This country as gone into terminal decline

[Carmes]

I have 2 young children in school.

I am becoming more and more anxious about what sort of jobs / careers they will have open to them.

I work for very large company with 10,000s of employees.

20 years ago whe I started work here there would be 100s of entry level jobs at any given time. These are jobs that don't require experience or a degree, ideal for a school leaver, and I know dozens of people who started their career this way.

Now there are maybe 10 jobs that would fit the same criteria.so. All the jobs have been offshored.
Now are the vacancies are for very specific technical skill set or experience.

This doesn't bode well for someone who has left school at 18'or even university.

@LutherVandrossessuit what you describe is why I’d hesitate to do a trade myself or recommend it to my kids. It seems like a lot of driving about, trying to find parking and working in lots of different people’s homes - some of who may be lovely, but what are the chances they all are friendly, have clean homes, no scary pets and will pay you on time.

Those aged 60 are still in employment and not drawing their pension. Shall we kill them off and save on pensions?

What a stupid comment. My parents are in their early 80’s with hopefully many more years to live with healthcare to support them when needed.

Look also at what good it didn't do for Theresa May when she dared to suggest wealthier pensioners should fund more of their own care, ; for once it was a politician being honest and it was a major factor in her losing the election

Thats true & why politicians don’t want to have the discussions.

Possibly. You’re certainly proven correct by the Tories and Labour. Which is why I’ll be giving my vote to Reform next time around. Last hope and all that.

Equally, I know a British family with 3 kids all of them with SEN who get private school paid for by the council because the mother claims only private schools can provide the level of SEN care they need. One of the kids is at a boarding school. These schools are not specialists- they are normal private schools but the mother tooled up with an educational solicitor and they get almost £60k in school fees + extras a year from their council. In the meantime, the mother is spending £££££ on her hobby.

go figure.

Good god what a thoroughly depressing thread.

I am 61 and take exception to this view!

75 yes but 60? Madness.

Nobody wants to pull the plug on their own parents.

And there was no suggestion of killing them off but frankly they wouldn’t need to be still in employment at 60 if we weren’t fitting stents and putting 80 year olds through general anaesthetics.

Let them just run their natural course.

I’m sure you do the same as the infertile couple takes exception to them not being allowed Ivf. Everyone thinks that they’re the exception don’t they?

I think this thread shows just how little older people are valued. People are literally shocked by my suggestion of proper pay and training for people working in care homes for example, ensuring our elderly have good quality care and not just leaving it along with fruit picking, for immigrants.

This doesn’t make sense, whilst I’m quite shocked at the comment re the over 60s I can see why younger people are pissed off. Or why they don’t want to work as carers even if it is better paid plus plenty of older people don’t want to pay more towards their care.

My grandfather could still be found tinkering away under the car or, up on his roof hammering tiles in at 75. He died at 92, after 3 months of illness. His life was very worth living.

Sadly I have to agree with this.
With rapidly falling birth rates we do not have the manpower to support people for decades after their retirement.

75 yes but 60? Madness.

The 75 yr olds will think the same as you though.

The legalised euthanasia scares me in that will people actually get care & dignity at the end?

And that’s fine. I’m not suggesting somebody comes round and takes a hammer to the back of his head or anything.
Pushes him off the roof.

But if you’ve got a disease that’s going to kill you beyond a certain age, it’s going to kill you.

God, the last thing we want to do is become more like the US, which is rapidly becoming a country of a small number of haves and a much, much larger underclass of have-nots. Homelessness there has increased by 18% this year and by 12% the year before that. It is already descending into violence.

It is the pre-occupation with growth (which increasingly only benefits those people who already have money) that is going to doom us all.

Possibly. You’re certainly proven correct by the Tories and Labour. Which is why I’ll be giving my vote to Reform next time around. Last hope and all that.

Reform definitely aren’t going to fix things!

The problem is after 80 healthcare costs 7 times more per person than someone in their 30s. Who's going to pay for that? Those on minimum wage.😂
Can't people see the ideas and concepts of the 1950s are NOT affordable? The concept of growth has reached a point of diminishing returns. We had deceleration from 2008 onwards now our ideas and foundations such as a home, healthcare and education aspirations are now in reverse.

Absolutely disgusting post.What about prolonging the life of under-60s disabled people, or the long-term unemployed - do you have an opinion on that as well?

Those aged 60 are still in employment and not drawing their pension. Shall we kill them off and save on pensions?

Tbf some of them are the sick & disabled on benefits that other posters mention.

What climate change and politics will do - who knows.

But their world will be alien to us. The giant and rapid changes in the digital and tech world will mean careers and fields will emerge for them that we can't imagine.

I would advise a young person to get an apprenticeship, train for something practical and necessary rather than go to uni, spend three years getting a debt and come out with a degree in something pointless.

Tho I'm old enough to have had a student grant, my own pointless degree has never been of any use and held me in a bubble for three years. I wish I'd gone instead to train in the field I went into later, and built knowledge and skills and a network earlier on.

Digital nomads are a thing - I have a friend who house/pet sits often in different countries, and runs her own business from laptop and phone, social media and Teams, wherever she is. The shift to working from home and the lockdown-led split from the big commute to an urban office is here to stay.

May you live in interesting times.

You don't say what benefits your mum claimed - did she merely claim benefits she was perfectly entitled to, or did she sit around on her a**e gaming and fiddling the system?
But going back to pensions, let's say I died in my early 50's, having worked since I was 18 and paid full national insurance contributions.
My state pension entitlement "dies" with me.
My heirs would not see a penny of my contributions, the amount of which would just stay in the government's coffers.
Having said that, none of us has a state pension "pot" - I think that people paying NI contributions now are paying for existing state pensioners, and the generation below us will pay for ours. I'm happy to be corrected on that.
But the bottom line is that dying "young" means that none of your heirs benefit from what you contributed.
So, we may not agree with your mum, but I do actually think she had a point!

How do you know? You can’t possibly.

They can’t possibly do a worse job than the current government. It’s been a disastrous 5 months.

What’s the alternative? Keep flitting between Labour and the Conservatives, hoping one day things will miraculously change?

I can't believe that nearly 25% of people here don't think we are in terminal decline. Do they have their heads stuck in the sand?

I can only assume that 1% are the people who will actually be all right, 10% are the ones who are currently alright and think they or their families will stay the right side of the line (they won't) and the others are the equivalent of the Trotters (next year Rodney, we will be millionaires).

The old manual jobs are the ones that will exist. Plumber, electrician. hairdresser are going to be here still. Can earn a good salary and if prefer be self-employed.