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.

I have worked, and was one of those bottom rung people you seem to despise.

Yes, it has, a lot of jobs done by teens in the past no longer exist, or are restricted to older people, and especially middle class teens are more likely to be heavily programmed with school and activities.

My partner, for example, had his first job doing roadwork at age 12 - I was doing agricultural work at the same age. The former would never be allowed for minors now and the latter is done by temporary workers from abroad.

I kind of thought that India has an huge economy because they have about a gazillion people, and a lot of them will work for less than people in the west, and their social infrastructure is pretty low cost.

I hear you. Feel lucky my kids have chosen fields with good employment prospects.

My youngest is a student engineer.

My oldest is 25 & works in a job that nobody else wants and that can't be offshored - namely offender resettlement and management. She's never been out of full time work, and loves her job working with the serial sex offenders, murderers, terrorists and paedophiles in our communities. 😕

Same, all my nieces and nephews and my kids all doing well, many have bought houses and there are plenty of jobs. I don’t agree with so many things said about the U.K. on here. Things change and evolve yes but it’s not all doom and gloom.

@TempestTost I replied to a post about home responsibilities though? Mowing the lawn is not the same as a job & I see lots of kids partaking in chores around the home. I don’t see it as a bad thing that 12 yrs old are no longer put to work outside the home.

why can't we rejoin the EU?

Like a jilted lover, we don't want you back lol.

You'd have to accept the Euro currency (you were given a special deal to keep the pound), I can see a lot of "horses rising up on their hooves" over that.

We have enough problems of our own anyway. But longer term I do see it happening geo-politically. But who knows, we're on the cusp of 2025. I just want to put this horrible year of 2024, what with all the wars, behind us.

Most girls don't want to work on a building site with a load of lads.

Well, they just don't have the strength for it is the truth.

In my yoof in the 70's a friend went to a building site for a job. The foreman took a look at her and told her to lift a bag of bricks. HA!

Anything that’s prolonging life over 60 needs to stop.

Thank fuck I don't know you in my life.

You should read up on Nazi Ideology.....

. Despite the horror stories, most people here would be much better off in the US

Not with Trump in power they won't.

All my friends in America would love to move away from USA, their homeland.

It's holiday season here also, although many have been working, as presumably some have in the UK - or are you all too lazy?

No, I'm not up a gumtree - and I don't live in Australia. I do hope your teacher daughters are able to write better than you do btw.

Where did I say I looked down on corporate jobs? I merely said I find them deathly dull.

I agree. That particular poster has some rather questionable views.

Yes we need bin men, manual workers and we need to pay them well. I agree these jobs should be respected. But a lot of people going in these jobs is not going to revive the economy. We need to focus on stem education and jobs in technology. Yes, trades people will be needed but that's not the answer to country's economic problems

As AI takes over many IT and scientific jobs, if it does... manual, healthcare and trades may be all that is left?

Skilled trades people can earn a small fortune, the plumbers also gas qualified, the joiners and electricians i know, all have nice cars, beautiful houses, even labouring on a building site will earn you around £200 a day as a min.

oh, to the pp, bricks don't come in bags!!!

We definitely do not have billions of people struggling on the breadline in the UK.

I offer a glimmer of hope to this thread! We have just six million people living in very deep poverty of whom roughly 3.8 million experienced destitution.

www.jrf.org.uk/deep-poverty-and-destitution/destitution-in-the-uk-2023

My DC have gone to Canada. The country recognises bright young things with qualifications and that leaves me with an elderly mother and no hope of shipping out of the UK for the foreseeable…

This place utterly sucks.

Gosh, this thread got weird and ad hominem.

Se have an aging population. Hence less young people.

People are obsessed with immigration. So they vote for people who are all mouth and no action. They are too stupid to realise they are being played.
The tories did ir for 14 years.

I think the issue is the definition of 'breadline' now. I consider poverty to be having to choose between heating and eating, having to go without food to feed your children, that kind of thing. The amount of people living in that kind of poverty probably isn't that high. But the amount of people struggling with bills, rent, only just keeping their heads above water, getting by but miserably will be significantly higher.

Lifestyle expectations are different now, too. If I think about my early life with my husband to be in the early 90s, by today's standards we'd be practically church mice in our little flat with no central heating, no computer, 15 inch TV with a mere 4 channels, but it's all relative, isn't it?

Apart from the obvious fact that the rent at the time was bugger all (I lived there on my own initially at 18 on a very low factory worker's wage. I couldn't do that anywhere today), most of the people our age were in the same boat.

Life simply didn't cost as much. For me, the COL crisis isn't just about rents, increases in food and energy costs. It's how much more expensive modern living is in general. The internet went from non-existent to nice if you can afford it to absolutely necessary expenditure in a matter of a couple of decades. Ditto smartphones. All these costs we never had.

Poverty is both an absolute and a relative thing. Standards and expectations have increased. The number of people living below the modern expectation of a reasonable standard of living is significantly higher than it used to be because that standard is higher. We are swimming in a sea of tech that is becoming increasingly necessary to function as more and more services move to online platforms. We are now being charged more for paper bills, etc. All this is getting harder and harder to do without.

Statistics show those at the severe end. Poverty by anyone's definition, but they don't show the strain of those struggling to meet increasing requirements to meet an average modern standard - house, car, internet, smartphone, netflix, sky TV, annual holiday abroad.

Yes, some kids still do chores, but fewer IMO and especially I would say fewer really significant ones.

Why shouldn't kids work at 12 to have their own money?Many young teens are so motivated to work, to have some independence and autonomy. By the time they pass 16 many are less keen, they've become accustomed to having lots of time to play video games or hang out, to getting pocket money from their parents.

I think we miss a significant window where kids would normally start to feel that it's important to support themselves and contribute meaningfully to the community.

Yes, some kids still do chores, but fewer IMO and especially I would say fewer really significant ones.

And you are basing this on? What’s a really significant chore vs a non significant one?

Why shouldn't kids work at 12 to have their own money?

Why should they? They are going to be working into their 70s with not much chance of retirement so I think let them have their childhood. Plus where would they work?

I think we miss a significant window where kids would normally start to feel that it's important to support themselves and contribute meaningfully to the community.

I don’t see this, just because a kid is not up the chimney age 10 it doesn’t mean they don’t realise they have to support themselves or have lost the desire too.

Life simply didn't cost as much. For me, the COL crisis isn't just about rents, increases in food and energy costs. It's how much more expensive modern living is in general. The internet went from non-existent to nice if you can afford it to absolutely necessary expenditure in a matter of a couple of decades. Ditto smartphones. All these costs we never had.

I wish people would learn from this. I remember talking to people saying that some of this tech was going to become a real imposition. They laughed and said people would have a choice, they could always just not get a phone or smart phone, they could keep just a landline, they wouldn't need to be on social media.

And it all does come with a price tag.

Talk to your parents or grandparents about the kinds of help they gave in the family and look around you. Even look at other cultures.

We infantalize our kids, many are perfectly capable of doing paid work at 12, and want to do it, and yet there are parents still hiring babysitter for them. I picked fruit at that age, lots of kids used to carry newspapers, or babysit, stack wood, mow lawns, etc.

Then they wonder why they can't cope when they are on their own and need to support themselves, or more often, are still needing parental support at 25.

This is why MN is absolutely toxic when it comes to politics. A poster, last night was constantly abused in posts. Called dense, having her daughter’s pulled into it etc. Yet they snap and eventually retaliate and the clique goes on a reporting spree. Clearly forgetting their own abusive posts and goading. I’ve asked MNHQ why they allow the same posters to do this. Whilst reporting the posters involved. Awful behaviour, whether you agree with someone’s views or not.