England is nowhere near as cheap as Ontario. I mean, when I went there HMV in downtown TO was selling cds like for an average of $12.. Like £5.. Crazy. i'll try and give you prices for what I can though.
Cellphone: Varies a lot. figure between 10-50p a min. Check
Orange,
O2, etc.
Telephone:
BT charges between £11-£23 line rental depending on what package you want.
TalkTalk do cheap calling plans. For long distance, use
Onetel. I use them, and they are about 4p to Canada/US. Line rental on NTL is free if you have the TV service.
Internet: 1Meg lines are generally around £35. Check
NTL or
Nildram for DSL.
Television: I have the all inclusive package. Sports, movies and entertainment. That costs me about £48/month. The base pack is about £18 (rememeber the free phone line though).
Housing: A one bed flat out here in the 'burbs (of London) will run you about £150/week. If you move a bit closer to the city, you can get it a bit cheaper though, but the quality comes down. Some areas (like North London) are fairly affluent, and can charge upto £350/week for a decent flat. In other cities though, it is much cheaper. The best places around in Coventry was like £60 including bills for a share in a house. Look for UK estate agents in a search engine.
Utilities
Water: Costs me about £215/year
Electric: Costs me about £42/quarter
Gas (Used for my central heating) £180/quarter. Obviously next couple of quarters it will be low. (Bear in mind though, some places use Gas cooking.)
Cars: New cars cost about £7000 up. Petrol is expensive at 78+p A LITRE. Car tax is $110/year or £60/6 months. Insurance is real high, and you'd probably need lessons to pass our driving test (it's really tough compared to the rest of the world), so factor £15-20 a lesson.
Public Transport: For a travel card (unlimited bus, train, underground) among defined zones, upto £140 depending on what zones you want.(
see here
Food: I spend between like £20-£40/week on groceries, and grocery related items. I do tend to waste a bit though, so you could probably save a bit on that.
Clothes: I don't buy a whole lot, but have these guidelines for branded clothes (but not designer label) clothes.
t-shirt: £10+
nice shorts: £20+
jeans: £15-20+
Although supermarkets can do this stuff cheap.
Salary: For a uni. leaver in a tech. industry, about £17,000 . If you are lucky, you could £20,000 which includes London weighting (you get paid more for living in London, because everything is more expensive). For a final year student, factor about £14,000-£17,000 . Don't forget to take the tax off that (22%)
I don't think you get taxed for being a foreigner. Just the income tax, etc.
Living out the in the country would make quite a few things cheaper, but would make finding work hard obviously. Ireland is supposed to be quite expensive (friend of mine just came back from a holiday there). I'm pretty sure Finland is too, (I know Norway and Sweden are, so chances are, all of scandanavia is). Australia is fairly cheap though, I think.
HTH anyway. Anything else you need, just ask.