the pockets of already overly wealthy business owners I would rather everyone in Hull was paid £15 per hour

A possible government lever would be larger tax free allowances in high cost areas.

No, there should be more govt incentives for businesses to move/create jobs in the deprived areas, and increased business taxes etc for those in the congested/expensive areas. We need to even out the country to get rid of north/south rich/poor area divides.

Also apart from rent and tube travel EVERYTHING else costs the same.

Again, I think that’s an overstatement. Childcare is an obvious one, but another is independent businesses that aren’t part of a chain structure with fixed prices.

For example, the same pint of beer is more than £1 more expensive in London than in the cheapest places to buy a pint (and more depending on the source you ask). Non-chain restaurant prices are more expensive, non-chain corner shops are more expensive, hairdressers are more expensive. When I bought a car 7 years ago, I went to York to buy it as the car I wanted was a grand cheaper there than anywhere in the south for the identical model (and I got 2 nice weekends in York).

Anywhere that pays rent, basically, and isn’t part of a national pricing structure.

Bet you didn't expect to get so crucified did ya OP, oopsy! maybe use your brain next time

Rural areas (properly rural) will have ‘corner’ shop prices which are way more expensive than London due to haulage costs. It’s all swings and roundabouts (well, swings anyway. Not much call for roundabouts in rural areas ;) )

Rural areas (properly rural) will have ‘corner’ shop prices which are way more expensive than London due to haulage costs.

Does the higher haulage outweigh the higher rent? Online comparisons and studies suggest not, but I’m sure there are outliers on all sides.

(I grew up in a pretty rural part of another country where the nearest shop was more than an hour on the highway away and the nearest small supermarket 4 hours. Food was very expensive because the distribution costs were insane. When I moved to the city I found supermarket food seemed very cheap but corner shop food on a par with what it had cost at home. Obviously I don’t have UK experience but it doesn’t seem that different when I’ve holidayed it quite remote areas?)

YABU
London weighting already inflates prices in London and further embeds the North / South wealth / earnings divide.

Benefits system is weighted for London which compensates those who need it and need to stay there.

As others have pointed out the government doesn’t pay wages.

This is wrong. The Government pays a higher proportion of the workforce in London than elsewhere (NHS, schools, local government, central government, Met police etc, etc, etc). All of these payscales are weighted in London. Even student loans are weighted for London favouring London landlords and Unis and the wider London economy. Public transport in London also heavily subsidised by Government effectively paying the wages.

Imho London employers should pay a levy to repay all the cross subsidisation. Good job the banks are so keen on paying tax.

I don’t agree with at all OP. It’s not the correct way to do it at all. Which ever city you live in there is a cheaper and much more expensive part to live in. £7 an hour isn’t much and you still have other living costs aside from rent to pay. A lot of people won’t be paying £600 in rent a month from a low wage for a start in Hull..

Zombie thread!

Or everyone could just be paid a living wage..

And learn to manage their money so that the situation where two people with exactly the same income but have very different life-styles doesn't happen.

Lol you stupid

Us lowly Northerers have been getting some reyt slack on Mumsnet over the last few days!

Northerners*
Damn my un-spectacled eyes

@Believeitornot

YABU, no one has to live in London, it’s a choice

So only rich people should live in London?

Follow that logic through please.

Ok, only rich people live in London, soon all shops etc have no staff as no one wants to work in them.

rich people start to flee London, shops starts to close remaining shops are forced to pay higher wages for low skilled roles in order to remain open.

Employment standards and pay rise.

.the horror, the horror

Londoners have more spent on the pp for transport, public spaces etc etc than elsewhere, make public spending more equal, there is no public transport here, you have to fund a car. The job opportunities are better in London also. There is also arealdy London weightings in salaries in any case, but you already have advantages included in the London life before you start stripping the salary from those outside of London.

Three things:

1. I live in Hull. There is NOTHING 'lush' about it.
2. The only person who can use the word 'lush' in all seriousness and not sound like a complete dick is Miki Berenyi.
3. Get fucked xxx