Listening to the wireless whilst pottering around the house, I heard noted pop music impresario Pete Waterman bemoaning the laziness and stupidity of British youth. Now, I normally pay no attention at all to the drug-fuelled ramblings of music industry persons, but in this particular case he caught my attention, because he runs a business in the real world. Or, at least, in Crewe. He has an engineering works and has been trying to hire (I think he said) 20 apprentices but they won't do it because they start at 7.45am and he won't let them use mobile phones while using equipment. He said that he had had to look "further afield" to find the people he needs - he didn't specify but I assume he meant Poland or Latvia.
Meanwhile, my wife was in hospital recently and was being served lunch by a Latvian woman. She was a university graduate but was serving food in a hotel to earn some money in the UK while she bettered her English and went to college in the evening. I know that anecdote aren't statistics, but you see this sam pattern time and time again. Under New Labour insane plans to create an underclass that would form a permanent socialist voting bloc while using uncontrolled mass immigration to keep the lights on we have come close to rendering an entire generation unemployable.
By coincidence, I happened to have been at an employers gathering the day before. I don't want to say why, because it would be inappropriate to identify any of the particular organisations. but it was interesting here some of the CEOs talk about the problems of expanding their businesses in the UK. Some had made a very deliberate decision to expand overseas and it wasn't, as I would have imagined, all about wage levels. More than one of them said that it was simply not possible to find young people in the UK who were prepared to work all day. Someone I know tolerably well has moved his software development company from the south east of England to Romania. You don't just lose the jobs of the software developers, you lose the jobs of the receptionists, janitors, accountants, solicitors and so forth too.
One of the guys at the meeting I was at was talking about the new government apprentice scheme. They have ten places available for (paid) apprentices. Only two people even showed up for interview (in a country with over a million unemployed yoofs). One of the other guys was trying to to hire engineering graduates and couldn't find any. The chap from one of the universities present said that many engineering graduates go into banking and finance because it offers the potential for big bonuses.
What has gone wrong? The New Labour edukashun drive must have had even more disastrous effects on our young people than even I had imagined, and my kids go to state schools so I see the catastrophic reality every day. This leaves me with very little hope for the UK - naturally I am advising my own children to flee as soon as is practical - but someone please tell me that there is a ray of sunshine out there somewhere.
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