Cyclemonkey

Dave that's the point the workers are asking for more than the minimum. Cedges what an odd post. You won't support people pushing for better pay because you don't get paid enough. The cinema workers are taking action to improve their pay, just as legitimate as leaving for a new job. How do you think most of the rights we all enjoy at work were won?

I'm not suggesting everyone in a low paid job should be able to afford to rent a one bedroom flat, i flatshared well into my late 20s on higher wages. Some of the Ritzy workers may live with parents but i expect many do not. There is a reason why it is called the London Living wage as that is what has been calculated as the minimum needed to live in London.

If you work a 36 hour week it is less than ?17,000 p/a before any deductions. Fancy living on that in an area where one bedroom flats are often ?1000 a month in rent.

I would imagine most of the Picturehouse staff would work locally. Put it this way - how far would you commute for a job that pays less than ?8 an hour and may knock off after midnight for some shifts. Here's an experiment for you, ask the bar staff and waiting staff in East Dulwich pubs and restaurants where they live, i'll bet you the majority of them are local.

Thanks for this Hannah. We spoke to some of the striking workers at Lambeth Country Show on Sunday. I really admire the Ritzy workers, striking when you are on a zero hours contract on a low wage is a brave decision and the Ritzy workers should be supported for their stance. I'll happily email the directors about this. We need to stand firm with them and get them to pay their staff a living wage. Looking at the cost of rents and living in East Dulwich it is a disgrace that a successful chain there will not pay their staff enough to live on.

That story has been doing the rounds for a while.

"money for the meter" scammers are easily dealt with. If it is between 6pm and 6am their electricty meter will not go off -the vast majoirty have "non disconnect" periods at night. If you are genuinely worried offer to help them phone their energy company for a "wind on" rather than giving them the cash. I last had a electricity meter scammer when i lived in Camberwell, the story was her husband was out and she needed ?10 for the meter as her son was on a dialysis machine. As we were very near to Kings College hospital i offered to go with her to the hospital where they could help her son. Unsurprisingly this was declined.

I'm seeing a few reductions recently or places hanging around. I'm hearing of sharp practice in other parts of London by agents such as requring the buyer to agree to pay the vendors agents fees - has that sort of nonsense crept in here at all yet?

Average income in London is around ?35K a year but it is distorted a lot by some very high earners. 40k is still a decent middle to upper income for a lot of people. Also don't forget many professionals in their twenties and thirties have been paying back thousands of pounds in student loans since the late 1990s. There is at least 18k i had to pay back that would have been saved for a deposit if i was only 5 years older.

Strafer - just looked, an annual Zone 1-6 travel card is over ?2000 so getting a travel card to travel from the edges of London to the centre does indeed run into the thousands. A bus pass is around ?700 annually but travelling by bus every day form the edges to the centre is a fairly tortuous business. I go to work by bus but Peckham to the City is a bit different than Bromley or Thmaesmead to the city. Also i expect there are no interest free season ticket loans for many low waged people as well.

I know many minimum wage workers live in the outer reaches of zone 6, i was mainly talkign about people commuting in form areas outside London. However even Zone 6 is a push on minimum wage in London - In 2000 I commuted from just outside Zone 6 to a job in Farringdon for six months after i graduated and it was punishing - i had to get up at 5.45am to get to work for 8.30am and i paid ?270 a month for a monthly railcard with tube zones. I was on ?16,000 a year and my rent at the time was ?275 a month to live in a ramshackle Victorian house shared with 5 mates. It was fine at 21, i'm not sure i'd want to do it at 36. In the end i moved to New Cross as i calculated that the saving on travel would more than pay for the rent increase.

Commuting is mainly a middle class luxury. Imagine you do a minimum wage job such as cleaning, bar work or catering. Many of them are anti social hours - starting at 4am or finishing at 2am. You hourly rate is say ?8 p/H (that's over minimum wage) say you worked a 35 hour week - that's ?280 a week before tax - that's around ?14,800 a year before tax - given that annual season tickets from the home counties run into several thousands a year for a service that many people doing these jobs will not be able to use (name me a train that runs from the Kent commuter belt that arrives in Central London for 4am or indeed takes you back again at 2am) you can immediately begin to see why commuting does not work for those doing many low paid minimum wage jobs.

Interesting stuff Miga. It is also interesting the difference that changes in housing tenure have had. Both my partner and I cannot afford to live where we grew up (me a small village in Kent, him Central London) Our parents are not rich or indeed home owners but had secure, long term rented accomodation related to their professions. Something that is vanishingly rare. Both our Dads tell us they don't know why we don't rent like they have to which the retort is perhaps we would if we had long term tenancies with controlled rents where we got to chose the decor. As it is this sort of thing does not really exist in the private sector anymore.

miga - i can answer your question there. A friend of mine and her partner are looking at Catford at the moment. They both have decently paid jobs abopve the national average (she is a higher rate tax payer) and they have a ?40,000 deposit. They are struggling to get even a 2 bed flat as they are constantly outbid on the ones they can afford.

It's a shame the second hand shop is going - i got a really good bookcase and two chairs there recently. East Dulwich Deli i can live without. Blackbird do nicer cakes, bread and savouries and Bambuni do better quality and better priced deli items.

Jeremy, It's not about being able to afford to live ina specific area - it's about being able to afford to live anywhere in your locality. I agree with you not everyone has the right to afford a double fronted period house in Bellenden Road but there should be mixes of housing for everyone. Too often now when i look at modest flats in the local area (by that i mean Forest Hill, Honor Oak, Peckham, Nunhead, New Cross, Catford etc..etc..) it is advertised as "ideal buy to let investment" and priced as such that you would need at least ?30,000 for a 10% deposit and a household income of over ?50,000 to get a mortgage. People want stability which is why they look at buying. Maybe people would be less concerned if renting was a viable alternative. Council housing is virtually impossible to come buy and private renting long term is frustrating, expensive and unstable.

The garage is mad but i suspect it is the land the buyer is interested not the garage. I assume they were given a good tip from the council (the vendor) that palnnign permission for aa new building was likely. It's true there is some good ex LA stock locally but you'll struggle to get much under ?300,000 even then. Believe me, we've been looking and we've not that tied to a postcode nor do we want a period conversion on Cystal Palace road. I viewed a three bedroom Ex LA place in Nunhead on at ?300,000 that woudl need a good ?30,000 inviested to make it habitable (it had no internal doors, a broken boiler, no carpets , a bathroom suite that was stained beyond use) A couple with 10% deposit and an average household income would struggle to afford that.

It doesn't but it makes aspects of society harder. Children no longer around to care for ageing relatives, grandparents not around to help with childcare, communities losing their roots. Healthy communities are a mix of old and young, rich and poor. The village i grew up in is very sad now. 150 houses and it is all second homes and older residents. There are no children left.

It's been happening for years all over the South East. I cannot afford to live in the Kent village i grew up in. House prices are not as mad as London but at least here in London i can get a well paid job. My partner was born and bred in central London, he and his family have progressively been pushed further and further out. We rent in SE15 at the moment (an area i moved to in 2000 as a young graduate cos it was all i could afford) but we will have to move on soon if house prices and even rents climb any higher.

My gosh that Bellenden Road house is ridiculously priced - it's currently uninhabitable. I would imagine the market would be serious property investors who will drive a hard bargain with the owners. BB100 i disagree about Shared Ownership, i just think it has been poorly marketed. I have had friends who have used it as a means to get somewhere. Those who have been most happy are those who have seen it as a way to get long term security of tenure - eg regard it almost as council housing. It will not help you "get on the property ladder" in any real sense.

Well they have to go up at some point. I won't be popular for saying this but if you have a mortgage and kept your job it's likely you did pretty well out of the downturn. Those of us renting and trying to save a deposit, not so much.

You're right rahrahrah. To be honest we could probably have pushed this vendor down by at least ?10,000 - ?15,000 and funded the work that needed doing but the i didn't like the place that much to do the work and live in a building site for a few months (as we can't afford to rent and pay a mortgage at the same time for any longer than a couple of months). It would have to be a real project - the boiler was broken, the bathroom was a health hazard and it had been disconnected from gas and electricty, and oddly all the internal doors had been replaced by those odd temporary chipboard doors locksmiths use. Not for the faint hearted!

It's madness out there. I viewed a three bed maisonette in Nunhead at the weekend. It had been advertised as "needing cosmetic work" and was on at ?285,000. The reality was somewhat different and instead if the paint job and new carpets i was imagining, you would need to gut it totally and spend a good ?15,000 to ?20,000 to make it somewhere you would want to think about living. When i said to the agent that at that price we simply wouldn't have the immediate spare cash to do the work the place required to make it habitable she replied - "oh if you buy it it will gain in value in the next two years even if you do nothing" It didn't seem to have occured to her that we were looking for a place to live in not an investment.

Yeh if you are being quoted much more than 2 - 4% at the moment then you must be viewed as a risk or have a very low deposit. What are the typical rates being offered to Help to Buy customers at the moment? We don't talk about it much here but there are sub prime lenders in the UK too, many of whom deal with people with bad credit or on low incomes - in my line of work we see a lot of people who brought under Right to Buy with those types of lenders and they really struggle if rates go up as they are already paying fairly high rates.

I think people are beginning to overextend as well due to low interest rates. For personal reasons we have deliberatly kept the amount we are borrowing fairly low but i was absolutely shocked when i was told how much lenders were prepared to lend us and then the implications for our household finances when i stress tested potential monthly repayments against a set of interest rate rise scenarios.