It really depends on your definition of crap. London dev salaries range from £24k for absolute juniors to £120k+ for the top 2%. Contractors fare substantially better. In my recruiter days I placed a Python developer who had experience with a particular trading system on a contract with a large trading firm. His contract was £1,100 per day for 6 months.

Keep in mind the other notable differences between here and the US such as free health care, a larger number of paid holidays etc.

Another way to see things is that the US, and especially Silicon Valley, have ridiculously high salaries. I'd say that compared to the rest of Europe, developer salaries in London are probably on the high side.

The service prices (health, education, banking, communications, etc) are generally much lower than in the US, though, so it's hard to get an accurate comparison of cost-of-life.

UK Developers seem to have no idea what they are worth, and work for peanuts. IMHO.

The varied answers you get about London salaries is because the financial industry pays pretty well, competitive with SV or NY money. Everyone else gets paid peanuts. Or goes contracting like me.

I was speaking to a Welsh comp-sci grad who was moving to London to be a programmer, for £19,000 p.a.

There's something mysterious about the low wages for programmers.