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So the tories won the election. How does that affect my trip, guys? I've read about the scrapping of the income tax for minimum wage earners, lots of welfare cuts (thou i never qualified for any benefits AFAIK, besides the oyster card discount for people under 25 y/o). I guess it won't be terribly worse than it would have been had i moved a year ago...
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May 8, 2015 20:14
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| # ? Jun 10, 2024 04:15 |
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It won't make any difference to you right now. Takes longer than a couple of weeks for policies to change, usually, and it's not like they weren't in power before.
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May 8, 2015 20:54
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You'll still pay tax if you get a job. Nobody actually survives on minimum wage in London.
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May 9, 2015 23:56
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How much is minimum wage, cause I am on 14,000 per year and I survive. Just. I work in heritage and Jesus loving Christ the first bit of advice I can possibly give you is not to go for the heritage jobs in Greenwich. The people that are employed in upper management there would make Jeffery Dahmar look sane and competent at managing a business. Second bit of advice is that looking for property is the most depressing thing you can do if you have to move out of somewhere, so choose somewhere you want to stay for as long as possible. I moved here about 3 years ago and have been through 3 houses in that time and it is an absolute ice pick to the face in terms of productivity and fun. Third bit of advice, learn what you are going to cook and cook in advance. It might sound daft but if you are on a limited budget making sure that you have enough to eat is vital. Fourth, avoid London Bridge at all costs during the rush hour, it is a blasted post-apocalyptic hellscape filled with angry commuters.
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May 11, 2015 23:05
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I "moved" to London for an "adventure" when I was about 23, five years ago. First I got a live-in job in a pub which was absolutely godawful and then I got a job as a hotel receptionist in a four star hotel in central London, which was bearable. I got paid minimum wage plus made about £100-150 a week in commission; London is the only place in Britain you make commission working in hotels. Basically you get a cut of everything you sell someone from an outside source, like theatre tickets, tour tickets, even taxi fares. I'd keep a wad of cash in my back pocket and when guests asked where they could change currency I'd whip it out. Then walk to the post office across the road and change it back to pounds, pocketing the £10 profit I'd creamed off the top. At night we'd order food from local takeaways - tell them you're ordering say a chicken curry and rice for some guests and 2-3 bags of food would turn up with a pile of their business cards, the whole thing costing us less than a fiver. The next day we'd throw the cards straight in the bin and move onto the next poor suckers. I also got a staff meal and it wasn't difficult to make friends with the chefs and get some more. Plus, soup of the day: you should be on your third bowl an hour into your shift. If you manage to accidentally accept a job with an employer who doesn't let you help yourself to unlimited soup then that's your problem. I lived in a shared flat with a bunch of probable illegal immigrants in Walthamstow and paid £40/week, all in. No council tax or bills, although after two months the landlord moved someone else into my room but he turned out to be cool so we just got drunk on Aldi wine and watched movies. Oh yeah, no rights either! My commute was about 45 minutes on two tubes, or 1.5 hours on the bus if I was on early Sunday. Your oyster card maxes out at a certain level (£7.50 per day at the time?) so it's free after that. For food (on then rare days I had to buy any) I went to my local market and bought a bag of random veg and a packet of random meat and went home and made a stew, ate what I wanted and put the rest in the fridge. Try to live with Muslims, they don't steal your pork. It was a bit of a laugh for a young guy but I wouldn't go back. It's intensely claustrophobic.
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May 12, 2015 02:44
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duckmaster posted:It was a bit of a laugh for a young guy but I wouldn't go back. It's intensely claustrophobic. My thoughts on London too. I loving love to visit it on my way back home since I have so many friends there, but I really would never want to live there again. I am renting a house now. An actual house that is not touching another house, and that has a back yard and a garage. And it's just for me, I don't share.
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May 12, 2015 19:45
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Josef bugman posted:How much is minimum wage, cause I am on 14,000 per year and I survive. Just. Out of idle curiosity, do you work on the museum side or archive side of that line? drat, that's like no money at all! And are you talking Greenwich the area in general, or specifically for the Royal Borough thereof? And yes to all of this -- seriously, one of the best things I ever did as a broke-rear end grad student was go to the local Tesco, price out £20's worth of food for a week (mostly actual food), and scope out what I could cook with that. Yeah, I ate a lot of tuna and beans, but I had veggies in my diet. London Bridge is indeed the inner circle of the damned. Avoid at all costs.
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May 14, 2015 07:44
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So i did my homework, got in touch with some contacts and nailed an interview for a job at a pub. We'll see what happens when I get there, but so far it seems we are off to q good start. I'll be staying at a hostel in Paddington. Regarding the NHS, what are the average waiting times for clinical routine checks nowadays? I did made sure to do some medical checks here before I move, but I'd still want to know...
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May 14, 2015 10:49
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To see a general doctor will normally happen within a week of you calling for an appointment, but if they want to refer you to see any kind of specialist then expect 2-3 months. Last time I needed something I saw my doctor in about 4 days, he referred me to a Neurologist who it took about 2 months to see, the neurologist asked me questions for 10 minutes and said I needed an MRI, which took another 4-6 weeks or so to actually have done, and my next neurologist appointment was booked in for the week after the MRI so I could get the results So yeah, not very fast.
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May 14, 2015 12:39
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It almost entirely depends on where you live. If I want to see a GP I can do it same/next day and a specialist referral is usually only a couple of weeks.
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May 14, 2015 13:23
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Yggdrassil posted:Regarding the NHS, what are the average waiting times for clinical routine checks nowadays? I did made sure to do some medical checks here before I move, but I'd still want to know... There is no such thing as a "routine check". You only go to a GP if you have an issue. In a related note, don't ever pay for private companies doing " medical checkups". It's a scam.
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May 14, 2015 13:53
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oliwan posted:There is no such thing as a "routine check". You only go to a GP if you have an issue. Americans were baffled that there were no regular health checkups here. I assume they exist because of the health insurance policies in the US, so they know to jack up your premiums if you look like you're on the way out. Scheduling a GP visit is a good way to spend 1 hour waiting past your appointment time, five minutes with an overworked, dead to the world doctor who if you're lucky knows something about medicine, but probably not. Then if it's serious, a nice few months wait for your referral to a hospital.
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May 14, 2015 14:37
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Yggdrassil posted:
The only routine check anyone bothers with is the sex clinic, top advice there if you manage to woo someone with the hedonistic gently caress-magnetism of a hostel bunk in Paddington.
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May 14, 2015 16:04
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While I am aware how slow the NHS can be I've always been ridiculously lucky with my interactions with them. I often have ambulance rides to A&E, get seen immediately, never left waiting around. Have follow up doctor visits within a week and sifted through Physio and a Pain Clinic within a couple weeks. Preexisting conditions seem to help here as opposed to the states where you are penalised for losing the genetic lottery.
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May 14, 2015 16:37
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dpack_1 posted:I often have ambulance rides to A&E, get seen immediately, never left waiting around. Nah you're definitely in another country, you can't be talking about England here. About 3 years ago I took my dad to A&E because he was having chest pains, shortness of breath, and pains down the left arm (heart attack). He told all of this to the woman at the desk and he got treated like someone with a sprained ankle. We were sitting waiting in A&E for about an hour and 15 minutes before he got seen by a doctor, who said he definitely needed to stay in, did some tests, and told him he has had a heart attack. Luckily it wasnt one big enough to kill him right there and then, but they kept him in for a few days for surgery to put stents in. Sitting and waiting in a loving queue while having a heart attack.
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May 14, 2015 16:53
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Ahdinko posted:
They are very good at upholding the British tradition of queuing for everything. That's another thing to take note of when moving here. We queue for everything. EVERYTHING. Cash machine, Post Office, taxi rank, kebab shop and even getting on a bus has a regimented code of queuing that, if broken will result in a few sharp words from an angry old lady. Get used to being in a queue. Nobody likes a skipper.
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May 14, 2015 20:38
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Ahdinko posted:Nah you're definitely in another country, you can't be talking about England here. Well you see there's your problem. You went to A&E. Call an ambulance (if it is genuinely serious, as most chest pains are) and you skip all that poo poo and get straight into a bed. I tend to end up in hospital every 3-6 months due to chronic pain causing my heart to go into overdrive, sustaining 150BPM+ for hours on end. When it starts hurting enough that i notice that i'll call 111, they'll send an ambulance out and the paramedics will hook me up to an ECG, go "oooh... that's... yeah..." turn the blue lights on and 10 mins later i'll be holed up in a bed with enough cables hanging off of me to be part of a cheesy sci-fi and constant supervision for 12 hours before being given a bunch of opiates and told to follow up with a GP that week. So yeah, with serious poo poo our medical service is pretty hot. Though I do agree the GP system is some circle of hell, and god forbid you have a mental illness, you'll be treated worse than you can imagine thanks to the fact the NHS pretty much refuses to believe mental illnesses exist.
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May 14, 2015 22:39
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Ahdinko posted:Nah you're definitely in another country, you can't be talking about England here. People have this idea that "it's quicker to go to A&E myself than call an ambulance" whilst the NHS keeps telling us that if it's an actual life threatening emergency dial 999. An ambulance would have been with you within 8 minutes* and has all the gear onboard not only to treat heart attack symptoms but to actually stop one happening. The paramedics can also call ahead to the hospital and have you bumped to the front of the queue, a receptionist can't. I don't mean to be condescending but it's our ridiculous stiff upper lip attitude which leads to people bleeding to death when on hold to NHS 24. If a life is at risk then calling an ambulance is the only option. No exceptions. The guy on the other end of the phone would also tell you what to do in that situation, which unfortunately is the complete opposite of what you actually did. But I hope your dad is ok. * the target is 75% of calls within 8 minutes, but they'll always be there quicker than you can get to them.
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May 14, 2015 23:38
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Don't you need an NHS number to get anywhere with appointments now? I'd never registered in my area since moving here 3.5 years ago, and when I did need to get an appointment sorted that day it was all kinds of ball ache finding the number from previously registering. Once they did have that, they were great and I got seen later on that day. I'm pretty sure it took two weeks or so to get the original NHS card/number through too, so it would then have been a month after going in to get treated I could actually get an appointment. Wasn't anything life threatening but gently caress, there's two of you sat there behind a desk doing gently caress all, you'd think it would be slightly quicker to receive a boilerplate piece of inkjetted paper when I've given you all the right paperwork.
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May 17, 2015 12:49
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Goldskull posted:It's currently undergoing a refurb, and no-one's quite sure how it'll turn out. Fuller's seem determined to make it food led rather than wet led, which is loving idiotic given there's a thousand places to eat in Soho. But as long as the staff and music remain the same, it'll be fine. No TVs, music decided by the staff and good beer. You might struggle once they put all the stupid new tables in depending on how many of you there are. I can let you know more once it re-opens on Tuesday. Turns out there's several ships in London. Who knew? Although at least half the staff at the Wandsworth Ship looked like they could be goons.
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May 17, 2015 13:11
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reformed bad troll posted:They are very good at upholding the British tradition of queuing for everything. Well, except the bus routes where it's a bloody free-for-all of nature red in tooth and claw. But yes, all hail the sacred queue -- the one way I know I've lived in this country Too drat Long is when I go home, I am constantly thinking, "Goddamn, why does nobody know how to frickin' queue?!"
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May 17, 2015 14:38
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oliwan posted:There is no such thing as a "routine check". You only go to a GP if you have an issue. There are some issues that you cannot predict, and some illnesses that only show symptoms in late stages, ¿how do you prevent these if you don't go for a routine check once in a while?
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May 19, 2015 15:16
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Yggdrassil posted:There are some issues that you cannot predict, and some illnesses that only show symptoms in late stages, ¿how do you prevent these if you don't go for a routine check once in a while? You die. There are no upside down question marks in English by the way. To be slightly less glib, you'd need one hell of a "routine check" to discover many of those illnesses anyway. Physical exams are unlikely to catch symptoms more quickly than you are, and blood tests don't give you a complete picture of health or anything. If you register at a GP they may ask for a urine sample to test for diabetes, and if you have any problem at all, it is pretty standard to have your blood pressure checked. If you're afraid of getting struck down by sudden pancreatic cancer or something, well, routine health checks probably wouldn't help you anyway.
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May 19, 2015 15:25
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Jeza posted:You die. There are no upside down question marks in English by the way. Just wrote an email in spanish, the upside down question mark got stuck  Jeza posted:To be slightly less glib, you'd need one hell of a "routine check" to discover many of those illnesses anyway. Physical exams are unlikely to catch symptoms more quickly than you are, and blood tests don't give you a complete picture of health or anything. If you register at a GP they may ask for a urine sample to test for diabetes, and if you have any problem at all, it is pretty standard to have your blood pressure checked. Thanks for that. I know nothing about medicine in general, but routine checks are usually done over here, so i had to ask :P
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May 19, 2015 15:30
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There's a whole lot of costing and research done on this and generally it's a waste of resources to screen everyone. Even for specific conditions such as breast cancer there's debate whether there is too much screening, leading to false positives and unnecessary surgery on many women. If you looked for every feasible disease in everyone not only would it take up a ton of time and money, you would undoubtedly treat things that weren't in need of treatment. However you will get screened for conditions based on risk, eg prostate cancer for older men. In theory the GP acts as a filter to refer serious conditions into secondary care and other specialists. Lady Gaza fucked around with this message at 16:01 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 15:56
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duckmaster posted:People have this idea that "it's quicker to go to A&E myself than call an ambulance" whilst the NHS keeps telling us that if it's an actual life threatening emergency dial 999. An ambulance would have been with you within 8 minutes* and has all the gear onboard not only to treat heart attack symptoms but to actually stop one happening. The paramedics can also call ahead to the hospital and have you bumped to the front of the queue, a receptionist can't. We were already in the car and happened to be about 3 or 4 minutes drive from the hospital (or 2 minutes as I put my foot down given the situation), at the time it made more sense to just haul rear end and drive to the place with trained medical professionals rather than stopping in the middle of the dual carriageway, calling 999 and trying to explain where on the A602 I was and then sitting in the middle of a road waiting for an ambulance whilst causing traffic backups for the ambulance to fight through My dad is all good now, the stents sorted the immediate issue and he lost some weight so he's alot less at risk, but I guess should something like that happen again I'll either drive there while on the phone to 999 to get bumped up the queue, or just stop in the road and wait for em. Of course if something should happen while he's at home, I'd just call an ambulance for him rather than trying to bundle a guy having a heart attack down some stairs and into a car Ahdinko fucked around with this message at 17:06 on May 19, 2015 |
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May 19, 2015 16:47
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Yggdrassil posted:There are some issues that you cannot predict, and some illnesses that only show symptoms in late stages, ¿how do you prevent these if you don't go for a routine check once in a while? Grope your balls in the shower once a week, and don't put off dealing with chest pain. Boom, done.
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May 19, 2015 19:46
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redreader posted:I lived in london for about 5 years, and left in 2007. One thing I'll tell you, that you won't expect. At first you'll be fine, winter will be 'interesting' but you'll deal. After about 3-4 years you'll start getting a cold tight feeling in your gut when winter comes, you'll loving dread it. It'll depress you. It happened to me also in Bucharest, that's why I'm going back to Spain :P
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May 20, 2015 21:24
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So, updates... I'll be moving on June 15, and thanks to a close contact i got in touch with, i'll be almost guaranteed a job at a pub in Paddington, who also happens to have live-in accommodation. I'll do my best to nail that opportunity, and will be staying at the pub's hostel when i arrive. I would like to go to the gym once i'm settled, ¿how expensive are gyms in London? ¿do you guys any good place to exercise around the Paddington area?
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May 22, 2015 18:59
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You'll be ten minutes away from Hyde Park, one of the best parks in london (And there are a lot of good parks). Either go running or sign up for some sort of exercise group based in the park.
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May 22, 2015 19:22
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What's with the upside down question marks?
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May 22, 2015 23:48
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^^Spainish/Portuguese thing. Oh a paddytown pub with attached hostel. I bet I know exactly where you're staying and fair warning it's pretty terrible. Still, welcome to London, may she treat you well.
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May 23, 2015 00:35
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Saros posted:^^Spainish/Portuguese thing. Oh I know what it is, just that it looks really out of place in English and that is a thing that the OP should probably be aware of.
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May 23, 2015 03:00
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Saros posted:I bet I know exactly where you're staying and fair warning it's pretty terrible. Why?
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May 23, 2015 06:12
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There are plenty of no-frill gyms costing 15 or 20 pounds a month. http://www.puregym.com/ is the biggest player in that market. Council run gyms also tend to be OK value.
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May 23, 2015 08:00
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council-run gyms are the ticket.
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May 24, 2015 00:47
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opus111 posted:council-run gyms are the ticket. In Edinburgh at least they tend to be a bit more expensive without really offering anything extra - 35/month versus 18 or so for the Pure Gym style ones. Don't know if London council gyms are cheaper?
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May 24, 2015 17:27
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Yggdrassil posted:Why? I had two friend work there when they first arrived and both said it was a pretty bad enviroment, staff get the bad rooms and the management were assholes. Hopefully its improved since then. London council gyms are generally more expensive than the no frills places. You can get them for 20-25/mo and council ones are usually 40+.
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May 24, 2015 21:31
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pim01 posted:In Edinburgh at least they tend to be a bit more expensive without really offering anything extra - 35/month versus 18 or so for the Pure Gym style ones. not sure, what i liked was that you didn't have to pay a monthly fee - i could just pay cash as and when i used the pool and my work shecdule at the time was hectic so sometimes i could only go once a week. also the facilities were excellent - much better than any private gym pool i've used in England. This was the highbury one.
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May 25, 2015 02:16
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Sorry to hijack the ops post but theres a decent chance I will also be moving to London in the next few weeks. Given we have a nice collection of london goons here what are some good things to do/see once you get bored of the super obvious tourist traps and big national museums?
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May 25, 2015 10:30
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