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tentish klown posted:I'm curious - what do you think "middle-class" means?
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May 30, 2014 10:54
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Betjeman posted:£800 a month gets you a one bed flat near East Croydon which is only 20 minutes to Victoria. You do realise that £800 per month isn't cheap, right? I'm in an entry-level position in the NHS and that would be 60% of my take-home salary gone straight away. Then there's the monthly season ticket, which is £140 on top. So then I'm left with 32% of my take-home salary to pay for those little luxuries in life like food, water, electricity and gas.
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May 30, 2014 11:00
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Umiapik posted:Articles on this very subject are now regularly appearing in the Telegraph, where posh journalists have switched from gloating over their house price gains to indignantly complaining that neither they nor their children can afford to live in London any more. Here's a good example: It's refreshing to see the poshos freely admitting how things work and not hiding behind big inky clouds of bullshit. Zephro fucked around with this message at 11:06 on May 30, 2014 |
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May 30, 2014 11:02
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Zephro posted:edit2: America is an interesting contrast, as a country with more than a dozen legitimately big cities. I assume they must all provide something of a safety valve for each other. Yeah, but it is also a much bigger country and arguably only 2 or 3 really are London like and the rest more Manchester. [edit] NY is also a good head above no2 as well. Munin fucked around with this message at 11:11 on May 30, 2014 |
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May 30, 2014 11:05
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Munin posted:Yeah, but it is also a much bigger country and arguably only 2 or 3 really are London like and the rest more Manchester.
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May 30, 2014 11:08
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Betjeman posted:There's a shitload of entitlement that thinks young people should be able to afford a decent place in a decent part of London straight out of college. There are still loads of affordable areas in zone 5. £800 a month gets you a one bed flat near East Croydon which is only 20 minutes to Victoria. £450 a month gets you a room in a houseshare in zone 3 Tooting, 30 minutes on the Northern line. £800 a month is an absolute fuckload of money (almost 50% of take-home pay for someone on the London median wage, plus you have to add on £200 for your zone 1-5 travelcard). It speaks volumes that you think spending way over half your wages just on rent and travel is reasonable. For context 20 years ago £100 a week (which is close enough to £800 a month in today's money), would have got you a one-bed flat on the Isle of Dogs or a 2-bed house with garden out in Plaistow. Housing prices are insane, and saying "well it's very slightly less insane in this particular area" is ridiculous.
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May 30, 2014 11:09
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We live in the Empire of London. It takes our talented and promising young people and resources and then complains of "subsidising" the rest of the country. If the UK is to survive in any meaningful way the centralisation of the economy and services in London has to be reversed.
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May 30, 2014 11:10
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goddamnedtwisto posted:£800 a month is an absolute fuckload of money (almost 50% of take-home pay for someone on the London median wage, plus you have to add on £200 for your zone 1-5 travelcard). It speaks volumes that you think spending way over half your wages just on rent and travel is reasonable. edit: also by the time you have a kid you'll need to find £12,000 a year after tax to put it in childcare so that you and your partner can both work to pay your colossal, barely-affordable rent / mortgage. Zephro fucked around with this message at 11:15 on May 30, 2014 |
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May 30, 2014 11:12
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big scary monsters posted:Middle class means anyone who earns the same as me +/- 30% regardless of my current income. That's pretty much the issue I'm pointing out - the definition of middle class has changed so much (possibly due to aspiration, social mobility, and those drat poors not knowing their place) that it ranges from 'I can afford houmous' to 'I'm worth loving millions but no one in my near family has a title'. The Telegraphs definition of middle class is not right or wrong, it's just different from Umiapiks. Zephro posted:There's another problem, of course, which is London's general dominance of the UK. There are many industries where if you have any ambition to succeed London is the only place you can go. It's all very well when people say that house prices in Cumbria have barely moved and that £60,000 will buy you a perfectly decent two-bed terraced house. The problem is no-one wants to live in Cumbria because there's nothing to do. You would be more accurate comparing America with Europe, given the relative populations and landmass covered, and the freedom of movement. In which case, we do indeed have several legitimately big cities - London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Rome etc.
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May 30, 2014 11:13
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Well they're getting rid of all the agency teams working at the Plymouth MDEC in a week's time - all of them, even the people who've been working there for three years, because of 'a change in the MDEC and low workload' two days after having a team briefing cancelled because they were too busy - so I'll be unemployed again! Hooray! I'm sure the privatisation of Royal Mail had nothing to do with this, nothing at all. I'm sure looking forward to them mass-hiring temps again after waiting long enough that they can legally get away with paying us minimum wage once more! Definitely not bitter!
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May 30, 2014 11:13
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tentish klown posted:You would be more accurate comparing America with Europe, given the relative populations and landmass covered, and the freedom of movement. In which case, we do indeed have several legitimately big cities - London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Rome etc. Anyway, the point isn't to say "We should make Britain more like America," it was just offered as a contrast to show up just how much like a city-state Britain feels.
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May 30, 2014 11:17
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Zephro posted:Sure, I just mean it's perhaps as advantage of living in a big country. Yeah, you could talk about Paris and Frankfurt being our safety valves... CancerCakes posted:We live in the Empire of London. It takes our talented and promising young people and resources and then complains of "subsidising" the rest of the country. London also pulls in the talented and promising young people from across the world. The "Empire of London" phrasing would also be apt in that respect.
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May 30, 2014 11:19
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goddamnedtwisto posted:£800 a month is an absolute fuckload of money (almost 50% of take-home pay for someone on the London median wage, plus you have to add on £200 for your zone 1-5 travelcard). It speaks volumes that you think spending way over half your wages just on rent and travel is reasonable. I was quoting that specific figure from the previous post, in reference to someone in their 50's being upset about how poor their life is because what a dump £800 gets their kid. I also put in the cost of a zone 3 house share for good measure. And unless everyone in here is pushing 50, I doubt we all have the benefit of knowing first hand "well, it was like that 20 years ago so"? We are all of a generation where the preceding generation hosed us over with regards to property. I bypassed a lifetime of being a rent slave by moving to the West Midlands, buying a house, and pumping every last penny of our joint income into equity so we could afford not to worry about renting. I did this in my 30's. My 20's were spent pissing money up the wall on rent and alcohol and trying to get at least a pound into the black every payday. For reference, I started out on £100 a week living in a £60 bedsit, so I like to think I did have some knowledge of what it's like to be poor and only able to afford to eat pasta and noodles.
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May 30, 2014 11:24
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Zephro posted:edit: also by the time you have a kid you'll need to find £12,000 a year after tax to put it in childcare so that you and your partner can both work to pay your colossal, barely-affordable rent / mortgage. I'm on a pretty good wage. This post just scared the hell out of me. I think this is something that needs to be made clear to more people desperate to get onto the 'property ladder' London - the bank owning your house with the vague promise of being able to wring enough money out of the next sucker looking to take over your hovel is not 'security', it is a dead weight, a shackle.
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May 30, 2014 11:26
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lenoon posted:I'm on a pretty good wage. This post just scared the hell out of me. I think this is something that needs to be made clear to more people desperate to get onto the 'property ladder' London - the bank owning your house with the vague promise of being able to wring enough money out of the next sucker looking to take over your hovel is not 'security', it is a dead weight, a shackle. Think of it as a shackle that prevents you falling off the cliff of indebted servitude (a lifetime of renting in London). Preferable, but not ideal. With the London property market I agree with you that "the only winning move is not to play." Unless you have enough millions to keep flipping properties as investments, and then why the hell are you on here.
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May 30, 2014 11:34
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Munin posted:Yeah, but it is also a much bigger country and arguably only 2 or 3 really are London like and the rest more Manchester. Germany is a better comparison than the US. Different cities have been developed in different niches, rather than everything being lumped into one megacity. London is like if you took the US and combined New York, Washington, and Los Angeles - a combination of Culture, Government, and Business such that nobody ever has to go anywhere else and it devours investment and people to the detriment of elsewhere. Combine that with an 18th century political setup and an English populace that for loving incomprehensible reasons doesn't want regional power, and we get London.
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May 30, 2014 11:40
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Zephro posted:There's also the point that a lot of these are temporary solutions. A houseshare is fine when you're 25 and single; it's harder to make it work when you're 33 and married with a kid. I've been talking about this a lot since moving back to Finland from London. Over here people will pay 700-800 euros for a studio flat within walking distance of the city centre, which is pretty rough if you're on minimum wage. So interestingly you actually have a better quality of life in London if you share a house with like six other people, renting a room as big as a studio flat here, for less money. Like I know guys who make serious money, are on a serious career path, and they live in some grimy terraced house in Brockley with seven others. But then over here in Finland barely anyone but totally skint students or hippies share a house, so it's a really marginal option. I think it shows well how Londoners adapt to the absolutely ridiculous housing market, adjusting their lifestyle in a way that in many other cities would be considered unacceptable.
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May 30, 2014 13:11
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If anyone was thinking of reading Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" but didn't want to pay £30, WHSmiths are doing it for half price. Might just be for this week though, I'm not sure.
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May 30, 2014 13:22
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Pork Pie Hat posted:If anyone was thinking of reading Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" but didn't want to pay £30, WHSmiths are doing it for half price. Might just be for this week though, I'm not sure. Best news I've heard all day; heading down to get it now!
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May 30, 2014 13:23
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Pork Pie Hat posted:If anyone was thinking of reading Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" but didn't want to pay £30, WHSmiths are doing it for half price. Might just be for this week though, I'm not sure. Forgive me for asking but is it a suitable read for a layman, or is it a fairly heavy academic read?
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May 30, 2014 13:31
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Pork Pie Hat posted:If anyone was thinking of reading Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" but didn't want to pay £30, WHSmiths are doing it for half price. Might just be for this week though, I'm not sure. Is it a good read? Is it nothing new if you've read this kind of thing before? I've heard tons about it and might go pick it up
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May 30, 2014 13:32
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Pork Pie Hat posted:If anyone was thinking of reading Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" but didn't want to pay £30, WHSmiths are doing it for half price. Might just be for this week though, I'm not sure. http://www.whsmith.co.uk/products/capital-in-the-twenty-first-century/product/9780674430006 Not half price online unfortunately. I'll probably wait for a cheap kindle edition at some point. Nice chap from Ipsos MORI just came round doing a survey about radio listening and gave me a fiver, score.
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May 30, 2014 13:42
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Betjeman posted:There's a shitload of entitlement that thinks young people should be able to afford a decent place in a decent part of London straight out of college. There are still loads of affordable areas in zone 5. £800 a month gets you a one bed flat near East Croydon which is only 20 minutes to Victoria. £450 a month gets you a room in a houseshare in zone 3 Tooting, 30 minutes on the Northern line. I can't be the only one who feels something sinister about referring to living areas by 'zones'.
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May 30, 2014 13:53
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El Scotch posted:I can't be the only one who feels something sinister about referring to living areas by 'zones'. Not really, they're just a vague measure of distance to the center of London. Saying zone 1, 2, 3, etc is a much more efficient shorthand than 'it's like 20 miles outside London and takes about an hour to get there'
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May 30, 2014 13:56
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CancerCakes posted:http://www.whsmith.co.uk/products/capital-in-the-twenty-first-century/product/9780674430006 Kindle edition has been £17.92 forever. Not cheap, exactly, but certainly a lot cheaper than print. Which reminds me, I need to get round to reading that at some point.
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May 30, 2014 13:58
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tentish klown posted:Not really, they're just a vague measure of distance to the center of London. Saying zone 1, 2, 3, etc is a much more efficient shorthand than 'it's like 20 miles outside London and takes about an hour to get there' Manchester was divided into Zones for bus travel more than 30 years ago. Somehow they never got round to herding us all into camps, though.
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May 30, 2014 14:01
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HortonNash posted:Forgive me for asking but is it a suitable read for a layman, or is it a fairly heavy academic read? bit of both, its cut up into bite size chunks that build on each other
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May 30, 2014 14:10
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Jedit posted:Manchester was divided into Zones for bus travel more than 30 years ago. Somehow they never got round to herding us all into camps, though. That's because.... Manchester is the camp!
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May 30, 2014 14:21
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tentish klown posted:Not really, they're just a vague measure of distance to the center of London. Saying zone 1, 2, 3, etc is a much more efficient shorthand than 'it's like 20 miles outside London and takes about an hour to get there' Well, it is also a direct shorthand for your monthly commuting costs.
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May 30, 2014 15:16
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El Scotch posted:I can't be the only one who feels something sinister about referring to living areas by 'zones'. You've not seen the shard have you...
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May 30, 2014 15:29
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Not only a class society, but a zone society.
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May 30, 2014 15:34
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Ya, blind in the wine zone leave ya mind blown When he shine with the nine, hes a Rhinestone Cowboy
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May 30, 2014 15:38
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El Scotch posted:Not only a class society, but a zone society. I'm zone 4 mate, no one even knows we exist
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May 30, 2014 15:55
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Would you prefer to be a zone 1 prole or a zone 5 middle-class.
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May 30, 2014 16:00
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inner city life forever
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May 30, 2014 16:09
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Answers Me posted:Is it a good read? Is it nothing new if you've read this kind of thing before? I've heard tons about it and might go pick it up No idea, I've not read it myself yet. I'd wanted to but didn't fancy paying £30 for it, so I wasw quite pleased to see it discounted today.
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May 30, 2014 16:16
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El Scotch posted:Would you prefer to be a zone 1 prole or a zone 5 middle-class. There are 6 Greater London zones, then all the home counties not wanting to feel left out got zones 7-9 for the bits around the M25. You can't just think 5, you're disestablishing vast swathes of suburbia.
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May 30, 2014 16:21
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You can only go into areas within 2 zones of your home zone anyway, so it's not really a problem. The civil enforcement police crack down on zone runners pretty effectively too, so the British caste system can be maintained.
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May 30, 2014 17:04
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Speaking of which, the battersea northern line extension that splits off from Kennington was going to be all zone 2. But now TfL are saying zone 1 for the new stations & turn Kennington into a 1-2 split like notting hill. Basically so the expensive luxury new developments there have the appeal of the zone 1 label. Billionaires are so shallow.
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May 30, 2014 17:46
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Illuyankas posted:Well they're getting rid of all the agency teams working at the Plymouth MDEC in a week's time - all of them, even the people who've been working there for three years, because of 'a change in the MDEC and low workload' two days after having a team briefing cancelled because they were too busy - so I'll be unemployed again! Hooray! I'm sure the privatisation of Royal Mail had nothing to do with this, nothing at all. I'm sure looking forward to them mass-hiring temps again after waiting long enough that they can legally get away with paying us minimum wage once more! Definitely not bitter! drat.  I grew up in Plymouth but haven't been back for a while. (As I've been sucked into London as the only place I can practise my profession, go figure!) How're things?
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May 30, 2014 17:51
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