Report on increasing gap between rich & poor. What's a London without 'average' families like?

[BrummieOnTheRun]

The Rowntree report published today describes the increasing gap between the richest and poorest in society, with increasing segregation between their lives.

One observation in the report is that 'average' families had virtually disappeared in some areas.

As one family amongst what seems like a mass exodus of families from London in the last year, I was interested to read that.

Does it matter if the only families left in large cities like london are the really rich and those reliant on state benefits?

Should cities try to retain 'average' working families, or just let this trend take its course?

Aaahhh yes. The immigrant workforce. So companies can bring them in, pay them minimum wage and allow them to live ten to a room. That must be where the 'average' workers of London come from.

100k is wealthy if you live in the midlands. It isnt wealthy if you live in London, no. i dont think 70k is wealthy if you live in kent either

Most of the nurses and teachers I know are either very young and living in shared rented accommodation, usually in a not terribly salubrious part of town, or they have husbands/partners with much more lucrative jobs.

i do wonder about quality of teachers in london

from what i have seen there are a LOT of newly qualified early twenty somethings from australia

now they can easily be fantastic teachers, but where are the old matronly women teaching outdated notions?

Well what I thought was interesting about that fact (E. European archaeologists) was that certain professions risk dying out in the UK because they don't pay enough. It's not just the manufacturing industries. Some 'middle class' jobs may disappear too. You won't pay a fortune to go to university to study something that won't pay the mortgage on a fleapit.

Students on non-vocational postgraduate degrees in London are very largely from overseas. There are few native Brits doing PhDs or junior lecturer jobs -- why would anyone spend 4 years post degree doing research, writing papers, attending conferences only to be expected to consider themselves lucky to get a junior lecturer's or research assistant post on £24K?

lol Filly, yes, where are children going to get their outdated notions from, eh, eh?

Read an interesting article yesterday about the new north/south divide, and how it is more pronounced than ever before, with the 'south' only now incorporating the south-eastern corner of England from just north of London to just east of Portsmouth.

Wish I could remember where I read it.

So does the govt need to start recognising that North/South divide and stop using UK-wide averages on which to base tax and benefits?

The whole thing is built on smoke and mirrors People who look well off etc are mortgaged in debt to the eyeballs adn are living a lie.I spoke to a friend yesterday in this very predicament and she told me the whole story and I was shocked.Since her dh's overtime dried up 3 months ago and the interest rates have risen she has been crying herself to sleep with worry.On the surface they seem to have the dream life so I didn't know what to say

Interesting point, Brummie. UK based averages, it would seem, would be irrelevant wherever they were used now.

this is interesting brummie

the gap is so wide now they say

when we were looking at shared ownership many of the properties required over £40,000 minimum wage not really designed to help average people on average wage..or if only one partner works..

they are pricing the interesting people / non key workers out of this town with these policies and i for one would be sad to to leave

the education policies are not keeping up with immigration (am not against it) but am very worried at the lack of english spoken by pres schoolers around here but got no real answers from beverely hughes interview (er, did anyone?...)
how a can someone be interviewed and not give any answers...

brummieontherun - at last - someone who understands how i feel about living in london! esp what you say about public transport/cars. i have no idea how we're going to manage with two children. it just doesn't add up. but my job doesn't exist outside london and dh is london born and bred and won't think of moving out so feel a bit stuck. i just watch as all the people like us move out, leaving only those who can afford £700,000 for a house, making me feel inadequate.
sorry this isn't adding to the thread but it's such a relief to hear someone else saying what i am always saying about life in london!

noddy - that is very true. DH and I earn just about the average and we live in a much cheaper part of the world than London, but we have very little left over after the essentials are paid for. We know people who's incomes are similar or lower than ours who own bigger house, have several holidays a year. It used to confuse me and I wondered where we are going wrong. But it turns out that, in at least one case, the whole lot is on credit - overdrafts, massive mortgage and credit cards. They can't see that there is any choice - doing without clearly nor being an option . Too bloody frightening to live like that IMO.

I know ormiran I haven't seen this friend for a few months but we have now arranged to meet for lunch in about 10 days and I am a bit worried about how to approach this.She told me too much I think but she seemed desperate to talk They have a second property a holiday place which they could sell but her dh won't ???

Well I just worked it all out: it's classic Labour policy. If the 'middle classes' (whatever that means these days) are forced onto the council estates they'll 'raise standards', ha, ha! Only joking.

EnormousChanges: the public transport issue is a disgrace. While the baying hoards were vilifying women driving their children to school there was NO vilification of male BMW M5-driving commuters and NO demand for access to public transport for parents of young children.

And I very much doubt that those issues will feature anywhere on the mayoral electoral agenda.

And how can one of the world's leading capital cities not be able to educate its young effectively. Hey, at least you'll have the Olympics for 3 weeks!

OrmIrian, that is exactly how I felt.

DH and I earn a reasonable salary and still find it hard to make anything left-over at the end of the month (In fact it is often hard to make the money even last to the end of the month!). I always wondered how others of similar or lower financial circumstances seemed to fare better, and like you, assumed it was us doing something wrong. But I now believe that many, many people finance their lifestyles on credit. Would scare the bejeesus out of me.

At the risk of being boring, I'll extol the virtues of the German 'system' again here - where renting is the norm, no stigma, tenants are very well protected legally and rents in most places (bar a few horrendously expensive places like Munich) are very affordable. We rent a lovely, spacious 2-bed flat (decent-sized bedrooms so should be more than manageable with 2 dc) in an average-to-nice area of Berlin, fairly close to the centre, for 500 euros pcm plus energy bills. We can only be evicted with very good reason indeed, minimum notice 3 months. I am very grateful to be able to live like this for such relatively little cost. Berlin is a very socially mixed city; although there are tendencies to yuppiefication of some areas and 'sinking' of others, it is by no means extreme. I understand in the UK part of the problem with everyone wanting to get on the property ladder is that renting is simply not a serious option in many places - which I feel is a horrendous shame.

Ormiran, I think a lot of people are racking up debt trying to maintain a 'normal' standard of life, not accepting the realities of their financial situation.

I know we did briefly. If you've been to university and worked hard for 10 years it can be hard to accept you have to live extremely frugally all of a sudden. It wasn't part of the deal, ha, ha!

I'm afraid I did get pissed off when I then saw teenage girls in Kentish Town togged up to the nines, pushing top of the range buggies they'd bought with their £500 surestart grant.

It is hard being an average family in London. DH and I are both keyworkers. We earn slightly above the national average wage each, though I am about to go part-time, and our income will drop accordingly.

We bought a 2 bed flat 3 years ago. We are in zone 2, but live 20 mins by bus from the nearest tube and 20 mins walk from the nearest BR. Our area is frequently featured on the national news as a crime hotsport (though this is overplayed IMO). Now we have dd, people keep asking us when we'll be buying us house. That will be when our lottery numbers come up.

However, I know that in many other parts of the country, those new to the property ladder have exactly the same issues.

If we moved out of London, we would each take a drop in pay, and would most likely need to run 2 cars due to the nature of our jobs (we manage without a car now), as few other cities have 24hr public transport. So I'm not sure moving would be worth our while - maybe scottish highlands or rural wales, but I can't think of anywhere else.

it's the lack of political interest which is galling. no-one is addressing these issues coherently. to be fair to the govt, the report does say the very poorest have had things improve in the last ten years - but at the same time the imf now classes the uk as a tax haven so good has our new pm been to the ultra rich. er, hello....?!
childcare costs in london are what will do for us, i fear. i am due in sept so we have a wee while yet but if i go back to work my entire salary will be taken up by childcare costs and i can't see us being able to cope. i like london, esp with babies, but where's the point of all these fab classes, parks, city farms etc when I either can't afford them or can't get to them?
childcare, transport, education, house prices. it's not a novel list but these are the things eroding the quality of millions of lives.
anyone fancy starting a new political party?

It's not just the lack of security of renting, Berolina. It's also seen as the only way to make any money.

Investment returns and savings are taxed...again. Pensions are viewed by many as unsafe. You can make more on your house in 5 years just living in it, than you could hope to earn in several years of salaried employment.

In answer to the op - it matters very much that cities have "average" families. whatever one thinks about wage differentials it is a fact that jobs that require a medium (or even "average") level of skills and education are crucial. the key workers that have already been mentioned on this thread - plus taxi drivers, skilled labour in all its shapes and sizes, corner-shop owners, shop assistants, pub land-lords and bar staff, cafe and restaurant owners and staff, office workers (think wernham-hogg), children's entertainers, musicians, writers - cities can't possibly function without them. and the more we loose them the "poorer" a city becomes. Diversity is what so many of us love about London - and like any city it needs social diversity too.

It's a gamble, though, isn't it, Brummie? It's not one I'd be keen on taking - but most of my post-university life has been spent in Germany, so I am very used to and convinced of the renting culture. I have no faith in (state) pensions either, and if anything happens to us in the near future we're fairly f*ed, but are slowly but surely building up savings within our capabilities (taxed very low because we haven't built up much as yet).