Why Exactly Are Northern Ireland Wages So Low? (Merged)

System

I'm sure there is a reason why we have the lowest wages in the UK and outside of London the highest cost of living, I look at my own pay £6.60 an hour, now for around here that is bloody excellent, but UK it is bloody awful, I even look at my boss who earns less than £20K a year, and he went to Uni etc

DUKE

Pity we can't all swap jobs every so often to break the monotony, work a four day week, and all get paid the same. I don't think any one job is more important than another.

dmxdave

Have a read on this old thread

arkonite_babe

We have a thread similar to this already, I'll add your query to it so all the replies are together. Posts are listed in date order so you'll need to read from the beginning to catch up

talksalot81

The cost of living in NI is, contrary to your thoughts, not high. Assuming you rent, you will find that NI is incredibly cheap. I have just been through this exercise. In SE England, rental costs will easily be double those in NI. Even in the 'poor' North, rental costs are significantly higher than in NI. Admitted, we pay more for everything else (food, insurance, luxuries), but this contributes a relatively minor amount when compared to rent. If you want to buy your house, the story is different but one should then just settle with not owning a house.

max5heads

The government can't lose. The amount we as business owners have to pay for rates and now electric is depressing, when you think of the MLA's that get 50k per yr + allowances that may double there own wages + all the other scams they pull for office rental's etc that are coming to light now is disheartening. (Venting a bit!).
Another vent, Why do we allow criminals to sit about playing playstation's etc in cell's and its costing us around 50K a yr to keep 1 of the !!!!!!'s, I want chain gangs here like in the US so they can do all the s**t? and cut costs to us at the same time.

IvanOpinion

max5heads, I don't disagree with you and have always maintained that prisons should be made 100% self-sufficient with each inmates standard of living being determined by the population of that prison as a whole.

However I also believe that anybody on benefits should be expected to carry out an equivalent number of hours of community service based on how much they earn and minimum wage. Common grass areas need cut, childrens play parks need tidied, OAPs may need help in tidying their houses/gardens.

My favourite though is to provide a 'free' taxi service of out-patients to and from hospital rather than wasting valuable ambulance time (naturally they would be refunded mileage costs). People undergoing cancer treatment need to attend every day for 6 weeks, knowing they have a guaranteed lift is one less stress in their lives.

ivan

Frenchtoast_2

IvanOpinion wrote: »

max5heads, I don't disagree with you and have always maintained that prisons should be made 100% self-sufficient with each inmates standard of living being determined by the population of that prison as a whole.

However I also believe that anybody on benefits should be expected to carry out an equivalent number of hours of community service based on how much they earn and minimum wage. Common grass areas need cut, childrens play parks need tidied, OAPs may need help in tidying their houses/gardens.

My favourite though is to provide a 'free' taxi service of out-patients to and from hospital rather than wasting valuable ambulance time (naturally they would be refunded mileage costs). People undergoing cancer treatment need to attend every day for 6 weeks, knowing they have a guaranteed lift is one less stress in their lives.

ivan

I agree.
Out patient taxi service sounds great. Would suggest fleets vehicles sponsored by private firms (maybe hospital carparking firms etc) and no mileage claims. The current abuse of ambulance call outs is a discrace.:mad:

snowmen

I agree with talksalot81.
Since moving from London in 2000 and being lucky enough to buy a house before the housing market went into stupid mode I have found that the cost of living is a lot less than england.
Rates are substantially less than council tax and in ni you dont (yet) pay water rates yet.
However we do get stung for energy costs. Oil has gone from around £150 a full tank to £450 now. Also not having competition in the electric marketplace in ni means we overpay and it is the same more recently for gas.
Shame about the house prices now which I feel are very over-inflated caused mainly by people in recent years just wanting to buy a property and selling a year later for a profit. Think a lot of people over here have stretched themselves too far as far as mortgage borrowing goes and negative equity could be a major problem with house prices starting to decrease.

max5heads

Snowmen.
Business rates are different than home.
The last building we owned and ran a carpet and furniture store from the rates where £1000 per wk!.We did not even get a bin collected for this amount.