So unsurprisingly it's just a sliding scale depending on your local GDP, there's not some universal pay grade.
I think part of the problem is class, there's a psychological barrier in the UK that employees shouldn't earn more than managers.
The other part of the lower pay is that we had a lot more people dabble with development in our school system in the 80s/90s because of the BBC programs and the Micro/Archimedes in schools which means we started running short of developers a lot later than other countries.
Both of those are speculation, but that's my belief.
C and C++ also has a calling up here, but more specialized to the particular company (think Ubisoft).
Recently saw a posting for a Linux kernel dev.
I haven't really seen calling for more niche languages, but I'm also only looking at the postings that come into my email.
Re the comment about management salary, I have been given that as a reason during salary negotiation as to why they can't pay what I'm asking.
The salaries I've been seeing have risen quite a bit in the past 2 years (after dropping suddenly, recession and all).