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.

This is true. The permanent staff are generally treated terribly, more and more expected while pay and t&c reduced, lack of flexibility, blame culture, frequent incompetent management, etc. Then everyone is surprised by the current recruitment and retention problems.
It's all very well saying train more UK based staff but the infrastructure within the NHS isn't there to train them because the clinical staff are already so stretched. Even if it was logistically possible, so many new doctors and medical students are already planning their exit! The managers/DOH/ politicians are all about short term thinking and cost cutting. They have all preferred to steal Filipinos/Indians/ Nigerians from their countries rather than recruit and retain from the UK population. I see no evidence that any politician wants to reduce immigration.

Can I cheekily ask where you and your DH relocated to @Parker231?

We moved to Canada - DH is French Canadian but had lived in the uk since he was 21. I came to the uk as a five year old. We are now in our mid 50’s. DT’s - grew up and educated in the uk are now in graduate jobs in Amsterdam and Brussels.

Good for you @Parker231. I hope you are enjoying life in Canada. Everywhere definitely has its problems, Canada included but the UK seems to be at the front of the queue nowadays.

Just a small example

Fumin' about the lack of public toilets along a popular part of the England Coast path, hours and hours of walking and not a toilet in sight.

I check the council website for opening times of the local toilets, firstly not all of the toilets run by the council are on the website, so I think to myself I will contact them and ask. Theres no way of phoning of course but they have a contact us button

The response :

Sorry, this form is not available at the moment.

Broken, basically the council is broken

But UKIP came before Reform, and Nigel Farage was part of UKIP, pushing for Brexit.

In your area maybe.

In the West Midlands, there are plenty

Canada is the world's second largest country and forty UKs would fit into it. Yet it only has 40m people compared with the UK's 67m so the UK is certainly very very crowded and squashed in compared to there.Canada wants to cut immigration sharply https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd7n3rqyjqzo. It has about 400k to 500k immigration a year - less than half the UK (UK is second only to the USA now with our net 900,000 a year - we are just about the most popular country on the planet).

I would rather we had far fewer people and be less well off.

Only 12% of Canada is habitable, the other 88% is useless other than for growing trees or mining. Most of the country is under snow and ice. Our cities are heavily populated - no different from the UK.

I thought that Trudeau had had a huge amount of criticism for the amount of immigration he has allowed. I guess he is responding to that, although whether anything changes is uncertain, as we know. A lot of Canadians are struggling with the cost of housing, which is even more ridiculous in some areas than in the UK.

Canada increased their immigration quotas during Covid but have now announced a reduction - not sure it’s actually going to work. We fall under Quebec province which handles some aspects of immigration separately from the federal system where c80% of immigrants admitted to our province in the next year are expected to know French (would be difficult to live here without being a native French speaker).

You only part-read my post, so picked up on STEM skills as one example, but there are many other shortage professions, including education, construction, health and social care. Check out the data here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/occupations-in-demand

Every parent and teacher should familiarise themselves with this data and bear it in mind when providing careers advice to young people.

There might be plenty of plumbers and electricians but can you afford them

Just been quoted £8k and £10k to fit a shower room (1m x 4m) in a 1 bed flat.
That is just labour only

Toilet shower and washbasin are all staying in the same place so no serious plumbing issues. Plastering a wall, plasterboarding and plastering the ceiling, tiling and fitting a radiator where the old radiator was

apoarently it would take 4/5 days so they charge £2k per day

The world has changed.

Final salary pensions?
Plentiful blue-chip entry level jobs?
Degrees meaning anything?

Those ships sailed about 5-10 years ago. Get with the modern world & work out what will be needed, how they are funded and where resources are located. There are opportunities, but nobody should even think about following their parents (or grandparents) route into work or career.

And before you ask, I have 3 (three) brave, intelligent, talented, sporty, musical, diligent, teenage kids. Although sometimes they are also idiots.

Good luck, embrace the future!

Don't even bother to explain they don't know what they are talking about or doing. They are so blinded that they don't even know that Nigel Farage and his family are European Citizens they already have their passports. It's about making a name for themselves that's it. I was listening to someone from reform he was talking about bringing back the coal mines I kid you not.

I heard Canada has a massive Jamaican community is that true? I would love to move my family there one day or just me and my partner. I know some French so hopefully with some extra lessons I will get on fine.

Jamaican population is small - primarily in Toronto which as it’s in Ontario is English speaking.

Yes, you are so right. Unless you are rich and healthy, I wouldn't advise living in the US. When I had an accident on holiday in the US, the first question they asked my husband at the hospital was whether we had insurance and then took his credit details, just in case! We heard the nurses discussing whether they would give pain medication to a stab victim because he didn't have insurance. That's why we should treasure and support our NHS.

I'm not sure that's true. The same has been said for decades (hence Tony Blair setting a target of 50% of school leavers going to uni) but I believe degrees are losing their value. The workplace is changing for sure. People are more likely to have multiple different jobs and I think transferable skillsets rather than qualifications will become increasingly important.

Universities are struggling and courses are closing. I worked in uni admissions for years. 25 years and more ago you could pick Joint degrees in any subject you wanted (my own choice was a bizarre but fascinating combo of law and anthropology!), now courses are closing, universities are struggling and soon you'll be lucky to find a course in a subject you want to study for a career you want to follow.

The present government has announced a shake-up of apprenticeships and I'm actually feeling quite positive about the future for kids who choose not to (or can't afford to) follow the university path.

Unless we do something about it. But the global economy is going to implode within the next 20 years - energy companies' profiteering will ensure that. Then we all start again at square one.

I think it is 250,000 Jamaicans in Canada and 800,000 in the UK (and 2.8m people in Jamaica)

My street is now covered with post Christmas fly tipping, there are at least 30 black bin bags dumped over the road from my house, it is making me so depressed that I cannot bear to draw back the curtains. It never used to be like this, council will clear it up in a week or so and then more will arrive. Sick of it

Just be glad we don’t live in the US with Trump!

@LoyalShaker

A friend of mine lost her home in the States because Insurance would not cover her child's operation. She would come home tomorrow but her kids are American and have put down roots . I really really we don't go down the route of having to take out private healthcare to get decent healthcare quickly . Sadly I can see it going that way .

I also think our infrastructure is breaking down our roads are just a patchwork mess and our city centres are a disgrace. It saddens me to see beautiful old buildings going to rack and ruin only to be demolished and soulless ugly flats built in their place .

I have a corporate job. My partner is a first responder and also has two trade skills.

Trades are in demand and have a decent salary.

Your kids don’t need to be CEOs to be successful. I’m think you need to stop worrying. It will all work out.

Well my oldest is an HGV Mechanic. Just turned 21 and on £40,000 plus a year.
Forget about University. All those admin/office jobs will be gone soon anyway....