Should I be more angry about the state of housing in my country?

[Aoami]

SW Trains, which do the trains from Hampshire to London are ludicrously expensive and don't do super saver advance bookings etc iirc. Some places on the hampshire/surrey border like Fleet are nice though, right on the M3 and it's not a long drive to somewhere like Richmond where you could get a tube into central.

 

[rynnor]

Just bonkers. How the hell do teachers and nurses in central London get by?

There are special deals for nurses/policemen/teachers etc. - it can be pretty lucrative.

 

[Mey]

Police officers get free travel with their warrant card on most public transport.

 

[DaGaffer]

You're going to university when you wrote the sentence "when you was at university"? 54 grand isn't enough...

 

[Gwadien]

Excuse me, I'm paying for my own pension thank you!

Even if you have a private pension, you're paying for some dying old mans pension, really.

You're going to university when you wrote the sentence "when you was at university"? 54 grand isn't enough...

YEAH BOI

 

[mycenae]

Nurses get no help with travel...but if you want to live in scummy hospital accomadation (which is like halls at uni - shared kitchens, bathrooms, in a flat if you're lucky, in actual halls if you're not) they will charge you about £500pcm inclusive of bills pcm. For that, you live on the hospital doorstep, center of london. If you're careful, even on a starting nursing salary which is about £24k inclusive of inner london weighting now, you can save quite a bit for a few years, then have enough to put a deposit down for something a bit further out....or take advantage of one of the shared ownership schemes for key workers. Quite a few of my friends have done this.
The basic nursing wage really is quite shite, but if you're willing to scrimp and save a fair bit, and do a hell of a lot of overtime (which pays a LOT more than your regular hours) you'll have no life and be perma exhausted for a few years BUT it pays off in the long run.
Vae and I live in Whitton....TW2 which is zone 5. Affectionately termed twickenham/hounslow borders. We bought our house here May 2010, and got a pretty good deal as far as we can see. I work at a central london hospital and have an hour and a half commute each way....walk, train, bus, walk. There is NO way we could afford to live closer in. I'm kinda lucky in that work pays for my annual season ticket up to £5k, and then takes it out of my salary every month for 10 months. This year my season ticket was about £1750. Its a sizeable chunk of my salary but doable, plus it applies to ANY public transport I use, irregardless or not of whether I am using it for work, though not every hospital will do this.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Nurses get paid more than I do. Clown about 3 times as much. I have to live in London and work there. It's not easy, even commuting from zone 4.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Don't get angry about things you have no power over, makes for a stress free life.

Well...free-er.

 

[Gwadien]

Wish I lived in Scandinavia, they all seem not to give a shit about their world status and spend billions on their armed forces, and are all proper socialist countries

The UK is a joke socialist country, it's like saying America is a socialist country.

It's more socialist to the extent of, oh look little working class people, we'll give you a TV, and be happy with it, whilst I buy 3 more houses in Spain, cool?

I'm all for the attitude of when someone builds a business they should be able to make loads of money off it, but not when it means they're STILL getting bonuses and high wages whilst letting most of their workforce go.

 

[old.Tohtori]

It helps when you've never conquered half the world and don't have a past glory up your butt

Well, unless we count the viking fellas, but they were a bit more on the "f*ck half the world" attitude, which i find completely acceptable, in both meanings of the word f*ck.

 

[Raven]

Why the fuck would we want to be socialist?

 

[Fafnir]

Why the fuck would we want to be socialist?

Well if you can balance it, so that all benefit from it, it works ok, not like in Sweden the past 50 years where the lazy fuckers got it all, while the workers paid for it. I would like to know how many billions our last goverment forked out on paying for peoples addiction without demanding anything in return. And how many billions immigrants have been getting without demanding anything in return, not even that they learn our language, since you can demand an interpreter for every fucking language out there when dealing with the goverment. Up to the late 70´s 99,9% who came here came to work, later alot came cause they heard they would get money from the goverment, we had about 20.000 elderly persons who came, got their "green card" got their pension and moved back home, then they died, and their kids kept getting their parents pension. A mates dad owned a buildng that the immigration department rented, they furnished the building, took about 2 weeks before they had to refurnish everything since the immigrants had sold everything, including the sink, every tap everything they could remove. Ended with my mates dad cancelling the agreement due to all the damage done. /end rant.

 

[Raven]

Rather worrying figures and probably makes quite a contribution to any housing shortage!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15868793

 

[throdgrain]

I hate bloody socialists.

 

[Zenith]

I'm glad I am not funding students too. It's their choice to go to Uni so they should pay for the privilege. The 3 years you spend at Uni could be spent in work experience.

What exactly do you hope to achieve with a history and sociology degree? What application in the real world do you think it is useful for? I suppose it could be a fairly good foundation for a teaching degree or something but little else... shit degrees in pointless subjects are 10 a penny these days.

Not meaning to have a dig at you personally but if people took more practical degrees, IT, engineering, physics, business, finance or whatever then they would mean something. You would have an edge in a specific field and get a job in that field.

In my experience, fresh graduates have been lazy know it alls, I would rather employ someone who has been doing the job (and indeed working) for 3 years than someone who has being studying some gumf and sleeping for 3 years.

That is actually not true. Both History and Sociology opens up academic careers for starters. They also open up a WIDE range of graduate jobs outside of the subjects. I have a bunch of friends that studied History or English Lit and started careers in banking, journalism and even started working for the various Embassy's.

Arts subjects, or indeed Social Sciences bar Psychology do not have a direct line of progress, but if you got the edge, you'll get a graduate job easy.

 

[Chilly]

That is actually not true. Both History and Sociology opens up academic careers for starters. They also open up a WIDE range of graduate jobs outside of the subjects. I have a bunch of friends that studied History or English Lit and started careers in banking, journalism and even started working for the various Embassy's.

Arts subjects, or indeed Social Sciences bar Psychology do not have a direct line of progress, but if you got the edge, you'll get a graduate job easy.

A society made up on physics and maths grads would be pretty shit.

 

[Scouse]

Stuff.

Why not move out of london if you're a nurse? I just don't get it. You can get a nice 3 bed house, with a garden and a garage, in a not-completely-shit area for about £120k in Nottingham.

 

[Gwadien]

A society made up on physics and maths grads would be pretty shit.

Could go and do a course in Lady Gaga?, or in Zombies. - Just sayin'

 

[mycenae]

Scouse....Strictly speaking we don;t actually live in london....but we are close enough! One of the biggest reasons for a lot of nurses living and working in london is the large amount of teaching and specialist hospitals....I'm a paediatric nurse and if I want to work in a specialist paediatric hospital, my options once out of london become quite a bit more limited. I have the majority of my friends and family within an hours journey from our house too, and with a baby on the way I would be loathe to move so far away from all that! Certainly in the future Vae and I have and do consider moving a bit further afield to get a larger more rural place for our money....but if and when that happens, it would be largely driven by work location for both me and him.

 

[Vae]

Ditto - Distance to job is the main criteria for living location. I'm currently about a 50 minute commute and Mycenae is 1.5 hours (she moved jobs after we moved house). I would struggle to get a similar job elsewhere in the country, certainly at the same level of pay (probably even taking into account higher living costs), because of the high density of head offices near/in London.

 

[Cadiva]

I didn't go to Uni because when I was that age I couldn't afford to go. There was no student loan, grants were means tested so I didn't get to go.

Similar situation here, my dad is a self-employed joiner/builder, my mum worked part time. When I wanted to go to University I failed to qualify for a grant because both my parents worked. The fact that between them they only just earned enough to pay for everything at the time didn't seem to matter. I didn't go to Uni because I couldn't afford to go.

 

[Aoami]

Conversely my dad is on £100k+ a year, and my mum is a teacher (not sure what she is on). Because they're divorced, I just stated I lived with my mum (which actually wasn't true, I had moved out by then and had my own flat and job etc, but that doesnt matter to them unless you are over 26, which is ridiculous in itself) and they only took my mums income into consideration so I got full loan/grants/bursaries when my dad could easily afford to support me (he didn't but thats a different story). People with parents who had combined incomes of far less than my parents we're getting no grants and lowest loans etc. It's a massively flawed system.

 

[Chilly]

Conversely my dad is on £100k+ a year, and my mum is a teacher (not sure what she is on). Because they're divorced, I just stated I lived with my mum (which actually wasn't true, I had moved out by then and had my own flat and job etc, but that doesnt matter to them unless you are over 26, which is ridiculous in itself) and they only took my mums income into consideration so I got full loan/grants/bursaries when my dad could easily afford to support me (he didn't but thats a different story). People with parents who had combined incomes of far less than my parents we're getting no grants and lowest loans etc. It's a massively flawed system.

And you scammed it.

 

[Raven]

Good for him. Stupidity should be scammed until it improves.

 

[Gwadien]

Good for him. Stupidity should be scammed until it improves.

yay, Insurance fraud time, because Raven said I could

 

[Aoami]

And you scammed it.

Why wouldn't I? I wasn't able to put my actual circumstances (that i was fully independent), because I wasn't 26+, so why wouldn't I take option A: say i live at my mums and get more free money over option B: say i live at my dads and get less, when they are the only 2 possible options are both are lies. By your reasoning, using option B would still technically be scamming it.

 

[DaGaffer]

I knew loads of relatively wealthy people at Uni on full grants; self-employed Dad=accountant="I have no money Mr. LEA assessor"=profit.