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?

Person B works down south for John Smith Ltd for NMW.

John Smiths is brewed in Tadcaster.

Perhaps if only rich people did live in London, and no poorer opeople to provide the services they want then fewer rich people would live in London? Ultimately paving the way for a better distribution of rich and poor (and NO oligarchs).

@doublehelix (cool name btw!)
I disagree that holidays cost the same. We live in the Midlands and the choice and price of flights is far worse than in the SE. We went to a European capital city last year - there was one flight a day. If we had flown from Gatwick or Heathrow there were at least 4 per day to choose from. We chose to fly from the local airport for convenience but it would have been cheaper overall to drive to one of the London airports and fly from there.

Public transport is also much more expensive- no free public transport for under 16s here.

Yabu, we should all be paid a basoc wage that allows everyone to afford accommodation, heating, food etc.

But instead of pushing for this, we all bicker and fight between ourselves, and call each other snowflakes etc while the government and employers laugh as they know they could be paying us a lot more if we woke up and actually worked together.

Surely the whole point is to encourage trade across the country - encourage people to move away from the SE?

*Eh? London is full of people from every country of the world as well as from every corner of the UK.They'veed away from all the above because they could have a better life in London. If Southerner's think they can have a better life up North ...they can do the same. It's hardly moving to the other side of the world. Why is it ok for others to migrate for a better lifestyle sacrificing being near families but not ok for Londoners to do the same if they think it's better elsewhere (

eh? What ARE you on about.

And your referring to Londoners and southerners as one and the same. Another who needs a map

oh ffs the snowflake comment was a piss take - you know on the old northern V southern softy shit!

Of course the responsibility lies with employer and landlords not workers - but further dividing people isn't the answer is it?

Have to agree though people in london do bloody have it sweet for public transport.

Compalining the tube is late in london when the government refused to even fund a public transport network in leeds. So one of the biggest coties in the uk with the second biggest financial sector in the uk and soon to have headwauters of channel 4 etc and it only has buses at extortionate rates,

Do you realise where the money comes from?

Ooh poor northern spelling there

Let's get this solved

We can sort these problems if we all work together on a positive, constructive plan. Can we all just agree that starting tomorrow we eat the rich? Shall we say anyone earning more than £100k? Bagsie the Queen.

[Starts countdown until someone points out that cannibalism is a serious issue and by using it in humour I'm as bad as the Nazis]

...and call Godwin's!

Most of my family live in hull I'm near Manchester you couldn't get a 'lush' place for those prices

@Jux I never understood this idea that some people have that people need to live in London to work there.

Let's just agree everything is shit everywhere!!

think a rent cap would be nice but it's impractical because landlords need to buy property which has skyrocketed in price,

Landlords don’t ‘need’ to buy property. No one ‘needs’ to be a landlord. It’s a business venture like any other, they’re not performig a public service and they have no god given right for their venture to be profitable.

You can rent a 3 bedroom house in Hull for around £400 a month but I can promise you it won't be 'lush' and neither will the area you live in! It it's 'lush' you're after you'll need to pay around £950 minimum for 3 beds in better surroundings. The current minimum wage ain't going to get you much.

And 'up north' is not just one place. There are 'naice' areas like Richmond and Leyburn, and there are less attractive places like inner city Leeds and Bradford. Some of Durham's gorgeous but other bits are pretty grim.

Racecardriver, early in my working life, I didn't earn enough to keep paying fares into London, it was cheaper to get a flatshare in a cheaper suburb on the tube/plentiful bus routes. Also more opportunities if living in town than in the suburbs, not just work but social, studying etc. I took advantage of the many many FE colleges I could get to straight from work and spent at least two nights a week studying, some subjects for fun, some for career.

That was back in the days when you could get pretty cheap flatshares and fares were not astronomical.

I think a rent cap would be nice but it's impractical because landlords need to buy property which has skyrocketed in price, so they have to rent it at a huge price!

Thats just another stuffed up view. the reason why property prices have rocketed is due to BTL.

YABU - I bet you live in London or south. There's no way you'd see the poverty that some families live in in northern cities and think giving them less money is fair.

That is a ridiculous suggestion as wages already are lower up north and high down south. I thought everyone knew that.

This thread is exactly why more people need to study Geography.....🙄

You can't always tell the SAHMs on this website. No idea about anything.

Can, even. I've lost credibility here...

The current situation where people from London are being forced out due to cost of living has been preceded for decades by people from the north and other areas like Wales being forced out of their home areas for work. I'm sympathetic, but some of the posts from the Londoners talking about what a disgrace it is read like you don't know you're talking to people who had to do this long before it affected you.

As for the OPs proposal, we could just stop artificially inflating property prices and introduce residence qualifications for those purchasing. And there's nowhere in the UK a single person can live comfortably on minimum wage minus top ups. Don't be dim.