Penny drops - at last

[crankedup]

Newsnight yesterday, a consensus from three independent 'experts', we urgently need to industrialise again in this Country (U.K.) We cannot simply rely on the services and bank industries.
Wave the flags, its only taken 30 years for reality to click in. It will take another 30 years? for industry here to have a greater effect upon our wealth, in a positive way. Also its at long last dawned upon the great and good, in recent years, that an apprentice or two are a good for industry, business, Country and Socially. Why on earth these apprentices were fazed out a couple of decades back remains a mystery.
Just need to re-open coal mines now

[Digga]

crankedup said:

Also its at long last dawned upon the great and good, in recent years, that an apprentice or two are a good for industry, business, Country and Socially. Why on earth these apprentices were fazed out a couple of decades back remains a mystery.

In the past, we've employed two time-served engineers (noew retired) who went through the good old apprenticeships and the breadth and depth of their talents was unparalleled.

Many business owners unlucky wnough to have been trying to find manual, semi, or unskilled workers during the New Labour boom years will likely tell you various tales of woe; high staff turnover, dire work ethic and, most corrsive of all 'management mania'. For a while - and I;ve no idea how or where the idea got started - it seemed that no one wanted to be an 'indian' and everyone wanted to be a 'chief'.

I partly blame the public sector for this as one of the means of competition with the private sector was to offer (silly) job titles, although the education system and the incumbent government's mania for putting anyone through university was also a major factor.

[RemainAllHoof]

I've been hoping more and more people would come around to this way of thinking; the only problem is that labour is expensive compared to the likes of China and India and the quality will be just as bad.

[bosscerbera]

RemainAllHoof said:

I've been hoping more and more people would come around to this way of thinking; the only problem is that labour is expensive compared to the likes of China and India and the quality will be just as bad.

'Our' labour won't be expensive when sterling tanks.

[anonymous-user]

renewable energy source, space technology, new materials, there are loads of interesting areas to make our country an expert in!

[grumbledoak]

It isn't going to happen. Taxes are so high that a living wage needs to be high and then we cannot compete.

Blame the Unions for continually striking for more pay, and then their political pets for ramming people into the public service or on to benefits to try to stay in power. Or accept big cuts.

[Odie]

Digga said:

n the past, we've employed two time-served engineers (noew retired) who went through the good old apprenticeships and the breadth and depth of their talents was unparalleled.

Many business owners unlucky wnough to have been trying to find manual, semi, or unskilled workers during the New Labour boom years will likely tell you various tales of woe; high staff turnover, dire work ethic and, most corrsive of all 'management mania'. For a while - and I;ve no idea how or where the idea got started - it seemed that no one wanted to be an 'indian' and everyone wanted to be a 'chief'.

I partly blame the public sector for this as one of the means of competition with the private sector was to offer (silly) job titles, although the education system and the incumbent government's mania for putting anyone through university was also a major factor.

Management Culture is part of the problem, Im the lowest in my department, but im expected to manage upwards, this includes managing directors at times. Seriously I have 'leadership' as part of my key skills seriously when will management get a clue and just be straight with me about when they want it when?

[derestrictor]

David, 100% correct.

Deindustrialisation (of raw material/manufacture based processing) has been the fundamental economic faultline since the revolution of the same name.

There needs to be a source of reasonably consistent, mass employment beyond the tertiary sector into which currently, the great and the good continue to peddle the delusion that vast numbers of higher educated white collarists can pass.

Whilst there are some fantastic, high tech companies going great guns in Cambridge, there is a social dimension to governance which has become anathema to policy since the dark days of the 1970s.

An irony emerges insofar as 'evil subsidy' may not exist in the traditional sense but has been replaced, instead, by a bloated state sector, chock full of burdensome, regulatory, quangovermin whose fetid existence owes everything to the same, tax-bled private coffers yet who unlike their notorious, (potentially ) 'productive' forbears in the former heavy industries, will never, nor could they ever, deliver any production, notion of value addition or potential, economic multiplier effects {other than their own, personal incomes which are generally derived from devilish schemes of enterprise prevention and thus, the benefit is at best neutral.}

Of course, disentangling this maze of state benefaction would be a hurculean task and the required transfer back to the private sector (via glorious, spectacular tax abolitions/cuts) would not be without potentially impossible, additional, economic shock which is one huge political demotivator in why it will never happen, so long as votes, rather than the vision of an enlightened despot, lead us to the unravelling fate of total, socio-economic ruin.

It would be possible and could be kicked off by forcing all employees of HMRC into the various aspects of supercar design, production and marketing and over a number of years replacing their hideous, parasitic role as the state's economic locusts with a revenue stream derived from selling exotic, carbon tubs super coups to Chinese and Indian Yuppies.

This model could be rolled out across various, productive arenas and even where possibly non optimal ito global competitiveness (at a given time of analysis) it would always be preferable to that person or group being employed to walk around in hi-viz nappies and hard hats telling people how to measure vegetables or building concrete mole hills across formerly flat, urban thoroughfares.

Traffic wardens become artisans and HSE officers tanners.

All the while, we all pay infinitely less tax and ultimately, almost none.

This should be the goal, aye. That and the stringing up of D Littlewood.

[anonymous-user]

manufacturing can mean making buzz lightyear toys, or it can mean designing new technologies and building high value, high technology bespoke things. The UK is ideally placed to offer the latter given our higher education system and the quality of many engineering sectors in our country. It's where the government should focus its efforts. Pick some industries that are going to grow rapidly in the next 20 years or so, and give them cash. Space technology is one such area.

[elster]

crankedup said:

Newsnight yesterday, a consensus from three independent 'experts', we urgently need to industrialise again in this Country (U.K.) We cannot simply rely on the services and bank industries.
Wave the flags, its only taken 30 years for reality to click in. It will take another 30 years? for industry here to have a greater effect upon our wealth, in a positive way. Also its at long last dawned upon the great and good, in recent years, that an apprentice or two are a good for industry, business, Country and Socially. Why on earth these apprentices were fazed out a couple of decades back remains a mystery.
Just need to re-open coal mines now

The problem is that a whole generation of recent uni graduates have been brought up to think this is the way to go for all jobs. So they do their uni course and expect to walk into a £20k job with no experience.

Reality is an apprentice in most industries will be worth more than that single uni graduate.

The problem is a lot of companies have an HR dept where they have to tick boxes and staff have to have a degree. I have always found companies where a dept gets to choose their own staff seem to have better quality staff too and usually less graduates.

[Mattt]

I've been involved recently with BITC (Business in the Community) and a SIB (seeing is believing) visit about apprenticeships and the STEM agenda, it's good that moves are being made to encourage apprenticeships and training in technical trades than the focus exclusively on graduates.

The consensus from all attendees seemed to be that they've got graduates coming out their ears, but are worried about the increasing average age amongst blue collar workers - and this is the focus for the short-mid term.

[smashing]

elster said:

The problem is that a whole generation of recent uni graduates have been brought up to think this is the way to go for all jobs. So they do their uni course and expect to walk into a £20k job with no experience.

Reality is an apprentice in most industries will be worth more than that single uni graduate.

The problem is a lot of companies have an HR dept where they have to tick boxes and staff have to have a degree. I have always found companies where a dept gets to choose their own staff seem to have better quality staff too and usually less graduates.

I am a graduate (Physics) and I really hate that generalisation......though it is sometimes soooooooo very true. I have a mate who doesn't understand why I chose a job on less than 17k a year (I chose it because it had training ) and he won’t settle for anything below 25k!!

[s2art]

Dangerous2 said:

renewable energy source, space technology, new materials, there are loads of interesting areas to make our country an expert in!

Well, the renewables we have to-date mean huge increases in the price of electricity. That would seem counter-productive to any expansion of our industrial base.

[anonymous-user]

s2art said:

Well, the renewables we have to-date mean huge increases in the price of electricity. That would seem counter-productive to any expansion of our industrial base.

if fossil fuels were going to last forever you might have a point.

[NoelWatson]

grumbledoak said:

It isn't going to happen. Taxes are so high that a living wage needs to be high and then we cannot compete.

And propertaay prices

[s2art]

Dangerous2 said:

s2art said:

Well, the renewables we have to-date mean huge increases in the price of electricity. That would seem counter-productive to any expansion of our industrial base.

if fossil fuels were going to last forever you might have a point.

Wrong. We have nukes, the potential of Thorium and perhaps fusion. There are plenty of fossil fuels around to give us time to develop alternative energy sources. In fact we are virtually swimming in fossil fuels, its merely that we have used the really cheap and easily extracted sources.

[Digga]

NoelWatson said:

grumbledoak said:

It isn't going to happen. Taxes are so high that a living wage needs to be high and then we cannot compete.

And propertaay prices

Yes, at the present time, even if we could convert the mass of non-working emplyables into drones, we wouldn't necessarily have the mobility of workforce we'd like, because of the bonkers housing prices.

[smashing]

s2art said:

Wrong. We have nukes, the potential of Thorium and perhaps fusion. There are plenty of fossil fuels around to give us time to develop alternative energy sources. In fact we are virtually swimming in fossil fuels, its merely that we have used the really cheap and easily extracted sources.

Completely agree, more money needs to be put in to fusion tech/research rather than wind farms and the like which are not really going to sustain us.

[anonymous-user]

I;d like to avoid this becoming an argument about nuclear power vs renewable, etc, but generally i agree nuclear is the way to go. lets put down 'alternative' instead of 'renewable' in my original post, which is what i meant, but miscommunicated.

[WhoseGeneration]

Digga said:

n the past, we've employed two time-served engineers (noew retired) who went through the good old apprenticeships and the breadth and depth of their talents was unparalleled.

There was much virtue in this system, it provided engineers who understood materials and methods and who could then, according to ability, progress through levels of education.
Indeed, from an apprentice to the top.
It might surprise some younger here but much was designed, produced and run by those with only an HNC to their name.