why is London more expensive than Brum in your opinion

In London you can easily live without a car, but in Bham you do

avrg car costs £4k to run a year plus the purchasing cost

A £230pw apartment in London costs around £130 pw in Brum

discuss

I live without a car- its easy.

I want to live without a car so bad.

I want to live without a car so bad.

Is the sex not so good?

Is she too rough on you?

Cost of living in London isn't really that much higher comparing to other places in the UK. Public transport prices are the same. Food, clothes and other stuff that you can find in everyday supermarkets and shops cost exactly the same too (in some cases even cheaper). The only thing that's definately more expensive is accomodation, but that's only if you want to live in a really good apartment in some posh area, if you just need a decent room in a family house in a decent suburban area you'll get away with a ~£70pw for a single and ~£100pw for a double, which is definately not much, at least comparing to f.e. Sussex. So i don't really see what this fuss about London being expensive is about.

Cost of living in London isn't really that much higher comparing to other places in the UK. Public transport prices are the same. Food, clothes and other stuff that you can find in everyday supermarkets and shops cost exactly the same too (in some cases even cheaper). The only thing that's definately more expensive is accomodation, but that's only if you want to live in a really good apartment in some posh area, if you just need a decent room in a family house in a decent suburban area you'll get away with a ~£70pw for a single and ~£100pw for a double, which is definately not much, at least comparing to f.e. Sussex. So i don't really see what this fuss about London being expensive is about.

i found that public transport in london was actually quite cheap and reasonable,whereas in alot of the other places it was the opposite (such as rural areas and medium sized cities)

London buses are cheaper than the Arriva buses where I live. The prices have just gone up here too.

I would say transport is more expensive in London. Even though it gets subsidised a lot. For example one stop on the tube can cost £2. compared to Newcastle where you can buy a return ticket for £2.20. So almost half the price!

Bus fares used to be cheap in London compared to a lot of other places in Britain, but I sisupect that is no longer so much the case with fares in the suburbs being £1.20. Is it £1.50 in central london or is that only night buses?

Taxis are definitely more expensive in London. I tend to be overly generous when elsewhere as it just seems cheap elsewhere incomparison.

Accomodation in London is roughly double what you would pay for a comparable area/house or flat in Birmingham (or Manchester or any other big city). You can live without a car in Brum just as you can in London, many of the people I work with that live in Brum do just that.

It's true that food, clothes, electronic goods etc are about the same as they are generally bought from the same shops but entertainment like cinemas, bars and to some extent restaurants and also services like plumbers, electricians, hairdressers are generally more expensive in my experience.

Another thing that is much more expensive is Solicitors fees when buying a house, my sister recently bought a flat in Wimbledon and was quoted by local solicitors around double for the legal work compared to a local firm in Shropshire, luckily she had family here that she visited regularly and she was able to have the work done through them or it would have cost her an extra £750 to buy her flat.

The office for national statistics did a study published late last year into general costs of living in different rgions across the country and came up with the following results:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/images/charts/1018.gif

London is 109.7% of the national average while the West Midlands is 97.8% of the national average. So to have the same standard of living in London as in the West Midlands you would need to earn 12.17% extra.

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/economic_trends/ET615Wingfield.pdf

I paid twenty quid to see Half Man Half Biscuit in London. That's outrageous. The place was crammed and my fellows kinda thought it was dire and annoyed me. Stupid clogs. So after they gave in and let me stay til' the encores, oh how kind, we persued to clubs and paid even more. London clubs offer you to pay for being on a guest list. Such generous hosts, and who'd figured out -some of these club owners are indeed either Dutch or Scottish :rofl:

Just compare the prices of half a cucumber in both cities and you have your answer.

at tesco's prices are the same nationwide you halfcucumberwit ;)

What is the best method of cutting a cucumber in half?

like this:
http://www.hormel.com/kitchen/images/refimages/seasonedinsight/fruit_veggies/cucumber/cutinhalf.jpg

of like this:
http://www.gardenseeds.com/images/seed/cucumber-spacemaster80.jpg

philosophers have pondered over this question for centuries, and I myself am still contemplating

Usually we chop 'em to pieces. It's favourite as dog food as well :D

appearances can be deceiving.
http://www.2good4usf.com/cards/Corvette-cucumber.jpg

that's a courgette she's holding
not a cucumber

:ohno: big city folk, what do they know of vegetables?

sebius you a true perceiver of leguminous plant produce. Henceforth I will unabashedly hearken to your word.

I couldn't give a monkey about expenses.

Its just a matter of which is the better city? The vast majority will say. London. And so will I.

How unbiased--oh look, you're from London!

How unbiased--oh look, you're from London!

ahhh but I could of easily moved from Brum to London ;)

I couldn't give a monkey about expenses.

It must be nice to be in a position where the cost of living is of no consequence but I'm sure for most people it is.

I agree that London is the better city in terms of architecture, leisure, restaurants etc and salaries are slightly higher too but I can see all that on a visit to London and live somewhere where I don't have to be a millionaire to afford a decent sized place to live in that isn't situated in an area that is an utter craphole (and there are plenty of crapholes in London just as elsewhere in the country).

Can someone answer this

Which city will you have more disposable income in if....

you live in a modern city centre apartment (studio flat)
you have a professional job
you don't own a car
you take into account London's inflated wages


discuss

WEll you could be better off in London as you've a better chance of stupidly high wages - however most people don't atually earn huge wages.

Can someone answer this

Which city will you have more disposable income in if....

you live in a modern city centre apartment (studio flat)
you have a professional job
you don't own a car
you take into account London's inflated wages


discuss

The wages for doing the same jobs aren't actually that much more in London it's just the jobs available are skewed towards the hgher end of the payscale as London has The City plus company headquarters plus central government.

I don't think you can generalise and say for definite one or the other but your chances of getting a super well-paid job are obviously higher in London while for the average person in an average job the extra London wages will all be eaten up by higher accommodation costs so it then becomes a simple matter of personal preference.

imo.