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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

Absolutely. No public transport, almost no culture, and housing anywhere nice is even less available than in London. For a young person working at one of these firms, where can you live? Where could you meet someone to date? What can you even do at the weekend?

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JLR is based in the metro area of Britain's second city. It's not exactly the middle of nowhere. Rolls Royce is in Derby, on the edge of the Peak District with much to offer. Much cheaper housing with more space available. And unlike in London, driving a car isn't hounded by terminal congestion.

JLR Gaydon is not in the metro area of Birmingham. It's in nice countryside and near a motorway which helps, but it's a fair commute out of Birmingham at rush hour to there. The nice surrounding towns/villages are expensive, and even the shitty ones aren't cheap (hello Banbury) as they're on the edge of commuter distance to London.

Derby I haven't lived in but know people who have. It's an old manufacturing town and hasn't much to offer graduates. Or anyone really. The Peak District is great, and if you can live out that way and commute in then do it. But again, you won't have similar people for local friends.

There's a huge JLR presence in Solihull right next to Birmingham.

It's also one of the wealthiest areas outside of London. But house prices in the really nice parts of Solihull are also high.

Can confirm, I grew up in Derby and it's an absolute desolate wasteland for anyone with any ambition, intelligence or a need for a modicum of culture.

Saying the peak district is good for young people is like saying there's a great lake near Detroit, it's not exactly what they're after.

Isn't that what everyone says about their hometown? :)

Well, every crap hometown yes. But in this case Derby has been officially voted the biggest dump in the UK recently: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13479767/Derby-vote...

UK people are so god damned spoiled. Sometimes I will pull up street view imagery of a random town in scotland or wherever in the UK that I see locals from there on reddit make a seething comment about. Then I will look at the town center and its basically greenwich village: walkable, pubs and shops all over the place, bus network goes everywhere, actual regional rail potentially, everything the american urbanist dreams about. You know where you actually meet people on a date in 2025? On an app, which they have users on all over the UK.

> No public transport

When I live in London I didn't drive, which was kinda nice but also meant I've only been out of city like once a year.

Sitting in traffic sucks of course, but driving rurally opens so much.

As for weekends - driving and hiking I guess?

Sure, but at that point you're having to buy a car (which is much harder as a young person - car prices have gone up, insurance has gone up faster, the driving test is harder than it was and lessons cost more...), you'll need somewhere to park it which adds to your housing costs, you still can't go drinking, and in general you're cut off from a lot of what young people are doing.

No Uber/Lyft in the UK?

It would be very expensive to take a taxi (of any sort) out of London to a scenic place, but it's easy to take a train to plenty of them, or hire a car for the day through an app.

Even tiny UK towns have excellent walkable mainstreets and are small enough to walk from field to field on the other end in no time. It is a far cry from the american obligatory car experience where it might be a 2 hour walk to your nearest grocery store even in a city suburb.

Wherever you live in London, there are commuter (and intercity) railway lines that can take you out of it.

For example I lived not far from Putney. Putney to Windsor & Eton Riverside takes 39 minutes and costs £6.90.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=11/51.5330/-0.1146&layers...

There is a culture there. I am not sure what people mean when they say there isn't a culture outside of the London. If you mean things like events, art exhibs etc. We have those here. If you mean bars, pubs and restaurants we have those here to.

Is it as glitzy as London. No. But saying there is "no culture" is just absolutely asinine.

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