to think that 6000 per month is excessive for the government to take off my pay for tax?

[tootaxed]

Surely there should be a maximum limit that each person has to pay as tax? Six grand per month in tax is just excessive imo. And that is before NI contributions etc. If the government set a maximum tax limit they would take more care over how they spent their central funds. And I wouldn't have to work so many hours away from my DCs only to have 72 bloody grand a year taken off my income to fund their mis-spending.

Quattro - I could point you in the direction of many highly respected, experienced and hard working professionals who live in London for less than a quarter of that figure, and for whom a three bedroom house in Hackney is currently an impossible dream. Someone on a £180,000 salary is wealthy, London or not.

Okay, yes I do take the point that it is significantly wealthier than most and does at least enable you to buy a property in London ...

Quoted from Xenia "that they aspire to be leading surgeons rather than nurses or whatever. Far too many girls have very very low aspirations. They need good high earning role models of women."

Whats wrong with aspiring to be a nurse, I am a nurse, i look after elderly people who have mental health problems, I love my job!
I don't earn fantastic amounts but I am doing something worthwhile which I fit around my family.

I also passed enough highers to do a different degree at Uni which may have led me down a different high earning path.

Anyway most of the high earning female role models seem to be reality tv stars or footballers wives and girlfriends, not someting I would hope any daughter of minewould aspire to, no matter how much money they earn.

For arguments sake, assuming that 6000 tax gives an income of 180,000, on that premise you have take home pay of over 8000K a month. I would argue that even in London this gives you quite a large amount of money left over to pay the mortgage, even assuming that you haven't benefited from the property boom and are a first time buyer.

Quite

Well enough to buy a property certainly but it wouldn't be the life of Riley. How do teachers and public sector workers etc afford property in London?

Well enough to buy a property certainly but it wouldn't be the life of Riley. How do teachers and public sector workers etc afford property in London?

Xenia some people are steered by their consciences in their career rather than their desire for status and wealth. Agree that girls definitely need higher earning role models [and not just page 3 ones] but you can't assume those men and women who become midwives or nurses are simply less intelligent or less motivated than surgeons. We need those with real vocations desperately.

They don't anymore.

That was to Quattro.

Quattro, I appreciate your sad face, but surely you can't only just have realised all this? It was you that calculated that you need a salary of £180,000 to buy a 3 bedroom house in Hackney. Did you think that teachers and public sector workers were paid anything close to even half of this? And it's not just them - it's most professions outside of the financial sector.

Yep, sorry for dopeyness. A fair cop. I actually originally typed "sorry for dopeyness" before the sad face then thought the dopeyness was self-evident.

Its not the differences in levels of intelligence, but levels of stress of various jobs. A nurse does require intelligence, but even a senior nurse does not have the level of stress and responsiblity that a heart surgeon has. Nor do they have to study quite as long.

Quattro, its not complusory to live in Hackney just because you work in London. 180K a year can buy you a very nice house in the suburbs.

Its not the LEVELS of stress or responsibilty its the TYPE of stress and responsbility.

Different roles , different repsonsibiltiy , different stress.

Yes, but if I had a daughter who was motivated to care etc and she was clever surely she does more good as a leading surgeon and helps more people, furthers science etc as a doctor than a nurse? Why would anyone choose to be a nurse over a doctor for example? What is more attractive abotu the job of nurse compared to just as hospital consultant?

Anyway it's not very controversial to say it's nice if girls can see women enjoying lives as pilots rather than air hostesses, chairman of the board rather than typist. Give girls opoortunities. Obviously i f they prefer low paid subservient roles then yes they will have that life of low pay and what follows from it and they make their bed and lie on it but let them have the chances to do the fun stuff where the adrenalin flows and you make a lot of cash too because that is heaps more fun for women than being at the bottom of anything.

Was I asked above about the welfare state? I'm not against it at all. I think people appreciate what they pay for so some nominal charging can help a bit at the point of sale as it were and I'd cut back its ambit to some extent. Lots of quangos have grown up under labour. I'd like flatter structures, much less middle management both in the public and private sectors.

On house prices I recently look at the 3 bed terraced we started out in in 1983 (outer London suburb). It's price was £40k and its price was about 3 x the salary my ex husband and I were earning then. If you take those houses now they cost about £250k and 3 x the wages in those jobs is about £200k but interest rates are lower than they were then so it's still affordable. In other words the house prices for those houses are not suddenly massively out of reach 25 years on which is fascinating and not what you'd have expected.

xenia - i hope for your sake you never have to use an nhs hospital if you truely believe your statment ".. but if I had a daughter who was motivated to care etc and she was clever surely she does more good as a leading surgeon and helps more people, furthers science etc as a doctor than a nurse? Why would anyone choose to be a nurse over a doctor for example? What is more attractive abotu the job of nurse compared to just as hospital consultant?" consultants do NOT run wards. Nurses do. Consultants mearly act on the advice/knowledge/experience of nurses.

Xenia which outer London suburb was that? I have seen very few 3 bedroom houses for under £250,000 in any part of London.

There are many professionals working in London with years of training and experience behind them for well under £50,000. Affordability has fallen enormously despite the lower interest rates. You are simply wrong on this.

Really tired and Captain Underpant - on this idea that levels of renumeration reflect levels of responsibility/stress. This may be true within a company, or even within a sector but is absolutely false if you look across sectors. Compare the salaries of company directors in say, engineering or architecture on one hand and finance on the other and you will find an obscene difference which bears no relation to the either the responsibility involved or the usefulness of the position.

Re: consultants v. nurses, neither of them earn as much as a girl who puts the work in at the right nightclubs and marries a footballer.

In my last job, people were paid according to what country they came from - a philippino was paid less than a pole who was paid less than an american. This had nothing to do with the job they did - it was just market forces.

IorekByrnison - I have never said that level of renumeration reflects the type/level of stress you may have - just trying to point out that you cannot compare two differnt types of jobs / professions and compare LEVELS of stress

each job has different types of stress/responsibilty for that individual whatever the pay.

I am totally disagree with the argument that more pay = more responsbility/stress , pay has nothing to do with it.

But we need good midwives and nurses as much as we need consultants. I'm not saying their pay should be the same [though i think nurses and midwives should be paid more] I am saying I respect those women and men who choose those jobs.
what about musicians, there are simply not enough well paid musician jobs for every excellent musician to be wealthy, but would you be disappointed in your child if that is what she chose to do?

Iorek, this would be a few doors down from where we bought in 1983. Obviously if people are snobby enough etc to think they have to live in Chelsea to be in London then it's their fault if they can't afford a house but 25 years ago this one was no more nor less affordable on the salaries my ex husband I were on then as it is now given what my elder daughter will be earning on her first salary in London.

www.buyalet.com/property.php?id=251&county=0&ptype=0&beds=0&prcie_low=0&price_high=9999999&page=0&te nant=0

quite riven.