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One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

bbc.com

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Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#521

Post by ztrww »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #204
jameshush wrote: post #153

Visiting family in the UK for the first time in about five years. Costs here are _way_ higher than I remember. I bought three hamburgers, three drinks, and two large pops at a burger shop here, the total was 48 GBP (about $60 USD). This was at Five Guys. I couldn't believe it. I visited my co-worker in the UK, and over some beers, he mentioned he's getting taxed at 48-50% on top of this. Also 20% VAT on regular shopp…

Can't believe prices are so high...goes to Five Guys which is at least 3x any other burger chain. I still can't believe how cheap the UK is. Big Mac meal near me is £6, cheeseburger is £1, 1kg of potatoes was 20p the other week, two-portion microwavable rice 20p, even a nice matured ribeye steak is only £5, it is genuinely incredible. In particular, the price of stuff that comes from farmers is really too low in the…

> For example, the govt recently introduced free childcare for a certain number of hours. Where do you think the taper would be? Probably median income? £28k? Maybe where child benefits stop £50k? Nope, £100k

So do you also think primary education is also welfare?

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#522

Post by ztrww »

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #425
Kaijo wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. However, enough of us do to render your claim that Five Guys is "3x as expensive as any other chain" entirely factually incorrect. And the situation's basically the same in any UK city big enough to have a few Five Guys.

It isn't. I would try leaving London. Almost all the chains you have mentioned do not exist outside London.

I bet the person complaining about the price of burgers was in London or some other major city which has them though. And nicer burgers won’t be much cheaper outside of London (they simply might not exist in some places though)

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#523

Post by HlessClaudesman »

rcarr wrote: post #165
HlessClaudesman wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK was already creaking at the seems in the 2000's. I left in 2011 and have spent the last 5 years crawling up a sewer pipe of regulations trying to get my post brexit immigration sorted. Brexit was just a fantasy of better days to come that was actually pretext for a right wing power grab. And what do right wingers ultimately want? A world of red in tooth and claw capitalism with themselves as the permanent winners,…

> UK was already creaking at the seems in the 2000's. I left in 2011 and have spent the last 5 years crawling up a sewer pipe of regulations trying to get my post brexit immigration sorted. As someone planning to leave and never come back, can you give me a brief overview of some of the shit I might not know about that I'm going to have to deal with?

Well EU immigration basically made it tougher for brits to emigrate, which is fair enough.

I can't elaborate too much but high skilled and family reunification pathways are still open, but the tests and documentation are more onerous than before brexit.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#524

Post by bradfa »

lucb1e wrote: post #184
bradfa wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube, Netflix, music streaming, most video conferencing, and general web browsing all work fine on a 1.5Mb/s link in my experience. It's certainly not fast, but it's fast enough to do the basics.

Most things you mention are a matter of buffering and waiting it out, so those will work in a 'basic' fashion as you say. But video conferencing? Even in a 1:1 call, where you need to download only one audio and video stream, if you don't live alone (most people don't), I would be very impressed if you got a router that can recognise and prioritise the call traffic to the point where that works smoothly.

I used to have 768kbps down / 128kbps up cable internet. There was some buffering on Netflix at the start of a stream but it was fine. When we got upgraded to 1.5Mbps down / 256kbps up there was basically no buffering at the start of Netflix or YouTube streams and FaceTime worked fine.

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#525

Post by ztrww »

scott_w wrote: post #504
ztrww wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location... combined with ever increasing inequality offers a much better explanation. Inequality is high in the US too but at least they have a lot of growth which means that the bottom 80% or so are at least not getting poorer.

And who's been in power since 2010 in the UK, overseeing all of the growing issues?

This has been the case throughout most Europe. UK seems to be below average though, then again nobody forced them to vote for Brexit…

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#526

Post by ztrww »

scott_w wrote: post #503
ztrww wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre 2010 (well pre 2008 to be fair) UK had a higher or similar per capita GDP as the US, now it’s not even close. If the current trend continues it will be almost double in a few years.. Other European countries have been doing a bit better but it has clearly been a ‘lost decade’ in most of Western Europe and you can’t really blame the tortes for that.

> Other European countries have been doing a bit better The UK has had the worst pandemic recovery almost anywhere in the developed world. How many other countries have an annual "Winter Crisis" in their healthcare that's extending into autumn and summer? The Tories have been in power since 2010. They're the common factor in the many issues the UK is currently facing.

Everything that happened since Brexit is a disaster and it’s mainly the fault of conservative party and their voters (also labor picking comrade Corbyn to be its leader meaning there weren’t really any reasonable alternatives..). Combine that with the overall trend of decline/stagnation across Western Europe and you’ve got something…

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#527

Post by yootyootr »

asdff wrote: post #520
yootyootr wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Walthamstow (North London) Five Guys is selling the regular hamburger right now for £8.65 which in dollars is $10.75.

Out of curiosity I just checked Detroit, MI, median income of 20k usd a year. Still about the same at $10.49. This is almost bewildering how the price is pegged to about $10.75 the world over, no matter the price of labor or rent or beef or getting it to the world over. Margins must be all over the place.

I suppose it's to prevent Burger Arbitrage

Re: One million cancel broadband as living costs rise

#528

Post by cudgy »

csdvrx wrote: post #193
cudgy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new 5G wireless providers are changing this some, at least in urban areas. I’m currently using one and get around 500mbits download rate. Cost is about $25 per month.

Which one?

Late reply, but it is Verizon.
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