It would be better if we just change the immigration policy. Last time I checked there was 400,000 leaving the country each year and somewhere between a million and 1.4 million entering.
I live in the countryside (I live in a small flat btw so I don't care about property prices) and I don't want everywhere in the country built over, which seems to be something here everyone wants for some bonkers reason. If you want to live in a concrete jungle that is fine, I and many others don't. I moved out of Manchester because I hated it there.
It's actually around 750,000, mostly third world, and around half of those are students.
Importing cheap foreign labour from the third world was always one of the goals of Brexit. This game gets played over and over - import cheap labour to keep wages down, lament about how the country is being invaded, and then blame immigrants for lack of investment, corporate profiteering, and other structural policy problems.
No, Brexit was about returning such decisions from Brussels to Westminster.
The UK may decide less immigration, or skill-weighted immigration, or lots more indiscriminate immigration - but the vote should be in the Mother of Parliaments, where else?
Whether it is part of the "goals of brexit" or not, is kinda irrelevant. The point is that we cannot build more homes easily, even if we could that has issues with other infrastructure and utilities. The easiest way is to at least maybe try to decrease demand and reducing immigration would be an obvious way to help with that.
Given whose muscle actually builds the houses (before I left the UK, the meme was all the builders were Polish), and what happened to the exchange rate (initially; it's harder to separate the increasing number of influences the more time passes), the UK could have build a lot more homes more easily in the EU than it can now it's out of the EU.
Again, the utilities cannot be scaled as easily. There are problems with building houses right now because there just isn't enough supply in some areas of the nation grid. That isn't something being in the EU would magically fix.
It's not magic, it's qualified workers already familiar with the necessary standards because the standards were (somewhat) unified by the EU specifically so that labour had an easier time moving.
That does also make utilities easier, but it's not magic… well, you could say it is but only in the sense of Penn and Teller: lots of effort that most people don't ever think of that already happened before the audience started watching.
It is amazing when it comes to any topic that is constantly thorny people will constantly twist your words. When I say "magically solve", I specifically mean that it wouldn't have solved the issue. The issue would still exist in some capacity.
There was problems with houses becoming to expensive (there are multitude of reasons for this) while we were still in the EU. Part of this was also do with the monetary policy of central banks after the 2008. Part of this is there is a shortage of housing. There was problems with utilities well before we left the EU, because of mismanagement.
This is all a deflection anyway from the point that high levels of immigration increase demand. Unless you don't believe in supply and demand, which is basic economics. BTW I don't believe that immigration is the only reason there is high demand, there are others. But it certainly doesn't help that we have record numbers of people entering the UK.
> This is all a deflection anyway from the point that high levels of immigration increase demand. Unless you don't believe in supply and demand, which is basic economics.
*Supply* and demand.
Immigrants supply, they don't just demand.
Immigrants (everywhere, not just to the UK) have a slightly higher supply-to-demand ratio than locals, owing to many of them not starting at age 0; likewise emigration tends to means supply going down faster than demand.
> Supply and demand. Immigrants supply, they don't just demand.
Why is there a massive shortfall then when we've had the largest amount of immigration then?
Why was there a shortfall previously when we were still in the EU?
> Immigrants (everywhere, not just to the UK) have a slightly higher supply-to-demand ratio than locals, owing to many of them not starting at age 0; likewise emigration tends to means supply going down faster than demand.
You can assert this but I don't believe it for a second. It is pretty much accepted by anyone that is doing any stats on this that demand is increased by immigration.
Almost everything says that immigration has raised prices on rent and buying (which is a proxy for demand). It depends on the area because each area has different rates of immigration.
> Why is there a massive shortfall then when we've had the largest amount of immigration then?
Of housing and public infrastructure in the UK? Politics: Green belt and similar planning restrictions, austerity, Thatcherism, privatisation, restricting local councils' ability to own and supply council housing.
> You can assert this but I don't believe it for a second. It is pretty much accepted by anyone that is doing any stats on this that demand is increased by immigration.
And supply. Not at the expense of supply.
The figures here show that in 2011 (when it was measured as "country of birth" rather than "nationality") were 9:1 ratio of locals to migrants in construction. The overall ratio for the entire population in that year was 8.4 to one.
Both have changed since then, of course; between the statistical value being measured (nationality vs country of birth, Brexit, Covid, austerity), this is just to give a flavour for a specific date when the numbers were easier to compare.
> Not sure what this has to do with anything.
You don't understand that keeping people from leaving was because of the economic catastrophe that the people in charge knew would have happened if they didn't keep people from leaving?
> Of housing and public infrastructure in the UK? Politics: Green belt and similar planning restrictions, austerity, Thatcherism, privatisation, restricting local councils' ability to own and supply council housing.
So you don't know. All you have done is provide a list of grievances with previous governments.
Even if I accepted all of this being true, then having more migrant construction workers wouldn't solve these problems anyway.
> And supply. Not at the expense of supply.
Yet the sources I cited indicated the opposite. You constantly assert that but there is no data I've seen that proves that. Supply of labour != supply of houses. It can certainly help, but they may not be directly proportional.
I also don't care whether it does increase supply. I don't think we should keep on constantly importing people at the expense of everything else to get the GDP numbers up a few percent.
There are other problems with high amounts of immigration that I have seen up close because I've lived in poorer areas. There is a lack of integration in the communities, language barriers and it causes tensions.
I used to be an expat. So you tend to actually notice this a lot more because you see your own country with a fresh set of eyes.
Additionally none of this matters now. The UK has left the EU. The situation has changed. If we can't import labour now (there is no reason we can't issue temporary visas), then demand has to be decreased. Like it or not, however much you want to dodge it, immigration has to be curbed to help lower demand.
> You don't understand that keeping people from leaving was because of the economic catastrophe that the people in charge knew would have happened if they didn't keep people from leaving?
Are you suggesting we should have kept people from leaving by force?
> So you don't know. All you have done is provide a list of grievances with previous governments
Thinking of "surely this is obvious" on the other thread, to me it seemed obvious that this is a list of things which caused the results, i.e. they are the why.
> Yet the sources I cited indicated the opposite
You seem to have difficulty understanding what I'm saying here, and I don't know why.
Your citations were about demand. Demand is not what I am disputing. You said yourself "supply and demand", but seem to be blind to half the equation.
> I also don't care whether it does increase supply.
> I don't want everywhere in the country built over, which seems to be something here everyone wants for some bonkers reason. If you want to live in a concrete jungle that is fine, I and many others don't. I moved out of Manchester because I hated it there.
Scale issue here: if "everywhere in the country" were build up to the population density of Manchester city, the UK would house 1.2 billion people.
I'm fairly confident there are not 1.2 billion people who currently want to live in the UK.
The point he is making is that a lot of stuff that you are told you need. You actually don't. Especially if you are working by yourself or in a very small team.
Getting stuff working is much more important. I'd rather people concentrate on stuff like CI, Unit Tests and Deployments.
I like unit tests, and I would happily adopt a CI system if my project included non-Python code and had to build multiple wheels. But formatting code properly in my editor is second nature by now; the functions I write are typically so short that it'd be hard to do anything a linter would object to; and type-checking doesn't just introduce busy-work, it works against part of the reason I'm using Python in the first place. I actively don't want to tell people not to call my code with a perfectly compatible type just because I hadn't considered it as within the range of possible compatible types.
Never said it was a silver bullet. I said I would rather people concentrate on more important things than configuring a linter. Half the time this stuff gives you weird errors that don't make a lot of sense (especially with JavaScript/TypeScript), sometimes you are literally making the compiler warning go away because there is literally nothing wrong with the code.
I do use eslint/prettier btw, but other collegues can never seem to get this working so I've just given up on it and then fix the linter issues whenever I come across them.
You've never met people who take what you now call obvious hyperbole absolutely seriously and literally?
I guess you're going to continue to get surprised by how often you get criticised in this specific way, by many, many other people.
Hint: when someone doesn't understand you, you were in fact not obvious, no matter what you think — communication is a multiplayer game, not a single-player endeavour.
It isn't a "conservative talk-radio shopping list". It is reality in quite a few areas in Europe and the UK.
> Economic Conditions and Political Outcomes are pretty sane and tolerable for all but a select group of (surprise surprise) US backed agitators like Hungary. You have to remember that the EU is run as a society rather than an economy, and must be judged on this ethos. People are very fond of using the comparable GDPs of Bavaria and Mississippi in this conversation - forgetting to mention the life expectancy is 10 years less and infant mortality 400% higher on the US side.
This isn't true. I know many people that have moved from Spain to Hungary. Most of these people where politically fairly normal e.g. either centre-left right or centre-left. I speak to people from all over Europe regularly and many of them do not feel the way that you are describing.
> Societal and Political trust is still quite high - despite much fearmongering, the far-right are not gaining the political capital necessary to instigate significant change outside of Hungary.
That isn't true. I know many areas of Europe where the electorate keep on voting for further right parties. The same is happening in the UK. Labour only won because the Conservatives lost and the Reform party did extremely well for what is a relatively new party. I know the same is happening in Belgium (I speak regularly with Belgian nationals). Areas of Spain that are most affected by immigration have voted for further right parties. So I know this isn't true.
> Re 'free speech suppression' I'm really not sure what you're aiming at.
Just look up the hate speech laws enacted throughout Europe and in the UK and some of the cases that have been prosecuted. We do not have a right to the free speech in the UK and the majority of Europe doesn't either.
>>This isn't true. I know many people that have moved from Spain to Hungary. Most of these people where politically fairly normal e.g. either centre-left right or centre-left. I speak to people from all over Europe regularly and many of them do not feel the way that you are describing.
The plural of anecdotes is not data, nor does your select social circle represent a cogent sample group.
Orbans stated position is to pivot Hungary from a democracy into an illiberal state, modeled after Putin's Russia. At the EU summit in mid-December, for example, he refused to agree to the extension of the Russia sanctions that expire at the end of January.
Hungary are on the brink of being kicked out of the Schengen Zone, have about 12 billion in EU funds frozen because of their stupidity, and are now getting loans off China like some sort of tinpot African dictatorship in order to bridge funding gaps.
The next biggest right-wing rise is - surprise surprise - bordering them and the ex-Soviet Bloc in Poland. That waned so quickly with the escalation of War in Ukraine that, even if they joined forces, Konfederacja + PiS could still not form a majority coalition for seat of the Polish Government.
>>That isn't true. I know many areas of Europe where the electorate keep on voting for further right parties. The same is happening in the UK.
You missed my key qualifier 'necessary to instigate significant change'. The Overton window shifts when society is impacted by War and mass refugee immigration, particularly in a period of high-taxes following high social spend (lockdown).
>> Just look up the hate speech laws enacted throughout Europe and in the UK and some of the cases that have been prosecuted.
Citations needed.
>> We do not have a right to the free speech in the UK and the majority of Europe doesn't either.
Well no, not explicitly, as they have a different legal and basis for law as the US - e.g. they don't have a codified constitution either as they came from a common law system based on the French Courts. Instead they hold the same proportional right as a negative right to freedom of expression under the common law.
Its a moot point anyway as since 1998, freedom of expression is guaranteed according to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights across Europe.
Freedom o expression does not guarantee you freedom of consequence in Europe. If you make fun of a politicians they or the state can come back after you for it.
Political satire is one of the oldest and grandest cultural traditions in Europe. Hell, most European countries even have some variant of a political satire show like Spitting Image:
Eva Glawishnig-Piesczek v. Facebook Ireland is a defamation case. Look up venue-shopping in London for American defamation cases if you want a counterpoint. The CJEU later clarified hosting providers’ obligations to remove defamatory content
Despite being acquitted, the Michael Much case was fairly understandable - the public prosecutor said freedom of expression had to be weighed against human dignity...(and) that propaganda does not fall under freedom of expression. No arguments here. 1A Rights aren't going to save you either, unless you call someone a 'pedo-guy'.
The reason I specifically brought up Spitting Image is that I knew you'd cite this case - with this point specifically argued in court.
"Partsch also pointed to popular TV-shows doing, he said, that did the same. If the court found against Much, it would mean a ban on creating political caricatures."
> Police searched Much’s house and removed and confiscated the posters. The public prosecutor imposed a penalty order of €6,000 for “criminal insult to politicians”.
The guy had his house searched by police, a €6000 fine and had to go challenge it in court. The fact that it happened at all is the problem.
NGL, I can't really argue with that. Thankfully it's not the same across Europe - Germany is just a basketcase when it comes to laws. It's like getting fined in Switzerland for falling off your bicycle. They're not even remotely consistent in how or why they're applying them.
"In Hamburg, a man (59) who had called Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (54, Green Party) a “complete idiot” on “X” (formerly Twitter) went unpunished. In Wunsiedel, Bavaria, the district court has now imposed a hefty penalty on someone who called Habeck an “idiot.”
"P. feels he has been treated unfairly and claims: "My Facebook post was meant to be satirical." His role model: the ZDF satire magazine "heute-show" . It regularly awards the "Golden Idiot" prize, for example to Winfried Kretschmann (75, Green Party), Sigmar Gabriel (64, SPD) or Björn Höcke (51, AfD)."
> The plural of anecdotes is not data, nor does your select social circle represent a cogent sample group.
When something isn't easily quantifiable there is no data. OK sure then, but there wouldn't be anyway.
The fact is that people are talking about moving either out of Western Europe / UK to somewhere else and it is a common sentiment amongst many professionals.
> Orbans stated position is to pivot Hungary from a democracy into an illiberal state, modeled after Putin's Russia. At the EU summit in mid-December, for example, he refused to agree to the extension of the Russia sanctions that expire at the end of January.
Can you point me to a translated policy document or a more credible news source from like Hungary that I can translate? I don't take American news sources seriously for European issues as they frequently get basic things incorrect.
> Citations needed.
You can look up the laws yourself and the cases. They can easily be found. They are numerous. The law around speech is quite easy to find on the .gov websites.
> Well no, not explicitly, as they have a different legal and basis for law as the US - e.g. they don't have a codified constitution either as they came from a common law system based on the French Courts. Instead they hold the same proportional right as a negative right to freedom of expression under the common law.
In the UK we literally don't have the right to free speech. I have actually read the law on this issue several years ago. Only in Parliament are you allowed to speak freely. There is nowhere where it says we have these rights, there are no cases that have decided that has ruled we have these rights. This is neither explicitly or implicitly.
> Its a moot point anyway as since 1998, freedom of expression is guaranteed according to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights across Europe.
Freedom of expression != Free speech. They are not the same thing and that is why hate speech laws exist in the majority of EU countries and in the UK. Time and time again people erroneously equate free-speech with free-expression. The UK government have themselves come out and said something to the effect of "You have the right to free expression, but not saying things we don't like" essentially.
You either are being wilfully ignorant or you are horrendously naive. Go and read the law yourself if you don't believe me.
>>The fact is that people are talking about moving either out of Western Europe / UK to somewhere else and it is a common sentiment amongst many professionals.
2022 and 2023 were the highest years on record for net migration into the UK. The only reason 2024 wasn't even higher was due to the new Conservative government's policy stopping international students from bringing dependents to the UK.
Migration to Ireland is at the highest level since 2007. It represents a 3.5 per cent increase in population - which in a given year would be one of the highest ever recorded for a single country.
>>Can you point me to a translated policy document or a more credible news source from like Hungary that I can translate? I don't take American news sources seriously for European issues as they frequently get basic things incorrect.
Wildly bad faith wasting of my time as it's one of the most famous speeches made in a Western Democracy in the 21st Century, but since I have to lead a horse to water... here's a translated transcript from the website of the HUNGARIAN GOVERNMENT.
>>You can look up the laws yourself and the cases. They can easily be found. They are numerous. The law around speech is quite easy to find on the .gov websites.
But of course the rules are different for your opponent in debate. Laughable.
>> In the UK we literally don't have the right to free speech...Freedom of expression != Free speech. They are not the same thing and that is why hate speech laws exist in the majority of EU countries and in the UK
I think you're conflating two issues here - Hate Speech and 'Freedom' of Speech.
Hate speech receives substantial protection under the First Amendment and is specifically covered under 1A as per Matal v. Tam (2017). But there are several carve-outs. The most famous is the fighting words doctrine; a well known limitation to freedom of speech under 1A - enshrined in a 9-0 decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942).
More to the point, the First Amendment prohibits defamation actions based on “loose, figurative language that no reasonable person would believe presented facts". Not actions like when Donald Trump defamed E Jean Carroll by denying her allegation of sexual assault to the tune of $80m+ in damages.
That said, this didn't stop ABC News paying $15m (£12m) to US President-elect Donald Trump to settle a defamation lawsuit after its star anchor falsely said he had been found "liable for rape" as opposed to liable for "sexual abuse", which has a specific definition under New York law. This is despite the substantial-truth doctrine which many jurisdictions adopted, which protects a defamation defendant as long as the “gist” of the story is true.
> 2022 and 2023 were the highest years on record for net migration into the UK. The only reason 2024 wasn't even higher was due to the new Conservative government's policy stopping international students from bringing dependents to the UK.
These aren't the same people as the people wanting to migrate away. I am talking about people that were born in their home countries wanting too leave. You are quite well aware of this you are being disingenuous.
Also there is 400,000 going out of the country last time I checked (and that was a good few years ago). Why are those people leaving?
> Migration to Ireland is at the highest level since 2007. It represents a 3.5 per cent increase in population - which in a given year would be one of the highest ever recorded for a single country.
Again this the same thing.
> Wildly bad faith wasting of my time as it's one of the most famous speeches made in a Western Democracy in the 21st Century, but since I have to lead a horse to water... here's a translated transcript from the website of the HUNGARIAN GOVERNMENT.
I don't follow Hungarian politics. I also don't trust American news sources. Thank you for the link though.
> But of course the rules are different for your opponent in debate. Laughable.
While they numerous and frequently get buried on major search engines. It been an issue for years now in the UK.
There are literally countless cases now. Last time I checked there were 7 cases a day prosecuted and that was way back in 2018.
> I think you're conflating two issues here - Hate Speech and 'Freedom' of Speech.
Hate speech is a made up term to limit freedom of speech.
I am put in the unenviable position of defending people that I dislike because I think people should have the right to speak their mind.
> The most famous is the fighting words doctrine; a well known limitation to freedom of speech under 1A - enshrined in a 9-0 decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942).
Firstly I am talking about the UK not the US. So why you are talking about the 1A in the US is beyond me.
Also I know Fighting words is not anything like the hate speech laws in the UK. So this is irrelevant.
> More to the point, the First Amendment prohibits defamation actions based on “loose, figurative language that no reasonable person would believe presented facts".
You are now conflating defamation with hate speech. These are not the same thing. Again this isn't irrelevant.
> Something something wilfully ignorant.
Yes you are being wilfully ignorant about UK hate speech laws. There are loads of cases in the UK where people have been prosecuted for Hate Speech, There is also non crime hate incidents which can show up on background checks when you go for a job.
Yes there are ridiculous rules like that are enforced. However tbh she should have checked first.
Rules around how the area should look, should be decided by people that live there. There are many better examples where it makes a lot of sense for the locals to be strict about rules about what can be erected.
I used to live near the Village of Corfe Castle. Generally the argument is that the place would lose its character and it won't be the same place anymore if it didn't keep its distinctive look.
If you would just start building places that don't fit in with the rest of the village. The village wouldn't have it character and thus it wouldn't have its tourism in the Summer as a result.
There countless towns and village with a bunch of heritage that literally goes back maybe a millennia and the argument that we should throw this away to build a load of crap houses (new houses BTW are awful, I've looked at many in the last few years) is completely asinine.
But it's _good_ when houses look different. Growing up my family would drive around new developments and say "ugg, these cookie-cutter houses all look the same, I miss when you we built unique and individual houses" and then it's jarring to move somewhere where people value conformity above all else and being different is considered bad. God forbid your house has eaves.
Explains a lot, actually.
I'm not talking about knocking down thousand-year old houses. I note that your example doesn't seem to have a problem putting car parks in, incidentally. But "locals" (aka old people with enormous amounts of time on their hands who bizarrely feel the right to tell other people what their home should look like) insisting that everything stay mediocre forever because they grew up with it this way is a bit much.
I think it is perfectly fine that people that actually live in an area get to decide what it looks like. If people don't involve themselves in that process and it is monopolized by people "with too much time on their hands" that is their fault. If they don't like the busy bodies then they should make time and actually go to the meetings.
You decide you own level of involvement in the community.
> I note that your example doesn't seem to have a problem putting car parks in, incidentally.
It is very interesting that whenever you bring up an example where it illustrates a particular point well, they will try to find anything they can point to so they can dismiss the general point being made. Guess what, a place in rural England that you can only travel easily to via car or coach will prioritise parking.
BTW I suspect knowing that area, you probably couldn't build anything other than parking in those places.
The challenge is that the people who live in an area use the rules in such a way as to make building new homes very expensive or outright impossible. The people who would like to live in that area have no say, and lack representation.
The bigger picture here is that it means even two rational people can inadvertently make the situation worse for themselves.
Person A lives in City A, but wants to move to City B
Person B lives in City B, but wants to move to City A
Person A votes to make it hard to build new homes in city A, because it makes their own home worth more.
Person B votes to make it hard to build new homes in City B, because it makes their own home worth more.
It makes sense in a self-interested way but both wind up worse off.
And I just meant that the car park is butt-ugly and shows the council's true priorities. They could at least put it on the edge of the village.
> The challenge is that the people who live in an area use the rules in such a way as to make building new homes very expensive or outright impossible. The people who would like to live in that area have no say, and lack representation.
Okay so what? I think that is perfectly fine. It isn't necessary for everyplace to cater for everyone.
> The bigger picture here is that it means even two rational people can inadvertently make the situation worse for themselves.
>
> Person A lives in City A, but wants to move to City B
>
> Person B lives in City B, but wants to move to City A
>
> Person A votes to make it hard to build new homes in city A, because it makes their own home worth more.
>
> Person B votes to make it hard to build new homes in City B, because it makes their own home worth more.
>
> It makes sense in a self-interested way but both wind up worse off.
These seems like a fantasy scenario to me. Typically people are either moving to a particular area, or out of a particular area, not swapping one nice affluent area for another equally affluent area (which is somewhat assumed in your scenario).
The reason btw housing is expensive is because housing became an investment vehicle isn't because of nimby's and we have about 600,000 (net) people entering the UK every year.
Not at all. It is quite clear that you are doing the "lets take this to the logical extreme". That might be fine in some sort of debate club tactic but it isn't what I was suggesting should happen at all and you know it. So I think we will leave it there.
That's fair when it comes to villages, but it's mostly the edge of small cities, and within larger ones, that growth needs to happen - because that's where infrastructure exists or can be added on.
Let the Cotswolds and Kent Weald be chocolate-box nimbyland, but keep it out of places that are trying to get work done.
The usual suggestion is to build cities more like Berlin (for example) which has an inner city with many 4-6 storey buildings — much denser than London's terraced houses, but without the isolation of skyscrapers.
These are all solutions that ignore the main problem. They literally cannot build enough properties (whatever they are) to fill current demand. Even if they relax the regulations that we currently have in place. Even there were enough properties built the infrastructure for utilities can't be scaled easily. There are issues building new properties right now because the electric grid cannot handle the combination of that and large data centres.
Since supply of house cannot be increased to solve this problem, you need to lessen the demand. The most obvious way to do this that I can see is to put a cap on immigration that is much lower than the number of people leaving (about 400,000 people leave the UK each year). However for various reasons this is seen as absolute verboten.
BTW, I know exactly the type of buildings you are talking about (we have them in Manchester) and they are typically look awful and usually start falling apart after shortly after construction. They are also not very nice to live in (I have lived in one for short amount of time).
Despite what you might read in the news, occupancy per household is LOWER than it has been for a long time.
Partly changing social customs - and you could, legitimately I think, argue some of this is down to immigration/multiculturalism - the old landlady/boarding house model, for example, which provided a LOT of cheap and relatively comfortable roofs over heads, was based on higher trust and cultural commonality than exists today.
But a lot of demand is driven by people living alone, either due to family breakdown, old age, or just out of personal choice.
On that basis if you wanted to increase supply, levers you could pull are an even more favourable tax treatment of rent-a-room schemes (although it's already pretty generous - people just don't want to), land value taxes to encourage under-occupiers to downsize, inheritance tax changes for the same (no more favourable "family home" treatment relative to cash or pension assets) and, more difficult this, legal and planning instruments to encourage suburban densification, get streets that are largely full of decaying HMOs knocked down and replaced by mid-rise which is fit for purpose.
> Despite what you might read in the news, occupancy per household is LOWER than it has been for a long time.
It has nothing to do with what I read on the news. It is simply numbers. You can come up with all these crazy schemes to increase supply which probably won't happen, or you could reduce demand that could literally be done tomorrow if they wanted to.
Then they are very few and far between. Generally the absolute limit is £90k. I've never seen any role for more than 90K unless it was a company in London and those are typically hybrid and not remote.
I only have the figures for end of 2018[1], but meta employed around 2300 people in the UK, if we assume the same distribution of jobs as elsewhere in the world about half will be engineers, so 1150 engineers. There aren't that many of these jobs. At goldman its a lot higher, aboutn 10,000[2] globally, but they only have around 3,300 employees in the Uk so if its the same ratio as global (25% tech), then that means around 800 developers. Again you'll note this is a very small number compared to the number of top graduates a year, with class sizes of 100-200 per university.
So like I said originally these jobs are few and far between. The point is that in the UK the salaries are much lower than those in the US and this is across all experience ranges.
That bad? Huh. Last time I was a permanent employee in the UK was nearly a decade ago now, and I think I was on something like £37k, I think some of my friends (Cambridge graduates and slightly older than me), even back then, were on £65-75k.
I kinda assumed inflation would have raised all of those by about 50% since then.
I am not a top software engineer( (otherwise I'd be working fang tbh) and I earn 85k up north. Hybrid role that's local as well.
I know people that earn a lot more than me.
It's just the recruiters are a joke and advertise silly salaries from local companies that are out touch. You have to know what companies are serious or not, and just apply direct or via recommendations.
Those are government, so probably have even better pensions than private sector.
And there was job advertised for lead software engineer by computer futures(probably an agency) for 80k
I didn't even look deep. I know there are even better jobs.
There are jobs that pay more than 65k. Just have to know where to look.
If you're working for undercapitalized local private companies, then yeah not going pay very much.
I'd also recommend looking at remote jobs. My really smart friends who can beat the competition got 100k+ jobs working remote that are officially based in London but they work up north. Then come down for meeting once or twice every few months.
A lot of the fintechs allow for fully remote and pay well.
We are comparing salaries of Software Engineers between the US and the UK. A Senior Developer position won't pay more than 90K in the UK outside of London. In the US I see well over that for a Senior Developer position.
Even in your examples (which are higher position than what was being discussed) they didn't top out past 90K (just like I said). Whereas in the US you can earn much more quite easily.
> You've moved the goal posts. You said 60k if your lucky.
No I didn't. I suggest you re-read the thread. I said 75K-90K max.
> I just found multiple jobs that pay more than that easily.
There are always certainly outliers. However most of those places usually have a bunch of iffy things going on e.g. you have to live at your workstation/laptop, or they are in the middle of no where. Enforced pair programming (fuck that btw), or have a stupid interview process (no I won't go through the humiliation rituals anymore).
However the vast majority of positions are paying max 65-70K for a Senior Dev.
I am glad that you managed to find something. But the rest of us haven't been as lucky.
You have to earn (much) more to have the same standard of living as outside of it. Therefore you pay more income tax and the cost of living is higher anyway.
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.
Depends what you mean by "Quality of Life". I literally won't go to see friends because that would mean travelling to London. I hate the place. It is expensive, hostile, dirty and everyone is rude.
I live on the outskirts of the peak district. I can walk/cycle less than 30 minutes out of town and be walking along the old canals, through old villages and get amazing views of the countryside.
To be fair I live in Zone 2 and I can be on old canals and villages (albeit now subsumed into London) in ~20 minutes walking. I grew up in rural Wales, and as nice an upbringing it was, there's a reason I have a single family member left, who's trying to move away!
There is a constant narrative that is pushed on everyone that immigration is necessary because people won't do the menial jobs. There is a huge number of problems with this this narrative.
* Menial jobs were/are normally done in the past by younger more inexperienced people. These were usually done part time while in education. This allows younger people to build basic competency and money management skills. They aren't supposed to be jobs for life and everyone knew this in the past. By constantly importing people from to do these jobs, you stop younger people from building up this basic competency. This stuff is important btw, as I know many people who never had these jobs and had the bank of Mum and Dad pay for them for far too long, they don't know how to manage money.
* A lot of more menial jobs are done by people that are part retired. When I was younger I worked with many part retired people that had a stressful job and moved away and part retired and were on the checkouts out the supermarket, cleaning, pushing trolleys or delivering things.
* A lot of immigrants seem to do jobs like Uber Eats, Deliveroo and other zero hour contract food delivery jobs. If you don't believe me, go to your local McDonalds at 8am on a Saturday morning and every driver picking up food will be a immigrant of one sort or another. These are jobs where people are literally too lazy to drive 5 minutes to the McDonalds drive through on a Saturday morning. I am normally very pro-free market however do we really need to immigrants to do these jobs? I don't use Uber Eats and I have no idea how much it costs, but I think the guy up the road that has a small mansion a Jag and Two Teslas can probably afford to pay a bit more for delivery.
* I am from the South of the UK. If you aren't from London or another big city, London is one of the most horrid places to visit, work. I spent maybe a 4 months working as a freelancer in London (travelling in). People are downright rude, everything is a ripoff. I'd rather be slightly worse off and live here than be "better" off an live in London.
Menial routine work for juniors has been eliminated or automated to the margins, that much is true. No office-boys and far fewer supermarket cashiers. For those with people skills, there's plenty of café work, but that's about it.
On the flip side though, the educational/academic landscape for the upper quartile of young adults is hugely more competitive. Nobody is making it to a Russell Group uni on cruise control, and getting top grades AND having a part time job AND hobbies and a social life isn't easy.
Then you have menial work that's actually fairly skilled. Social care, childcare and so on. That's not something a student is going to do for a couple of years on the way to something better.
And a shift, for various reasons, to the contracted-out agency model for cleaning. Mostly done by immigrants, but they work harder than most semi-retired Brits would be willing to. Even if they're less flexible than the old boy who'd fix a bad door or window as well as sweeping the floor, and have none of his loyalty.
UberEats on the other hand is taking the mick. A lot of their workers are undocumented, the self-employed contractor status allows the operator to avoid the normally stringent penalties for immigration law breaches. I don't know if they lobbied for the law to be that way, but it's a massive loophole. So this is illegal work and maybe shouldn't be conflated with legit immigration. How much it's a problem I'm not sure.. the actual numbers are quite small, but like the loudspeakers on the bus thing, it's a very visible breach of the norms and rules, so there's an argument that it's bad for society on that basis. And like I say, the operator is blatantly exploiting it, they can't be blind to what's going on. I'm pretty liberal on immigration, miss the positive contribution the former Eastern Bloc countries made prior to Brexit, but the whole food delivery sector is overdue a clean out.
Not really. I am talking generally about this notion that we need to keep importing people.
> Menial routine work for juniors has been eliminated or automated to the margins, that much is true. No office-boys and far fewer supermarket cashiers. For those with people skills, there's plenty of café work, but that's about it.
That is often repeated but I don't think that is quite as true as people make out. There aren't robots yet (or likely to be) stacking the supermarket shelves. Yes self service has taken most of the cashier jobs (not all btw).
> And a shift, for various reasons, to the contracted-out agency model for cleaning. Mostly done by immigrants, but they work harder than most semi-retired Brits would be willing to. Even if they're less flexible than the old boy who'd fix a bad door or window as well as sweeping the floor, and have none of his loyalty.
In other countries to emigrate there you need to have skills they need. When I moved abroad previously the company had to justify looking outside of the country to employ me. I don't understand how it can be justified that they can't find cleaning staff. BTW I employ a cleaner so I know roughly how much they cost.
> UberEats on the other hand is taking the mick. A lot of their workers are undocumented, the self-employed contractor status allows the operator to avoid the normally stringent penalties for immigration law breaches. I don't know if they lobbied for the law to be that way, but it's a massive loophole. So this is illegal work and maybe shouldn't be conflated with legit immigration. How much it's a problem I'm not sure.. the actual numbers are quite small, but like the loudspeakers on the bus thing, it's a very visible breach of the norms and rules, so there's an argument that it's bad for society on that basis. And like I say, the operator is blatantly exploiting it, they can't be blind to what's going on. I'm pretty liberal on immigration, miss the positive contribution the former Eastern Bloc countries made prior to Brexit, but the whole food delivery sector is overdue a clean out.
It doesn't matter whether it is small or not (I don't think it as small as you are making out). It shouldn't be happening. Also just because you don't like the people that are highlighting this issue, doesn't mean that the issue isn't important.
The reason why things are a mess is that nothing gets sorted out properly in the UK. We have had leadership failures now for years.
On the cashier jobs - the thing is that they can rely on fewer and more trained/experienced staff. This may not be a bad outcome for those in the jobs, but it means less availability of casual work.
Which is not the same thing as no availability, but there used to be plenty of this kind of work to go around, such that it was the norm that 17/18 year olds could get it without particularly trying. That is not the case now.
Trying to bring skilled labour into the UK, or trying to get residence as an apparently useful and self-sufficient person, is actually quite difficult, so I'm not sure how all the low-skilled labour ends up here, other than large agencies in areas (social care, farm work) with known skill shortages.. being large agencies, the bureaucratic overhead isn't too bad for them, whereas for an individual or small company, it's more trouble than it's worth. There's no way you can just bring a cleaner over from abroad because you want someone to clean your house/office.
As to shouldn't be happening. Yes. But as for so many other things in the UK and its gradual slide towards a low-trust society. So it becomes a case of figuring out which battles to pick, which ones are genuinely impacting peoples' day to day. And I think collectively (not particularly a left vs right thing), the country has forgotten how to prioritise that.
> Trying to bring skilled labour into the UK, or trying to get residence as an apparently useful and self-sufficient person, is actually quite difficult, so I'm not sure how all the low-skilled labour ends up here, other than large agencies in areas (social care, farm work) with known skill shortages.. being large agencies, the bureaucratic overhead isn't too bad for them, whereas for an individual or small company, it's more trouble than it's worth.
Most of the skilled labour that I've encountered in the UK from immigration was Indians etc. that Accenture brought over. It is a gold ticket for the Indian developers and it is cheaper than paying people like me. So they do the same thing from the most skilled to the least skilled if the company is large enough.
> There's no way you can just bring a cleaner over from abroad because you want someone to clean your house/office.
I wasn't claiming to. I was saying that I know roughly what the costs are.
> As to shouldn't be happening. Yes. But as for so many other things in the UK and its gradual slide towards a low-trust society. So it becomes a case of figuring out which battles to pick, which ones are genuinely impacting peoples' day to day. And I think collectively (not particularly a left vs right thing), the country has forgotten how to prioritise that.
This feels like a false dichotomy. Many things can be done quickly if the bureaucracy wills it. The fact is that they don't.
I live in the countryside (I live in a small flat btw so I don't care about property prices) and I don't want everywhere in the country built over, which seems to be something here everyone wants for some bonkers reason. If you want to live in a concrete jungle that is fine, I and many others don't. I moved out of Manchester because I hated it there.
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