Political relations between UK-EU

[metalblue]

It is a question of aspiration. Your daughter aspired, or did aspire to be a MUA (as it’s known in showbiz), and if the fee for the training was £3.5k, no doubt the money would have been found, just as people who aspire to go to university find much larger fees.

If people aspire to be a truck driver than finding the fee will be less of an obstacle and I’m happy for them. Trouble is, no one aspires be a truck driver. They aspire to be doctors, nurses, journalists, YouTube stars. They may end up working in the local Estate Agents and find they enjoy it, but no one is aspiring to become an Estate Agent either. But office life can be fun, it’s regular hours and you are not having to take a shit by the roadside.

Oh, is it okay to take the piss out of Estate Agents or is that more ‘beneath me‘ snootiness?

Actually, I’ll change it, as I started out as an Insurance Broker after school, and no one is aspiring to be one of those either.

And no, I didn’t go to university, but I am happy and delighted for as many youngsters to do so, dream big and not require them to be conscripted in as emergency lorry drivers. Unless of course that is their big dream, in which case they are in luck.

I didn’t aspire to do what I do exactly. I didn’t go to uni but found a had a hidden talent for blagging and bagged a job in commodity trading, learnt everything I could from the old hands and have managed to have a career in it by repeating the same 10 things in different ways for more years than I care to remember. I was lucky, there is zero chance today of any youngster getting into this gig the way I did or having the exposure I did.

But that’s the crux of the thing isn’t it? Everyone “thinks” they need to go to uni these days - so many employers demand it so kids dutifully go off and get one. You don’t need a degree to do my job in the slightest but yet banks insist on one before they’ll even look at your CV. Kids don’t get that chance to try out being a truck driver and if they don’t like it become a commodity broker the next week, they basically have to map out their lives from the age of 14…who amongst us had a clue what we wanted to do at 14? some sure but they’ll be in the minority.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

Truss appoints Ian Botham as UK Trade Envoy to Australia as the Whitehall farce gathers pace.................!!!!!

It's better than that though. We have the following, which will more than make up for any lost EU trade...

He is one of 10 new trade envoys.
Baroness Hoey has been appointed to Ghana, while Stephen Timms MP has been assigned to Switzerland and Lichtenstein, and Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP to Cameroon, in addition to his role as trade envoy to Egypt.

David Mundell MP has been appointed to New Zealand, Mark Eastwood MP to Pakistan, Marco Longhi MP to Brazil and Conor Burns MP to Canada .

Lord Walney has been assigned to Tanzania, while Felicity Buchan MP has been appointed to Iceland and Norway.

 

[metalblue]

Merkel’s decision in 2015 to not close the border and her famous ‘we can do this’ reverberated around Europe and was widely criticised at the time for encouraging migrants. The rest of Europe and the UK were not happy.

How the figures stack up is open for debate, but the common consensus was 930k Syrian refugees applied for asylum in 2015 and 1.7 million asylum claims were made between 2015 and 2019. Whether that includes rejected claims or claims taking years to be approved, I don’t know. But as you say, whatever the final figure, it was a bold move and Merkel is still in power (until next month) and held in high regard whereas the leaders who criticised her have long faded.

Oh, and they still have a labour shortage :)

Incidentally their truck driver shortages are similar to ours ;)

 

[inbetween]

No, it should be about the experience as much as anything else. Not everyone will get what they want out of it, but that’s life. Equally, if someone wants to be an electrician or plumber or any skilled trade then fine.

I reject the idea we should limit peoples aspirations, or start imposing views on how kids should approach university life.

It also should be free, or a nominal sum. £3.5k sounds about right. But that’s a whole new argument :)

My experience was that it was mainly about drinking on my own borrowed expense for 3 years. If you'd had said to me when I was 18 why don't you go and do this for a few years and then you'll be earning £40k, I'd of done it but I wasn't pushed in that direction.

Instead my college told me that my course would lead to magic graduate jobs so I went for it but as it turns out it was a total lie. It's almost as though people think that universities exist to educate people but they don't, universities are primarily businesses that exist to make money. Oxford University made £1.3bn last year and they don't make that through tuition fees or giving students an experience.

We shouldn't impose that kind of view no but we should stop lying and selling the message that university is somehow aspirational or puts you in better standing compared to everything else because it just isn't true.

 

[BobKowalski]

Domestic workforce getting a mention...

 

[BobKowalski]

Incidentally their truck driver shortages are similar to ours ;)

What we need to do is pool resources with Europe to help cover the shortfalls. Co-operation rather than confrontation. Trouble is, you would need a different Govt and a different national mindset for that to happen.

 

[west didsblue]

What we need to do is pool resources with Europe to help cover the shortfalls. Co-operation rather than confrontation. Trouble is, you would need a different Govt and a different national mindset for that to happen.

If only someone would come up with a concept where there's free movement of labour across the continent. What a great idea that would be.

 

[bluethrunthru]

They will love him

"Aussies are big and empty, just like their country." ~ Ian Botham

 

[bluethrunthru]

Giving prisoners very sharp masks - what next? Convicted drunk drivers let out to drive delivery lorries?

Prisoners to plug worker shortage in meat industry

Meat industry leaders tell the BBC the government is "keen" to link up businesses with inmates.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[BobKowalski]

My experience was that it was mainly about drinking on my own borrowed expense for 3 years. If you'd had said to me when I was 18 why don't you go and do this for a few years and then you'll be earning £40k, I'd of done it but I wasn't pushed in that direction.

Instead my college told me that my course would lead to magic graduate jobs so I went for it but as it turns out it was a total lie. It's almost as though people think that universities exist to educate people but they don't, universities are primarily businesses that exist to make money. Oxford University made £1.3bn last year and they don't make that through tuition fees or giving students an experience.

We shouldn't impose that kind of view no but we should stop lying and selling the message that university is somehow aspirational or puts you in better standing compared to everything else because it just isn't true.

People view it as aspirational because every one at the top, be it politics, business, media invariably went to university, and private school.

What is the alternative message to parents? What is the alternative aspiring example? How do we fight that reflexive and ingrained bias that university is the only way forward?

As for Universities as businesses, well we voted to make them businesses. We voted to let them charge our kids high fees. Fees in France? Nominal. Fees in Germany? Nominal. England? Mortgage the rest of your life.