The UK is open for business and it is working (Article in SMH)

[bunbury61]

Sorry but it's true! Back in the UK for a short time and yes, Trafford Centre packed, Chill Factor packed, restaurants full (on Sunday night?) everyone going to Spain in a couple of weeks. Kind of feel like the poor relation form Oz! Lol

 

Sorry Jan ,that's how I felt ....but life goes on here ....the young here only live for today ....

[kungfustu]

It has not always been the case, in the seventies a degree (or mine as a mature student was)was free as it was considered that your input would help to improve functioning of the country and its economy.

I know quite a few people who can easily afford for their darlings to go to the right uni and do so to make sure they make the right connections and meet the right marriage partner and support them to go on to do either a masters or a Phd just so that they are at the head of the queue, and if you haven't worked that one out then I'm afraid you not in the real world pof mummy and daddy buying a flat near their college so the little dears don't get groped on the train, oh i forgot they usually have a car.

And i really don't think that it's character building to work and study and then work for free as an intern in the hope that it might lead onto something like a permanent job on just enough to buy essentials and still be relying on handouts from your parents to make ends meet, there has to be some responsibility borne by someone , somewhere about what the value of a degree is, in the uk and oz everyone is being told they have to have a degree to get on but increasingly jobs for graduates are poorly paid with poor career prospects but everyone from the politicians to the universities to the employers are benefiting but not the students but everyone carries on with the same mantra, partly because everyone believes that you go up in the english class system with a degree and because there is no apparent alternative, yet on the Continent tradesmen and women earn as much as white collar workers and have equal status, a first year apprentice in the uk can be legally paid £2.38 an hour, and then everyone moans on about how there are no tradespeople in the uk.

The other issue that i have is the concentration on degrees at present is the emphasis on training rather than education, a modern degree at a middling uni is more about people being able to parrot out info rather than use ideas and extrapolate from understanding ideas to form their own solutions to problems, if that is what doing a degree is about then why should the student be made to pay to become a simple unit of production ready for the industrialist to screw into their machine.

The right wing have really screwed the working class , they make them pay for an education which only fits them for the role ordained for them and does away with any part of education which might make them think about what their position is in this perverse world, right from the first tests they do in infancy, right up to trying to get a job which will pay enough for a mortgage, which with new regulations to help the banks stay out of trouble, they are never going to qualify for because their student loan is taken into account as an outgoing.

 

In the 70's......hello.....its 2015 now mate.

student loans do not count as outgoings.....they will not affect any future borrowing ie mortgages etc.....check your facts.

The rest sounds like a rant that I cannot be arsed to read or reply to.....sorry.

[MARYROSE02]

Trying to keep a balance.....i work in the midlands .

Everyone I meet seems to be doing o.k ....when I say o.k ,I mean they are getting by ,not living the dream ,but getting by.,hardly Las Vegas.

Are most of the people I meet swimming in money ...no ...will they ever be ...no

 

Is that dream over for most of us ...yes...is the "American dream " over ...yes

 

I work right across the board ....posh and poor .....the best thing about the u.k is the people .

I carried out a job in Wolverhampton the other day ....by oz standards the lady hadn't got a lot ....but she i sisted I have a breakfast and 4 cups of coffee ...oh the black country people ....just lovely.

 

In relation to London ...it operates different to the rest of this island .....i call It the "capital of the world " for good reason .

It bears little resemblance to the tired and grubby place ee visited in the 70s and 80s.

Its busy ,its multi cultural ...but the money is pouring in ,dare I say flooding in .

 

Its not everyone's cup of tea,but I bloody love it

 

Why ?...because when iam there ,I feel iam somewhere that matters ..steeped in history ....

 

I always wanted to live and work in London, like my mate Nick, although he always wished he had followed me to Australia. Sydney is not unlike London, and wherever you go, there are construction sites and cranes poking up into the sky. I read somewhere recently that, despite the mega-high prices for real estate, Sydney is actually under-priced.

 

I went into the city yesterday, very close to me, five minutes on the bus from Central down Elizabeth Street to Goulburn Street where I had tea and lunch in 'Love Bites' cafe, surrounded by 'suits'. I walked down Castlereagh St, diverting into a shop catering for Japanese/Korean/Chinese visitors. I was tempted to buy a 'heart-shaped' chopping board, marked at $125, but guy offerered me it for $75. There may have been a time when Sydney was a white 'outpost' but those days are long gone, and it's more like being somewhere like Hong Kong.

 

I was texting a friend (from the Criterion Hotel in Park St which might be the first pub I went to in Sydney in December, 1978) and she said 'why don't you go into Hyde Park?' I wasn't going to, but then I changed my mind and I'm glad I did, as I had a look in the War Memorial, and took photos of Capt Cook's statue, and a new creation made up of huge 'bullets'. You forget just how good some places are when you take them for granted.

 

i loved living in England, but I feel more 'Aussie' than ever now, to the extent of letting my UK passport expire and not caring.

[BacktoDemocracy]

In the 70's......hello.....its 2015 now mate.

student loans do not count as outgoings.....they will not affect any future borrowing ie mortgages etc.....check your facts.

The rest sounds like a rant that I cannot be arsed to read or reply to.....sorry.

 

Excuse, but under the 2014 requirements of the FCA for mortgage applications student loans do count as a liability and it seems unfortunate that you cannot be , as you charmlessly term it,' be arsed', to try to see the points I'm trying to make as they will affect the next generation greatly.

[Chortlepuss]

It has not always been the case, in the seventies a degree (or mine as a mature student was)was free as it was considered that your input would help to improve functioning of the country and its economy.

I know quite a few people who can easily afford for their darlings to go to the right uni and do so to make sure they make the right connections and meet the right marriage partner and support them to go on to do either a masters or a Phd just so that they are at the head of the queue, and if you haven't worked that one out then I'm afraid you not in the real world pof mummy and daddy buying a flat near their college so the little dears don't get groped on the train, oh i forgot they usually have a car.

And i really don't think that it's character building to work and study and then work for free as an intern in the hope that it might lead onto something like a permanent job on just enough to buy essentials and still be relying on handouts from your parents to make ends meet, there has to be some responsibility borne by someone , somewhere about what the value of a degree is, in the uk and oz everyone is being told they have to have a degree to get on but increasingly jobs for graduates are poorly paid with poor career prospects but everyone from the politicians to the universities to the employers are benefiting but not the students but everyone carries on with the same mantra, partly because everyone believes that you go up in the english class system with a degree and because there is no apparent alternative, yet on the Continent tradesmen and women earn as much as white collar workers and have equal status, a first year apprentice in the uk can be legally paid £2.38 an hour, and then everyone moans on about how there are no tradespeople in the uk.

The other issue that i have is the concentration on degrees at present is the emphasis on training rather than education, a modern degree at a middling uni is more about people being able to parrot out info rather than use ideas and extrapolate from understanding ideas to form their own solutions to problems, if that is what doing a degree is about then why should the student be made to pay to become a simple unit of production ready for the industrialist to screw into their machine.

The right wing have really screwed the working class , they make them pay for an education which only fits them for the role ordained for them and does away with any part of education which might make them think about what their position is in this perverse world, right from the first tests they do in infancy, right up to trying to get a job which will pay enough for a mortgage, which with new regulations to help the banks stay out of trouble, they are never going to qualify for because their student loan is taken into account as an outgoing.

 

Raises a lot of good points which are lost on many. 80% of people going to uni's now get firsts or 2:1's - When I went in the 1980's four people out of 120 in my year got very well deserved firsts but many degree courses had never awarded a first. Clearly people just not good enough and universities were tough and independent enough to make a stance about people not making the grade. With so many people going to university, the grant system is unsustainable, degree courses are all about 'bums on seats' and certainly no longer a guarantee of a good job. I prefer a system like Denmark's where university education is free, but only to selected people who are clever/hard-working enough. In fact, I think it would be great if poorer students could be grant assisted to take degrees at Oxford and Cambridge - that way we could attempt to get a more representative balance of power in the country instead of being ruled by the braying Eton masses..... I read that almost 50% of students are predicted never to pay their loan off - what good is that to the UK's finances and what about the ex-students who do get over the threshold and have to subsidize the rest? Hardly fair! Soon you'll need a PHD to work in Maccers. No wonder some would be students are saying it's just not worth it.....

[BacktoDemocracy]

Raises a lot of good points which are lost on many. 80% of people going to uni's now get firsts or 2:1's - When I went in the 1980's four people out of 120 in my year got very well deserved firsts but many degree courses had never awarded a first. Clearly people just not good enough and universities were tough and independent enough to make a stance about people not making the grade. With so many people going to university, the grant system is unsustainable, degree courses are all about 'bums on seats' and certainly no longer a guarantee of a good job. I prefer a system like Denmark's where university education is free, but only to selected people who are clever/hard-working enough. In fact, I think it would be great if poorer students could be grant assisted to take degrees at Oxford and Cambridge - that way we could attempt to get a more representative balance of power in the country instead of being ruled by the braying Eton masses..... I read that almost 50% of students are predicted never to pay their loan off - what good is that to the UK's finances and what about the ex-students who do get over the threshold and have to subsidize the rest? Hardly fair! Soon you'll need a PHD to work in Maccers. No wonder some would be students are saying it's just not worth it.....

 

Exactly, your last sentence is spot on and it's not that you will need a Phd to work in maccers but that will be the only job available for them with this govts policies on manufacturing, austerity and education.

[Thom]

My daughter attends the ANU, studying medicine. She holds down two part time jobs, dental nurse and library assistant, and is proud to be funding her own study.

[BacktoDemocracy]

My daughter attends the ANU, studying medicine. She holds down two part time jobs, dental nurse and library assistant, and is proud to be funding her own study.

 

I am not saying anything derogatory about people working to get an education, what I am questioning is the system and the premises which underpin it, is it right that your daughter, who as a doctor will be central to the country's health system, has to exhaust herself working like that, if the country valued her would it not be better to offer the option of free education dependent on working exclusively in the public system for 5 years as a way of ensuring the State is repaid.

The question I am also raising is that by making the universities self supporting you have introduced all the worst excesses of the market into education, which is supposed to be about ethics and preparing people to have a broader understanding of the world and their function in the world, and what we now have are education factories which train people to fulfil a small part of a whole with little understanding of the whole, an assembly line approach to education, whilst also at the same time having elite universities still educating an elite in the old fashioned way thereby ensuring that they are destined to go on and effectively always be the ones who run things.

[Thom]

I am not saying anything derogatory about people working to get an education, what I am questioning is the system and the premises which underpin it, is it right that your daughter, who as a doctor will be central to the country's health system, has to exhaust herself working like that, if the country valued her would it not be better to offer the option of free education dependent on working exclusively in the public system for 5 years as a way of ensuring the State is repaid.

 

That may be one way, but it's fraught with dangers. The country will recognise her work and sacrifices in the wage she receives.

 

 

The question I am also raising is that by making the universities self supporting you have introduced all the worst excesses of the market into education, which is supposed to be about ethics and preparing people to have a broader understanding of the world and their function in the world, and what we now have are education factories which train people to fulfil a small part of a whole with little understanding of the whole, an assembly line approach to education, whilst also at the same time having elite universities still educating an elite in the old fashioned way thereby ensuring that they are destined to go on and effectively always be the ones who run things.

 

Your evidence for this?

 

IN these times 30-40% of people in Australia attend University up to 50% in the UK, when I did my 2 degrees 6% of people did. So it's obviously not harming the prospects for entering University.

[kungfustu]

36% of 18 year olds started a university degree the 2nd year after fees went up to 9k....the proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds also increased.....in England disadvantaged kids were 7-% more likely to goto university in 2013 than 2004.....so it kind of puts to bed the theory that poor families will suffer more.

 

There are now some pretty useless degrees on offer.....media springs to mind.....but that should not detract from those degrees students seek in order to become a Teacher, Doctor, Solicitor, Engineer etc etc.....there are still thousands of students studying for good careers that offer good prospects and good salaries.

 

More degrees and more educated adults does not mean a drop in standards.....its like saying lets not try and aspire to countries like Finland, South Korea or Japan because by doing so we are just lowering our standards by allowing too many kids a good education.....incidentally the UK finishes quite high on the world list for best educations.

 

again.....people just bl##dy moaning and whinging......its like a virus on this website.

[BacktoDemocracy]

36% of 18 year olds started a university degree the 2nd year after fees went up to 9k....the proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds also increased.....in England disadvantaged kids were 7-% more likely to goto university in 2013 than 2004.....so it kind of puts to bed the theory that poor families will suffer more.

 

There are now some pretty useless degrees on offer.....media springs to mind.....but that should not detract from those degrees students seek in order to become a Teacher, Doctor, Solicitor, Engineer etc etc.....there are still thousands of students studying for good careers that offer good prospects and good salaries.

 

More degrees and more educated adults does not mean a drop in standards.....its like saying lets not try and aspire to countries like Finland, South Korea or Japan because by doing so we are just lowering our standards by allowing too many kids a good education.....incidentally the UK finishes quite high on the world list for best educations.

 

again.....people just bl##dy moaning and whinging......its like a virus on this website.

 

Just to take one profession which is supposed to be a nice little earner, law, unis are churning graduates out but what nobody tells anyone is that only about 15% of law graduates get a job in law and those tend to be from the Russell group of unis, my brother in law who is a partner in a well recognised law firm has had to take substantial haircut this year due to the cutthroat competition in the legal world.

So I don't think it's whinging its telling it like it is.

[MARYROSE02]

36% of 18 year olds started a university degree the 2nd year after fees went up to 9k....the proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds also increased.....in England disadvantaged kids were 7-% more likely to goto university in 2013 than 2004.....so it kind of puts to bed the theory that poor families will suffer more.

 

There are now some pretty useless degrees on offer.....media springs to mind.....but that should not detract from those degrees students seek in order to become a Teacher, Doctor, Solicitor, Engineer etc etc.....there are still thousands of students studying for good careers that offer good prospects and good salaries.

 

More degrees and more educated adults does not mean a drop in standards.....its like saying lets not try and aspire to countries like Finland, South Korea or Japan because by doing so we are just lowering our standards by allowing too many kids a good education.....incidentally the UK finishes quite high on the world list for best educations.

 

again.....people just bl##dy moaning and whinging......its like a virus on this website.

 

I agree with most of what you say, apart from the bit about 'useless degrees on offer' as if the only 'useful' degrees are those that train you for a specific profession. I'll give you one example from what I would also have thought to be a 'useless' subject - philosophy, which I did in my first unit at the Open University. I was talking to a bloke in the cafe near my home and he said that learning how to construct a proper argument from studying philosophy had given him the 'edge' at work when it came to getting approval for new projects in his job as a finance executive.

 

Looking back, my first degree - a BA from UNSW was 'useless' in terms of helping me in my career, but it was still bloody hard work. I doubt if I will use my OU degree for help in my career either, but it's good for my mental health, and gives me something to do in semi-retirement. I was in the cafe yesterday, talking to young guy who works there, and it turned out that he did the same subject as me at Macquarie Uni - Critical Thinking - but he was doing it 'on campus' whilst I did it 'on line'.

[MARYROSE02]

Just to take one profession which is supposed to be a nice little earner, law, unis are churning graduates out but what nobody tells anyone is that only about 15% of law graduates get a job in law and those tend to be from the Russell group of unis, my brother in law who is a partner in a well recognised law firm has had to take substantial haircut this year due to the cutthroat competition in the legal world.

So I don't think it's whinging its telling it like it is.

 

I would have thought that anybody who wanted a career in a particular profession could research everything there was to know before they enrolled in a degree, including which universities had the best reputation? This website came up amongst many from a simple 'Which university is best for law' question in Google. What do you mean by a 'substantial haircut' by the way? Do you really mean he had to have his haircut?

 

COURSES

 

 

UNIVERSITIES

 

 

RANKINGS

 

 

ABOUT US

 

 

 

 

[h=1]Top Law Schools[/h]

 

 

 

[h=3]What Australian universities have the best law schools?[/h] One's definition of a good law school depends on what you value in a degree. Some of the law schools with the highest course satisfaction ratings are not considered elite. These include Edith Cowan University, UniSA and Bond University.

The UNSW Law School has strong claims to be the best law school because it has prestige and gets high ratings from graduates. UNSW is also good in social sciences and has a strong Master of Laws program. UNSW's rivals in postgraduate study include Melbourne Uni, Sydney Uni, UQ and UWA.

Another consideration are the types of law degrees universities offer. Some law schools do not have Bachelor of Laws, instead requiring students to do expensive Juris Doctor degrees. Other schools require students to complete lengthy combined degrees (such as Arts/Law). These options contrast with USQ's 3-year law degree.

[h=2]Top Rated Law Schools[/h] Reputations count for little when graduates rate how satisfied they are with their law courses. The top law schools for course satisfaction are a mixture of prestigious and vocational universities.

 

Summary

 

 

Top 10

 

 

11-20

 

 

 

[h=3]Top 10 rated law schools[/h] Edith Cowan University

University of New South Wales

University of South Australia

Bond University

University of Wollongong

Charles Darwin University

Monash University

University of Canberra

University of Technology, Sydney

La Trobe University

 

 

[h=3]Satisfied[/h] 97%

95%

92%

91%

90%

89%

89%

88%

87%

87%

 

 

Source: MyUniversity, Course Experience Questionnaires

 

 

 

 

 

 

[h=2]Best Universities for Masters[/h] Master of Laws (LLM) degrees are popular with law graduates wanting to specialise and non-law graduates seeking to improve their legal knowledge.

 

Top masters program

 

 

Top 10 list

 

 

 

[h=3]10 best unis for LLM (not in order)[/h] Australian National University

Monash University

University of Adelaide

University of Melbourne

University of New England

University of New South Wales

University of Queensland

University of Sydney

University of Technology, Sydney

University of Western Australia

 

 

[h=3]State[/h] ACT

VIC

SA

VIC

NSW

NSW

QLD

NSW

NSW

WA

[BacktoDemocracy]

No, MR2 he had to take a paycut .

[kungfustu]

I would have thought that anybody who wanted a career in a particular profession could research everything there was to know before they enrolled in a degree, including which universities had the best reputation? This website came up amongst many from a simple 'Which university is best for law' question in Google. What do you mean by a 'substantial haircut' by the way? Do you really mean he had to have his haircut.

 

He is talking about the government cut backs in "legal aid".....the government have proposed big cuts in legal aid.....the governments own auditors have advised the government that it is not financially viable for these law firms to operate with the proposed cuts.....the government have suggested that the law firms join forces and create companies within companies in order to keep their costs down etc etc......my brother is also a partner in a firm of Solicitors in Kent and I have heard it all over the past couple of years....I would show you the smallest violin if it was possible on a chatroom.....what this all has to do with universities god only knows?

[Skyba]

The only reason things have been looking better lately is because the Tories have done everything they can to exadurate the figures prior to the election, They issued inflated growth figures in order to gain confidence. Today it's been announced that unemployment has risen. Wouldn't surprise me if those figures were all played with in order to change public opinion.

 

 

the only facts are that the use of food banks has risen drastically, the amount of children in poverty has spiralled so much so the Tories will change the definition of poverty not to fall behind the the legal levels of child poverty and inequality is at its worst for many years. All of this is happening and the right wing media will have you believe that a government stealing from the poor to give to the rich are doing the right thing. Millions of hard working families will have their help taken from them yet the Tories continue to allow their buddies get away with paying minuscule amounts of tax.

 

Injust watched a progrMme about slavery and how the government was made up of plantation owners so that they could infiltrate the powers that be and make sure the laws worked for them, they spoke about it as if it was a thing of the past. It's exactly what's happening now but they're just a little more clever about it than before. the slaves are gone but they've created a new way of trPping people and creating weLth for the few from the suffering of the masses.

 

If you live in the London bubble things are great apparently though

[Parley]

Yes. It is all a giant conspiracy.

[Skyba]

Yes. It is all a giant conspiracy.

 

 

No conspiracy just the Tories doing what they do best. feeding everyone crap, screwing over the working classes and somehow getting them to take it with a smile on their face. Also it can only be a conspiracy if it's hidden and it's only hidden if you read the daily mail or the sun! I find it best to get the information from experts such as max Keiser who have actual knowledge and hold their position due to their understanding of the facts rather than someone who prints what Rupert Murdoch tells them to

 

It is a fact that they falsified the growth figures, it's a fact that they use cash terms to describe debt and deficit rather than percentage terms because if they did, it would be crystal clear that this is far from the worst situation a government has inherited in history. in fact previous labour governments have inherited far more debt in percentage terms than this lot did and they sorted it out a lot faster too. Blaming your failings on the previous government is tired and old now. If you set a target and miss it that's your failure nobody else's.

 

Many well educate and far more informed economist than any of us state that the UK economy is being damaged to a state of disrepair by the cuts and sanctions that are being imposed on the working people. I am an electrician and I have to do 80 hours OT in order to earn the same in a month as an electrician here would get in a flat week 15-20 years ago.

 

The economy doesn't recover by making a few people very Rich, it doesn't get stronger by changing the value of the pound over night so that rich people can leave their money in the bank and earn more by doing that than investing. Give a rich man £1000 and he'll pop it in the bank, give a poor man £1000 and he will spend it. Growth doesn't happen by leaving cash in the bank. The top 1% of this country have seen their wealth more than double since the crisis yet the average person has seen their living costs rise and their wages fall.

[Parley]

The economy is recovering in Britain.

Which is why the pound is improving so much.

[Thom]

Just to take one profession which is supposed to be a nice little earner, law, unis are churning graduates out but what nobody tells anyone is that only about 15% of law graduates get a job in law and those tend to be from the Russell group of unis, my brother in law who is a partner in a well recognised law firm has had to take substantial haircut this year due to the cutthroat competition in the legal world.

 

.

 

Your evidence for that?

 

When sixth-formers were recently polled about the factors that most influenced their choice of university, graduate job prospects came up time and time again.Six out of 10 teenagers told a Which? University survey, published in March last year, that employment opportunities three or four years down the line were at the forefront of their mind when filling in their Ucas form.

The introduction of £9,000-a-year tuition fees has forced university applicants to be harder-nosed than previous generations. For most, improving their chances of getting a firm grip on the career ladder trumps state-of-the-art sports facilities or good nightlife when deciding on courses and location.

The good news is that prospects for those graduating in 2015 and beyond are the healthiest they’ve looked for years. “Graduate recruitment at Britain’s top employers is this year set to reach its highest level for more than a decade,” says Martin Birchall, managing director of High Fliers Research, which recently published its 2014 report on the graduate job scene. “And starting salaries are on the rise, too.”

Accountancy firms, retailers, manufacturers and technology companies, such as Rolls- Royce and Jaguar Land Rover, dominate the list of big graduate recruiters. Meanwhile, Teach First, which puts graduates into challenging schools, tops the recruiter chart in 2015, with 2,060 vacancies, followed by PwC and Deloitte.

 

The number of graduate vacancies is predicted to rise this year, reflecting an increased confidence in the economy among employers, according to a new survey.Available graduate positions are expected to increase by 11.9 per cent, double that of the previous two years, which saw roles increase for university leavers by 4.3 per cent in 2013 and 2014.

It represents the largest increase in graduate jobs since 2007, and follows two years of economic growth in the UK, in which GDP passed pre-recession levels.

In total, employers are estimated to have offered 21,682 jobs last year.

The survey, published today by the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR), is based on the responses of 200 AGR member employers and provides insight into graduate recruitment.

[Thom]

I am an electrician and I have to do 80 hours OT in order to earn the same in a month as an electrician here would get in a flat week 15-20 years ago.

 

 

 

Overseas and EU country workers undercutting you?

[MARYROSE02]

No, MR2 he had to take a paycut .

 

Sometimes we have to make sacrifices, unusual for lawyers mind! I see there are plenty making money out of the various Royal Commissions. I seem to recall that the convicts on their way out to OZ called sharks 'sea lawyers!'

[MARYROSE02]

No conspiracy just the Tories doing what they do best. feeding everyone crap, screwing over the working classes and somehow getting them to take it with a smile on their face. Also it can only be a conspiracy if it's hidden and it's only hidden if you read the daily mail or the sun! I find it best to get the information from experts such as max Keiser who have actual knowledge and hold their position due to their understanding of the facts rather than someone who prints what Rupert Murdoch tells them to

 

It is a fact that they falsified the growth figures, it's a fact that they use cash terms to describe debt and deficit rather than percentage terms because if they did, it would be crystal clear that this is far from the worst situation a government has inherited in history. in fact previous labour governments have inherited far more debt in percentage terms than this lot did and they sorted it out a lot faster too. Blaming your failings on the previous government is tired and old now. If you set a target and miss it that's your failure nobody else's.

 

Many well educate and far more informed economist than any of us state that the UK economy is being damaged to a state of disrepair by the cuts and sanctions that are being imposed on the working people. I am an electrician and I have to do 80 hours OT in order to earn the same in a month as an electrician here would get in a flat week 15-20 years ago.

 

The economy doesn't recover by making a few people very Rich, it doesn't get stronger by changing the value of the pound over night so that rich people can leave their money in the bank and earn more by doing that than investing. Give a rich man £1000 and he'll pop it in the bank, give a poor man £1000 and he will spend it. Growth doesn't happen by leaving cash in the bank. The top 1% of this country have seen their wealth more than double since the crisis yet the average person has seen their living costs rise and their wages fall.

 

You talk as if the Tories are dictators of Britain, and also as if it is only Tory governments who 'play politics' when they are in power. Look back over the past fifty years and you will find plenty of examples of Labour subterfuge, and often Labour incompetence, just like in OZ, is followed by the voters kicking them out, so the Tories can sort things out again.

[Skyba]

Overseas and EU country workers undercutting you?

 

 

Not at all, i am an approved electrician, overseas workers don't tend to be able to get the jobs I can because they have to get their qualifications again. I've worked on sites all over Bristol and i think I've worked with 1 overseas electrician and he wasn't an electrician he was an improver. It's actually just large companies, unrfortunately like the On my way! I find myself working for now, who grew large during thatchers death grip who take advantage of the economic situation to buyout companies and run them into the ground or undercut the competition by paying poor wages. They run at a loss most of the time just so they wipe out the competition.

[BacktoDemocracy]

He is talking about the government cut backs in "legal aid".....the government have proposed big cuts in legal aid.....the governments own auditors have advised the government that it is not financially viable for these law firms to operate with the proposed cuts.....the government have suggested that the law firms join forces and create companies within companies in order to keep their costs down etc etc......my brother is also a partner in a firm of Solicitors in Kent and I have heard it all over the past couple of years....I would show you the smallest violin if it was possible on a chatroom.....what this all has to do with universities god only knows?

 

No actually he does no legal aid or court work he does all commercial and contract work, so nothing to do with govt changes, just simply more firms desperate for work willing to do the work cheaper.