This article from The Telegraph is interesting
It says we are paying the price for pushing young people towards university education, and that the lack of manual workers in the population has been concealed by people coming from the EU.
It says we need to value manual work more, rather than pushing young people into irrelevant Mickey Mouse university degrees where the skills acquired are of no use in subsequent employment.
Indeed it does young people no good if they go on a unversity course, saddle themselves with a large student debt, and then cannot use their university degree to find suitable employment.
For years, the lack of manual workers in the indigenous population was concealed by European migrants. That will no longer be the case
www.telegraph.co.uk
In secondary schools today they push kids into Media Studies, Arts, Photography, Dance etc instead of Science simply because that's what teachers they have. The education system has no capacity to teach a trade until College.
My local College is still teaching kids car mechanics for ICE cars when the industry is crying out for EV training. Sounds like a bit of joined up thinking maybe required!
There is a conflict to resolve. Education is geared up to a progression through Further Education to University. The majority of pupils do not need that and commerce needs different skills.
Well its good they are pushing kids into media studies considering how big the media industry is in this country, but i suspect that wasn't your point.
Like !.
The vast majority of those who study media do not go into the industry, over 99% I think I read once, similar for those who train as equine vets. Engineering students on the other hand and trades find job offers being thrown at them.
Further Education for most is maybe a way of keeping them off the streets. Yes it does not matter what they study as many believe they can become sports/film/football stars. Which, of course, leads the majority to end up feeling like failures. The media re-enforces that by only hailing stars not mundane workers. All part of the consumerist society.
Yes we have a pyramid scheme economic model which relies on immigration to make up the shortfall in our falling domestic birth rates needed to keep the growth going, not just in GDP, but also increasing the workforce numbers to keep paying tax to prop up the state pension model. This is not unique to us, most western economies are in the same boat, some ahead of us, some behind us. Even China is now having problems with working age population due to its long lived one child policy.
I think the shortages, including in petrol, are a subliminal message saying that maybe we're demanding too much for the population of our size and what labour the population can carry out, as you allude to with exploiting immigrants.
No - If you double the population then you double the labour supply and double the demand. Limiting factor is the SIZE OF THE PLANET. Also its a bit more complicated because a growing population infers a majority of young people to support the old people. If the population is falling then the old people become a growing burden on young people. Add into the equation that people are living a lot longer then that means older people are an increasing proportion of the population despite moderate growth.
But the poor old planet and its resources (like oil) is not getting bigger. So what I hear you say ? - all we need to do is find another planet........
Meanwhile, back on topic...
I needed to buy fuel tonight (long journey tomorrow) - I drove to the petrol station, waited behind one car, then filled up as normal. Drove past another petrol station on the way home - that had a short queue.
Crisis over.
Its what I expected/hoped this week as there is only so much fuel people can panic buy and hoard. It is not like toilet rolls which can be stored in every room of the house, shed and garage.
So we're going to have the reserve fleet of tankers mobilised driven by civilian drivers... Now I'm confused, I thought it was drivers we were short of not tankers!
Sounds like a gesture to calm the panic buyers down. Which might work - oh have I blown it now.
There should definitely be changes but the above statement is untrue. No-one is forced to do media studies, arts, photography, dance etc at GCSE level at any sensible school, and certainly none that I know of. In contrast, Science is compulsory. I would suggest any further discussion on this is made truthfully, accurately and also in a separate thread.
On the subject of petrol panic buying, I have no interest in driving a car myself, but I was given a lift (5 people in the car, so pretty efficient) and this involved going past a petrol station on the York outer ring road at approx 6:30pm and the place seemed empty; a cursory glance suggested they had no fuel but it wasn't obvious from my viewpoint. Going back around 9pm it clearly did have fuel and did look to be very busy but the queues were short. That's the only petrol station I've seen recently.
The petrol station near me (a few blocks away) was closed all day Tuesday - I could tell because there was no sound of car & lorry horns blowing.
I’m just sitting back with the popcorn on this one. Got over half a tank & dont need the car until w/c 11th October & then only 20 miles that week. Bus/train will do nicely until then & hopefully the drama will have abated.
Same here as I was waiting until nearer mid October for the next rip to Cardiff. Expecting it to blow over this week. But I chickened out yesterday because of the rumours that a £30 cap will be put on. That means I would need to make two visits.
When I lived in London I had no use for a car, but now living in a rural area I have no choice since the bus services faded away.
Yes. I feel lucky that I live in London (sometimes).
Some fool is suggesting that a mobile phone App is developed which enables people to see how long the queue is at various petrol stations in the area. (Quite how the App would know in real time how many cars are in the queue is beyond me)
This would be counterproductive, as people would rush to the nearest petrol station with fuel available, which would then mean that it would sell out of fuel more quickly.
In any case, if the App shows there is no queue at a particular petrol station, does that mean it is open and has fuel available (but with no queue) or does it mean that the petrol station is shut because they have run out of fuel?
Yes - that app will not reduce the fuel panic it will just exacerbate the problem. Also my local Petrol Station generated a mile (approx) long queue. But most of the vehicles in it were waiting to get past the fuel queue. This crisis really has snarled up the traffic I have even seen a queue down the wrong side of the road !.
