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.

Yep. It all costs. Not just the monthly fees, but new tech has to be bought when platforms stop supporting older models. My parents had to get a new TV. Nothing wrong with their old one except they couldn't get iPlayer and itvx on it because their TV was 10 years old.

Our 15 inch lasted until it took 15 minutes to turn on and the colour went wonky. The Simpsons were green in our house.

Into the council bin lorry??? Would you take bin day off work and wait in for the lorry to arrive and then drag it over to the lorry, attach it to the lifting gear and then pull it down when empty? Where I live the bin men come any time between 7am and around 2pm so you would need to be available for approx 7 hours, Or maybe you could be the one driving the lorry!

I have zero sympathy for universities. They have taken advantage of students and charged them thousands in university fees for degrees that can probably never be used. Universities need to reduce the number of degrees and concentrate on core subjects that give students the best possible chance of having a successful career

I probably wouldn’t encourage many people to go to university at the moment. My DN is interested in being a lawyer but is actively going down the apprenticeship route.

They have taken advantage of students and charged them thousands in university fees for degrees that can probably never be used.

I agree. I begged my children not to go to university as neither were interested in academic work but they wanted to do what all their friends were doing and the one argument I couldn’t refute was that so many job applications required a degree.
It was a waste of time and money (though they did enjoy themselves and made lots of friends)

yes to this last para! It’s a long course and hard work but so rewarding, get chance to do different seats to see where they want to specialise when qualified, and whilst it is a very low income whilst training, the financial rewards come at the end when qualified.

I wish this route had been available when I was younger - employers are also very supportive. Not sure of your DNs age, but if I could give one tip it would be no matter what their age, try and get some free work experience in school holidays. It shows enthusiasm too - even if it’s just going into a few local firms for a few days in school holidays and shadowing people. There are official vacation schemes at firms which can be competitive to obtain, but some additional days are worth the experience. And make sure it’s all mentioned when applying for roles.

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.

😆 What makes you think I haven’t? And my parents are immigrants, my mum had to leave school at 14 & moved to another country at 17, they didn’t want the same for me.

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.

You are ignoring the fact there isn’t loads of paid work for 12 yr olds & employment laws have changed. No one reads newspapers much these days so it’s not surprising the paper round (which I did) is a thing of the past. I don’t know anyone who hires a babysitter for a 12 yr old as opposed to leaving them for a bit. Perhaps you need to expand your circle a bit more.

The area I live in is really blighted with fly tipping, massive hideous fly tips that people obviously drive over in the dead of night and dump broken furniture, filthy old mattresses, broken white goods and so on. No local litter pick (and we do have one, they are brilliant and I personally pick litter and weed my street) can get rid of that. As I type this I am looking out of my front room window at the latest fly tip on my street, it is a pile of over 30 black bin bags, no way can a litter pick cope with that, We have begged the council for CCTV but they say it is too expensive so we just have to live with it. We asked them to put up notices, their response was "nobody reads notices". I no longer invite people to my home, I am so ashamed and embarrassed. As for the shops, I shop local for my groceries but I think that we are going through a massive change as a society due to the internet and city centres need to move away from trying to depend on retail, maybe have more homes in them, more green spaces be more focused on entertainment and hospitality. The industrial revolution brought huge changes to society, the digital revolution is comparable.

@TempestTost I know this is just one person's experience and there may be a huge body of empirical evidence that suggests that kids working at 12 is beneficial in the long run, but for me personally, working from that age onwards is the main just made me realise capitalism is stupid and pointless and is probably why I hate work and our economic system so much as an adult.

Working during the summer holidays taught me is that some people have to work really hard to get things like art books and sims expansion packs, while other people (every other girl at my school) get them for free. The valuable lesson there is that our economic system is fundamentally unfair, and that no amount of effort on the part of one individual can make up for the vast disparities of unearned wealth that already exist.

Working in a restaurant meant I had access to drugs, unlimited alcohol and raves at 15, which I was happy about at the time but in retrospect think was probably responsible for the terrible mental health I experienced in my late teens and early twenties. When I later had to write essays about the psychological toll of emotional labour in customer facing jobs I always thought about a work friend who had died after a cocaine induced heart attack after working back to back double shifts over Christmas.

The admin/marketing/organisational work I did was obviously physically easier, but extremely boring and clearly pointless, even to me then. But the most significant impact it had was to make me furious when the "graduate" jobs I did after university consisted of basically the same work for the same money, despite employers insisting that my Oxbridge degree was a prerequisite for the role. It probably encouraged me to walk away from some of these jobs after a couple of weeks, giving no notice and I'm sure causing a massive inconvenience to the people who had employed me.

So working as a teenager did teach me lots of things about economics and capitalism but definitely didn't imbue me with the work ethic that I think people have in mind when they wax lyrical about the benefits of part-time jobs for young people!

We should stop looking down at all jobs. Apart from maybe stupid non-jobs like influences, all jobs perform a role in our society and keeps it functioning. From the abattoir workers to KCs working in the courts of appeal to the clerks that make the banks function to the lighting technician working on your favourite show.

society is a massive jigsaw and every single job out there should be treated as a dignified, worthy way to make a living and respected accordingly.

Personally, I think there'll be a shift back towards respecting the "unpopular" jobs such as caring, maintenance, cleaning, farming, manufacturing, and other mainly manual/hard working jobs, due to lack of supply of people willing to do them, which will ultimately lift wages and working conditions so that they are attractive. These are jobs that need doing and need doing properly, yet have been looked down upon and paid a pittance for far too long.

Given the international nature, I think that "brain" jobs that can be done remotely, such as professional services, IT consulting, marketing, banking, arts, media, etc will ultimately mostly move to the low cost countries simply because they can, due to the internet, with online teams meetings, email, online portals, etc.

In a few decades, we could actually find that it's people who can and are able to do the "dirty" work who are the ones who are in most demand and highest paid, and when I say "can do", I mean both physically and mentally.

AI is very good at analysing data, but as far as generative AI goes, it is not intelligent at all, it is just a wonky parrot. The media are pushing the fact that AI is going to take over the world but they don't understand it. The people I know in the industry have a very different concern. They are worried that when all of the companies who have invested heavily find out that AI cannot do what it advertises, and probably never will, it will cause another stock market crash.

They are worried that when all of the companies who have invested heavily find out that AI cannot do what it advertises, and probably never will, it will cause another stock market crash.

That is very interesting. What particular aspects will it be unable to do? I’m always a bit doubtful about translating (other than technical handbooks or recipes and so on) but I’ve been told soon A1 will have no difficulty in providing a perfect translation of Wuthering Heights into Mandarin or whatever.

I personally think the only way that birth rates on a global scale (at least in first world countries) will get to replacement level is if governments pay women a full-time wage to be mothers.

Given that the majority of people in the UK are net beneficiaries rather than net contributors, I don't think we can afford to have only men and childless women going out to work and paying taxes.

I agree things are relative in proportion to everything else food and clothes are cheaper than ever so just because someone's well fed and nicely dressed it doesn't mean what it meant back in the day. Because rent is so high now I know whole families living in one room in b and bs because landlord sold and they couldn't find anywhere else that wasn't super expensive, but these people aren't underweight or dressed in rags so old timers will look at them and say stop moaning "back in my day we didn't have phones" etc.

Technology used to be the pinnacle of wealth back in the day but you can get a smartphone for £10 now so pretty meaningless. Personally I'd rather have have less clothes and gadgets but not live in a house share than the other way round. I like my personal space too much

Homeless people have phones so I’m not sure why so many use it as a marker of wealth.

Exactly you can also get flat screen TVs really cheap out of charity shops. Some people are still stuck in the year 2000. In fact a lot of people I speak to don't realise how high rent is in the local area now unless they're actively looking why would they know. This one guy was talking about how his house he owns would rent for £600 a month when a house like that is easily 1.5k now.

Read Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber. It made me really grasp how many stupid non-jobs are actually out there!

Really? I’ve been in teaching 20 years and have always thought it easy to get onto a teaching course and then a job etc - since Covid it’s become VERY easy. You do not need high qualifications to be a teacher. Lots of teachers leaving and big bursaries for STEM subjects as recruitment so bad atm. This posters DS will easily become teacher (if they want to) across any route. Standards are not high and I don’t mean that unkindly to anyone either.

My DP is a self employed plumbing and heating engineer. Did a YTS when he was younger, worked with an highly experienced chap for years and then eventually set up on his own 25 years ago (and has to do exams every 5 years to stay qualified). And he would wholeheartedly disagree that it’s an industry that’s crying out for more of them.

Many plumbers and heating engineers struggle to get work coming in, as the industry is saturated with people who don’t have the proper knowledge and skills, charge less to get the business and then do sub standard dangerous work, that the qualified, experienced guys like my DP then have to go out and fix.

There are however, more women going into these professions which he thinks is a great thing as he feels it’s a very male dominated industry.

She wants to join as an officer so a degree is highly recommended.
DH was in the forces for 20 years he’s pleased she knows what she wants

Imagine it being NYE and you’re on here personally attacking again and admitting to trying to drive them off the forum? @MNHQ

I didn't do anything to drive them off the forum, merely said I was pleased to see the back of them. I think you will find quite a number of posters think the same way I do, and obviously one of them felt the need for action. 👏

And it's New Year's Day here btw. I've only just arrived on MN for the day and was pleasantly surprised to see their posts had been taken down.

As I said, it’s toxic behaviour and from my communication with MNHQ they’d agree. Awful behaviour. Your comments were pretty disgusting as it goes and now deleted.

Well aren't you special? For what it's worth I would never report a post unless it was very, very, very, bad as I believe people are allowed to express their views and I've never been a tell-tale. However, it takes all sorts.

The particular poster you are hero worshipping I very much doubt they were the person they purported to be - for someone who apparently had such an IMPORTANT JOB that none of us could possibly do they wrote badly and appeared not to be able to grasp quite simple concepts.

If you are the sort of person who thinks once someone gets to 60 (or any age after that) they should be allowed to die as they are not worthy of saving then you are just as bad. I did wonder if you were them under a changed name, and the fact that you can't seem to grasp that I had nothing to do with their comments being removed from the thread lends weight to that.

Stop derailing this thread with your ignorance. And you can report me all you like btw, I've about had it up to here with MN and the many idiots who use it. You needn't bother replying btw as I'm out of here, but maybe stop to think that no-one is defending the removed posts except for you, that ought to tell you something.