I'm going out now to buy some expensive Southern petrol and expensive Southern goods, why are we Southeners punished like this? It's absolutely outrageous

Like I said, there is already an essential worker allowance for London, you aren't listening either, this is not about London. Is it more expensive to live in Cambridge, Norfolk, Leicester? Will those towns and cities be in the North or South??

Having recently come back from holidaying "down south" the disel was far cheaper than in Hull, so please don't patronise.

In the public sector there is already a London weighting so wages there already reflect the difference and it is completely transparent. The job pays the same hourly rate wherever you are in the country but if you are in London you get the weighting so there is no need for this policy.

The policy is clearly all about paying people less in the regions and nothing else.

The net effect will be to depress there regional economies further as spending power decreases further and push more people into the bracket where they can claim benefits so the tax payer will subsidise them anyway.

We have also seen this week another leak about the likely content of the budget which is the scrapping of the 50p tax rate for higher earners.

So at one and the same time the Tory party is going to tax the rich less and reduce the wages of the ordinary person. They truly are the scum of the earth in my opinion.

I know this place is more left wing than a seagulls port side but how naive do you have to be to think this is a bad idea?

If a card carrying leftwing nut job nurse in Hull thinks it's unfair get her to move to London or Kent or Surrey and pay her the same, see what she says after a year.

Besides if the nurse is unhappy up north on the pitiful wages move down south, it would seem the English are the least mobile work force in the world and refuse to work further than 6 miles from where they were born.

Yeah everyone living in the south works doesn't it.

So in HY's world every single public sector worker who is unhappy about this should just up sticks and do the same job down south? Then you'd be moaning that the Northerners are taking all your jobs! Your short sightedness amazes me.

It's a personal choice, different places will mean different pay, different expenses and different quality of life - make your decision and if you are unhappy then change

I moved to Gateshead and it was cheaper but the place is miserable, I might move down south shortly, it will be expensive but there are some jobs you just can't get in your home town. Personal choice.

If people are fed up of the divide then do something about it, the Scots want independence and one of the reasons I have heard cited is the supposed imbalance between spending on "the English" and "the Scottish" but the Scots get more central funding than us Northerners

It's just basic supply and demand and opportunity cost. It shouldn't be a suprise that rates of pay for similar roles differ across a country than it is that they differ across the world.

I haven't read the article but it is a Tory policy therefore automatically wrong, and automatically aimed at screwing over poor people. The End.

*fingers in ears*

London weighting has been around as long as I've worked, and that's all private sector. It's common sense.

However, my current job is the first time I've ever been paid a little extra for 'Manchester weighting'. Enough for a decent night out including meal, let's say.

2 years after starting they 'fessed up they'd underpaid my weighting and chucked me a few hundred quid extra in a lump sum. So that's all good then.

We'd all noticed that that was your core approach. But thank you for admitting it.

You'll feel better now.

Oh sorry, I was being sarcastic. I thought [iyou [/iof all people would have recognised that.

Apologies in advance if I have made any spelling errors.

[url=http://www.dfpni.gov.uk/8.17_london_weighting_allowance.pdfLondon Weighting Allowance for civil servants moving from Northern Ireland to London[/url: £4000pa for Inner London, £2690pa for Outer London

[url=http://www.unison.org.uk/acrobat/b694.pdfUNISON's document describing London Weighting for public sector jobs in 2005[/url: Inner London: £6k for police, £3k local government, £4k fire service, etc.

Note also that regions outwith London receive additional weighting. I'd get a ~£3k weighting if I moved to London to do the same job.

My issue isn't with differential salaries depending on the prevailing costs of the local region, but there's more than enough irrationality in Osborne's pronouncement to wonder what's really going on:

[list
[*The cost of living - depending on how you define it - isn't necessarily greater in London or the South-East than elsewhere. Compare, for example, the cost of fuel (or necessity of heating) in, say, [url=http://www.petrolprices.com/search.html?search=IV4Inverness (£1.45/l when I checked)[/url to [url=http://www.petrolprices.com/search.html?search=London%2C+KentLondon (£1.42/l)[/url. I picked Inverness because it's a relatively well-served and prosperous area - fuel (and food) prices increase rapidly once you head out of population centres, up here.[/*:m
[*Inflation is a nationwide phenomenon.[/*:m
[*Parts of London and the South-East are also rather poor (depending on your definition), which would seemingly contradict the need for a regional weighting or public sector salary increase in those parts of the South-East, depending on the definitions adopted. How granular should this be?[/*:m
[*If it's a 'simple matter of supply and demand', then wouldn't we expect those poor areas with high unemployment to be driving salaries down because there's a ready and available workforce to step into the jobs on offer? Is the problem actually something more fundamental than the influence of public sector salaries in the region?[/*:m
[*If the 'higher public sector wages' are preventing private sector companies from hiring staff, doesn't that suggest a shortage of potential employees, rather than an excess, and shouldn't the private sector companies then be competing in terms of the salaries that they offer to a scarce workforce?[/*:m
[*We'll probably not see a grading of MPs'/Lords' salaries depending on where their constituencies lie on the map. If the differential is justified by actual differences in costs of living, why not?[/*:m
[*Is it sensible or a positive move to, in effect, reduce centralised funding (through public sector salaries) to poorer regions whose private sector is more highly-dependent on that funding?[/*:m
[*Will the relative drop in pay result in more demand for tax credits and other state help?[/*:m
[*Do the plans intend to wait until the 'average' wage catches up, a wage for a 'comparable job' catches up, or something else? We could, for example, freeze MPs' pay until everyone else in London (or the UK) catches up with them, but that would be stupid and unreasonable. Is this proposal any less unreasonable, or better-defined?[/*:m[/list:u

I've no issue with the principle of pay matching what you need to pay your staff to live - which takes into account the cost of living, and may vary from region to region. That doesn't seem to be the motivation for this, to me.

Looking around the internet at reaction to this I found some info that a cleaner on a public sector grade one pay scale in Manchester will currently get an average pay rate of £6.88 per hour. Max is just over £7.

Is that moron Osborne seriously suggesting that this rate of pay is reduced because the cost of living is less in Manchester than London?

Thats how I see it would work



It has been suggested on the news today that the Yorks & Humber region public sector workers get on average 13% more than private sector (which is just rubbish in my husbands case as he has applied for 2 jobs in the private sector, one starting salary was slightly less than what he is on now and one is quite higher, for the same job he is doing now just in a different environment).

If Osborne uses the same figures as the BBC were reporting and he gets a 13% pay cut, after just having gone through a 3 year pay freeze and me losing my ESA (my only income) in September I will lose my home. I don't understand how this government thinks workers who have earned the same salary for years doing a job, won't be angry over this. My hubby expects to be striking over it in the next few months but obviously that is upto the Unions to finalise.

Using the same figures, what will happen to a grade 1 worker who works in this area who earns a few percent over minimum wage? Would they get paid below minimum wage?

Like I have already said, it wouldn't be difficult to implement a relative scale, with places such as Cambridge at the top and Hull at the bottom. The data is available I'm sure.

Just paid £2.60 to park my car for 45 minutes in Maidstone

I guess we deserve it for voting in the Conversatives around here.

Has anyone actually said that pay will be cut in the north?

No, you deserve to be embarrased about the nasty way they are treating the poor and vunerable members of society. I am not poor by any means in the true sense, but I am disabled and the way they have treated us is dispicable.

If you think its that expensive to live in Kent that you need "extra money" than why not move up North? Works both ways.

No, thats why I have questioned just how it will work. Will the North get the cuts or the South get the rise? Whichever way it will cause unrest.

Basically the Tories want to have London as this Super rich city state, with the rest of the nation employed as Thralls, servicing the needs of the Metropolitan elite. In the modern era of mobility there is an argument that things like the London Weighting along with the disproportionately large housing benefit subsidy London receives, are actually helping drive up the house price differentials between London and the rest of the UK. As discussed by other posters however. Other areas of the country are often just as expensive eg food, fuel. Or even more expensive, Public transport, council tax etc. Housing benefit link www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j& ... 4w&cad=rja

Basically the Tories want to have London as this Super rich city state, with the rest of the nation employed as Thralls, servicing the needs of the Metropolitan elite. In the modern era of mobility there is an argument that things like the London Weighting along with the disproportionately large housing benefit subsidy London receives, are actually helping drive up the house price differentials between London and the rest of the UK. As discussed by other posters however. Other areas of the country are often just as expensive eg food, fuel. Or even more expensive, Public transport, council tax etc. Housing benefit link www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j& ... 4w&cad=rja

Parking in King Street which is in the city centre of Manchester £6.80 for two hours
Parking in THE CITY of London is £2.50 per hour

Which reminds me: [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/mar/09/council-tax-in-it-together-anomalies?newsfeed=true£7.4m house in Westminster subject to same council tax as £155k house in Nottingham (£1300 pa)[/url.

What? Where has this come from? You've completely lost me there.



It is expensive to live here but I wasn't complaining about it.

Make sure you don't mention the Wandsworth Council Tax rates to our friend The Chair Maker too

You said that you deserve the high parking fees because you voted in the Tories. I just told you what, imo you really deserve and that is to be embarrassed about the way they are going about things and treating vunerable members of society.

I actually didn't think that was difficult to understand