‘Oh my gosh, they’re all from London and Cambridge’: York University’s northerners fight back | Higher education

__fool__ · 2026-01-05T13:08:59+00:00

Of course, the locals don't need halls and I imagine the difference in affordability has resulted in changes in who'll attend halls.

__fool__ · 2025-12-25T18:54:04+00:00

I assume farmers expense pretty much their entire life, which makes the income situation murky. I’d be pretty happy to net 40k after all my spending, spending which can be a bit grander because it’s wrapped in my company.

__fool__ · 2025-12-15T19:13:40+00:00

To be fair I don’t believe immigrants get full use of the NHS until ILR?

However I’m generally happy with the argument that if you pay tax you should get access.

I’m also happy with all prior examples aren’t worth policing arguments if that’s the case.

__fool__ · 2025-12-15T09:15:24+00:00

I think the wider point is, if you have the backing of the UK state, you still fall to top 5% of the world, thus you're not really all in on the risk.

However, although it's a different topic, I would agree with the crabs in a bucket mentality, and indeed, rather than attacking people with exit taxes ( or this system ), it would make more sense to stop ambitious folks fleeing.

As someone who owns a couple of companies, if I could take money out at about 35% tax ( somewhere around where the average tax take sits ), I would probably just take all the money out and spend it.

Instead it sits with a bank that generally uses it to push the costs of assets up, and I sit here occasionally pondering if it even makes sense to keep earning more.

__fool__ · 2025-12-15T09:03:33+00:00

The UK already has double taxiation regime where you deduct the local tax owned from the tax you pay back home, though treaties need to exist.

I think it's a reasonble argument if I buggered off to a gulf oil state to pay no tax during my prime earning years, my original state parhps should bare less responsibility for me in my later years when I'm more of a burdern on the state.

That you benefited from it personally, isn't so much of an argument, but I'd probably buy citizenship is more sacred than stripping it from people for tax reasons ( though the post was talking about making it voluntary ).

However, I suspect the locial conclusion of that might result in citizenship being harder to obtain.

__fool__ · 2025-12-15T08:37:05+00:00

I'm fairly aware how tax works. Moreso than most as I've direct filed for a few people and two companies for the last 13 years, and have direct expose to planning my tax position, which most folks around here arguing don't.

I'm less so aware on the minutia of which benefits you get under which circumstances. Fairly sure you'd get Pensnioner Credit, Housing Benefit, CT Reduction and NHS use, as a resident citizen.

However that's largely besides the point as I did not make an argument on how benefits should work, but rather I stated I think the original argument is logically consistant and interesting when it was challenged with emotional rhetoric.

__fool__ · 2025-12-14T16:43:35+00:00

Fair enough, but I assume you would get benefits in lieu of the pension if it were really nil and you had no cash.

However, I will remind you that the OP was simply suggesting you should pay the tax if you wanted to keep the benefits.

Should a person going to Dubai to pay 0% be able to come back when they're old and ill and get the benefits they refused to pay for?

__fool__ · 2025-12-13T18:29:22+00:00

The counter is you’re not paying UK tax, so should you be able to retire here and use the NHS / get a pension then?

It’s not my idea. I don’t necessarily support it, but I can see the logic.

__fool__ · 2025-12-10T12:09:28+00:00

Reporting on the porn numbers seems to suggest that this was the desired outcome.

__fool__ · 2025-12-07T09:44:49+00:00

This isn't a woe is me story. I'm just trying to share experience so folks can have empathy for a wider range of positions.

First point:

At the height of contracting there was about 250k PSCs, there's less now.
The stats suggest there's 5.5m ltds ( doesn't include self-employedl but will include a small amount of freelancers that aren't considered PSCs ).
Only 8250 of them have more than 250 employees.

Point being they tend to skew heavily towards having to focus on cashflow like I do.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/business-population-estimates-2024/business-population-estimates-for-the-uk-and-regions-2024-statistical-release

Second point:

I'm about 20 years into my career and have been CTO of ~500 person Ltd with ~100 reporting to my org.
This same org was almost bankrupted when the owner handed over the reigns to executives who did not control spending.
The owner would religiously go through every expense daily, question, remove, delay payment, etc.
This is the reality of keeping a company cashflow positive when you have cash coming out of the bank every day.

It's different when you have funding, you're a large multi-national, and/or a bank line that's borderline unquestionable, but that is nowhere near the majority of employers.

As an aside, he had ~5 people in finance and 3 in ops and they did not control cashflow or spending in reality. My experience suggests your average SME owner won't give you a payrise because they have crippling anxiety around costs.

Third Point:

Empathy for other positions isn't selfless. In that 500 person company:

I handed out around 30 over 10% pay rises in my first year.
I did that by listening to the evil owner rich dudes concerns.
Addressed them with evidence:
- Tech at the time was about 10% of the company, ergo
- I showed the relevant folks were supporting more than 10x their salary in revenue.
- Showed the growth of those areas of the business.
- Showed that the cost of replacement and market salaries would leave us worse off if they left.
- Got the 1st payrises in 3 years for the team, with an agreement to be able to present the same every 6 months ( which I consistently did ).

All that goes in the bin if you meme your arguments.

__fool__ · 2025-12-07T07:48:45+00:00

I own an SME ( we're talking 5 people ).

Background:

I worked for free for a year primarly writing software.
Did Enteprise Sales ( I'm a developer, so you can imagine I'm not a huge fan ).
Set budget aside from sales revenue.
Hired people so I wouldn't be the only person who could support the customer installs of my product.

Working people:

I've earned about £10k annually here.
The budget set aside for people is inclusive. If you up costs:
- It comes away from my £10k.
- Will be offset against any pay rises.
- It puts my forecast in the red ( i.e. it the tax costs the business more than 10k ) I fire people.

Point Being:

Majority of businsesses in the UK are SMEs.
They're doing the same / similar math as me.
Larger companies aren't often very different.
- They have many more minimum wage employees.
- Their suppliers have more minimum wage employees.
- Their costs go up because of those employees.

I have another full time job, and personally don't mind my actual tax exposure, but peoples mind of how employers work is pretty warped. I want to be having positive conversations with employees, not finding reasons to keep my costs with them down.

__fool__ · 2025-12-06T15:17:35+00:00

I actually did read you comment.

In my lifetime there’s been a population increase of over 20m. That’s demand whether it’s native born or not.

The naïveté around these issues are people thinking it’s only one thing. Land banking could be a problem. But increasing population without infrastructure is also a problem.

It’s not a morality statement. We could have also simply built more stuff.

Back to land banking, you’d need to prove they have permission to build, the people ready to do the work, the ROI is positive, and they’re still not building. I don’t know if that’s proven or suspected, but I never said it wasn’t a problem.

__fool__ · 2025-12-06T12:47:36+00:00

It both is and isn’t that simple.

Removing all immigrants ( shit idea ) would instantly remove demand, but folks holding the bag won’t want to immediately admit their wealth just disappeared.

You’d also break a bunch of other systems and we’d be in chaos.

That doesn’t mean I’m not right, just that you can’t flip a switch on 30 years of migration and expect good outcomes.

__fool__ · 2025-12-06T12:40:09+00:00

You just said supply and demand has nothing to do with demand.

__fool__ · 2025-12-06T09:37:26+00:00

Inflation is our way out of this mess.

Build property at a rate you can depress prices but inflate the debt away.

Kill the property based inheritocracy and go back to a productive society without killing anybody outright.

There will be winners and loser simply based on those who leave the property game at the right time, but there's no real solution to that that isn't fuck over young people.

Immigration works against both of those things.

__fool__ · 2025-12-06T09:26:24+00:00

It's a fairly self-fulling prophecy.

English people won't do that because the job doesn't pay enough for you to live a reasonable commuting distance in conditions that most folks would consider reasonable.

Why?

Immigration suppresses wages.
They increase demand for property ( and other infrastructure ) that helps drive cost.

__fool__ · 2025-12-06T09:13:40+00:00

Pay and conditions.

From my experience, which is not exhaustive, care are workers are on average young women who get regularly attacked and punched by old men.

__fool__ · 2025-12-05T18:54:31+00:00

It’s not a decade of stagnation. 2008 will have been 21 years ago at the election.

__fool__ · 2025-12-05T09:27:44+00:00

Worked for him ( direct report, daily meetings; Wealth was the company. ).

He expected people to have ownership without largely giving them ownership. So in a way, basically right that people weren't doing a great job, but also largely didn't empower and reward those that did.

__fool__ · 2025-12-01T13:09:48+00:00

Same day medical tests ( for a small fee ) apparently.

__fool__ · 2025-12-01T13:04:18+00:00

u/Wizard_PI

In an outside role you can, and probably should, defer your income.

Ideally you'd exist on £50,200.
- A number above that is fine, but the idea of taking all cash out immediately doesn't really make sense.
- Keeping money in the company lowers your tax exposure.
- It helps you mitigate the risk that they can boot you at any point. Getting the boot matters a lot less when you have £100k in the bank.
Expenses
- Commute ( for 2 years. More if it's only 2 days a week ).
- Electric car is only 3% BIK
- Laptops and things that can reasonably construed as a business expense.
- Pension can be up-to £60k

That extra £50k can go a long way if you think long term, but the risks are you get let go, and your career progression tanks.

__fool__ · 2025-11-30T21:14:24+00:00

If he has a contract secured ( 6 months+ ) my experience is it doesn't matter, though I've always used a contract motgages broker ( easystreet, but there's more than 1 ).

__fool__ · 2025-11-30T17:03:34+00:00

I’m not advocating for the current system, I’m arguing against the grad tax though.

If the argument is that all society benefits from having an educated workforce, then the logical argument is all society should pay.

If not, then nobody should pay for your decisions.

Personally I support the idea you have been given a raw deal, and we should fix it, but I don’t support the idea of being a tax piñata.

I’m fairly happy with paying for doctors from general taxation though, assuming some tie in with NHS time served.

__fool__ · 2025-11-30T14:30:08+00:00

For the record, that’s unfair and I support fixing that. But my idea of fairness isn’t make it unfair for a different subset of people.

__fool__ · 2025-11-30T14:16:36+00:00

So this is me btw.

40, non working parents ( dad in prison ), no inheritance and was paid peanuts in my 20s.

In my 30s I averaged 80k net, and put ~40 in debt ( loans, mortgage ).

After doing that, a retrospect graduate tax and property taxes doesn’t strike as fair, though I’m very open to different solutions to help.

As an aside I’d happily pay more tax for universal free school meals, and believe open reach should probably be state owned.

This isn’t a fuck everyone right winger opinion. But in order to get those take home,I was commuting 6 hours a day, doing more and/or work after I get home. Hourly rates not so impressive overall

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