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?

Biancadelriosback

@witch, I was on min wage in Newcastle for a long time. Good qualify of life? No. Any luxuries? No. Small studio flat with no car, no dish washer, no garden. Come up and try it some time!

FYI I'm not sitting in a big house with no idea about living on a shoe string budget.

Not saying people up north are all swanning about in a palace but imagine living in Croydon with that same wage, it would be a single room in a shared house if that.

No @tildaMa it's not cheap up here. London is just totally over hyped and overpriced. It is a shit hole. An expensive one, but still a total shit hole non the less.

Ah, is there not poverty in the North like? 🤔

Again @DerelictWreck nope... I worked between Richmond and Liverpool for 10yrs.

Liverpool was, handsdown, more expensive for petrol, beer, food, pub meals, chocolate in shops, everything!

Any more myths?

But OP- the minimum wage is just that, a minimum. If companies need to pay more for cleaners, shop workers etc, then they are already perfectly able to do it, and do.

It is still not a good standard of living though, because London and SE is so expensive.

I do think it's odd though on these threads when the very idea that someone move from the area the grew up in, away from their family and childhood friends, to the North or even just out of London to a commutable distance - when everyone accepts the reason for silly house prices in London is down to demand, due to lots of people doing just that, moving to London for jobs/improved lifestyle.

I just think you're missing the point OP. Minimum wage is:
On an average full time contract of 35 hours per week, you would take home £1,096 per month. BEFORE TAX. So after your tax and NI, do you really think anyone in the country could afford to rent, heat, furnish, clothe, insure, feed a person with around £900?? You are delusional if you think that you can, seriously.

Even up north where you can get more housing for your money, you would still be negative money every month regardless.

You can't penalise businesses because of their location, as they are already penalised by location as it is (a shop in London will have more customers than one in a residential neighbourhood) because this would just create a divide everywhere you go. Living costs would increase in London, forcing people to move (even more so than is already happening) to lesser populated areas, meaning that areas housing will now be more profitable... and it becomes a vicious cycle.

Near me. Enough said.
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-51743967.html

@ineedwine99
Letting type: Student

So obviously overpriced because it's actually rented by room.

a shop in London will have more customers than one in a residential neighbourhood

You do realise a lot of London is residential neighbourhoods?

I just think minimum wage should be increased in expensive areas and kept the same in areas where you can achieve a good quality of life on minimum wage.

Oh, do fuck off, dear.

Let this be a lesson to people: it's not necessary to share every inane thought that enters your head with the world.

Would the wage area be the workplace or the postcode the worker lives in?

I mean, my spouse's workplace has 5 sites just over one city. Some of those are in areas that are far more expensive than others, and that's before getting into how there are far more house shares than family homes in the city to the point there are parts of the city where a room in a house share is the cost of a house elsewhere in the city. Would he get paid for working in the pricier area or would he be paid less for commuting in from a cheaper area? Thankfully he gets paid a bit above minimum wage but such a policy would likely affect such employers as well.

Plenty of other countries have better labour rights and pay without doing this. Many countries have rent controls - the UK used to be one of them. It might be more difficult to get support and put in place, but I don't see it as any less impractical than trying to set minimum wage by the fluctuating housing costs of different areas of the country.

Why do people trot out the “nobody has to live in London” line? Christ almighty. London isn’t just full of rich foreigners on Park Lane and oligarchs. It’s full of people who have to live there because it’s thror home, where they were born, where their family And friends live, thror support networks, their childrens’ lives And schools are. It’s their lives for fucks’ sake.

Get a map out those of you who Think we should just move away. Acquaint yourself with London. Not the city or the west end but with the towns in inner and outer London, the London boroughs. The wealth, the poverty. The same as everywhere else in the country. Would you tell others to relocate. Or just us Londoners who don’t deserve to live where our long established lives are.

@tildaMa I do actually, considering I grew up in London my point being that London population is incredibly dense and has endless tourists, whereas a residential area In the midlands won't have that kind of customer base.

Ineedwine99

I'll just leave these here...

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-57910107.html

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-57909120.html

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-68442118.html

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-57947460.html

£7ph minimum wage, that wouldn't get anyone much in any area!

Trouble is you don't just buy housing with your wages.

You buy clothes, white goods, travel, holidays, save for retirement. These are the same price everywhere.

Why should people in the north be short changed on these?? Londoners sell their house and retire to a cute cottage with the proceeds. Northerners stuck where they are.

May be less of an issue at minimum wage for some of those examples but the principle stands.

yes I used to LIVE IN LONDON having moved down there - away from MY friends and MY family due to the lack of jobs up north

Christ are all southerners such snowflakes

I get just over min wage and it's a struggle some weeks. I can't imagine being paid less for my role just because I live in the north. It's a fucking terrible idea.

Totally agree with the PP who pointed out that there are expensive places to live outside of London and (heaven forbid) North of Watford gap.

The PPs who have talked about having to move away from naice areas where their parents live or where they have rented in order to buy in London, you do realise that happens in other cities/areas too?

Reading this since my first comment something else occurs, the company I work for is just one unit, in the North, if by your suggestion I'm paid less now because I live in the North and the minimum wage is less than London, where's that money I'm not getting paid going to go? It's not going to go to their operations in the South because there aren't any, it's going to stay in the employers pocket, reducing what income I have to spend and have absolutely zero benefit for someone on minimum wage in London.
So it's just going to make the Northern rich richer and the Northern poor poorer while achieving nothing down South. Unless of course the owner is from the South, which will still just increase the divide in both areas because someone who owns a business isn't likely to be pulling min wage themselves, so the extra money will just drive prices up in the South as now the business owners have more in their pockets at the expense of their Northern workers.

But the idea that essential services carried out by NMW workers rolls out everywhere. London has more expensive housing and that's it - same prices for electricity, food, etc and often lower council tax, public transport and then there is always the infinite choiceof evrerything else.

But unless an area is completely deprived of employment (and these places do exist in the UK and have done so for years and years) accommodation costs will be more expensive.

It's wrong, wrong and very wrong, but it's not just a London/SE thing. Down SW it's the same only we're more 'jolly' about it. Jolly only because there's fuck all we can do to change it.

Or, there's area that a secure job at NMW is gold dust because jobs are so far and few between.

Pretty much in the poorer regions (those that maintain the National Averages as higher than many people live at - hence The Average) the best earnings are in public sector and the best working conditions are in Local Councils.

I'm sure London Weighting still exists.So at least there's that.

I'll just leave this here

www.entitledto.co.uk/help/Local-Housing-Allowance-Rates

why it's like people in London get more!

because they do!

£417 for a 3 bed V £136

Ok: www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-57678603.html

Not lush, not cheap. There are some expensive areas here too such as York, Harrogate, Knaresborough and the Lake District. How do you propose people living there survive with your idea?

That's weekly for a 4 bed by the way - North London V Barrow

Interesting.

I’m from Hull. I moved because there was fuck all opportunity other than low skill minimum wage zero hour work. So I had to move away from my family and friends on my own so I could have a chance at a life that didn’t include re-signing on to JSA every few months and being constantly in debt because I would have 30 hours one week then 8 the next.

So if I’ve had to move to have the life that I’ve wanted why shouldn’t someone from London?