The Nick meme is a great way of encapsulating how utterly sick of the UK young professionals are at this point.
There is no way to win. I know many young people who are very comfortably in the top 5% of earners in the UK, paying tens of thousands of pounds of income tax per year, and are still locked into paying massive amounts of rent, because it's near-impossible to actually own a house here at this point. So quite honestly, what is the point any more? It's really no wonder UK productivity is dropping.
It's really hard to describe how bad the general vibe is here.
Meanwhile pensioners sit comfortably in four-bed houses in London suburbs with triple lock pensions guaranteed by the government.
It's not a new thing. I'm genX and I lived in rental until my 40s. Was in a 1 bed flat with my wife and son until he was 4. Eventually managed to buy a small place, but even then I was lucky.
I reject this generational war thing though. British state pensions are the worst in Europe. The triple lock doesn't make pensioners rich; it just keeps them from sliding into abject poverty.
I live in the East Midlands in the UK. You can grab a reasonable first house here for less than £150k quite easily. So you'll need a 5% deposit, £7,500 for one of those. One person on an average salary for the area would be able to afford a mortgage for a house like this on their own. But Nick has a girlfriend, who can hopefully work, so should be able to afford it easily.
But half of people earn less than the mean salar though. So what about those on minimum wage? Well, one person with a full time minimum wage job should be able to get a mortgage for close to £100k, so wouldn't be able to afford a £150k house on their own. They could scrape by and get a house close to £100k though. There are plenty of these. Again, two people on minimum wage should have no problem.
I recognise that people have all sorts of different circumstances, so this is not meant to minimise the difficulty of affording property, but I'm just not recognising this claim from the outset that you need a £100k deposit or high paid job to get on the property ladder. It's hard, but it's doable for most.
And on top of this, Lifetime ISAS are a thing, so you only need to save up 80% of your deposit, the govt will pay the rest. And shared ownership is a thing, making it even easier.
>And on top of this, Lifetime ISAS are a thing, so you only need to save up 80% of your deposit, the govt will pay the rest. And shared ownership is a thing, making it even easier.
LISAs are a trap if you want to buy in the South. You can only use it if the value of the property is £450k or less. The limit hasn't been raised since 2017 despite crazy house price inflation. So many people got completely fucked by this; they have their money locked up in the LISA, can't buy a house near London with it, and can't transfer it to something else without a huge penalty.
More broadly, "the govt pays the rest" is part of the problem. All this help-to-buy stuff amounts to demand subsidies that just push prices higher and higher.
Where is 100k for a house deposit coming from?! Don't most people start with a way smaller deposit? Like 5% is common these days. Yes you'll pay an enormous amount of interest. You pay rent to the owning class one way or another.
C'mon... 3 years have passed and only two job offers applied for? What is Nic's degree in? Babylonian history? When I was in this position I applied to 20 ads per month. In addition to applying I had alerts on my phone, if a job ad dropped that matched my cv well I'd call the recruiter within 5 minutes of posting. I scored two great jobs this way. But this was in IT... I hear every other industry is much, much harder
As someone sympathetic to this, throwing in the culture war stuff (make jokes about LGBT etc) is a massive own goal and makes it so easy for people to discredit. This could have far more cross-party support but it's just going to amuse the people who already agreed with it and make everyone else think it's the alt-right letting the mask slip..
It's "viral" marketing for progress-party.uk, if you play to the end there is a link to a Google doc to register your interest.
The veiled racism and bigotry in the "sim" is cheap. The current housing situation may be made worse by migration, but the majority of it is legal so hardly the migrants fault if we are inviting them.
So blame the government (predominantly Conservative over the last 20 years) and all the NIMBYs and hypocrites that stop anything changing in this glorious country.
> A 50,000 home new town in Kent is blocked because they found nests full of agitated Chupacabras following the government's 'reintroduction' of the cryptid to British arable land. Your deposit requirement increases by £5000.
36 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 59.2 ms ] threadI like that the site seems to use the gov.uk styling.
That part actually made me LOL.
There is no way to win. I know many young people who are very comfortably in the top 5% of earners in the UK, paying tens of thousands of pounds of income tax per year, and are still locked into paying massive amounts of rent, because it's near-impossible to actually own a house here at this point. So quite honestly, what is the point any more? It's really no wonder UK productivity is dropping.
It's really hard to describe how bad the general vibe is here.
Meanwhile pensioners sit comfortably in four-bed houses in London suburbs with triple lock pensions guaranteed by the government.
I reject this generational war thing though. British state pensions are the worst in Europe. The triple lock doesn't make pensioners rich; it just keeps them from sliding into abject poverty.
But half of people earn less than the mean salar though. So what about those on minimum wage? Well, one person with a full time minimum wage job should be able to get a mortgage for close to £100k, so wouldn't be able to afford a £150k house on their own. They could scrape by and get a house close to £100k though. There are plenty of these. Again, two people on minimum wage should have no problem.
I recognise that people have all sorts of different circumstances, so this is not meant to minimise the difficulty of affording property, but I'm just not recognising this claim from the outset that you need a £100k deposit or high paid job to get on the property ladder. It's hard, but it's doable for most.
And on top of this, Lifetime ISAS are a thing, so you only need to save up 80% of your deposit, the govt will pay the rest. And shared ownership is a thing, making it even easier.
LISAs are a trap if you want to buy in the South. You can only use it if the value of the property is £450k or less. The limit hasn't been raised since 2017 despite crazy house price inflation. So many people got completely fucked by this; they have their money locked up in the LISA, can't buy a house near London with it, and can't transfer it to something else without a huge penalty.
See: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2025/06/lifetime-isa-...
More broadly, "the govt pays the rest" is part of the problem. All this help-to-buy stuff amounts to demand subsidies that just push prices higher and higher.
Hang in there UK.
You can rent a nice, 2 bedroom flat with two showers+toilets, 13 mins' walk from a London Underground station in zone 3, for less than £2,000.
Even if they don't want to share with another couple, Nick and his girlfriend should each be paying less than £1,000, no?
The veiled racism and bigotry in the "sim" is cheap. The current housing situation may be made worse by migration, but the majority of it is legal so hardly the migrants fault if we are inviting them.
So blame the government (predominantly Conservative over the last 20 years) and all the NIMBYs and hypocrites that stop anything changing in this glorious country.
> A 50,000 home new town in Kent is blocked because they found nests full of agitated Chupacabras following the government's 'reintroduction' of the cryptid to British arable land. Your deposit requirement increases by £5000.
This is too real...