looking for part time work

[1john]

Everyone gets exploited, thats how business works, if everyone did everything at cost then no one would get paid for anything.

I think if you want to gain knowledge you should pay for it, no matter whet it may be, if you wanted a degree you would be required to pay for the knowledge to gain one, the same should be for other trades, some people are happy to spend a small fortune on a 5 day course after all.

I don't see why the OP is so keen to do electrical work, there is no great money in it on a small scale, larger companies appear to be going through the hoop too. Complaints about BG not investing more training money on you because you cannot earn them enough to pay it back is going to fall on deaf ears here. BG run a sucsessfull company, if that could be emulated by small contractors on a national scale it could be sucessfull too, although I think i'd want £7,2M a year to try and organise that too!

If you have already gone down a bad path with your choice of career through BG, dont go down another one in being an one man band electrical contractor, you hardly ever stop working, your brain will hardly ever switch off from it, at least being employed by BG you do your set hours and thats that.

 

[cmossom]

Thanks 1john and thomo some great advise from you thats all i really came on here for not to get veg thrown at me lol.

you would have to save up for 10 years to buy a new meile but what if i broke b4 five years and cost 500 to fix parts and labor


It does scare me working for my self thats why i work for company.

I will send out a CV and see if i can get some work experience from some big companys who do commercial and indst.
I dont want to be a spark to be rich i have a beautiful 1 year old girl im already rich lol vomit!!!

you are right if you want something you have to pay for it and if thats with labor then so be it.

Just sorry that the guy had to pick holes in every sentence and find a negative i didnt plan to start a moral debate but it has been fun lets put the world to rights down with corporate business brothers

 

[1john]

You gotta remember that if everyone paying £7 a month per appliance had a repair on every appliance you wouldn't have a job. BG aren't doing anyone a favour, and they certainly won't do you any favours either. Some people get good VFM from their £7, others get 'ripped off' local guys arn't ripping people off, they are actually doing the job for a one off actual cost. Personally I cant see that BG are going to allow you enough time to become an electrician off of your own back, and being in similar shoes to you with a 14 month old son, I would take some comfort in knowing that I had a job and a wage (unfortunately I am self employed and don't have those luxuries). I would bide your time and wait until the economic climate changes as at the moment a lot of the tradespeople I know are living hand to mouth. Take the money, keep your head down with BG and enjoy the security you are so blessed to have. Absorb everything about your child growing up and believe me, if you have the opportunity to turn off after your 9 to 5 you will find that so much easier to do.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

...how the overall free market capitalist system works.

Which you don't like, even though you are quite happy to live in a society which is based on it, and take all of the benefits it has brought, and even though you have no idea how it could sensibly be made significantly better in your eyes.

At the end of the day it's an opinion anyway,

Indeed - I just wondered if you had an opinion of what the profits should be.

if you disagree then argue back instead of asking me to pointlessly quantify it. Do you really need this level of clarification to get the point I was trying to make?

I just wondered if you had a figure in mind which you thought would be OK.

Last year the profits they made allowed a dividend to be paid to shareholders which represented a return on their capital of around 3-4% before tax.

How low do you think the return could be brought (remembering that capital invested in shares is always at risk, so returns are going to have to be higher than putting the money into a savings account) before the company becomes unable to raise capital and declines and goes under?

Remember too that the vast majority of Centrica shares are held by institutions, such as pension funds used by millions of ordinary working people, investment funds where ordinary people might put Aunty Edith's legacy so that they can afford for their children to go to college, and so on.

No, I am but one man of 28 years, up against centuries of coercion and domination, give me a break!

Feel free to go and live in a country without free market capitalism and see if your life gets better.

Our system isn't perfect, and there are of course tweaks that could be done that would produce real beneficial changes, but in terms of a completely different system nobody has ever come up with a better one that works for industrialised nations with high population densities.

The 18 directors of the company were paid a total of £7.2M. Even if they worked for free that wouldn't make much difference to the money the company needs to make.

I'm sorry, I don't understand the question. What does that have to do with 2bn corporate profit which goes ultimately to the shareholders?

It was in response to your "and this cash goes more to the rich elite than the people doing the job or the local economy" - I thought you meant the directors.

 

[securespark]

Absorb everything about your child growing up

Wise words. The eldest of my three boys is 11 now & I wonder where all that time has gone: it's flown by!

Scary stuff.

 

[tonyelectric]

Don't fear working for yourself, yes it's tough at times, but you will never want to go back to work for a boss after you have settled to it.

Ten years ago I was a school teacher, putting up with unruly kids, spending sundays marking, all pretty awful to be honest and for c£24K a year. Fortunately I come from a long line of electricians and had done 2330 prior to going off to uni. So at the end of the summer term I packed up my school bag for the last time, went round all the local schools (where I knew people) and advertised my services doing minor electrical works - found my feet with that and slowly built up.

Yes its true about working all hours, evenings are taken up with paperwork, often work saturday and sunday and havn't had a holiday in that 10 years, but I love what I do, you don't mind going the extra mile when its your business - and if like me you love electrics and all that accompanies it then whats not to like.

Now 10 years on i've got a business partner and the wife quit teaching as well to retrain as an electrician and has joined the firm too.

 

[cmossom]

thanks for the posts all very useful stuff you never know where life will take you im just trying to be prepared for the worst.
all have a great xmas and new year