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300k to survive... typical Sunday Times Article

69 replies

Judy1234 · 29/04/2007 16:13

Sunday Times article... the writer says because of house price and school fees rises to afford what his parents could afford you now when in your 20s have to make stark choices - City well paid job, City partner, IB etc - fine you can emulate that life. Other jobs, GP etc, not fine. I'm not sure there really is that change. I think it was always so - the child who became a teacher, actor, vicar would always have been different in terms of income and life from those who went into the City.

"My father, a respected country-based architect, somehow managed to put his four sons through private education. One is now a partner in a venture capital firm; another is co-founder of Lombok, a furniture retailer with a turnover of about £15m a year; another is a highly skilled Shropshire-based cabinet maker; and as for myself, the oldest son, ?wordsmith? seems best to describe the translating, writing and language teaching that have occupied me in Paris, Rome and London over the past decade or so.

Of these four brothers, all of equal talent but of quite different character, two are or soon will be rich or very rich. The other two are penniless.

As an unmarried and badly paid knowledge worker, I live in a rented room in Hammersmith and have no hope of ever buying a home anywhere. Indeed, when I return to the agreeable parts of central London that I know so well from earlier periods of my life, I realise that I am looking at the attractive stucco houses in just the same way that a tramp looks through a restaurant window at a group of people enjoying a carefree meal. I am effectively an exile in the city where I was born. "
women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article1719509.ece

OP posts:
pointydog · 30/04/2007 17:31

boo hoo, boo hoo

UnquietDad · 30/04/2007 17:41

ta lilymaid!

ruty · 30/04/2007 22:45

oh poor little rich kids who now can't afford to send their little darlings to eton. Ridiculous.

expatinscotland · 01/05/2007 09:16

True, ruty.

Because even if I had the money, there's no way I'd send my kids to Eton.

themildmanneredjanitor · 01/05/2007 09:29

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

yellowrose · 01/05/2007 09:36

"a partner in a country law firm on £75,000" - that is bollocks - i was on £50K as a one year qualified lawyer ages ago "in the country" so the partners outside London in the bigger firms earn a lot more than 75K. i think they were on well over 150 - 200 K, esp. if you are City qualified like me, you earn quite a decent salary outside London.

I don't think everyone who has left London has only left because they can't afford it. We moved out because of my son, although we lived in leafy North London, we got fed up with the traffic, the unbearable City sorts (although we both worked in the City and dh still does, he commutes to London several times a week - we just got fed up of our colleagues most of whom were complete wankers !) the noise, the pollution, you name it. I don't think it is a great place to raise a young family.

we left to get a better quality of life which includes things like having more nature around at a short distance, lovely non-wanker neighbours and being able to walk and cycle almost anywhere. you can't put a price on such things.

themildmanneredjanitor · 01/05/2007 09:55

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

MuminBrum · 01/05/2007 10:01

X, a small thing, but could you put links into your posts properly in future?

ruty · 01/05/2007 10:02

i know expat.
Not being able to afford to get into a good state school, because house prices are so extortionate in the catchment area - now that is the real problem. I guess people like this aren't aware of the problems most people face.

MuminBrum · 01/05/2007 10:02

for anyone who is interested

MuminBrum · 01/05/2007 10:03

Oh lord, just saw the byline ... Sebastian Cresswell-Turner .... "international whinging pretentious ponce" probably doesn't even begin to cover it!

themildmanneredjanitor · 01/05/2007 10:04

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

MuminBrum · 01/05/2007 10:05

Yes, sorry, just saw it, was too busy choking on my dry crust to concentrate.

Judy1234 · 01/05/2007 10:16

I see 70 peoole have commented on it on the Times site.
Sorry every single time I have tried links I've failed so I gave up.

I think he is wrong. There isn't the different he mentions. In 1961 when my parents bought their house it was a struggle. In the 1960s/70s they struggled to pay school fees. These things were never easy. Parents spent much less on children too. There were not glorious easy years even for the fairly rich.

(Many small law firms in the country will indeed have partners on £75k and that is nearly 4 x the average wage and a good wage for most people).

OP posts:
MuminBrum · 01/05/2007 10:26

Now concentrate, X, it's really easy.
Copy and paste this: description

Then copy and paste the url in question over where it says url in the above. Then take out "description" and write the words you want to use to describe the link.

Give it a go right now and make us all proud!

MuminBrum · 01/05/2007 10:28

Oh bum, that'll teach me to be a smartarse! The first bit is backslash link{url\description}

yellowrose · 01/05/2007 10:42

i know mild, it is a fab salary and a heck of a lot more than most people earn, just wanted to say the guy who wrote the article doesn't have his facts right !

yellowrose · 01/05/2007 10:45

mumin - lol on idiot guide to posting links !

Aloha · 01/05/2007 10:49

I read this. Clearly he feels hard done by living in his rented room, but he has clearly been flitting about fairly purposelessly for most of his life, so it's hardly surprising. Why on earth does he expect to be rich when he just mimsies about pleasing himself? Bizarre. If he was an architect like his dad he could compare his lifestyle, but this is ridiculous. Architects today aren't exactly on the breadline.

edam · 01/05/2007 10:57

With friends like these... ?First, they can?t afford to eat out,? he told me, ?then they pull their children out of [fee-paying] school, and you just stop seeing them.? Oh, so you really want to hang out with people who won't bother to see you if you don't hang out at White's with all the old bores?

And he's mixing up 'country landowners' with professions such a architecture. Seems to think the fact daddy had a good job entitles him to live the lifestyle of the landed gentry without actually bothering to earn any money himself!

MuminBrum · 01/05/2007 11:06

the whinging ponce has been at it for years - see here - and unfortunately no sign of him starving to death.

bozza · 01/05/2007 11:06

Where does he get the idea that everyone in 1967 bought their homes outright? My Mum and Dad put a £100 deposit down on a £1000 two bed terraced house in 1970. So that was 17 x less and 3 years later, but hardly a rectory.

If he is trying to say that there is no automatic upper middle class and more room for people being upwardly and downwardly mobile, I can hardly see that as a bad thing. Why should he be well off, just because his Dad was?

LittleSarah · 01/05/2007 11:09

What a numpty. I find it incredible people can write such trite whinging tracts without an ounce of shame...

I mean does he have no self-awareness at all? Does he not realise that A. There are many many people, much worse off and that B. Why would a writer expect to earn enough for a large house plus flat plus school fees (unless you are JK of course and C. His view reflects a tiny (privileged) minority and the rest of us think he is an A-list up of his own arsehole!?

GRRR. Get. A. Grip.

(And the broadsheets wonder why so few bother with them)

yellowrose · 01/05/2007 11:20

and also do you stop contacting good friends who can no longer dine at the fecking Ritz with you or stop sending their son to Harrow beacuse they can't afford it ?

So some people are pimping ponces who only associate with other pimping ponces and give up on their good friends who have hit hard times ?

FiveFingeredFiend · 01/05/2007 11:25

It's a whole world. London centric at that. They kinda realise that other people exist and times must be hard for them, but liken it to the time they had no money on them and asked Ben the Investment banker friend to lend him a £50 "god it was so embarrasing!"

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