I haven't noticed a huge shortage of Ruby on Rails devs in London, and the average salaries don't reflect a major shortage either. According to itjobswatch.co.uk, the average Ruby salary is the same as the average Java salary in London.

I also thought the idea of hiring cheap, sub-par developers as a way of saving costs was somewhat discredited by now.

Thats advertised rates. The actual rates are higher or you lose people before you get a chance to offer a place to them.

We employ starting at £50,000 and we still lose 80% of our candidates to better cash sums.

Hello, I'd like to get in touch with you. Would you be OK with sharing your email address please?

Cheers.

When I interviewed with the GOV.UK people in January it turned out that the seemingly good salary they were offering was actually about the same as I'm currently paid up here in Leeds. However, the pension element of the compensation was relatively generous.

Yes that doesn't surprise me.

If you've lived in London for a number of years, you'll realise you need real cash up front to survive here as the transport and accomodation costs are sky high.

My rent for the 3 bed terraced house in South West London I moved into on Saturday could get me a 7 bedroom mansion with several acres of ground near Leeds...

I know a few aspects of the .gov redev have been held outside of London, so they might look at that as a possibility.

(I think it's unlikely, most uk.gov seems to be focussed on London, which is natural and annoying)