The UK is poor and getting poorer every year. People simply don’t start companies there. Making the labor market even worse isn’t going to fix the structural issues that are reducing living standards year after year

The amount of regulation a company has to comply with to hire and retain a "real" (non-uberised) worker in the UK has been increased to a great degree since the mid 90s. Gig work allows these companies to offer work without commitment, while the worker may offers his labour without commitment. There is no limit to the number of platforms/firms he can sign on with. If company x provides too few hours or undesirable terms then he can add company y and company z. Uberization is a predictable outcome where hiring risk is increased and assigned solely to the employer.

This is a tremendous opportunity for the capitalists and industrialists to dodge their obligations towards normal employees. Essentially outsource their costs, healthcare, pension, unemployment etc employee protections to the working class while additionally driving down the wages. They profit and the rest of the society (Ie the tax payers that still remain) have to shoulder the cost.

A labour union in Finland interviewed some Wolt gig workers and found that after discounting for time waited for delivery and expenses their effective take home pay was around 2.5€ per hour.

We can expect this to spread more and more from taxis and delivery service to wider spectrums.

Uberify? Funny, I continually tell people I refuse to use Uber because of its labour policies and it fails to register for them. I have never used Uber, Deliveroo or Just Eat which are trashy, exploitative companies.

> Be your own boss etc..

I was on 0 hour contract with staffing agency when I first arrived to UK until I got my white collar job. It was brilliant concept, I worked as much as I wanted/needed and from my perspective it was like a job that I can work on whenever I wanted which gave me the flexibility to find and prepare for my actual job.

Other people that I worked with were mostly students, Australians(apparently they take a year or two off before/after university to travel Europe and pay for it by working in UK), immigrant doctors/engineers and other professionals in order to pay for their expenses when preparing for their exams in UK so that their qualifications are recognized.

So there's definitely a gist of reality in the advertisement. That said, I knew that I was going to get a proper job and most of the other people were in that mindset so we just made money and had great time but there were some people who did this as their main income and they were forced to move cities when shifts dry out. There were also some people who worked 16 hours a day everyday, making relatively good money but destroying their lives.

It's definitely something that must not be considered long term.

Not living in a major city puts you at the bottom of the social ladder? Wow.

A lot of people living outside major cities seem to have a better quality of live than those in them.

London is probably the most subsidised part of the UK although it pretends to be the opposite. It does produce vast amounts of money but also because its infrastructure etc is maintained and it is constantly promoted via the TV etc.

>The UK desperately needs a functioning angel and VC culture

That is like the last thing they need. Functioning unions and collective bargining is the proven way to combat this.

Zero-hours contracts probably started as a pragmatic tool for genuinely small, volatile businesses, but they scaled into something very different when large employers adopted them systematically