In part, at least, this is due to a long-term failure to address low productivity, which in turn is largely due to a failure to invest adequately. It is not, contrary, to the Daily Mail, the case that this is principally due to lazy workers. Piss poor educational standards add to the problem.
Great post
@BrianW. The above to me is the crux of the problem. Some of the very best training was offered by nationalised industries, BT, British Rail, British Steel, CEGB, British Gas etc. They were also hot beds of innovation, which frustratingly we often failed to capitalise on, but thats a different story.
The vocational training offered by the nationalised industries had the benefit of generating a stream of highly skilled workers who could then move to the private sector often for a good increase in pay and become industry leaders in businesses which would then feed the export markets.
The training schemes were very high quality mixing real world practical skills, within a given industry, with academic learning. All of which was assessed and led to people being certified to undertake certain types of work after having gained sufficient expertise.
Now we are stuck with privately owned companies who are only interested in profit for shareholders, many of whom are overseas and not interested in the future prosperity of the UK. They are certainly not interested in training programs for staff and therefore in some sectors there's a shortage of people with the right skill sets or as is often the case, people in positions where they might have the academic qualifications but dont have a clue of how things work in practice.
Its a real mess and as you say will take years to sort out along with the political will to force those large companies to provide very high quality training or be hammered by taxation. It would however also require legislation to prevent them just passing the cost on to consumers to maintain profit margins as is currently the case whenever they are hit by a levy.
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