Hello, this is probably going to be a lengthy post so bare with me. I live in the UK and love it, I love the history, the way you can walk past strangers and say alright without it being weird (where I live it’s pretty much everyone, it’s just polite right?), I love our relatively calm (until global warming kicks in) climate which hardly any natural disasters (except for the frequent floods, but what do you expect when people build on flood plains?), hardly any tornado’s or earthquakes and no volcanoes or hurricanes, most of our wildlife is of no threat to us whatsoever, and what I mean by that is no poisonous spiders or bears to eat us. Other things I love include our health service and education system, in contrast to other countries where free health care and in some extremes free education isn’t possible, I love how we’re governed (will do even more when this whole expenses thing gets sorted out), the tradition and the way it’s done, I love our mannerisms and humour, I love the way our general law enforcement for the most part don’t carry guns, because the population isn’t armed (yea theirs riots and such but I never said I love everyone in the country, just that I loved the country) there is more and I could go on, there are defiantly countries that do things better than us but I love my country. On the other hand I have no problems with us being more involved in the European union, when Brussels sorts itself out anyway, as long as it gives the people of Europe a better standard of living, I know there’s some people who would never want to be part of Europe because we will lose our national identity, and I personally wouldn’t want to lose the £, but if it’s necessary then I will accept it, and I know there’s some people who would rather we got closer to America than closer to Europe, but I personally think we have a lot more in common with Europe than America (most European people I’ve met speak English as a second language anyway), I mean we’re living in a post war society after the two world wars, and our countries were flattened by bombings and some occupied by foreign forces, and all the socialist changed like the UN, the European union, the NHS, an end to the death penalty all happened after the wars, and the whole of Europe changed together after the wars, America changed a lot less. America seems so old fashioned to me sometimes, talking to some American friends it just seems that things like the far right hard liners are more accepted than over here (the BNP are just racists and are ridiculed and not liked), and if you said something like that over here you would be shunned, and religion holds too much of a sway on a lot of the population (people should be able to live as they like, as long as they don’t hurt anyone else, I don’t see how being gay is that offensive, or even abortions can make people so mad, they can disagree by all means but there is just no need to be as harsh as some of the people I’ve seen are). Although I’m not the biggest fan of religion, I don’t think religion itself is bad, and I have nothing against people who have a faith, but those people who think they can do whatever they want as long as they confess it and twist religious texts to suit their own prejudices annoy me so much Sorry about the last part it wasn’t meant to be a dig at America or religion I was just trying to get my point across. As well as my national pride I hate suffering, if countries are abolished and we were all one big world of people free to travel where we want and work and live where we want wouldn’t that be better for everyone? So why am I typing all this? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8065615.stm Because of the recession graduates should go abroad? If they find a job in another country what incentive will they have to come back? And you know how some people over here react when “foreigners steal our jobs”, why won’t people from other countries feel the same? My own situation is that I’ve just hit 6 months of unemployment again, and haven’t had a full time job since I got made redundant from a slaughter house 6 months before the recession hit. I have been to college and have a BTEC national diploma, and I’ve tried really hard to get into the IT industry (my BTEC is a national diploma for IT practitioners system support), the closest I came was after I got made redundant at a firm that installed networks and computer systems for businesses, the only reason I wasn’t hired is because I didn’t have a car. After I left college I kept working at the pizza shop I worked at to pay me through college for three months after I finished, before getting a job at a slaughter house I worked for in summer holidays while I was at school. For almost two years I worked 12 hours plus a day 5 days a week, during normal working hours I was the beef grader (involved a lot more than that but that was the job title) and after everyone else went home I updated databases and sent emails about the day off to DEFRA, as well as write letters, spec and upgrade computers, the network and fixing problems on the computer network. It wasn’t a bad job, I was getting paid a lot more than anyone else I knew who was my age and because I was doing the other stuff after my main job I was getting the experience I that jobs I wanted requested. Before I left I had saved up £4000 for training or to go to university, my dad wanted to set up his own business, so I gave him half. Then started 6 months of hell as I looked for a job that I wanted to do, I didn’t apply for job seekers allowance (still haven’t), because I thought I had the savings and there are people who need the money more. After 6 months I just settled for a job in a restaurant as a kitchen hand, the people I worked with were frankly dicks and after they saw that I was a hard worker (if there wasn’t anything for me to do I’d sweep up or clean or just find something to do, I was also described as fast) they relied on me when it got busy to do everything, they were also very abusive, in the end I quit after 4 months, the boss made asked me to move literally, a tonne of bricks (probably more) from the second floor where they were renovating to the basement, and afterwards I had to get on my hands and knees and scrub the toilet floors with cut hands and cream cleaner, and then the chef made me buy alcohol for his underage daughter (if I’d have said no to him I think he would have killed me). The wage was crap and in the end I got sick of it so left. After that I looked into training and found a course I could do, Microsoft approved network engineer, and the training company that ran the course provided you with a work placement at the end, it seemed like the perfect thing for me, but my dad’s business had failed and my parents needed money, so I gave them over £600 and I couldn’t afford the course in the end, the £2000 I gave him in the first place I let them keep as 6 months’ rent. After another 4 or 5 months I found a job at a circuit board factory, was minimum wage again (and as I was 21 at the time, not a lot), worked there for about 2 months and as the time came for them to give me a contract, which would have increased my wage I was let go (I was an agency worker, I’ve heard stories of a lot of people getting a job there and getting let go after a few months). Since then I’ve had 6 months unemployment after applying for lots of jobs, think the holes in my employment plus the fact I’ve been to college (the only jobs that seem to be around are shop workers or bar staff) put people off. If I could get a stable job abroad, why would I come back? I love this country, and I know my situation is probably unique, but why would the government let highly trained people go abroad when there’s a high risk they probably won’t return? In my opinion the government should provide them with jobs (they’ll have some money left over now they’re paying less on expenses) and try to keep them in this country, otherwise we will lose a lot of young and highly intelligent people.
Sadly such is the plight of the UK's shift from a manufacturing base to a service-based society. With increasing numbers of people increasingly well-qualified, fewer and fewer people are happy to do **** jobs for no money, which sadly a capitalist economy relies upon. You look like you've stuck it out in some pretty godawful employment (slaughterhouse?) but quit after severe provocation. The problem now is that the jobs you (we) are unwilling to do will be filled from countries with lower standards of living (i.e., who will accept **** jobs for no money); such is the nature of supply and demand. The UK needs cleaners, fruit-pickers, street cleaners, plumbers, builders - and its citizens are increasingly unwilling to perform those jobs. You're a very tough employee, but you're in the same boat eventually - you won't work for no money in a job you hate. However, as a result you're in a uniquely crappy position. Were you to go abroad, you'd have to accept a low standard of pay and living because virtually nowhere in Europe is as wealthy per capita as the UK. You'd be a 'reverse Pole', going from a prosperous homeland to a less-prosperous place of employment to earn less money to do a job you felt more suited to. This is why the Government is encouraging 'volunteering;' if you volunteer to work in a Romanian orphanage, you're not going to expect much of a standard of living. In response to your last question, I think the issue is that Britain now has so many skilled workers (that expect good pay and employment for their studies) that we need to export them and import unskilled people that don't expect to be paid well and do expect to do **** jobs.
The slaughterhouse wasn't too bad (in retrospect at the time i thought i was wasting my life, long hours, but it was good money), you got covered in blood every day and in the summer it was quite hot, physical and hard, and at christmas everyone wanted meat, so sometimes working 15 hours a day and working harder than ever, but id go back to it tomorrow if i could. Currently im applying for lots of jobs, currently waiting to here back from 3, im sure i'll get a job eventually, hopefully more perminant this time. (if you don't think that you get down so yea lol) But basically i was just wondering what everyone thought, the government just seem to be pushing people into university (i personally didn't go because i didn't want to get into debt) and they're encouraging them to go abroad? I don't personally think many people will work in romanian orphanages, but i knew a lot of quite highly trained poles who came over here to work in unskilled jobs because the pay was a lot better (on the subject of poles working over here, i have no problem because they pay taxes, although they did seem to send most of there spare cash home), i think a lot of students could for example go to poland to do the jobs that the poles left, and even if they do decide to come back, theres still no guarantee that they will get a job over here, and i would personally rather have job security. When they are over there they will be paying taxes in the country they're working in, so the government is getting no benefit either. Is this bad advice or not? Id love to be a fruit picker, no jobs like that around here lol, and my brother is a plumber, he makes a living but doesn't make a lot out of it at the moment.
I don't see why people think this. We have very strong links to Europe, and I don't mean only recently. Since the Roman times until the Norman invasion we've been bombarded by Europe (and before that too but we have no records of this), and even after the Norman invasion we've been bombarded in a more peaceful way by immigration. Our Royal Family, which we hold as being the pinnacle of Britishness, is a branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, which has strong links with Belgium, Bulgaria, Portugal and parts of Germany (Saxe-Coburg and Saxe-Gotha, present day Bavaria and Thuringia). We've had a Dutch king, a Norman king (should point out Norman =/= French at that time), both Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tzar Nicholas II were first cousins of King George V and the list of links to Europe goes on. IMO, if you're proud to be British you must also be proud to be European. I guess two World Wars distanced ourselves from our close cousins. EDIT: As for the rest of it, I'm in sort of the same boat as you, although not quite as bad, so you're not alone, I know right where you're coming from. Right now I'm struggling to find an entry level position, just the general office admin jobs at minimum wage are requiring a bunch of experience, it's definitely not a job seekers market right now. I'm also in the same boat with the uni thing, I dropped out after a few years not finding what I wanted to do and getting pissed off with how **** the system is that I have to pay for and then came to the realisation that I'm not really too fussed about earning tons of money and I don't have to get a degree to work in a decent paying job. Unfortunately just as I left the credit crunch kicked in, getting a job right now is pretty damn difficult, but getting one with a big black mark of dropping out of uni makes things even harder. Currently working in a Kitchen and attempting to find some way of studying for an AAT qualification that doesn't involve me working there still and ideally being able to move back to Cardiff and not have to pay for the tuition.
Well i went abroad for my placement at uni, it frankly costs the same to set up shop pretty much anywhere and you won't have the level of pikeyism which Britain has allowed itself to fall into. The rise of stupidity crossing the Atlantic with horrible celebrity culture and the stupifying of the media to cope with these half-brained fops is just becoming shameful. Does make anyone with half a brain want to either move to somewhere very isolated in england or jump ship completely.
I think it is kind of interesting that the same government that responds to the public sentiment of "British jobs for British workers" would encourage British workers to go abroad and take foreigners' jobs. In any case, Puresilver is not correct when he says that the UK is the country in Europe with the highest wealth per capita. Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Holland and Luxemburg (and incidentally, Switzerland) all do better than the UK. Germany, France and Belgium are on an equal par.
If it weren't for the fact I'm **** with languages I'd be very tempted to move somewhere else in Europe like Norway or Germany.
Sorry, I used the wrong statistic. The one I wanted was GDP, PPP adjusted. That's a slightly better reflection of the financial standing of nations (GDP doesn't take into account accumulate wealth, which is what the UK has). This will give a better idea of how far your money would go were you working somewhere lower down the list and trying to spend it in the UK. GDP/PPP adjusted places us third behind Germany and Russia, which means to be better off than working here and spending here you'd have to work in one of those and spend in the UK. For reference, Poland (9th) for 2009 is 664I$, whereas we're 2216I$. So you can see how it makes financial sense to earn in the UK and spend in Poland.
Well duh, we are infamous for being the most overpriced nation on the planet That's only a very small picture though, it doesn't take into account things such as education, health care, public transport, etc.
