814, 359 employers in Britain are so keen to find employees that they have signed up to a European initiative that pays a bounty of 1000 euros to anybody in another European country who is prepared to get off whatever is the equivalent of a Bulgarian DFS sofa, put down their Stella beer – and take the job! The EU will also pay the employer another 1000 euros to help with the training and language difficulties.

I take Bulgaria as an example because there are only 128 such desperate employers in Bulgaria, so if Britain fills up with Bulgarians as a result of this initiative – you only have yourself to blame.

No other country comes near to the desperation of the British employers keen to fill vacancies. More than 50% of the vacancies are in Britain. Germany is second in the list with 267534 vacancies they cannot fill.

These are not highly skilled jobs that only a select few can fill – take a look down the list – mechanics, welders, care assistants. Ordinary jobs. Some come with an offer of accommodation, even a car.

In the East Midlands alone, there are 62624 vacancies.

There are too many in Britain who would prefer to lie on their sofa carping about how tough their life is under ‘Tory austerity measures’ – when all over Europe there are people who are also struggling with austerity who are prepared to do whatever it takes to feed themselves and their families.

Quit whining about immigration and ‘foreigners taking our jobs’ – the jobs are there, but too many Britons are too proud and find life on a combination of welfare and the black market too cushy to want those jobs.

Mathew Hancock, a junior Business Minister says that ‘firms have a social duty to employ young Britons’ – nobody, but nobody is suggesting that young Britons might have a social duty to take up these vacancies!

Ted Treen put an interesting comment on this blog yesterday – very apposite.

“Everything you receive without working, means that elsewhere, someone is working for it without receiving it”.

Na’er a truer word was spoken. The Government has no money to give to anyone, cuts or no cuts. The only money they can hand out comes from those who are working – and not receiving the fruits of their labours.

Janet July 31, 2013 at 16:52

I believe that micro-businesses  are our future
Construct them well
and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess
inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Let the workers’
laughter remind us how we used to be

Everybody’s searching for a hero
People need someone to look up to
I
never found anyone who fulfilled my needs
A lonely place to be
And so I
learned to depend on me

Come back, Anna, Come Back

Show us snivelling brats the right way!

RobinB July 30, 2013 at 13:14

There’s an aspect of this which politicians never like to acknowledge, and
that is that a large proportion of the young unemployed are just plain
unemployable. They lack education, skills, aptitude and self-discipline. Many
of them are, sadly, second or third-generation unemployed. The reasons for
this situation are another whole discussion but the fact is that employers
would rather look elsewhere e.g., a hard-working foreigner.

belinus July 30,
2013 at 11:16

I have used the jobcentres to find me a good candidate for employment, once
the position is filled the jobcentres keep the vacancy on their boards and
computer systems for some 6 months after the position is filled, and
some.
This leaves a vacancy no longer available on the statistics you have
presented.

Go find the figures for those kicked off benefits to satisfy government
targets, and then consider your premise that the British don’t want to
work….
You have moved down a few notches on my validated reporter list with
this one coony.

Furor
Teutonicus July 31, 2013 at 14:13

XX I have used the jobcentres to find me a good candidate for employment,
once the position is filled the jobcentres keep the vacancy on their boards
and computer systems for some 6 months after the position is filled, and
some.
This leaves a vacancy no longer available on the statistics you
have presented.XX

Yup. Whilst trying to find work during my Uni time, a good 90% of “jobs
on the boards” were all taken LONG ago. Some up to 18 – or evfen 24
MONTHS!

Of course, the scumbag shit eating maggots that “work” for the job
centers could nbot GIVE a fuck.

They just think it is funny to “take the piss out of the doley.”

belinus July 30,
2013 at 11:10

Let me tell you how it is.
The government are forcing young school
leavers into college to continue the programming they get at school, this
keeps them out of the unemployment figures and caps the debauched idea of
education.

The government are paying employers to take on apprentice for a year to
then be sacked so the employer can take on another apprentice at no cost to
the employer.

There are very few jobs outside the corporate empire and to get those you
have to be fully programmed to the yes sir no sir mentality.

belinus July 30,
2013 at 11:03

A clear case of falling for deception, this report is absolute nonsense,
period.

Andrew S. Mooney
July 28, 2013 at 22:54

“Everything you receive without working, means that elsewhere, someone is
working for it without receiving it”.

OK, can we apply this to UK employers, to the tune of 814,000 vacancies?

They apparently expect government to pay them up to 2000 Euros of Someone
Else’s Money because they are too lazy to train new employees…

Assuming each “vacancy” is filled that is 1.6 billion Euros of someone
else’s money for the UK alone. Presumably turning this country into a minimum
wage flophouse for PIIG economies to dump their surplus young people off on
to, because they can no longer get subsidized government jobs at home is great
for someone, but I don’t think it is anyone who lives in this country,
employed or not.

Could our good host clarify if this applies to UK nationals who seek work
from these freeloading British companies, who, to rephrase it, potentially
cannot be bothered to spend the equivalent of a month’s wages for the average
UK worker upon training and language skills, if they have to pay it out of
their own pocket? Would all of these vacancies exist then?

I would have thought that handing out money to hire foreign nationals is
not an illustration that the locals are lazy, it is a flat out act of racial
discrimination.

Perhaps if the EU is prepared to subsidize my job training I can trade up
to a better country as well, and go and live somewhere that isn’t a
Dubai-style racially segregated mosaic of slums and million pound apartment
blocks, entirely predicated upon poverty labour and tax avoidance.

I’m thinking of giving Detroit a whirl. At least there I can buy a house.
At least there, they acknowledge that there is a problem.

Furor Teutonicus
July 28, 2013 at 19:48

XX More than 50% of the vacancies are in Britain. Germany is second in the
list with 267534 vacancies they cannot fill. XX

Oh they CAN.

Trouble is, a German needs to pay the rent, the gas, the electric, the
“local rates”, the T.V licence, etc, etc, etc, and does NOT get a “free meal”
three times per day, as part of the contract, and we are not living 20 or 30
people “hot bunking” (ask a Sailor what that means), in some falling apart rat
trap of a “building.”

When my landlord starts asking crappy East European rent, when my local
shop starts accepting crappy East European prices for a dodd of meat, then I
will WILLINGLY work for crappy East European pay!

Moor
Larkin July 28, 2013 at 20:26

Guess who’s doing the plumbing further east in Europe? …….

The Polish government is allowing prisoners out of jail to work, as it
tries to fill vacancies left by the exodus of workers to Britain. Since
Poland joined the European Union in May 2004, more than 1.2 million Poles
have left the country to go west, with many ending up in Britain. The Polish
government has had to resort to using convicts to plug the gaps in some of
the affected sectors, particularly in construction. Prisoners are being
given day release and paid around 86p an hour.
http://www.cipd.co.uk/pm/peoplemanagement/b/weblog/archive/2013/01/29/polishprisonersfill-2006-10.aspx

Good to see how socialist principles always benefit the working
classes………

Furor
Teutonicus July 28, 2013 at 20:52

Intereting. Thank you.

Furor
Teutonicus July 28, 2013 at 20:54

Or “interesting”.. even.

(And when THAT is miss-spelled, I give up!

Amber July 27, 2013 at 23:27

Wondering if the author of this piece is living in the same village in the
South of France as Theodore Dalrymple. Also wondering what she gets out of
denigrating her own nation in a way that would once, in nobler times, have
been called traitorous.

Anna
Raccoon July 28, 2013 at 06:13

[email protected]/[email protected]/[email protected]

You really don’t need to go to the trouble of giving yourself a new
e-mail address and a new name each time you comment – you do realise that I
can see you all use the same computer don’t you?

Moor Larkin July 28, 2013 at 11:35

The sequence of comments after this interesting [2009] blog are quite
amusing….
http://www.yalelawtech.org/anonymity-online-identity/we-are-anonymous-we-are-legion/

Lucille July 27, 2013 at 23:17

I’m guessing, Anna, that you don’t reside in les banlieues.

Actually, some say that London is France’s sixth largest city in terms of
population. What happened there then? Did we import all the lazy ones?

The Jannie July 27, 2013 at 15:03

My son trained as a chef, was good at it but, like most, suffered crap
wages, crap hours and even worse employers. He then had to give it up after a
kitchen accident. Going quietly round the bend with boredom during surgery and
recuperation he decided to retrain as a welder. I can weld, but he’s an
absolute artist at it. He’s not coded but that hasn’t stopped him working for
serious money in Formula 1 and World Endurance teams. So the next time someone
says “welder” or “welder-fabricator” they may not mean a guy who throws skips
together using a monster stick welder!
Rant over . . . until the next
time.

Justin July 27, 2013 at 15:16

What does “He’s not coded” mean? Idle curiosity only.

Anna
Raccoon July 27, 2013 at 16:02

http://www.specialwelds.com/services/welder-training.asp

Engineer
July 27, 2013 at 16:28

Plant and infrastructure that must have insurance to legally operate
(such as industrial boilers or pressurised pipework) must have welds made
by certified welders trained and assessed to be competent in that specific
type of welding. The certification of the welder is colloquilly referred
to as ‘Coding’, since the welder’s standard of work is assessed against
the criteria laid down in one of several Codes of Practice.

Moor Larkin July 27, 2013 at 19:24

I was very lucky, because there was full employment on the Clyde, you
know, and that was the way of Glasgow then, the schools opened their
doors and the shipyards opened theirs and everybody poured in. And I
became a welder. I was actually becoming en engineer, and joined the
wrong queue. And it is the truth. Because everybody had jobs, and
“engineers this way, here’s the queues”, and I joined the wrong line and
became a welder. And I started being an apprentice welder without even
knowing what a welder was – I didn’t know what to press to make it work,
for Christ sake.
http://www.ibras.dk/comedy/billy_connolly.htm

Engineer
July 27, 2013 at 21:26

At that time, shipyard welders were not coded. That may have
changed for pressure pipework, but not, I think, for hull and
superstructure work. Billy Connolly would not have been ‘coded’.

Roosh July 30, 2013 at 17:18

The two posts above confusing personal experiences with general trends
again- tad narcissistic to assume Anna is calling your Kids workshy nay?
If anything, rejoice that your friends and offsprings aren’t lumped in
with them- and save us all from your hammering on- a swallow doesn’t make
a summer etc?

Peter c July 27, 2013 at 11:12

814359?

Workshy Britain, or dubious figures, together with a bounty that gives
incentive for inflated targets?
This subject angle is bogus.

suspicious
July 27, 2013 at 11:44

I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

Budvar July 27, 2013 at 10:53

Not the old “The Brits wont have work” bollox again?

I have a daughter of 26, she did 3 years college doing child care. The only
work she could get was agency work with a load of Poles, and it was always her
that got laid off, never the Poles. Don’t anyone dare give me the “That’s cos
she’s lazy and always blobs Monday mornings”, because she works hard and never
doesn’t turn in. She now works stacking shelves in Poundland 16 hrs a week,
but usually works a lot more hours as she’s the only one who can be relied on
to turn in, and she always gets the phonecall when someone else throws a
sicky.

I have a son of 21, he’s never had a job. He’s a bit slow, but since he
left school, he’s been doing training and voluntary work, (The last 2 years
landscaping the local greenways). He’s tried to get a job, he’s sick to get
one, but it’s always the same, “What if he has an accident?” .
All the big
employers round here are all now agency work, and all without fail only employ
East Europeans, thye indiginous don’t get a look in.

suspicious
July 27, 2013 at 11:45

Similar things are going on in my neck of the woods. I’m fast coming to
the conclusion that our erstwhile leaders actually don’t like us. They are
actively undermining us and have been doing so for years.

Ted Treen
July 27, 2013 at 22:17

Don’t like us?

Their record shows all too clearly they have the utmost contempt for
us. In years gone by, their heads would be on poles…

and I don’t mean of the Eastern European variety.

Ah! The good old days…

suspicious July 27, 2013 at 10:31

How does a young british person get training to be a plumber these days?
There seems to be a few apprenticeships around, but not enough given the
amount of school leavers thrown onto the job market every year. I have the
suspicion that due to the general dumbing down of our education system (mostly
by the socialists) and a lack of quality training available to our youngsters
over many years, nay decades, we now have a nation which largely doesn’t have
the skills to find a job. No wonder we have to import skilled labour from the
EU!

A little support from our politicians would be helpful. As if they’d ever
think along the lines of investing in their own nation…

Oh no, far too interested in feathering their own nests and appearing on
the world stage.

Mudplugger
July 27, 2013 at 16:28

Until about 20 years ago, most British ‘plumbers’ were initially trained
by the Gas Board, later British Gas, who provided apprentice training for
many hundreds of school-leaver trainees every year, to feed their own
growing need for service engineers and installers. The standard of training
was excellent and turned out high-quality technicians, all trained in water,
gas, electrics and associated building aspects. Many of those stayed on
working for the Gas Board, but many others worked there for a few years of
live experience before jumping ship and becoming self-employed ‘plumbers’
and ‘heating engineers’, using those acquired skills on their own
account.

Once privatised and restructured, it soon occurred to the now
profit-centred company that it was spending many millions every year
training its own competition, so it stopped doing much of the work and
stopped training most of the apprentices. This gap in the nationwide flow of
well-trained plumbers then opened the way for the import of the Polish
variety – an unintended consequence of privatisation perhaps, as much as
being a measure of European integration.

suspicious
July 27, 2013 at 16:40

Interesting. Thanks for filling me in!

Mudplugger
July 27, 2013 at 22:06

A follow-on tip – how to spot a properly-trained one. When he
approaches your house, does he press the door-bell ?

A Gas-trained one will never use a door-bell – there is a chance that
the job he is visiting may be one involving a gas escape, and using an
electric door-bell carries a minor risk of creating a spark which could
ignite the escaping gas. Hence it was drilled into them all, from day one,
never to use a door-bell, just in case.
(This explains why customers
often complained that the gas-man had just put a ‘Called But You Were Out’
card through the door, when the customer was elsewhere in the house
listening for the door-bell, rather than a muffled door-knock).
I’ll
put my anorak away now and get my coat.

Disenfranchised of Buckingham July 27, 2013 at 10:21

I’ll state the obvious that politicians won’t say.

If you are unemployed and require the financial support of your peers then
you should work for your peers.

Everywhere I go there is environmental improvement work that needs doing
that requires little more than a shovel and a wheelbarrow. Use ex squaddies as
foremen.

40 hours a week of hard physical work will get the sofa huggers fit and
back into a work ethic. You never know they might like the quieter life of
working in a care home after a bit of workfare.

John July 28, 2013 at 15:28

Not forgetting the provision of PPE, and the mandatory manual handling
training etc..if the workers come into contact with children/vulnerable
adults, there is the CRB check to be paid for (I know, it’s only supposed to
be for “unsupervised access”, but the advantage of a ECRB check is that the
RoOA act does not apply). Then there would be the requirements for under
18s’ to work lower hours (etc) and they cannot work nights. Not to mention
the working time directive….a H&S Law.
Lots of fun. Of course, they
are cheap….but the employment laws still apply.

Roger July 27, 2013 at 10:18

Although I work hard and resent parasitic scroungers, I sometimes wonder of
employers are innocent in the foreign workers issue. I remember being in low
paid work in the 80s recession, and employers told us then that they couldn’t
afford to give us a pay rise because of the recession, but when the good times
came we all expected a pay rise and lo and behold local businesses sent agents
to recruit workers in Portugal. Norwich Union did the same in Norwich, but
with Indians, offshoring some work, and importing other Indians to undercut
the salaries and working conditions of locals.
Of course, the real racket
is that when these workers are discarded by the employers, the tax payer (you
and me) are expected to pay all their childcare costs, unemployment payments,
and educate and house their families. We, the workers suffer because of
immigration, and unscrupulous employers (big ones often avoid tax. Look at
Aviva) gain.
What I think the government should demand of these employers,
is that they pay a large bond to the government to cover the cost of any
crimes immigrants may cause, their healthcare, and their deportation at the
end of their contract. Also they should not be entitled to vote (to discourage
importing Labour voters), have any public assistance.
Most importantly they
should not be allowed to raise families and settle here.

suspicious
July 27, 2013 at 10:35

Yes, it just requires good common sense. Something our government seems
to have little of…

Ted Treen
July 27, 2013 at 17:26

“Yes, it just requires good common sense. Something our government
seems to have little of…”

Bet you can’y name one government that has said quality in
abundance…

rabbitaway
July 27, 2013 at 10:59

40 x £6.19 = £247.60 plus some housing benefit

Basic Allowance couple 2 children £216 approx plus full housing
benefit

Min wage for 18 – 20 year olds £4.98, under 18 £3.72

delcatto July 27, 2013 at 10:06

It’s interesting looking at what jobs are available. My son walked out of
his job eighteen months ago after a disagreement with his boss who reneged
upon a promise to support his apprenticeship. It was a big mistake to quit his
job & after umpteen job applications with an occasional interview he
obtained a job at a fish processing factory. He’s still there one year later
& although it’s hard work with the added bonus of eau de fish and unsocial
hours, he enjoys the work & he has a pride in working. He has told me no
end of stories of some workshy locals who don’t turn up or do not pull their
weight & aren’t invited back to work. He speaks in glowing terms of the
hard working Poles & Lithuanians as well as the other Brits who work
there.
I looked at the site for nursing jobs in Europe and I met my first
hurdle: language. Apart from some rudimentary French & German I would
struggle to find a job abroad. Having just taken early retirement and needing
to return to work in the autumn I will be looking for work. Luckily there are
plenty of nursing jobs in the UK and I don’t mind wiping people’s backsides.
It is not pleasant but it is an integral part of nursing and caring for
others. There are worse jobs out there.

Anna
Raccoon July 27, 2013 at 10:11

I was surprised at the number of foreign nurses in the hospital I attend
in Bordeaux. Polish, Italian, Spanish, German – and yes, they all spoke
perfect French – a requirement for taking up work there.
The Polish nurse
told me that she had arrived in France as a fully qualified theatre sister –
and then spent four long years working as a kitchen orderly sharing a room
with four other polish girls in order to meet the requirement for perfect
French, but had never regretted doing so – and she didn’t speak a word of
French when she arrived.

Marie July 27, 2013 at 22:49

I would have imagined that language was your forte. You underestimate
yourself surely.

Chris July 27, 2013 at 08:54

I’ve just had a quick look at the job search on that site. Every job I’ve
seen so far was loaded by “Department for Work and Pensions, Public Employment
Services, United Kingdom”. So I’m wondering if these employers haven’t been
individually posting jobs on this board.
Out of interest I looked at some
of the jobs available in my category of Computer systems design… which include
Bettawear Salesman, and CCTV installer.
I then looked at some Agricultural
jobs, which include “Assistant Road Safety Education Officer” and “FAMILY
SUPPORT WORKERS”. DWP are clearly a bunch of idiots.

John July 28, 2013 at 15:32

Since many of the DWP workers are on short contracts, and minimum wage,
what do you expect ?

Moor
Larkin July 27, 2013 at 08:48

It’s a truism in England at least, which is where 85% of the UK people
live, that we have a shortage of plumbers. The Polish Plumber has become as
valued as the Bangladeshi curry house proprietor. It is also a truism that
hospital staff in urban areas at least, are heavily staffed by hard-working,
patently immigrant staff whose accents quickly reveal they are not native to
our Jerusalem. One suggestion about the causes of the NHS problem is that
8,000 of our own under 18′s females are taken out of the jobs market every
year by becoming pregnant. That’s not to say boys shouldn’t be becoming
nurses, but the reality is that most males never did find the idea at all
appealing – perhaps feminists would point out that girls don’t find wiping old
people’s backsides very appealing either, and so decide that wiping the sweet
little pink botty of their own baby much more like living the dream. Why the
boys don’t become plumbers is one of the great mysteries of our age. Perhaps
the massive attack of TV Cookery shows these days will lead to a generation at
least being equipped to take over the running of the curry houses. Either that
or they can become part of a boy band.

Jonathan Mason
July 27, 2013 at 12:02

Perhaps a BBC TV show in which a team of plumbers given secret makeovers
to homes with inadequate piping to surprise the householders on their return
from a day in the metropolis would do the trick.

john malpas
July 27, 2013 at 22:57

There you go with the ‘/old people’ thing again.
Firstly most people
in hospiutals are not old.
Secondly most old people can wipe their own
backsides.
And Finally nirses were once nurses not jumped up
graduates.

john malpas
July 27, 2013 at 22:59

sorry about the spelling it is rather dark in here and the font is
small when you are 78 years old

Elena ‘andcart
July 27, 2013 at 08:40

There isn’t all that much to these engineering and mechanical jobs, you
know. I like to kid on that being an Air Mechanic required high intelligence
and great skill, when in fact you just take off one bit and put another one
on. And it is pretty obvious where the new bit is supposed to go.
And then
there is always The Mallet. You just need to know where to hit it.

PS. I was never personally responsible for the loss of an aeroplane.

Den July 27, 2013 at 09:15

LOL. The home of the industrial revolution never did develop respect for
engineers did it? Oh to be an engineer in Germany where the profession is
appreciated. Still, we’ve more or less got rid of greasy, dirty engineers –
we have banking instead.

Elena
‘andcart July 27, 2013 at 10:11

Well, if you know yourself that it isn’t Rocket Science, what do you
expect? Although even Rockets are only made up of components that need
changing and fitting sometimes.

The Stress and Strains lark is only mathematics. Although The Theory of
Flight has never quite taken off for me. Which is why I never fly.

Engineer
July 27, 2013 at 11:19

Hmmm – not quite. Having earned a living in the ‘stress and strains’
lark for a couple of decades, I can tell you there’s rather more to it
than just mathematics, useful though that discipline is. A late and much
lamented colleague (at one time the Chief Vessel Design Engineer for
Shell UK) once told me that in his thirties, he thought he knew a bit,
but by his forties he wasn’t so sure, and by his sixties he’d learned
enough to know that he knew practically nothing. I know what he meant –
engineering design is a very broad and VERY complex field.

Fortunately, we are still training engineers of high calibre. British
consulting firms, and the best British engineering universities are
highly regarded the world over. You don’t hear much about it, because
everybody assumes that engineering is about assembly lines and
old-fashioned metal bashing. For example, the majority of European and
American internal combustion engine design and development is undertaken
in Britain; Ricardo is one of the big names most people have probably
never heard of.
———

Returning to the point of the post, it would help if government
didn’t penalise employers for taking on youngsters. It used to be the
case that employers got tax breaks for running apprenticship schemes.
Now they get hit for minimum wages, all manner of perks and obligations,
and employers’ NI. Why spend a fortune training someone when you can get
a work-ready Pole (who can probably speak and write better English than
many natives, and turns up on the dot every morning) ‘off the shelf’ as
it were?

Engineer
July 27, 2013 at 16:48

Here’s Ricardo’s website. The company was founded by Sir Harry
Ricardo in about 1900. It’s grown a bit since then, but it’s still a
British-based global company. It’s far from being the only
British-based global company, either

http://www.ricardo.com/

binao
July 27, 2013 at 22:41

Fair point Engineer about the high calibre stuff.
Anybody
interested in Ricardo site might also look at Shoreham Airport
too.
Back to the apprenticeships bit. In manufacturing there has
been a huge change in productivity, products, materials, and quality,
which has reduced the need for adjusting, minding, and repairing
process machinery. We expect production machinery to run continuously,
monitoring itself and the product it makes; at the same time
automation has dramatically increased production capacity. Thanks
USA.
At the start of my apprenticeship in a well established
company I recall an old press with 1888 cast into the crosshead; it
was used to stamp out tinplate blanks which were then formed and
soldered into cans for Cannings Peerless Polish. Every blank required
an operator feeding a piece of tinplate and pressing a pedal. Twenty
years later I was building and commissioning factories making beer
cans on production lines running at 800 cans a minute. From a coil of
tinplate or aluminium to finished, printed cans in a continuous
process, 24/7.
That was thirty five years ago and that kind of
change has affected all manufacturing. There can’t be many Ward 7 or
Peterman sliding head auto jobs about now.
So a lot of skilled and
semiskilled work has evaporated because we do things better, I would
suggest.
Outsourcing the supply of everything including skills
could meanwhile have led to an enhancement of the role of artisans due
to scarcity. But then along came that damned eu and the free movement
of labour….

Disenfranchised of Buckingham July 27, 2013 at 23:54

Binao, things were going down hill 35 years ago. Around 1981 I was
asked to add electronics to a machine tool made by a once world
beating British company. I asked to speak to someone who knew how the
machine worked and was told it was designed in 1930 and everyone who
knew how it actually worked had retired. No one seemed to know enough
to understand a pre war machine tool. Depressing. They no longer
exist. The moral of the story is that the skills of the 30s had been
lost by the 80s.

Engineer
July 28, 2013 at 12:07

binao – I absolutely agree. Somewhere recently, I read that
Britain’s output of manufactured goods by value is as high as it ever
has been, but because production productivity has improved so much,
the same value of finished goods is produced by a vastly smaller
workforce. The skill required of those remaining is in consequence,
far higher than it used to be.

DofB – not sure I believe that story. 1930′s machine tools are
basically fairly simple, and can easily be repaired today, never mind
in 1981. (Dean, Smith and Grace will today, for example, remanufacture
lathes they built in the 1950s and 60s, and in some cases, retro-fit
computer control. They can also supply spares for any lathe built from
the 1960s on, mostly off-the-shelf.) It sounds more likely that the
machine was clapped out after 50 years of use, and the shop-floor
wanted it replaced. Either that, or they didn’t want it’s productivity
improved, thus possibly threatening their jobs.

Disenfranchised of Buckingham July 28, 2013 at 12:51

Engineer. This was not a retrofit to an old machine but adding
electronic control to a machine still in production. They were loosing
their market to the Japanese but felt unable due to loss of skills to
modify the design enough to work well with electronics.

Joe Public
July 27, 2013 at 12:20

“The Stress and Strains lark is only mathematics. Although The Theory
of Flight has never quite taken off for me. Which is why I never
fly.”

Unlike the Bumble Bee.

Initially, ‘The Theory of Flight’ determined that it was impossible
for a bumble bee to fly. Then the scientists realised they’d applied the
wrong mathematics.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1076/is-it-aerodynamically-impossible-for-bumblebees-to-fly

Elena
‘andcart July 28, 2013 at 13:06

I’m still not buying it.

And when did you last see an aeroplane flapping it’s wings up and
down, unless they were about to drop off.

binao July 27, 2013 at 08:37

A few weeks ago I had a visit from an old RSA friend, over to visit her
son, who came here looking for work a few years ago, has married a Polish girl
settled and started a family.
This c.30 year old is now working for
himself, but has always worked since being here. ‘…there’s work out there if
you look hard enough. A lot of people here really don’t want to work. I’ve
done jobs I really didn’t want to do, horrible work, but it’s work.’
His
work? Carpentry, but if there are no carpentry jobs, whatever he can
find.
Yes, I know, hardly a detailed study leading to logical conclusion,
and we do have many millions working away doing things they perhaps might
prefer not to, but contributing to the general well being.
The hand
wringers have fostered a belief that this is not an obligation, just an
option.

Cynic July 27, 2013 at 08:20

I would balk at calling mechanics and welders “not highly skilled”.

Decent welding jobs require “Coded” welding qualifications for the types of
welding to be done. I doubt that you would knowingly wish to, for example,
cross a steel bridge knocked up by some bloke with a stick welder who has been
shown only how to turn the machine on.

Similarly, you would no doubt prefer to have your motor car or, if you
travel by air or sea, the engines of your transport maintained by qualified or
skilled mechanics, rather than some chap who just about knows the difference
between a nut and a bolt.

I should also say that the appalling treatment meted out to their
“customers” by some care assistants (as evidenced by several recent cases and
prosecutions) would suggest that the standards required of such people should
be improved (not necessarily with formal qualifications) rather than accepting
“ordinary” i.e. bloody awful, skill levels.

Despite all the rhetoric from the likes of Hancock and that hypocrite
Duncan-Smith, it is not always a good idea to hammer square pegs into round
holes, to suit a political agenda. If evidence of its undesirability is
needed, I suggest a brief examination of the 650 expense claimants in the
House of Commons will confirm that the “Peter Principle” is in full swing
there, to the detriment of the rest of us.

Anna
Raccoon July 27, 2013 at 08:31

I didn’t say ‘not skilled’, I said ‘not highly skilled’. I quite
understand that welders have to be coded – what I intended to imply was that
these were the sort of jobs you would expect Britons living locally to be
qualified for. i.e. not unattainable qualifications.

Den July 27, 2013 at 09:02

A mechanic used to have a five year apprenticeship. Perhaps three years
good training might suffice but he has to get a lot of experience. Basic
welding requires a hand/eye co-ordination knack which as an electrical
engineer the welding boys despaired of teaching me when I dabbled. I agree
with your general thrust but you have chosen some problematic
examples.

Incidentally, as a Post Office engineering manager in the 80s I was
told that we were stopping apprenticeships (they were very good ones). I
asked where we would get technicians in future and was told that we would
buy-in people trained by other firms. If we want good craftsmen they must
be trained properly.

However, It would not hurt for people on the dole to be given some work
to do in order that they might learn/retain the discipline required to get
up in the morning and report for employment.

suspicious
July 27, 2013 at 10:41

I had an interesting experience not so long ago with BT. It took four
of their engineers to put in a phone line to my new abode. The first one
was disinterested and didn’t seem to know what to do, the second was
about the same, the third quite honestly incompetent and also downright
rude. Only the fourth seemed to know what he was doing and had the
imagination, intelligence and aptitude to do it. It took him three solid
hours of hard work, but he triumphed in the end, and lo, I had a working
phone line!! Woo hoo!! The only difference I could make out between him
and the others was age. They were all in their early twenties, while he
was nearing fifty and therefore had experience.

Disenfranchised of Buckingham July 28, 2013 at 00:10

Apprenticeships can be a 2 edged sword. One of my mates did a 5 year
print apprenticeship. He was a wiz at setting up lead type and all that
stuff. When he completed his apprenticeship he found himself
unemployable because everything had gone computerised.

Cynic July 27, 2013 at 21:54

I realise you wrote “not highly skilled”‘; hence my quoting you
verbatim in my first paragraph.

If you investigate the skills available in the workforce overall, you
will find that the welding and mechanical skills you suppose to be readily
available are not. The opportunities for people to obtain these skills
have also dwindled in face of things like 50% university attendance.

Almost everything in England at present works against providing people
skilled to do the jobs you mention. An education system, where some prat
called Gove can indulge his every whim at least daily, to employers who
want everyone but themselves to pay the lion’s share in order that they
take the profit, via a crap Tax and NHI regime, mean that it is, for the
moment, stuffed, and royally.

John July 28, 2013 at 14:13

Training.
Very little of it a available.
Employers prefer their
employees to have been trained at anothers expense. Personally, given that
welding uses many processes, and encompasses many materials, each process
and material the welder is supposed to have been tested on, I would not
consider it a job that a person without experience or papers would be
enlisted for. And I’ve been welding for over 30 years. The average
employer will not train people, other than in what legislation requires
them to be trained in: manual handling/lift truck/ etc.

Peter Whittlesea
July 27, 2013 at 08:05

I would go as far to say ‘Everything you receive without working, means
that government have just printed a load of funny money through QE….’

Mick Anderson
July 27, 2013 at 08:25

And who do you think pays for the effective inflation and devaluation
caused by QE….? It’s not something for nothing.

Peter
Whittlesea July 27, 2013 at 21:31

… patiently awaiting the forthcoming implosion
)