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.

FFS they're not beneath anyone, but fruit picking pays less than minimum wage once you take into account fuel, mileage and travel time to out-of-the way rural locations. If you are lucky enough to live in said rural locations you need to earn vast multiples of the minimum wage to be able to afford anywhere to live because second home ownership and AirBnBs have pushed prices up.

Those sort of jobs are also only for a couple of months a year, so no good for someone who a landlord or mortgage lender is likely to ask for "evidence of a stable income".

Pretty much all these labour market issues would be solved by widespread provision of genuinely affordable housing - until then, no, people are not going to willingly do work which doesn't cover their housing costs.

Good for you if that's really your experience, I however had to move out of my home town because it pretty much got taken over by Pakistani Muslims and it was no longer safe for a woman to walk out on her own past 6pm and the white kids were getting beaten up at school. This comment will probably get deleted although I don't see why it's just my experience like how you have yours.

Although you never explained why the girl you know having three kids was relevant to moaning about tax payers money being wasted when it's been capped at two since 2017. Plus the jobcentre will push her to get a job when the youngest is 2/3 it's not the 00s anymore when people could sit around doing nothing.

@Carmes
Brexit has ruined the country
people who don’t see that are kidding themselves

I know. The naivety of some of these comments is amazing.
And unemployment is not 'very low'. The figures are not to be believed and it is rising and likely to rise a lot more over the next few years.

We know quite a few NEET, they’re all waiting for treatment mostly MH. Most got very little from CAMHS and then adult services so treatable problens have turned into big. Yet another Tory mess left for labour to clear up.

Mental health services in the UK are absolutely disgraceful. I agree that the Tories failed dismally and have caused a rapid decline in pretty much everything during their 14 years. I'm not optimistic about the chances of Labour fixing things though...

Ever since the 1950s (when we had the temporary blip of never having it so good because industrial Europe had not yet caught up with us after WW2) British governments have struggled with production and productivity: the consequence is that the taxes never match the increasing need for government spending so borrowing goes up. Other countries, especially China, can manufacture more cheaply than the UK. European countries built new railways, etc., whereas the British carried on for the most part with outdated equipment. Public expectations are high, resources are low. Politicians have never faced up to this.

I find it interesting that everyone is panicking about how the country will be for their kids without realising that our kids will not be passive beings in the future, they can make choices, they can influence what happens.

I really don’t think I’ve ever read such a depressing thread on MN.

There is so much going for this country are we all going to just accept it’s shit and only focus on the bad things?

I look around my friends kids and see hardworking, empathetic and motivated kids. They play sport, study, do extracurricular activities, much more than I did or any of my friends did. Surely this will pay off for society?

maybe they will find solutions to some of the problems in this thread.

We shall see.

One thing they need to look at is outsourcing abroad. The Tories have just let so much work go abroad- cheap labour. My husband works in IT and so much is done abroad now. Companies pay them tiny wages and they don’t produce quality work. Some us really poor.The few left in England have to put all the mistakes right. It’s happening across all sorts of sectors many quite high security. It’s a disaster waiting to happen and an erosion of skills. Chuck in Brexit with UK workers now unable to access European jobs and the future looks so bleak. Other countries must just laugh at us.

I think labour needs to sort out the right to work in Europe and give rewards to companies that don’t outsource abroad.

The Tories or Reform are seriously the last thing we need. They only care about themselves, their financial interests and their backbenchers.

TBH, tough as it is I personally don't want to leave the country short of being in actual danger, or if both kids moved I might move to join once retired. But my whole skill set is writing based - there's no way I could get fluent enough to pick up my job in another country, although that said I could always work remotely as there's also a lot remote work available in my field.

@TennisToday everyone I know did all of those things (sport etc) but that doesn't magic up housing for you as an adult.

The challenge isn't finding solutions - they're already there (a wealth tax alone would solve many of the issues mentioned in this thread, just to give one example) but a small number of extremely rich and powerful individuals benefit from the current state of our economy and society, and they spend unbelievable amounts of time and money trying to uphold the extractive systems that are causing our current plight.

I read George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison's The Invisible Doctrine over Christmas and it emphasises this far more lucidly and effectively than I can - I genuinely think everyone commenting on this thread should read it.

Birth rate is falling in most countries but the world population will continue to rise for several decades due to population momentum - the children born during high fertily periods are now entering reproductive age. The number of children born is impacted by both the number of women of reproductive age who have children as well as the number of children on average they have. Fertility decline does not therefore instantly lead to population reduction. Particularly when life expectancy is also increasing m.

I did grape picking in the UK for the first time this year

It was a team effort & enjoyable

The inability to accept that things can be different is astounding from some posters. The comparison is what can I get for sitting on my arse versus actually working. There are tons of jobs available - everyone you look there are vacancies. The problem is people would rather play on their tax payer funded X-boxes than do anything. This is why benefits need to be reduced. Disabilities excepted it should not be possible to live on benefits beyond a period of time to ensure people are forced to actually do something.

Thank you ! You clearly know what you’re speaking about.

Not sure what you mean by inability to accept that things can be different. Obviously, things can be different.
As I said, there are not 'tons of jobs available'. Vacancies have, in fact fallen. This was reported recently in the mainstream media. I agree that long term benefits do no one any favours but it is far more complicated than you suggest and these people are often victims of the awful system rather than anything else.
You mainly seem to be interested in regurgitating the right wing media trope rather than showing an understanding of the factors that have led to this situation.

Yes, large corporations have been busily squeezing every last bit of profit out of workers, including the outsourcing that has been going on for the last few decades. I hope it can be reversed. However, these massive corporations control the world nowadays so they will lobby for whatever benefits them until their dying breath! If we do bring more jobs to the UK (see Trump's proposals), wages would need to rise (positive) but it may well be more than some companies can afford, leading to more insolvencies.
I remain to be convinced that Labour can make any meaningful improvements but I would be v happy to be wrong.

I picked grapes in southern France in 1977 with a team of Catalan peasants (very good, experienced, fast) and a motley crew of German and English students. Paid 12 (about £1) francs per hour, accommodation provided in a former pigsty with no plumbing and a stone sink without running water. It was a trip to the village loo in the middle of the night in an emergency though (after excessive indulgence in some very delicious ripe figs we scrumped)! After so much time in the healthy outdoors, I did not catch a single virus for 12 months.

@Beekeepingmum of course things can be different. There are loads of exciting and creative possibilities for change that would make those jobs more viable for people- universal free childcare and public transport, 100 per cent capital gains taxes on housing so that house prices don't get any more out of control, 4 day weeks with one day for volunteering, loads more social housing constructed by a state owned construction company.

But cutting benefits isn't a creative or original suggestion. Like cutting taxes on the rich, it was been tried time and time again over the last 40 years as neoliberalism has seeped into policymaking, and clearly doesn't work, because people are no better off than they were before, despite all the alleged economic growth.

Yes!,,

Whether your suggestions would work, I don't know but hooray for something different! As you say, 40 years of Neoliberal policy has been a complete and utter failure and there has been very little growth.

Is it worse than the 70s? They're always painted as being grim, but I didn't live through them.

It's a lovely daydream @Eeeeeeeeeekohno . If all housing and public transport (do we include or exclude aviation?) was free who would pay the cost of providing it? Services cost money to run. Taxation funds some services deemed essential, but at a frustratingly threadbare level.

I did live through the 1970s, as a late teen/young adult. It was the worst of times, but I was young and resilient, the music was great and I didn't have any responsibilities. Even so, I studied for my A levels by candlelight, the bins weren't emptied for weeks, and bodies went unburied in some parts of the country. I would never suggest a return to those days. Adults despaired.