sounds interesting, and probably illegal

Saw the Damo in AMF / 1st bowl tonight. Didn't look too happy either.

Just after you met me for a beer after my job interview.....ironic!

True story.

On the decline of manufacturing, or at least related to it, there is another big problem with our labour market - namely that we seem to have a knack for churning out young people without skills relevant to the jobs that do exist. There is sometimes a perception that if you have 2 million people unemployed, filling 400,000 jobs should be easy. But it often isn't. Twice recently I've advertised quite well paying jobs for work we really needed doing and been unable to appoint any of the applicants. In one case we had a re-think and employed at a lower grade with a view to training the candidate up (she's doing very well, as it goes) but the other was an 18 month contract (at least initially) and we couldn't have got the expertise in place in time.

Another example, I had my phone line moved at home a couple of months ago, and had a chat with the Hungarian guy who came to do it about how he came to be working for a sub-contractor of BT. It seems that, rather than him coming over here looking for work, the company had actively gone to Hungary and various other countries to recruit because there simply weren't any qualified telecoms engineers available in this country. I don't imagine for a minute that they wouldn't rather have employed people who were already here, but I guess when every third person has a degree in leaisure and tourism or media/film studies, you can't expect to find anyone with any actual useful skills can you?

So here we are with well over 2 million people unemployed, about 400k vacant jobs, and a frequent inability to match any of the 2 million to the 400k. Epic economy FAIL. I don't actually know how to solve this, but finding some funding for more vocational training (including reversing the lunacy that turned every technical training college in the country into a "University"icon_wink.gif and apprenticeships might be a start. I can't imagine that withdrawing EMA is helping social mobility very much either.

There's a natural tendency to mock those who's oft-repeated response is "It was all different in my day" but in this case it was - and it was better.

When I was 17 and leaving school you expected, not hoped, expected to be employed by a company who would take you from school and train you to do the job.

They would also pay to send you to a college, usually on a day release and/or night school for between three and five years and at the end of it you would have a qualification and a trade - by the time you were 21 you would be a useful contributor to the economy.

That applied to almost EVERY school leaver whether or not you chose a manual profession or an office job, there were almost no jobs that did not involve some sort of on-job training and external studying for the first 3 to 5 years of your working life, it also helped that many professions actually tied you to the company for that same period by means of apprenticeship or indenture contracts so that you all were confident that there actually was a future for you - many trades also had professional bodies who would supervise the whole thing, approve your training courses and qualifications, and if your employer went bust they would find another employer to take you on (or at least they did in the construction trade).

I went into electrical contracting as a surveyor so have experience of how an electrical apprenticeship worked, five years of working four days a week and studying one day plus two nights is what produced 21 year old qualified electricians in my day - I understand that you can do it in a few weeks these days at privately owned colleges that may or may not issue recognised certificates at the end of it - you simply will never convince me that those trade qualifications come even close to the Apprenticeship Release forms and JIB Electricians card that our apprentices would recieve in their 21st year - not anything like close.

You make a good point there. The advent of the meaningless qualification has lead to people thinking that they should be able to get a better job than they actually can. In the days before the Travel & Tourism GNVQ etc people who weren't that academic just went out and learned a trade, and worked their way up. That was where your plumbers, electricians & brickies came from. Give someone a HND in Media Studies, and they would probably consider those sorts of jobs beneath them.

There has also been an influx of people from new EU countries who have come over and been happy to do the jobs that the British people with equivalent skills have turned their noses up at

Might be helpful if schools weren't all about teaching children to pass exams so they can move on to the next step in the educational ladder, be it from GCSEs to A Levels, or from A Levels on to Higher Ed.

The education system as it stands is all about league tables and bugger all to do with preparing kids for the world of work.

Thats the trouble with much these days. We get caught in the middle of measuring things to have clear metrics and be able to compare, and becoming blinded by anything other than the attainment of the target. One size does not neccesarily fit all.

My other half is a KS1 teacher in a pretty rough area of Nottingham, where kids come in barely able to talk, as the white trash parents don't give a . Most of them haven't a hope of attaining the standard SAT results, but the school has to jump through the hoops rather than actually work to improve what they will eventually get out of life. Hopefully one or two of them will find jobs. Most will never leave the city

There was an article in todays Metro on the front page about a company trying to get folk in for job interviews and such. Most wouldnt turn up due to it raining, being too tired etc with one actually telling the guy "I get more on my benefits than i do working, so im not doing it".

Shocking. or actually, not shocking at all anymore. There used to be a social stigma at one time being out of work and not earning etc now this has been replaced by the total apathy to going out and earning a crust.

Came as no surprise. Heard of places giving up recruiting because the people they recruit can't be bothered

As someone in his early 20's i'm not going disagree with the comments above, i'd rather endorse them. From my experience at high school they're solely focused on preparing kids for their GCSE's and nothing about the real world and so much of what you get taught there for your GCSE's simply isn't needed after you leave. And they do make things as easy as they can so the school can show good pass marks every year.

I remember a friend of mine doing a bit of Year 11 coursework in English, first time he handed it in he got a D* and the teacher would write down how he could improve it, eventually after 5 rewrites he got an A to be able to hand in as his final coursework. I did mine just once and got a B- got the chance to rewrite it but turned it down because then its not your work. As i pointed out to the teacher even though i was only 15, you won't get the chance to do things 5 times until its right out in the real world of work so why should we do it here, she didn't answer me.

In several years at my work i've seen about a dozen lads around the late teens/early 20's age come in, to do the menial jobs and around 10 of them within the first TWO WEEKS of mediocre effort have come to me (even though i'm not the boss, must be an age related thing) and asked about getting a pay rise because its not enough, and i always point out that firstly, you knew the wage when you started and secondly that 2 weeks is nothing, get your heads down for at least several months before asking that.

I will say though they're some good young workers coming through but as has been written in previous comments, its because its the parents that have taught them well about the values off hard work, and not the education system. And also i would point out that i know a fair few people in their 40's and 50's that ain't exactly employee of the month material.

It’s always great to read about the real world where the likes of some people on this thread are keeping it real. Well since we’re on the topic of British high schools not preparing their pupils for the real world I have a proposal. We should have a one year exchange programme where kids from Britain spend time working in a sweatshop in Asia. In return the poor Asian kids can come over here for a year to get an education. The laws are a lot more relaxed in Asia so our fantasy world kids from Britain will be in for a culture shock. This programme will churn out the lazy ones and if any of them that die from starvation due to not earning their bag of rice then it’s just collateral damage.

Now onto those family’s that have been workless for generations. We should make then swap lives with the Philippians rural poor families. Hard workers them lot over there. Some of them work $3 a day on farms and that’s only when there’s work on. Farmers could only dream of paying that much for a British person to do a full day’s work on their farm. But out government won’t do the swap because they’re too soft and get kicks out of killing the agriculture industry over here. Or maybe just maybe the British government is a lot more ethical than other governments around the world that some people on this thread would find themselves at home with.

Then there are them misguided kids that go into further education to study travel and tourism, media and other tin-pot subjects on offer. We should scrap these courses all together and this would free up all those teachers who are world weary enough to take up those vacant 400,000 jobs that are currently available. The education sector has had too much of an easy ride and it’s time it got with the real world. The fantasy world that’s dependent on taxpayers throwing money into the fire and kids willing to spend time studying imaginary industries needs to stop immediately. The less education we have in this country the better. The less academic ones will just go out and learn a trade whilst the more academic ones will be granted the privilege of further education.

Britain is very good at playing imaginary. That’s why we still have Queens, Princes and Princesses in the twenty-first century. We even have a Fairy flying about on tv at the moment in the shape of the Fairy Job Mother. She’s so good and that’s why she’s on tv as much as Jeremy Kyle. She could just wave her wand and get Britain’s mass unemployed back into work in an instance. But the unemployed are far too busy sticking pins into voodoo dolls to make sure that her magic doesn’t work on them. It’s such a shame really.

That bloke who’s in charge of washing the cars at where Sherbet Dip gets his car washed. He always has work for everyone apparently. If this is the case then why is Chris Grayling the employment minister and not the bloke at the car washers?

Back into my world. I was totally out of it on booze when I was at AMF bowls. Had a bit of a surprise bar crawl with my mate and got really drunk.

Have you been to any of the car washes & asked for work?
Rhetorical.....we know your answer!

Muppet

You wouldn't know a hard days graft if it kicked you in your Iestyn Harris

Nope but I’m at the job centre this dinnertime to discuss about transferring onto the New Enterprise Allowance. Admittedly it’s not the most ideal thing (I wanted investment other than the job centres but it looks like I’m going to have to earn that) in the world but it means the end is nearly in sight and it gives my business plan three months to build a reputation to attract further investment. Three months down the line I’d be only getting £33 a month from the job centre but I’ll be trying my damned hardest to make sure that I’ll be off the scheme by then.

I can live on £65 a month because I’m financially responsible. Besides car washing places aren’t that secure for a long term wage. I do seem to remember reading someone getting fired from such a job on these very forums so I decided to give that little venture a miss.

What a difference a week makes..