Small cracks in new skim

[Micilin]

when we should be training our young lads to work the tools.

Leaving aside the rest, I agree fully.

Govt and Industry giants have ruined the trade.

I can't take a young lad on some sites (aged say 16,17 ) to try him out for a few weeks (sometimes a day is all you need) without a CSCS card. To get that, got to register,pay fee, do test. Just so we can have a look at him. Also if U18 need seperate risk assessment and method statment - and he will not be allowed to work machinery (mixer, whisk) .

So easy option - don't try him out, get someone else or do without.
And that could be a good bloke lost to the trade.

We used to take a lad on , pay him cash until we decided he was okay (as I say , a day or a fornight) then on the books. Three years he'd have skimmed , rendered, screeded etc.

I got my new CSCS card (as I had a dispute over my old City and Guilds , long story) last year. The 'assessor' never even saw me with a trowel in my hand. Yet another man with no card, doing it for 20 years can't get on site . Disgrace.

 

[joe-90]

Immigration is the problem. Why take on a lad to train when some mug in Poland has trained a guy who then jumps straight on an Easy-jet flight over here.

No wonder we get riots. Create an underclass and they'll always give you grief. Unemployed youth IS that underclass.

It'll only get worse and worse and pay rates will tumble. 10 years from now you'll be lucky if you get £50 per day.

 

[Micilin]

Immigration is the problem. Why take on a lad to train when some mug in Poland has trained a guy who then jumps straight on an Easy-jet flight over here.

So training is the problem. Big firms used to do apprenticeships. We had metalwork and woodwork at schools. This CSCS NVQ nonsense - make our lads good enough. This is what drives the market and improvement of the economy. You are making my point for me - the Polish guy by your admission is better trained than our mug . Why do we do so well in financial services and IT ? Training . Know how. Those industries didn't make it harder to train youngsters and say 'what's the point ' If we shut our doors to better trained people where is the incentive to improve our workforce. Competition drives improvement.

We have demand for housing . Without the wars and the bank bailout , there would be the financial means to unlock the demand. Immigration did not cause the banking collapse, it was deregulation and lack of oversight




No wonder we get riots. Create an underclass and they'll always give you grief. Unemployed youth IS that underclass. Bit more complex than that . Teachers, students, older workers also involved. But of course unemployemnt is a scourge . But I could not roll up tomoorow and take one of them out to site to see if they are any good , give them some money to buy things instead of smashing windows to get them. I'd have to organise a card, test etc etc

It'll only get worse and worse and pay rates will tumble. 10 years from now you'll be lucky if you get £50 per day.

joe, how old are you? If under 30 you are lucky up to this to have had no recession for 15 years, so not really in your working life. If you can predict 10 years in the future, you are wasted here.


I've been through 3 of these recesssions since early 80s and they all went the same way. High wages, plenty of work, house prices rising. Thought it would last forever . Crash. Wages fall. Current scapegoat gets the blame. (Northeners, Asians, Kosovans ( we don't hear about them any more) Asylum seekers, Poles. Just add the next guy trying to get on the merry go round) House prices come down enough to get things moving. Thought it would last forever. Then it starts all over again.

 

[joe-90]

I'm probably your age, Thinking more about retirement than anything else.

Every year hundreds of thousands of immigrants arrive and most enter the building trade. I read it works out at about a city the size of Liverpool.

That is why we have a housing shortage. Hospitals are bust with maternity wards full of foreigners and schools are full of non English speaking kids.

They are on low wages so pay no tax but claim a fortune in benefits.

Stop the influx and we need no new housing.

We managed before they came so why can't we manage now?

Put our own kids to work - not Johnny Foreigner.

Johnny Foreigner is sending us bust.

 

[stevethespreader]

I had a dispute over my old City and Guilds , long story.

did you have the same problem i had? that the cscs scheme did not recognize any city&guilds qualifications? and that the reason was that no assessor had seen you do any plastering work and was you then told to get an nvq2 to bring you bang up to date so you can have a blue skills cscs card? costing you £550?