ruggedtoast Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 (edited) Numerous British colleagues from when I worked abroad. Expats now as they saw UK living costs spiral into insanity and decided to stay put. One of my best friends from Uni. Toughed out a year or two post graduation living in Tottenham living the London graduate's white collar dream of renting a room in a shared house and dodging muggers on the way home from the Tube, then went back to Scandinavia. He comfortably rents his own flat in a lovely part of Holland. Works for a technology company and has always wanted to come back to England. But everytime he looks at equivalent salaries, theyre all pointing him back to that House of Multiple Occupancy in Tottenham. So he never has or probably will. A nice German chap I worked with a few years back. He was a qualified librarian and his wife was a very successful academic researcher with a top London university. They had a baby, looked at their options for bringing up a family in London and immediately left for Germany. The London university has lost their researcher to a German counterpart. They now both live within a walk of where they work, can run a car, send their kid to a nice school, and most importantly, have swapped their pokey Zone 4 flat located within its network of grim British schools, clapped out expensive trains, and dirty health centres for a house near the countryside. A couple I have known for years, one is a teacher the other a nurse. He works in a horrific school in a South London Borough where the kids carry knives for protection and his classroom is occasionally invaded by gangs. He is by all accounts a very good teacher and liked by his students. Needless to say they live in the standard issue one bedroom rental flat which is reserved for people doing low paid professions like nursing and teaching that Britain in its wisdom, has labelled mostly useless. They feel there is no hope of ever buying here. They have both had enough. They are emigrating to New Zealand. New Zealand cannot wait to have them and doesnt even require them to have jobs lined up to get their visas. On their new salaries they will have a house to live in, clean streets to walk on and decent public services. And some respect for once. Oddly enough NZ doesnt seem to have a great need of more people to sell insurance or sit in call centres trying to push 10 quid ringtones on little kids , so most of the people who have priced them out of owning a home in London wont be able to follow them. A very good old friend of mine, J, married an American lass, P. She has a good professional job in HR and he does a graduate office job. It goes without saying that they have the standard issue one bed rental flat and feel no hope of ever being stakeholders in this society by buying. They told us yesterday that they are moving to the States. There'ss just no way we can have a life here" P said sadly. "If we go back to America we can get a proper house to live in, J wouldn't have to commute for 3 hours a day, we can live near decent schools. If we could get somewhere around here we'd probably stay but...." She shrugged her shoulders and glanced out of the window at the street below. A street full of ordinary looking flats and houses that would take them 15 years or more of their combined net salaries to buy outright, or most of the rest of their lifetimes on a crippling mortgage. The crazy thing is not one of these people really wants to go. For all its faults they like living in Britain and want to stay here. These arent I'm alright Jack chancers leaving at the first sign of hardship, many of them are or were utterly gutted to leave and miss their families dreadfully. But they just saw no realistic way of having their own children here. Theyre all in their 30s, graduates and doing professional jobs, in any other developed country in the world these people are stakeholders, but here theyre just renters. People who don't own and probably never will. Too well off for the council list, too skint to buy. Stuck in the middle forever. Fed up, and leaving us to it. Edited August 31, 2009 by ruggedtoast Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bloo Loo Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 and a special round of applause to the 20% of wealth generation (well in 2007) Industry...the Banking Sector. may you all fry. providing "finance" so people can outbid each other for a place to live..and finding devious and illegal ways to make the finance even greater...and for whose benefit? fry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noodle doodle Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 Shouldn't this be titled "Why London's Crap" And yet the government wants to overload the capital even more by directing investment into it via high-speed rail lines etc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ruggedtoast Posted August 31, 2009 Author Share Posted August 31, 2009 Shouldn't this be titled "Why London's Crap"And yet the government wants to overload the capital even more by directing investment into it via high-speed rail lines etc The high speed rail lines will never happen, or if they do they'll price out 90% of the people who would need to use them. Too many important people have a vested interest in commuter belt property prices remaining over inflated. Theyre not going to allow that to be jeopardised by giving workers any real option of living further away. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
winkie Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 The reality of 'the broken parts of Britain' the parts that the powers that be would like to dampen down, but they are there all the same and clear to see without trying or looking very far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bloo Loo Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 Shouldn't this be titled "Why London's Crap"And yet the government wants to overload the capital even more by directing investment into it via high-speed rail lines etc London is in a good location for connecting trains. High speed trains are great. specially Eurostar, champagne and wine all the way to Paris, food is not all that, but who cares. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest skullingtonjoe Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 The reality of 'the broken parts of Britain' the parts that the powers that be would like to dampen down, but they are there all the same and clear to see without trying or looking very far. If there was a `chav-o-meter` (similar in design to a geiger counter) then Portsmouth would be buzzing louder than a swarm of angry wasps! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mammon Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 Numerous British colleagues from when I worked abroad. Expats now as they saw UK living costs spiral into insanity and decided to stay put. One of my best friends from Uni. Toughed out a year or two post graduation living in Tottenham living the London graduate's white collar dream of renting a room in a shared house and dodging muggers on the way home from the Tube, then went back to Scandinavia. He comfortably rents his own flat in a lovely part of Holland. Works for a technology company and has always wanted to come back to England. But everytime he looks at equivalent salaries, theyre all pointing him back to that House of Multiple Occupancy in Tottenham. So he never has or probably will. A nice German chap I worked with a few years back. He was a qualified librarian and his wife was a very successful academic researcher with a top London university. They had a baby, looked at their options for bringing up a family in London and immediately left for Germany. The London university has lost their researcher to a German counterpart. They now both live within a walk of where they work, can run a car, send their kid to a nice school, and most importantly, have swapped their pokey Zone 4 flat located within its network of grim British schools, clapped out expensive trains, and dirty health centres for a house near the countryside. A couple I have known for years, one is a teacher the other a nurse. He works in a horrific school in a South London Borough where the kids carry knives for protection and his classroom is occasionally invaded by gangs. He is by all accounts a very good teacher and liked by his students. Needless to say they live in the standard issue one bedroom rental flat which is reserved for people doing low paid professions like nursing and teaching that Britain in its wisdom, has labelled mostly useless. They feel there is no hope of ever buying here. They have both had enough. They are emigrating to New Zealand. New Zealand cannot wait to have them and doesnt even require them to have jobs lined up to get their visas. On their new salaries they will have a house to live in, clean streets to walk on and decent public services. And some respect for once. Oddly enough NZ doesnt seem to have a great need of more people to sell insurance or sit in call centres trying to push 10 quid ringtones on little kids , so most of the people who have priced them out of owning a home in London wont be able to follow them. A very good old friend of mine, J, married an American lass, P. She has a good professional job in HR and he does a graduate office job. It goes without saying that they have the standard issue one bed rental flat and feel no hope of ever being stakeholders in this society by buying. They told us yesterday that they are moving to the States. There'ss just no way we can have a life here" P said sadly. "If we go back to America we can get a proper house to live in, J wouldn't have to commute for 3 hours a day, we can live near decent schools. If we could get somewhere around here we'd probably stay but...." She shrugged her shoulders and glanced out of the window at the street below. A street full of ordinary looking flats and houses that would take them 15 years or more of their combined net salaries to buy outright, or most of the rest of their lifetimes on a crippling mortgage. The crazy thing is not one of these people really wants to go. For all its faults they like living in Britain and want to stay here. These arent I'm alright Jack chancers leaving at the first sign of hardship, many of them are or were utterly gutted to leave and miss their families dreadfully. But they just saw no realistic way of having their own children here. Theyre all in their 30s, graduates and doing professional jobs, in any other developed country in the world these people are stakeholders, but here theyre just renters. People who don't own and probably never will. Too well off for the council list, too skint to buy. Stuck in the middle forever. Fed up, and leaving us to it. Give us some hard figures, let me just pick out you friend J and his wife P. How much do they earn? Between them they probably earn 40K, thats is enough to get on the housing and buy their own place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
i wanna house Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 Give us some hard figures, let me just pick out you friend J and his wife P. How much do they earn?Between them they probably earn 40K, thats is enough to get on the housing and buy their own place. why should families depend on both parents working full time to pay a mortgage on a flat or modest house ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bloo Loo Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 Give us some hard figures, let me just pick out you friend J and his wife P. How much do they earn?Between them they probably earn 40K, thats is enough to get on the housing and buy their own place. maybe theyd want more than a one bed flat.... or maybe they are sick of housing and the british "ladder" of opportunity to buy, and die. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tbatst2000 Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 Give us some hard figures, let me just pick out you friend J and his wife P. How much do they earn?Between them they probably earn 40K, thats is enough to get on the housing and buy their own place. Without other money, it's pushing it anywhere in the south-east unless they're prepared to live in an absolute sh1t-hole. If you're after starting a family, which it seems they might be, then housing is the number one issue to think about. It doesn't surprise me that they'd choose the US over the UK for that reason, although they may end up regretting the choice for other reasons of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Cavey Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 (edited) Give us some hard figures, let me just pick out you friend J and his wife P. How much do they earn?Between them they probably earn 40K, thats is enough to get on the housing and buy their own place. ....but is it not the point that that with the same money elsewhere a better house and higher standard of living can be achieved? It's why I left. Edited August 31, 2009 by Captain Cavey Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agentimmo Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 Give us some hard figures, let me just pick out you friend J and his wife P. How much do they earn?Between them they probably earn 40K, thats is enough to get on the housing and buy their own place. If they manage to get a 7x loan and lie a bit about their real earnings, possibly. Where in London can you buy a 1 bed flat for £150K ? And isn't in MuggersVille Central ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Traktion Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 and a special round of applause to the 20% of wealth generation (well in 2007) Industry...the Banking Sector.may you all fry. providing "finance" so people can outbid each other for a place to live..and finding devious and illegal ways to make the finance even greater...and for whose benefit? fry. +1 Not the average man/woman on the street, that is for sure! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ruggedtoast Posted August 31, 2009 Author Share Posted August 31, 2009 Give us some hard figures, let me just pick out you friend J and his wife P. How much do they earn?Between them they probably earn 40K, thats is enough to get on the housing and buy their own place. I dont think so Dan. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
noodle doodle Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 The high speed rail lines will never happen, or if they do they'll price out 90% of the people who would need to use them. Too many important people have a vested interest in commuter belt property prices remaining over inflated. Theyre not going to allow that to be jeopardised by giving workers any real option of living further away. The error with the planned high speed rail lines (ok, this isn't the initial discussion here, BUT IT IS NOW, ha) is that they assume everyone wants to go to london What else explains the ridiculous split at the border with branches to glasgow and edinburgh? Surely the ideal would be to have edinburgh and glasgow on the same line, because I know more people in those cities want to travel to each others cities than to london. There's been a campaign for years in scotland to have high speed rail between these two cities instead of the hour long journey to cover 45 miles. The same probably applies to manchester and liverpool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cygnus Alpha Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 (edited) Numerous British colleagues from when I worked abroad. Expats now as they saw UK living costs spiral into insanity and decided to stay put. One of my best friends from Uni. Toughed out a year or two post graduation living in Tottenham living the London graduate's white collar dream of renting a room in a shared house and dodging muggers on the way home from the Tube, then went back to Scandinavia. He comfortably rents his own flat in a lovely part of Holland. Works for a technology company and has always wanted to come back to England. But everytime he looks at equivalent salaries, theyre all pointing him back to that House of Multiple Occupancy in Tottenham. So he never has or probably will. A nice German chap I worked with a few years back. He was a qualified librarian and his wife was a very successful academic researcher with a top London university. They had a baby, looked at their options for bringing up a family in London and immediately left for Germany. The London university has lost their researcher to a German counterpart. They now both live within a walk of where they work, can run a car, send their kid to a nice school, and most importantly, have swapped their pokey Zone 4 flat located within its network of grim British schools, clapped out expensive trains, and dirty health centres for a house near the countryside. A couple I have known for years, one is a teacher the other a nurse. He works in a horrific school in a South London Borough where the kids carry knives for protection and his classroom is occasionally invaded by gangs. He is by all accounts a very good teacher and liked by his students. Needless to say they live in the standard issue one bedroom rental flat which is reserved for people doing low paid professions like nursing and teaching that Britain in its wisdom, has labelled mostly useless. They feel there is no hope of ever buying here. They have both had enough. They are emigrating to New Zealand. New Zealand cannot wait to have them and doesnt even require them to have jobs lined up to get their visas. On their new salaries they will have a house to live in, clean streets to walk on and decent public services. And some respect for once. Oddly enough NZ doesnt seem to have a great need of more people to sell insurance or sit in call centres trying to push 10 quid ringtones on little kids , so most of the people who have priced them out of owning a home in London wont be able to follow them. A very good old friend of mine, J, married an American lass, P. She has a good professional job in HR and he does a graduate office job. It goes without saying that they have the standard issue one bed rental flat and feel no hope of ever being stakeholders in this society by buying. They told us yesterday that they are moving to the States. There'ss just no way we can have a life here" P said sadly. "If we go back to America we can get a proper house to live in, J wouldn't have to commute for 3 hours a day, we can live near decent schools. If we could get somewhere around here we'd probably stay but...." She shrugged her shoulders and glanced out of the window at the street below. A street full of ordinary looking flats and houses that would take them 15 years or more of their combined net salaries to buy outright, or most of the rest of their lifetimes on a crippling mortgage. The crazy thing is not one of these people really wants to go. For all its faults they like living in Britain and want to stay here. These arent I'm alright Jack chancers leaving at the first sign of hardship, many of them are or were utterly gutted to leave and miss their families dreadfully. But they just saw no realistic way of having their own children here. Theyre all in their 30s, graduates and doing professional jobs, in any other developed country in the world these people are stakeholders, but here theyre just renters. People who don't own and probably never will. Too well off for the council list, too skint to buy. Stuck in the middle forever. Fed up, and leaving us to it. Dunno about your other examples, but in the Netherlands, housing is actually MORE expensive than the UK. Although you do get tax relief on your mortgage. I think you are talking about London rather than the UK? Edited August 31, 2009 by Cygnus Alpha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest pioneer31 Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 and a special round of applause to the 20% of wealth generation (well in 2007) Industry...the Banking Sector.may you all fry. providing "finance" so people can outbid each other for a place to live..and finding devious and illegal ways to make the finance even greater...and for whose benefit? fry. +1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ruggedtoast Posted August 31, 2009 Author Share Posted August 31, 2009 (edited) No I didnt vote for Labour. I dont accept your trite assertion that I would be partly to blame if I had either, thanks. Its good that smart people like you saw 'teh' writing on the wall and left. So now you can post social commentaries from 'teh internets' abroad. Edited August 31, 2009 by ruggedtoast Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doomandgloom2 Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 Holland is not in Scandinvia... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gravity always wins Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 Mass migration to London from within and outside the UK leads to higher prices. Suggest many migrants were architects of their own downfall. Bit of a non story really. What else did they expect? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zebbedee Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 (edited) Did you vote for Labour?Then, you are partly to blame. Gordon Brown promised an "end to boom and bust", and he reckoned that to become Prime Minister one day, when Blair was ready to leave, he would need to deliver on the promise. Unfortunately, market economies like the UK's tend to move in cycles. In fact, a cyclical downturn (a "bust") every 4-8 years is healthy, in helping to cleanse excesses, including excessive debt, from the system. But Brown did not want one. I wanted to preserve is reputation as a "miracle chancellor", and meet his unrealistic promise to provide "an end to boom and bust." So the recession which should have naturally occurred in 2001-3 did not happen. Instead, Brown's budget, and the instututions following his lead, pumped up a massive housing bubble, The huge increase in debt kept the UK economy out of technical recession, and allowed Brown to boast of his economic expertise. Unfortunately, it was all a conjuring trick, of delaying a recession through a tremendously dangerous build-up in debt. Instead of "boom and bust", Brown has bequethed a legacy of "bigger boom and bust", all thanks to the re-relection that his party was given by naive voters, who find these sorts of things too hard to fathom. They prefer to be led to the slaughter that Labour has provided for them. Unfortunately, it is not just Labour voters and naive homebuyers that will suffer. Brown's cronies have insured that the British government is now carrying the can for the mistakes of the banks, and the aggressive homebuyers. Smart folk, who can see what is going on are leaving. (I left the UK myself, back in 2006- I could see the writing on teh wall, even then.) Those who have no choice, are left behind. I just hope that people will wise up, and understand economic factors better. It is time to throw the charlatans out ! If you cannot leave, at least you can vote to give your country a better chance to recover from the Curse-of-Mr,Brown, and his "bigger boom, bigger bust" economy. Yep, I'm partly to blame, I'd had enough of the conservatives who by '97 had reached a stage where they felt they could do and pass laws as they pleased whether they were wanted or not. As we near the end of another labour government they to reached the point where they felt they could do and pass laws as they pleased whether they were wanted or not. However they reached that point many years ago and got away with it by bribing joe public with thier own money. They even think they can get away with it again (at least I'm convinced Gordon Sh!t does), if only I hadn't been as naive in '01, I looked at the market, considered buying and on above average income still managed to see it as unsustainable, but didn't see the Brown/BoE intervention to support it coming. Things have only gotten worse, £175000000000 (thats right, just look at those zero's) coupled with all the other potential liabilities are all that is holding back the damn. They surely cannot perform that conjuring trick forever. As for the OP, I know exactly how your friends feel, much more of this Bu11sh!t and I'm off, taking REAL skills with me and the HPI brigade can sit in thier houses congratulating themselves on how much thier house is worth whilst wondering who used to generate the wealth of the country and where the next meal is coming from!!!!!!!! Edited August 31, 2009 by zebbedee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
enragedlamb Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 Those people didn't need to leave the UK, they just needed to leave London. My only criteria for a job when I left Uni was "not London". It made things surprisingly difficult and my partner and I lived apart for 2 years. Now both happily living in Newcastle where you can get out into the wide open countryside by bike yet have all the "city facilities" that you need. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexw Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 and a special round of applause to the 20% of wealth skimming (well in 2007) Ponzi Sector...the Banking Sector.may you all fry. providing "finance" so people can outbid each other for a place to live..and finding devious and illegal ways to make the finance even greater...and for whose benefit? fry. Its not wealth creating since that implies actual creation of wealth, and its not an industry since it produces nothing except debt, the remainder being gambling. Thus i've corrected your statement to make it more reflect reality Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pete.hpc Posted August 31, 2009 Share Posted August 31, 2009 When I read the title of this thread I thought the OP was in mourning. I thought his mates had seen latest Nationwide price rises and slashed their wrists. Oh well it's still coming. The Samaritans better start manning the phones ready for next months figures. Are you lonely? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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