The quality of life and cost of living in the UK

As the season when people think about leaving, (those who are about to retire and the many working who don’t seem to find this the land of opportunity our politicians promise it is), gets underway, its always miserable January when they start wondering if they would be better off retiring or getting a new life overseas.

The most recurring reasons I hear are

1. Making ends meet or not as the case may be

 2. The quality of everyday life, or lack off and constant "stiffing" (stiffing is the practice pioneered by the IT industry, finding clever ways, deals, contracts etc. that squeeze little amounts money out of thier consumers, lots of them, on the hope they won't individually notice) 

Both these concerns are of course linked, having a reasonable disposable income tends to lead to a more social able lifestyle, a more social able lifestyle leads to less breakdown in social order as is the case throughout most of Europe, particularly those that border the Mediterranean, Spain, The South of France, Cyprus and Portugal just to mention a few.

Instead of looking at the numbers peddled by Westminster, low inflation, growth etc people look at real life, cost of food, energy, travel, tax etc the things they have to purchase in order to live and have some "quality".

A typical couple living in this country who have been prudent and been lucky enough to got together an occupational pension, at the top end this will be two thirds of their income as it was over a period leading up to retirement, the governments own figure suggest the average wage is around £24,000 per annum, which makes a typical pension of about £16,000 a year, take of a further 20% for income tax and that leaves around £13,000 or around £260 per week, and if you are working on the average wage then this is about the same when you take NI into account.

When you look in the “must buy” list, starting with the most expensive purchase we make in our lives, Government, top of the pile is Council Tax

Making ends meet on the average income

Council Tax £25 per week

Food £80 per week (if you’re really tight)

Energy costs £25 per (if you wear a jumper)

Travel £30 per week in fuel, assuming you have a modest car (more on that in quality of life)

£25 per week for various must have insurances, and unavoidable taxes like TV and Car

£25 per week for essential stuff like clothes, toiletries and phone

The basics of life come to around £200 per month, assuming you pay no rent and have mortgage or other forms of borrowing, which leaves about £60 per week to splash on your Quality of Life

Quality of life on £60 per week (or stiffing the consumer)

Saturday, visit the town centre for shopping, £3 to park (if you’re speedy), and two cups of coffee £3

Sunday, visit a relative in Hospital £4 to park, stop off at the local and have one drink each £5, a packet of crisps 50p which contains 8 crisps and some crumbs.

Monday, take a trip to a local beauty spot, £3 to park, £5 to gain admission, 2 ice creams £3.50

Tuesday, stay at home, it’s raining. Study mobile bill and contract, try to work out  why it's costing 3 times more than the salesman said, call them, wait 15 minutes for them to answer the call you are paying for.

Wednesday, mid week  food shopping trip to supermarket, come home with bags full of stuff, a lot of which you’ll throw away because the supermarket has stiffed you on the use buy date or sold you things in 3’s or 5’s. Stop off at post office to pay fine and collect the present your grand daughter sent.

Thursday, trip to council dump with your trailer full of garden cuttings, get turned away, drive 25 miles to the council office in the next town and get a trailer licence £15.

Friday, find out that on Saturday you weren’t speedy enough in town, exit camera calculates you overstayed by 20 mins, pay NRP (No Responsibility Parking Ltd) £35 fine.

Next Saturday morning, £35 letter from the bank telling you you're £6 overdrawn

Following week, don’t go out, it’s just too risky

On the subject of cars, as promised early, a business associate of mine in Cyprus said “in Britain you are bonkers, you build houses, you build commercial centres but you never join them up, it’s why you all have cars and so much congestion and so little choice”

As a PS to the above comment, I live in Worcestershire, a county divided by the River Severn, they are building 10’s of 1000’s of houses on one side of the river and all the work is on the other! This wouldn’t be so bonkers but for the fact in my area there are only two routes over the river the congestion and resulting polution is dreadful, it takes about an hour to travel the 8 miles from houses to work and they are going to double the number of cars with no spend on "joining up"  We don’t have a green government we clearly have a brown one!

It’s no surprise then that so many people are attracted to countries like Spain, Cyprus etc. where the things that matter on a day to day basis are free (parking, beauty spots) and cheap (Tax, food, entertainment) officialdom and jobs worth are delightfully kept to minimum and the practice of “stiffing the consumer” cannot be found in the language.