15 ms·

I lived in Canary Wharf ~2011-2012, on the 42nd floor and with a stunning view west over the city. The shard was being built at the time and I've got plenty of

by mstade 3y ago

I lived in Canary Wharf ~2011-2012, on the 42nd floor and with a stunning view west over the city. The shard was being built at the time and I've got plenty of photos of dramatic sunsets, rays streaming through the glass and trusses. As much as I loathed living in London, I quite enjoyed the view.

LilBytes 3y ago
What was your reason for loathing living in London? Edit: reason I ask is because I assume it's costs, I can't imagine your apartment was cheap. I don't see much evidence that even SWE's can comfortably live there.
- jwmoz 3y ago
  It was great in 2012 and comfortable for SWEs (am one). Now it is honestly too expensive, £8 a pint in pub near work, it makes going out less fun.
  - iiiieu 3y ago
    Yeah, who could ever afford a £8 ping on a SWE salary. /s
    - vladvasiliu 3y ago
      I'm not a Londoner, I only visit occasionally, but I think this may be a psychological response to a big increase. I used to like going out in London: "everything's so cheap!" Especially, getting a nice beer at a random pub would cost significantly less than a random basic lager in Paris. But this year, I was shocked to see the price increase. It's now pricier than Paris, even though Paris prices have also edged up a bit. And since my cash is Euros, I always compared the prices as converted to euros, so this accounted for the conversion rate variations.
      - kjkjadksj 3y ago
        If you want cheap european beer just go to south europe. It will be cheaper than the water they charge you for.
    - ubercow13 3y ago
      Check Indeed, junior SWE jobs in London are listed starting at ~£25k/yr. Yes, £8 is expensive for a pint of lager.
      - dukeyukey 3y ago
        I'm sure you _can_ find salaries that low but it's not typical. I started on £30k 6 years ago, and that company was infamous for underpaying grads! Most other junior developers I knew (at other companies) were on ~£40k or so. £8/pint is also way more expensive than normal. I was out in Shoreditch last night, paid £6.70 for a pint of Brewdog, and that was more than I'd usually pay.
        bombcar 3y ago
        I can find $10 pints nearby, but I can also find $1 can nights, all within a mile or so of each other.
      - KptMarchewa 3y ago
        This is around what you can get in Warsaw.
    - csomar 3y ago
      Unless you want going out to be an Instagramable event instead of an after work one, then yeah.
    - isaacremuant 3y ago
      Tax rates matter. It's easy to talk as a yank in a US salary with the tax rates in most states. UK is insane.
      - creativenolo 3y ago
        -healthcare, etc, etc
        isaacremuant 3y ago
        Healthcare is terrible. It's mostly a scam with lots of propaganda and lack of perspective by British citizens. I'm not kidding. It's a system where the NHS will just push you forward and the insurance will cover fuck all and try to get you to the same NHS doctor. It's the same nanny state style as some other European countries where they will try and sell you nothing over the counter because "you might abuse it" but they have a drinking and illegal drug culture to rival the best of them. The US sucks if you're in the lower end of the spectrum without insurance but with insurance you actually get treatment. There's other countries where it's a pleasure to have private healthcare if you're middle class but many in europe definitely aren't. They'll just try to discourage you unless you're having an "my leg is detaching" type of emergency. There's a reason why there's ads in the tube to "go to turkey to fix X health problem". We should stop comparing having a health net for the jobless in a country with the US and typical quality of life/healthcare situation for a professional. Edit: If I felt things worked, and people would eventually be able to afford houses and get into a better situation high taxes would be fine, but it's high taxes and policies that still benefit the richest/landlords/corporates/big pharma. It's corruption and classism. He former is widespread in many countries but the pretense otherwise is what is annoying.
  - hk__2 3y ago
    > Now it is honestly too expensive, £8 a pint in pub near work, it makes going out less fun. Aren’t the salaries higher as well? In Paris a pint is €7 on average (~£6) but according to Glassdoor the average SWE salary is only €53k/yr vs. £68k for London.
    - okeuro49 3y ago
      > Aren’t the salaries higher as well? The killer is house and rental costs. If you want a flat in central London you'll be paying half (or more?) of your £68k salary on rent after tax. In Canary Wharf you might not even be able to afford rent. A £68k salary won't bring you close to being able to afford a mortgage, unless you have capital from other means e.g. inheritance.
      - gadders 3y ago
        To be fair, though, that is a prime-ish location, not much different to trying to live in Manhattan or the nice bits of SF.
        bombcar 3y ago
        Big cities are big enough that you can have vastly different ideas of what it means to "live in New York" or "live in LA" - I had friends in both who would say they lived there, but were a minimum an hour from the central business district.
        gadders 3y ago
        Yeah. You get people who live in Bromley who say they live in London, just because it's a London Borough.
        bombcar 3y ago
        I gave up answering where I lived years ago, now I just reply with the name of the nearest international airport; people are much more likely to know where LA is than any of the hundreds of smaller cities in and around its metro area.
  - pydry 3y ago
    That's the one kind of inflation which didn't bother me too much. I still go out just as much I just drink less. That's healthier. The property situation makes me far more angry. The UK construction and property industry completely lacks market discipline and quality regulations have been reduced (see: Grenfell where that literally killed people, but also the shocking build quality of most properties). Then there was the restriction of homebuilding - deliberately engineered by successive governments in order to jack up property prices and parasitically extract a greater % of Londoner incomes via rents. When the Tories talked about being Singapore-on-Thames I wished they meant build thousands of nice HDB apartment blocks and get tough on corruption but alas it seems what they actually meant was Moscow-on-Thames - make London an even bigger haven for oligarchs and dial up the corruption with more no bid government contracts to their mates.
    - noelwelsh 3y ago
      Here's some data corroborating this: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/indexofprivatehousingrentalprices/july2023 https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bull... As you can see, London rents are increasing at an accelerating rate.
      - Tarsul 3y ago
        thanks for the stats. Most often, rental stats are for new leases but actually those are numbers also for current renters (" The index not only measures the change in newly advertised rental prices, but reflects price changes for all private rental properties, including for existing tenancies."). 5% rent increases last year...
    - flower-giraffe 3y ago
      | quality regulations have been reduced (see: Grenfell where that literally killed people. Grenfell was a horrible tragedy. It was built as social housing in the 50’s or 60’s to a much higher standard (in terms of space and utility) than the so called luxury apartments of Canary Wharf. The installation of cladding to modernise the building to meet modern energy efficiency standards and the apparent failure to make sure that work was completed within the regulations seems to be the cause of the catastrophic spread of the fire. London planning is a complete mess. We waste millions on poorly executed projects to modernise social housing to save on CO2 emissions and at the same time we have the wealthy living in Victorian and older houses that are not allowed to install double glazing in order “to preserve the character of the property”.
  - agd 3y ago
    For non-Londoners, it’s worth pointing out that £8 for a pint is exceptionally high. In most smart pubs in central london the price for a regular pint is approx £5-£6.50. And you can get pints for approx £3 in centrally located Wetherspoons (a common pub chain).
    - zelos 3y ago
      £7 a pint in the pub in my Sussex village.
      - osullip 3y ago
        $15 AUD in my local Aussie pub(7.50 pound) A little off topic but just wanted to chime in because it's crazy here.
      - denton-scratch 3y ago
        Sussex villages are full of wealthy commuters. I wouldn't expect to find anything cheap in such a place.
  - _fat_santa 3y ago
    Unfortunatley we are seeing prices like this in the US as well. I live in Denver, CO and a pint here typically runs between $5-$10 depending on the place.
    - dougSF70 3y ago
      A US pint is 16 fl Oz vs a UK pint which is 20 fl Oz, so add 25% to the US price to do a like-for-like.
      - pb7 3y ago
        Spent months in London over the last year and didn’t realize this… thanks.
      - denton-scratch 3y ago
        UK Pint == Imperial Pint. USA disapproves of imperial measure, for historical reasons. A fluid ounce is based on avoirdupois, which isn't "imperial", so it didn't have to be abandoned. I think pints, quarts and gallons, all being based on the pint, are the only measures that differ significantly between the US and the UK.
- jokethrowaway 3y ago
  It's not really about the cost. I would say it's pollution, crime and lack of avenues for small kids. I was living on a skyscraper and the amount of black dust I was removing from next to the windows was mind-blowing. I still remember moving 1hr out of London and feeling like I was breathing again. Not what I wanted for my kids. The amount of stabbing and theft going on was pretty crazy. It was all around you. Some parks are ok and touristy, some parks are straight up dodgy and you run into drugged up, drunk people, (homeless?) people harassing you. There are almost no kids around so not super easy to find friends for your kids. Nurseries are small and crowded because real estate is at a premium. Again, moving out from the city fixed all the problems. Town life in the UK is actually pretty great. Sure you will miss on the main pros of London, events and networking. I'd recommend finding a nice town commuting distance from London to reap the most benefits.
  - new23d 3y ago
    Your comments are a reflection of life in Tower Hamlets, where PanP etc. are. London otherwise in the N, NE and SW parts has clean air with plenty of green spaces for kids.
    - jstx1 3y ago
      > where PanP etc. are. What are these?
    - jokethrowaway 3y ago
      I was not in Tower Hamlets but in the City of London and Southwark, but I'm sure your comment is valid: London is a large area and you can get a better quality of life on the outskirts. Still, flying from London to somewhere else or taking a train to go outside, the difference in air quality before and after was noticeable.
  - flower-giraffe 3y ago
    Canary Wharf is surrounded by poverty in a brown field redevelopment that has been a permanent construction site for over thirty years. It is not really representative of London. London is an expensive city, you’ll need several million pounds for a decent family home but if you can afford it it’s an absolutely fantastic place to live. Unfortunately the lack of affordable housing makes it less likely to be so in the long term. Arguably it is developments like Canary Wharf and the associated planning concessions that have fuelled the London property market to make it practically unaffordable for the vast majority of people that do the real work.
- bettercallsalad 3y ago
  London is actually surprisingly cheaper than many cities in US. You just have to find your place based on the budget. I lived in Ealing area (sure it’s far from many actions but lots of great ethnic food in far cheaper price than anywhere else) in a quite a spacious apartment and it was half as much as what I spent in both two cities I have lived in US. And the tube is excellent (compared to our public transport standard). I actually somewhat miss my time there. It was safe (again based on my standard in US) and I didn’t really need a car.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >London is actually surprisingly cheaper than many cities in US. Sure, because average salaries are also much lower than in the US.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - isaacremuant 3y ago
    Can you mention year and price? I'm curious. It can be vague if you think that would be identifiable info. I know Ealing and things are pretty pricey nowadays.
- mstade 3y ago
  It was a one bedroom rental in a newly developed skyscraper called the landmark, I think I paid about £1400/month. Cost was a thing, sure, but coming from Stockholm I was used to things being expensive and anyway the move to London effectively tripled my salary at the time. I was doing fine. After the year lease was up the estate agency wanted to jack the rent by 60%, which I then learned was par for the course in London so I moved around a bit, as you do. I eventually found myself living in Islington which I didn't mind so much. It wasn't the one thing that made me loathe living in London though, it was more like death by a thousand cuts. It ground me down you could say. I visited again this past Christmas for a few days, the first time I was in town just as a tourist. I can definitely see the appeal when you're staying just a few nights, it's a good tourist town, but living there just wasn't for me.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    Living in London is best done by moving progressively further out and treat going in to the centre as tourist trips. I spent my first couple of years at Marble Arch, and then moved to zone 3, and now I live in zone 5. I couldn't imagine living further in. Too little for the money, and too busy. I only go in to the centre to go to fancy bars and restaurants for date nights etc., or for other touristy stuff.

by mstade 3y ago

LilBytes 3y ago

What was your reason for loathing living in London? Edit: reason I ask is because I assume it's costs, I can't imagine your apartment was cheap. I don't see much evidence that even SWE's can comfortably live there.

jwmoz 3y ago
It was great in 2012 and comfortable for SWEs (am one). Now it is honestly too expensive, £8 a pint in pub near work, it makes going out less fun.
- iiiieu 3y ago
  Yeah, who could ever afford a £8 ping on a SWE salary. /s
  - vladvasiliu 3y ago
    I'm not a Londoner, I only visit occasionally, but I think this may be a psychological response to a big increase. I used to like going out in London: "everything's so cheap!" Especially, getting a nice beer at a random pub would cost significantly less than a random basic lager in Paris. But this year, I was shocked to see the price increase. It's now pricier than Paris, even though Paris prices have also edged up a bit. And since my cash is Euros, I always compared the prices as converted to euros, so this accounted for the conversion rate variations.
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      If you want cheap european beer just go to south europe. It will be cheaper than the water they charge you for.
  - ubercow13 3y ago
    Check Indeed, junior SWE jobs in London are listed starting at ~£25k/yr. Yes, £8 is expensive for a pint of lager.
    - dukeyukey 3y ago
      I'm sure you _can_ find salaries that low but it's not typical. I started on £30k 6 years ago, and that company was infamous for underpaying grads! Most other junior developers I knew (at other companies) were on ~£40k or so. £8/pint is also way more expensive than normal. I was out in Shoreditch last night, paid £6.70 for a pint of Brewdog, and that was more than I'd usually pay.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        I can find $10 pints nearby, but I can also find $1 can nights, all within a mile or so of each other.
    - KptMarchewa 3y ago
      This is around what you can get in Warsaw.
  - csomar 3y ago
    Unless you want going out to be an Instagramable event instead of an after work one, then yeah.
  - isaacremuant 3y ago
    Tax rates matter. It's easy to talk as a yank in a US salary with the tax rates in most states. UK is insane.
    - creativenolo 3y ago
      -healthcare, etc, etc
      - isaacremuant 3y ago
        Healthcare is terrible. It's mostly a scam with lots of propaganda and lack of perspective by British citizens. I'm not kidding. It's a system where the NHS will just push you forward and the insurance will cover fuck all and try to get you to the same NHS doctor. It's the same nanny state style as some other European countries where they will try and sell you nothing over the counter because "you might abuse it" but they have a drinking and illegal drug culture to rival the best of them. The US sucks if you're in the lower end of the spectrum without insurance but with insurance you actually get treatment. There's other countries where it's a pleasure to have private healthcare if you're middle class but many in europe definitely aren't. They'll just try to discourage you unless you're having an "my leg is detaching" type of emergency. There's a reason why there's ads in the tube to "go to turkey to fix X health problem". We should stop comparing having a health net for the jobless in a country with the US and typical quality of life/healthcare situation for a professional. Edit: If I felt things worked, and people would eventually be able to afford houses and get into a better situation high taxes would be fine, but it's high taxes and policies that still benefit the richest/landlords/corporates/big pharma. It's corruption and classism. He former is widespread in many countries but the pretense otherwise is what is annoying.
- hk__2 3y ago
  > Now it is honestly too expensive, £8 a pint in pub near work, it makes going out less fun. Aren’t the salaries higher as well? In Paris a pint is €7 on average (~£6) but according to Glassdoor the average SWE salary is only €53k/yr vs. £68k for London.
  - okeuro49 3y ago
    > Aren’t the salaries higher as well? The killer is house and rental costs. If you want a flat in central London you'll be paying half (or more?) of your £68k salary on rent after tax. In Canary Wharf you might not even be able to afford rent. A £68k salary won't bring you close to being able to afford a mortgage, unless you have capital from other means e.g. inheritance.
    - gadders 3y ago
      To be fair, though, that is a prime-ish location, not much different to trying to live in Manhattan or the nice bits of SF.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        Big cities are big enough that you can have vastly different ideas of what it means to "live in New York" or "live in LA" - I had friends in both who would say they lived there, but were a minimum an hour from the central business district.
        gadders 3y ago
        Yeah. You get people who live in Bromley who say they live in London, just because it's a London Borough.
        bombcar 3y ago
        I gave up answering where I lived years ago, now I just reply with the name of the nearest international airport; people are much more likely to know where LA is than any of the hundreds of smaller cities in and around its metro area.
- pydry 3y ago
  That's the one kind of inflation which didn't bother me too much. I still go out just as much I just drink less. That's healthier. The property situation makes me far more angry. The UK construction and property industry completely lacks market discipline and quality regulations have been reduced (see: Grenfell where that literally killed people, but also the shocking build quality of most properties). Then there was the restriction of homebuilding - deliberately engineered by successive governments in order to jack up property prices and parasitically extract a greater % of Londoner incomes via rents. When the Tories talked about being Singapore-on-Thames I wished they meant build thousands of nice HDB apartment blocks and get tough on corruption but alas it seems what they actually meant was Moscow-on-Thames - make London an even bigger haven for oligarchs and dial up the corruption with more no bid government contracts to their mates.
  - noelwelsh 3y ago
    Here's some data corroborating this: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/indexofprivatehousingrentalprices/july2023 https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bull... As you can see, London rents are increasing at an accelerating rate.
    - Tarsul 3y ago
      thanks for the stats. Most often, rental stats are for new leases but actually those are numbers also for current renters (" The index not only measures the change in newly advertised rental prices, but reflects price changes for all private rental properties, including for existing tenancies."). 5% rent increases last year...
  - flower-giraffe 3y ago
    | quality regulations have been reduced (see: Grenfell where that literally killed people. Grenfell was a horrible tragedy. It was built as social housing in the 50’s or 60’s to a much higher standard (in terms of space and utility) than the so called luxury apartments of Canary Wharf. The installation of cladding to modernise the building to meet modern energy efficiency standards and the apparent failure to make sure that work was completed within the regulations seems to be the cause of the catastrophic spread of the fire. London planning is a complete mess. We waste millions on poorly executed projects to modernise social housing to save on CO2 emissions and at the same time we have the wealthy living in Victorian and older houses that are not allowed to install double glazing in order “to preserve the character of the property”.
- agd 3y ago
  For non-Londoners, it’s worth pointing out that £8 for a pint is exceptionally high. In most smart pubs in central london the price for a regular pint is approx £5-£6.50. And you can get pints for approx £3 in centrally located Wetherspoons (a common pub chain).
  - zelos 3y ago
    £7 a pint in the pub in my Sussex village.
    - osullip 3y ago
      $15 AUD in my local Aussie pub(7.50 pound) A little off topic but just wanted to chime in because it's crazy here.
    - denton-scratch 3y ago
      Sussex villages are full of wealthy commuters. I wouldn't expect to find anything cheap in such a place.
- _fat_santa 3y ago
  Unfortunatley we are seeing prices like this in the US as well. I live in Denver, CO and a pint here typically runs between $5-$10 depending on the place.
  - dougSF70 3y ago
    A US pint is 16 fl Oz vs a UK pint which is 20 fl Oz, so add 25% to the US price to do a like-for-like.
    - pb7 3y ago
      Spent months in London over the last year and didn’t realize this… thanks.
    - denton-scratch 3y ago
      UK Pint == Imperial Pint. USA disapproves of imperial measure, for historical reasons. A fluid ounce is based on avoirdupois, which isn't "imperial", so it didn't have to be abandoned. I think pints, quarts and gallons, all being based on the pint, are the only measures that differ significantly between the US and the UK.
jokethrowaway 3y ago
It's not really about the cost. I would say it's pollution, crime and lack of avenues for small kids. I was living on a skyscraper and the amount of black dust I was removing from next to the windows was mind-blowing. I still remember moving 1hr out of London and feeling like I was breathing again. Not what I wanted for my kids. The amount of stabbing and theft going on was pretty crazy. It was all around you. Some parks are ok and touristy, some parks are straight up dodgy and you run into drugged up, drunk people, (homeless?) people harassing you. There are almost no kids around so not super easy to find friends for your kids. Nurseries are small and crowded because real estate is at a premium. Again, moving out from the city fixed all the problems. Town life in the UK is actually pretty great. Sure you will miss on the main pros of London, events and networking. I'd recommend finding a nice town commuting distance from London to reap the most benefits.
- new23d 3y ago
  Your comments are a reflection of life in Tower Hamlets, where PanP etc. are. London otherwise in the N, NE and SW parts has clean air with plenty of green spaces for kids.
  - jstx1 3y ago
    > where PanP etc. are. What are these?
  - jokethrowaway 3y ago
    I was not in Tower Hamlets but in the City of London and Southwark, but I'm sure your comment is valid: London is a large area and you can get a better quality of life on the outskirts. Still, flying from London to somewhere else or taking a train to go outside, the difference in air quality before and after was noticeable.
- flower-giraffe 3y ago
  Canary Wharf is surrounded by poverty in a brown field redevelopment that has been a permanent construction site for over thirty years. It is not really representative of London. London is an expensive city, you’ll need several million pounds for a decent family home but if you can afford it it’s an absolutely fantastic place to live. Unfortunately the lack of affordable housing makes it less likely to be so in the long term. Arguably it is developments like Canary Wharf and the associated planning concessions that have fuelled the London property market to make it practically unaffordable for the vast majority of people that do the real work.
bettercallsalad 3y ago
London is actually surprisingly cheaper than many cities in US. You just have to find your place based on the budget. I lived in Ealing area (sure it’s far from many actions but lots of great ethnic food in far cheaper price than anywhere else) in a quite a spacious apartment and it was half as much as what I spent in both two cities I have lived in US. And the tube is excellent (compared to our public transport standard). I actually somewhat miss my time there. It was safe (again based on my standard in US) and I didn’t really need a car.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >London is actually surprisingly cheaper than many cities in US. Sure, because average salaries are also much lower than in the US.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- isaacremuant 3y ago
  Can you mention year and price? I'm curious. It can be vague if you think that would be identifiable info. I know Ealing and things are pretty pricey nowadays.
mstade 3y ago
It was a one bedroom rental in a newly developed skyscraper called the landmark, I think I paid about £1400/month. Cost was a thing, sure, but coming from Stockholm I was used to things being expensive and anyway the move to London effectively tripled my salary at the time. I was doing fine. After the year lease was up the estate agency wanted to jack the rent by 60%, which I then learned was par for the course in London so I moved around a bit, as you do. I eventually found myself living in Islington which I didn't mind so much. It wasn't the one thing that made me loathe living in London though, it was more like death by a thousand cuts. It ground me down you could say. I visited again this past Christmas for a few days, the first time I was in town just as a tourist. I can definitely see the appeal when you're staying just a few nights, it's a good tourist town, but living there just wasn't for me.
- vidarh 3y ago
  Living in London is best done by moving progressively further out and treat going in to the centre as tourist trips. I spent my first couple of years at Marble Arch, and then moved to zone 3, and now I live in zone 5. I couldn't imagine living further in. Too little for the money, and too busy. I only go in to the centre to go to fancy bars and restaurants for date nights etc., or for other touristy stuff.