you encourage people to work locally rather than commute, which makes it more expensive to companies to base themselves in London.

Your maths seem wonky.

It doesn’t cost the companies anything to be in London. It costs the employees – who can’t afford to live nearby, so have to live some distance away and drag themselves to their place of work, with negative impact on CO2.

But the company feel important because they re based in London.

It doesn’t cost the companies anything to be in London.

Errrr! Are you sure?

UCL published this table:

London (£52.50ft2 per month)
Belfast (£6.82/ft2 per month)
Cambridge (£4.08ft2 per month)
Exeter (£3.97ft2 per month)
Edinburgh (£3.45ft2 per month)
Brighton (£3.38/ft2 per month)
Leicester (£3.18ft2 per month)

OK, to clarify, it doesn’t cost a company anything in travel/commuting costs to be in London. Those costs are on the employees alone.

i’d expect to be paid significantly more to do exactly the same job in london vs devon.

OK, to clarify, it doesn’t cost a company anything in travel/commuting costs to be in London. Those costs are on the employees alone.

Unless they buy in a service or supplier in which case they will be paying the third parties travel / commuting costs

OK, to clarify, it doesn’t cost a company anything in travel/commuting costs to be in London. Those costs are on the employees alone.

Well, apart from they have to pay significantly higher London salaries to convince people to live or commute there.

I’ve applied/worked/been offered jobs in Teesside (almost the cheapest house prices in the UK and remarkably good public transport) and London, roles in the Teesside offices (even for the same companies) are advertised at about 65-70% of the London salary which is pretty much needed to offset the cost of commuting/house prices.

Swings and roundabouts, I had more disposable income living up north, but will have the ability to ‘downsize’ and move back there and get a chunk of that back with the difference in house prices so it’s a short term loss.

The contract rates were even more stark, well over double in London. Again because they were trying to encourage people to commute in. So it doesn’t take much disruption to convince a portion of those people not to bother.

The problem is that the general public don’t want to bear the inconvenience and there would need to be cross party agreements rather than relying on voting/be at mercy of losing because of unpopular environmental policies. You can imagine how well that would work…

On the **** nose.

These threads always bring out the loons.

Which are the loons?

Those advocating for a reduction in car travel /commuting…?

Or

Those who think riding a bike, using the bus or finding a job closer to home…?

Re. Chelmsford

Another factor not isolated to Chelmsford is the constant need to fill in every green space or brownfield site with more houses, retirements homes and flats with no thought to the road network and no wider plan or ability to tackle congestion.

I know! I’m amazed at the number of new builds that have gone up in the last ten years.

I built (well, partly built, but my nephew thinks it was all my doing) the flats in Central Park, those opposite the police station in town, the big estate on the edge of Witham and a few others before leaving the UK.

Now Channels has been turned into a massive estate with zero transport links. The old County Hotel is going to be retirement homes, as the old Miami Motel now is.

And have you seen Maldon? The size of the new estate there is staggering! And there is sweet FA in Maldon…

B-in-l sells waste management to building sites and knows where and what is going to be built. It’s staggering! Who TF wants to live in Essex?

Even if we Return to pre industrial revolution Britain…. Fair distribution of land and keen rewards for useful physical services…. Localised food production, and a complete wipe out of unnecessary consumerism. A simpler time where a special treat was meat on a Sunday or a hot bath.
Watch the population dwindle, and the Co2 decline….
Pretty extreme…. And ultimately pointless whilst Americans are driving round in v8 petrol cars, triple bagging half of Walmart and China are injection moulding entire oil Wells into packaging for pointless shit. And you would feel pretty hard done by in your primitive community enjoying your wholesome existence. That must be what it’s like to live in a community affected by climate change, suffering a 5th year of drought, having contributed nothing towards it whatsoever….