It was great in 2012 and comfortable for SWEs (am one). Now it is honestly too expensive, £8 a pint in pub near work, it makes going out less fun.
The property situation makes me far more angry. The UK construction and property industry completely lacks market discipline and quality regulations have been reduced (see: Grenfell where that literally killed people, but also the shocking build quality of most properties).
Then there was the restriction of homebuilding - deliberately engineered by successive governments in order to jack up property prices and parasitically extract a greater % of Londoner incomes via rents.
When the Tories talked about being Singapore-on-Thames I wished they meant build thousands of nice HDB apartment blocks and get tough on corruption but alas it seems what they actually meant was Moscow-on-Thames - make London an even bigger haven for oligarchs and dial up the corruption with more no bid government contracts to their mates.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bull...
As you can see, London rents are increasing at an accelerating rate.
Grenfell was a horrible tragedy. It was built as social housing in the 50’s or 60’s to a much higher standard (in terms of space and utility) than the so called luxury apartments of Canary Wharf.
The installation of cladding to modernise the building to meet modern energy efficiency standards and the apparent failure to make sure that work was completed within the regulations seems to be the cause of the catastrophic spread of the fire.
London planning is a complete mess. We waste millions on poorly executed projects to modernise social housing to save on CO2 emissions and at the same time we have the wealthy living in Victorian and older houses that are not allowed to install double glazing in order “to preserve the character of the property”.
London planning isn't an accidental mess. It's a deliberately engineered mess designed to let property/land owners and construction companies act as a parasite on the productive economy.
New York in the 1950s ran a very high level of immigration (GIs returning from the war) and had the strongest rent controls it ever had. Neither property prices nor rents rose very much.
London only passed the population threshold it reached in 1939 in 2015 - LONG after rents and property prices had been jacked up to eye watering levels.
Building social housing isn't hard, it just requires a government that operates on behalf of the working classes (who want a roof over their head) rather than land owners (who will try to stymie that process in every way they can in order to jack up rents and asset valuations).
With Singapore you could argue that immigration is a key issue with their rising rents because proportionally it's so much higher than the UK, they make very efficient use of land and they are very much more space deprived.
In the UK it's not an issue with immigration because other variables override it.
That is unless somebody is really in the mood to indirectly take the issue to a xenophobic or a racist place on behalf of a few populist property oligarchs looking for an easy scapegoat.
>> In the UK it's not an issue with immigration because other variables override it.
Care to name some? I guess you could say that UK housing is "inefficient" but again, I'm not sure making people live in tower blocks just so that more people from other countries can move here is all that fair of a solution, or if it is what people are proposing at least make it explicit and have it as a party policy that people can vote on.
TBH property oligarchs would favour high migration because of the effect it has on property values and rents.
The only forcing going on in London is handing over between 30-50% of your paycheck just to have a roof over your head.
Nobody would have to be forced to live in an apartment. You just have to build them and people will rent or buy them.
As I said, unless you want to take this to a racist place it's not an issue of immigration. Not in the UK anyway.
>TBH property oligarchs would favour high migration
Yes, thats why the Tory party effectively used xenophobia to garner votes while simultaneously increasing net migration to the UK. It was all about throwing a racist bone to their voters who were heavily swayed towards UKIP before betraying them.
That makes it sound as if it's 600k each year. It isn't - that's the figure for 2022. The figure for 2019 is 180k. Supposedly, the 2022 figure is inflated by official programmes encouraging immigration from Hong Kong and Ukraine.
I look forward to the figure for 2024 being -800k or so to even things out but I won't hold my breath.
All the while charging extremely high tax rates that get distributed to who knows what, the war on Ukraine, maybe.
Aren’t the salaries higher as well? In Paris a pint is €7 on average (~£6) but according to Glassdoor the average SWE salary is only €53k/yr vs. £68k for London.
The killer is house and rental costs.
If you want a flat in central London you'll be paying half (or more?) of your £68k salary on rent after tax. In Canary Wharf you might not even be able to afford rent.
A £68k salary won't bring you close to being able to afford a mortgage, unless you have capital from other means e.g. inheritance.
I got a 2.5% salary increase this year. Because of inflation is should be > 8% (ONS has a recommendation). Complained about it and they still wouldn't increase it.
A fluid ounce is based on avoirdupois, which isn't "imperial", so it didn't have to be abandoned. I think pints, quarts and gallons, all being based on the pint, are the only measures that differ significantly between the US and the UK.
I used to like going out in London: "everything's so cheap!" Especially, getting a nice beer at a random pub would cost significantly less than a random basic lager in Paris.
But this year, I was shocked to see the price increase. It's now pricier than Paris, even though Paris prices have also edged up a bit.
And since my cash is Euros, I always compared the prices as converted to euros, so this accounted for the conversion rate variations.
£8/pint is also way more expensive than normal. I was out in Shoreditch last night, paid £6.70 for a pint of Brewdog, and that was more than I'd usually pay.
UK is insane.
It's the same nanny state style as some other European countries where they will try and sell you nothing over the counter because "you might abuse it" but they have a drinking and illegal drug culture to rival the best of them.
The US sucks if you're in the lower end of the spectrum without insurance but with insurance you actually get treatment. There's other countries where it's a pleasure to have private healthcare if you're middle class but many in europe definitely aren't. They'll just try to discourage you unless you're having an "my leg is detaching" type of emergency.
There's a reason why there's ads in the tube to "go to turkey to fix X health problem".
We should stop comparing having a health net for the jobless in a country with the US and typical quality of life/healthcare situation for a professional.
Edit: If I felt things worked, and people would eventually be able to afford houses and get into a better situation high taxes would be fine, but it's high taxes and policies that still benefit the richest/landlords/corporates/big pharma. It's corruption and classism. He former is widespread in many countries but the pretense otherwise is what is annoying.