What caught my eye this week.
I had to dodge through a queue of cars snaking out of a petrol station forecourt and onto the road on my way home this evening.
There are also gaps in the supermarkets and High Street stores – albeit definitely more missing teeth than gummy and barren.
Oh, and energy suppliers are going bust like blown fairy lights.
How bad could this get?
Over on their new website – Invest-ability – the Investor’s Chronicle veterans John Hughman and Phil Oakley posit a new Winter of Discontent:
[…] something is definitely going on that investors need to be keeping tabs on.
We have heard lots about the brewing supply chain crisis that is seeing some empty shelves in supermarkets, partly because we import so much of what we consume and because a lack of lorry drivers means goods simply can’t be moved around.
Sky News also ran through the shortages (not) piling up and the list was long, with everything from bikes to Christmas trees apparently under threat:
From “cancelled” Christmas dinners to numerous energy suppliers collapsing and items missing from supermarket shelves, many industry experts claim Britain is in crisis.
The UK economy has been disrupted by several factors including labour shortages, new immigration rules and the lingering effects of the pandemic.
There is estimated to be a shortfall of around 100,000 lorry drivers, and soaring energy costs have also added to the cost of food production and logistics.
Having spent millions getting a CO2 supplier back into business this week, the government is now holding crisis talks on the petrol driver shortage.
Rebooting the machine
Many are blaming all this on Brexit, and it’s tempting. However the fact is various supply shocks are showing up across the global economy.
The world is famously short of microchips, for instance – it’s even holding up the manufacture of cars. Lumber prices in the US went through a mini boom-and-back-down cycle earlier this year. And the US hypermarket Costco is now warning of a potential toilet paper shortage.
For sure, by re-erecting trade barriers and imposing mounds of paperwork at our borders while scaring off hundreds of thousands of key workers, Brexit won’t be helping. Whatever its political merits, very few economists thought leaving the EU would be anything other than self-damaging. The only question was how much.
For me, our lurch back to the early 1970s was always more akin to taking up smoking. It’ll hurt us in the long run, but in the short-term it’ll mostly be smoke, hot air, and generally being unsociable.
Rather, as I said the other week, there was always going to be a more costly fallout from Covid and its rolling lockdowns than we’ve felt so far. You can’t turn off the global engine and not expect to see some stuttering when you turn it back on. Anyone who has worked at a business that effectively shuts up shop from mid-December to early January knows that.
So I do believe things will probably get better – here and abroad. But they may very well get worse first.
What do you reckon, and are you stocking up on anything? Let us know in the comments below. And have a great weekend!
From Monevator
The contrast effect: Post-FIRE life vs old life – Monevator
The investor’s lifecycle – Monevator
From the archive-ator: How to build a risk factor portfolio – Monevator
News
Note: Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view you can click to read the piece without being a paid subscriber. Try privacy/incognito mode to avoid cookies. Consider subscribing if you read them a lot!1
Avro Energy and Green go bust; warning more suppliers will go under – BBC
Wine beats scotch and Hermes bags as top luxury investment – Guardian
Food producers warn surge in cost of CO2 will force up prices for shoppers – Guardian
Roald Dahl family in line for £500m after selling up to Netflix – ThisIsMoney
The global housing market is broken – BNN Bloomberg
Vanguard’s forecasting model predicts US equities will lag the rest of the world for the next decade – Vanguard
Products and services
Brace yourselves for an energy bills shock [Search result] – FT
JP Morgan launches new UK bank account – Which
Last chance: earn up to £500 cashback when you transfer your pension to ii [Offer ends 30 September] – Interactive Investor
Sainsbury’s claims new Nectar scheme could save you £200 a year – ThisIsMoney
The cheapest mortgage deals revealed as rates plummet – Which
Twitter enables users to send and receive Bitcoin – Engadget
Sign-up to Freetrade via my link and we can both get a free share worth between £3 and £200 – Freetrade
How crypto is attracting millennial millionaires to financial advice – Investment News
Castles for sale, in pictures – Guardian
Comment and opinion
A new tool to calculate your ‘Safe Savings Rate’ – Portfolio Charts
Boring is beautiful – The Belle Curve
Why buying the dip is a terrible investment strategy – Of Dollars and Data
Are you (or is someone you know) one of the 134,000 underpaid the state pension? – Much More With Less
A very generous review of Monevator – Financial Expert
The psychology of saving habits – Morningstar
Overlooked areas of retirement planning [US but relevant] – Humble Dollar
Gordon Brown: the £20 benefit cut is morally indefensible – Guardian
The boon of a mid-life career change [A few weeks old] – Guardian
Abundance and scarcity are the enemies of appreciation – AWOCS
Most active managers will continue to lag in this bull market – Indexology
Value creation – Banker on FIRE
Copycat investing mini-special
Does guru investing work? – Enterprising Investor
Steal ideas, not implementations – Robot Wealth
Naughty corner: active antics
Some thoughts on investing and life – The Undercover Fund Manager
Rob Arnott: second chance at the value turn – Advisor Perspectives
Christopher Mills: spotting value and doing something [Video] – via YouTube
The point of being active – Klement on Investing
What is return stacking? – RCM Alternatives
Zooming in on history – Neckar’s New Money
Covid (and the common cold) corner
Is the ‘worst cold ever’ going around? – BBC
Male life expectancy falls for first time in 40 years due to Covid – Guardian
Llamas are at the front line of a new Covid treatment – BBC
Kindle book bargains
Finish What You Start by Peter Hollins – £0.99 on Kindle
Understand Psychology: Teach Yourself: How Your Mind Works and Why You Do the Things You Do by Dr Nicky Hayes – £0.99 on Kindle
Stuffocation: Living More with Less by James Wallman – £0.99 on Kindle
The Great Mental Models Volume 2: Physics, Chemistry, and Biology – by Shane Parrish – £0.99 on Kindle
Environmental factors
Nature is medicine. But what’s the right dose? – Outside
Air pollution: even worse than we thought – BBC
Ocean photographer of the year, in pictures – Guardian
Off our beat
CEO who gave all his employees $70,000 minimum salary thriving six years later [Video] – CBS
Scam and fraud have come to the world of NFTs – The Verge
Crypto Jeff Bezos – Not Boring
The spirit of Occupy Wall Street migrated to Reddit – MarketWatch
And finally…
“In the short term, the reasons for market sell-offs feel like they matter a lot and downturns feel like they’ll never end. In the long term, investors tend to forget the specific reasons stocks fell in the past and all corrections look like buying opportunities.”
– Ben Carlson and Robin Powell, Invest Your Way to Financial Freedom
Like these links? Subscribe to get them every Friday! Note this article includes affiliate links, such as from Amazon and Freetrade. We may be compensated if you pursue these offers – that will not affect the price you pay.
- Note some articles can only be accessed through the search results if you’re using PC/desktop view (from mobile/tablet view they bring up the firewall/subscription page). To circumvent, switch your mobile browser to use the desktop view. On Chrome for Android: press the menu button followed by “Request Desktop Site”. [↩]
Comments on this entry are closed.
I reckon the Brexiteers are lucky that they have Covid to hide behind.
Since the UK was never emotionally attached to the european project the reason the country joined the EU in 1973 was economic once the EU became more important than the former empire as a trading partner by the late 60s
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
Who could have possibly predicted that throwing up barriers to what had been nearly frictionless trade for nearly 50 years would have unforeseen consequences?
@ Ducknald Don
Couldn’t agree more!
I see from one of the links the Dahl family are making £500 million from a Netflix deal. I remember when they organised a £500,000 whip round to save Roald’s writing hut, rather than pay for it themselves from the proceeds of his estate they inherited. That never felt right at the time.
https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/13891/uk-campaign-seeks-to-save-roald-dahl-writing-hut/
@Ducknald Don – I was thinking the opposite:
I reckon the Covidistas are lucky that they have Brexit to hide behind.
I’m stocking up with tinned fish, vitamin pills, water filter spares and gas bottles. The Cabal will be stepping it up over the next few months.
(bought some commodity futures & producers also).
On the energy suppliers thing. There is some discussion over on MSE which may get deleted (for fear of libel) which hints that some of our delightful low cost startup now ex- energy companies (due to them selling long term fixed and buying spot) were little more than ponzi shells for their directors.
Without slagging specific examples or people off – this is how such a game might be worked by someone so minded:
– Offer a low tariff and attract switchers – a few hundred thousand
– Collect the levelled annual DD monthly in the summer when usage (and wholesale bills are low) – cash builds up. So launch at the right time. Buy some energy.
– Pay yourselves modestly handsome direct salary and again via “consultancy – strategic, marketing, IT whatever) to closely allied vehicles you or your relatives also happen to own. Setup costs and growth platform etc. Thus avoiding “no dividends” without profits rule and increasing your rake from the cash pile. Manipulate corporate debt and COVID relief and loan rules to improve the position further.
– Don’t fully hedge your future energy wholesale costs or do so minimally to keep ofgem off your back. Play with growth assumptions to balance *those* books to a level where you are allowed to continue trading (Cat and mouse)
– Wait for energy wholesale costs to fall and buy cheaper if it works out and the cash is enough. Hooray. Roll it over next year and do it again for another season but bigger.
Or go bust if it doesn’t (which is what has happened because of the gas spike). Shrug – walk off with your winnings. Leave it to OFGEM to sort out.
Keep minimal appropriate records (and nothing else) and nobody goes to jail or even gets disbarred as a director. As Private Eye would say – Trebles all round.
Wait for a discreet period then attempt to rinse and repeat with a new brand and a new slogan and some different relatives/mates as the front men and women.
OFGEM have to clean up the mess and find suppliers to take the leached reduced pile of cash and the bigger pile of pre-paid winter energy wholesale debt on. Would you as another supplier like to *pay* to acquire some customers with I don’t know – 30p in the (cost now) pound cover of their energy to be taken this winter ? To see them switch away again. I thought not. So it will go industry levy and turn up in all our bills. Only a small nibble so we don’t get mad that the original robbers have made off with a few million around the ancillaries of an unhedged sold futures bet on wholesale energy prices..
Or OFGEM can can pool and run off the bad book in a pseudo nationalised state bad energy company if it got too big and ugly for the resolution mechanism. Somewhat like UKAR/NR/B&B. Doubt they will need that this time.
Now I’ll admit the above is very cynical – and some of the startups may well be run by sincere but naive folk who wanted to be part of the green energy future and yet didn’t really understand financial hedging and risk management. Selling long term fixed and buying spot. Making it up as they went along hoping rapid growth would cover most ills. Black Scholes make sandals.
OFGEM *really* need to stop this bullshit once and for all. Rules which block it properly (better wholesale hedging requirements (even full take or pay redux vs allowed (lower) volumes) and company capitalisation minimums) – will stop new little guys and the era of a plethora of new entrants with fake but “good” tariffs will be gone for good.
A few of the past new entrants have maybe grown enough to make it into the long term game. Bulb etc. as example.
This is *hugely* important to get right. For two reasons.
1) Managing fuel poverty. We need to get targeted benefits to more people who will be cold if we don’t and generally to reduce the numbers of these. Politically a moving target is even worse than a stable but higher energy price. (Issue links to the bad housing stock and poor quality development problem in a big way). Lots of building. A fair amount of demolition. Big investment in building standards and the rebirth of enforcment of BR.
2) Green Energy Transition investment by home owners.
Stable assumptions on future energy cost are central to home owners decision making on green energy transition investments to replace oil or gas boilers, radiators, ASHP, UFH etc. (i.e. all the investments *other* than insulation). The potential shape of the transition uptake curve depends upon clarity and stability. Particularly to the relationship of electricity cost to gas and oil. Coverage of this issue in the general media remains as risible as ever.
This website is outstanding and has changed my life – thankyou so much.
I am a buyer in food manufacturing, fair to say the last 18 months have been awful for all kinds of reasons.
The shortages we are seeing are more concentrated around labour. The UK has been using European labour for 30 years to fill roles in many industries, and now I guess we are reaping what we sow. Suppliers not only rationalising ranges but also its CUSTOMERS 🙁
The paper shortage is real and causing problems on availability of packaging for food, and lines ceasing as a result.
Covid is playing its part in terms os supplies coming from the Far East where factories have simply been closed.
That situation is getting better, but theres no need to panic – perhaps we could reduce our ever increasing global calorie intake a touch!
You can tell times are bad when prepping and conspiracy theories enter the chat at only post #5
I actually take that back. Walked past a local petrol station. Half mile queue. Stewards with hi-vis vests. Panic buying.
With regard to the Vanguard forecasting article, is there any such thing as a global ex-US ETF available to UK investors?
@gmO. Nice rant! What is find odd is that when some hedge fund speculates on equities going down by “naked shorting” (which they actually don’t but anyway lets run with the nonsense on reddit), some find it’s morally repugnant.
When these energy companies speculate short on energy prices and lose, where is the moral outrage then? They were just wrong footed by the rise in prices. Poor people!
It’s way past time that our rules on limited liability companies were tightened up. In fact we should think about reducing the ease of which you can create limited liability. We also, however, need to stop bailing out customers. If they decided to take their energy from a cheap company and it defaults, they should be exposed to the possible downside of that, rather than asking the broader population to insure their cheapo decisions.
@IanT #10. I have done some searching and found it very difficult. There were some developed world ex-US funds under the EAFE banner (“The MSCI EAFE Index represents developed markets around the world, excluding the US and Canada”) but I couldn’t find any of them listed on UK sites.
You may need to DIY copying the breakdown from MSCI EAFE (with some EM).
Well, it was said that voting for brexit was like turkeys voting for Christmas.
I wonder if some actual turkeys are having a laugh right now.
A related point is the Financial Services Compensation Scheme levy paid by such firms to fund the FSCS pot for compensation.
In theory it’s great that the financial industry puts the money up rather than the taxpayer in order to cover situations gone bad.
In practice, however, it seems that the strong companies are just penalized to support the spivvier ones. And in a true Probably Still Too Big To Fail scenario the big strong companies would possibly be bailed out by the taxpayer anyway.
So arguably the whole thing is a tax on success and a bung to flakey firms.
(I say arguably because I could make the case for the opposition, too. But I do think there’s two sides.)
Tis human to blame a specific for our current malaise’s like Brexit or Trump
It is interesting to look a bit deeper
Probably the relative stability of post wars years up till now make people think that this is the normal state of affairs
Unfortunately a reading of history soon disabuses us of this happy thought
Volatility,pandemics and wars are more usual
We have been lucky to have had such a long period of stability -however normal service seems to be resuming via Covid and excess debt etc
People are finding this very difficult to deal with
xxd09
@MarkR.
Yep, cheers for that. I haven’t found anything either. I think it’s a case of compiling your own. Vanguard themselves have a big US based ETF (VEU) which is made up of 40% Europe, 30% Asia-Pacific, 24% Emerging Markets.
That would be simple enough to replicate.
More seriously, in my view, what will happen will be a reconsideration of the ‘just in time’ model of doing business.
In terms of lorry drivers, I’m on their side. Just under 50 years ago, as a 21 year old, I drove buses in Glasgow for 18 months. After university, it was a somewhat distorted version of a gap year. I needed to pay rent, so walked into the offices of Glasgow Corporation Transport one morning, and asked if they had any jobs. They almost pulled me through the door. The ‘interview’ was about 5 minutes. Working on the buses was not a popular job. Weekly rotating 3 shift system. 6am to about 2 pm. 2pm to about 10pm. And the split shift…, which covered the early and late rushes plus middle of the day, with some hours off in between. Finishing around 7 or 8.
The stress levels were high in the busy urban environment, and I always felt tired. The job was better than the digging ditches, and general labouring that I had done in my student vacations, but not remotely what I would consider longer term. When I left, to work in an office, 9 to 5, with work colleagues, something of a social life, I started to feel alive again.
Yes, I’m on the side of the lorry drivers. Permanently on the road, no real support infrastructure in this country.
@xxd09
I’ve read an article which I sadly didn’t bookmark that argued that part of the cause is that from say the middle of the 20th century politicians and other senior public figures had first hand knowledge of what unpleasantness could result in their world (e.g. substantial wars, famine etc.) and as such thought through the implications of their decisions, and were to an extent kept “honest”.
Politicians now are from an era where any famines or wars are perceived as remote either in time or geographically, so there isn’t anything reminding them of the potential consequences of poorly thought through or unrealistic decision making.
@TI
If I may, since we are in a time that has more than its fair share of challenges, I offer the recently published (2021) “A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century – Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life”, Heying and Weinstein, as a helping hand (no connection with etc).
Written with a light but eminently apposite touch, it is clearly well researched, and it may cause you to stop and think seriously about aspects of your life.
> We also, however, need to stop bailing out customers. If they decided to take their energy from a cheap company and it defaults, they should be exposed to the possible downside of that, rather than asking the broader population to insure their cheapo decisions.
This. I have MSE’s cheap energy club, but all I did is switch between edf and eon and the occasiona foray with BG because of this bonkers carry-on. MSE CEC say I could save a hundred p.a.or so going to some no-name with an unknown record of customer service. I can’t be arsed to hang on the phone to save a hundred sods or so, so I stuck with big enough suppliers I had heard of, because life is too short. I always wondered how this system worked. Now I know. It didn’t.
On the hauliers I have a loathing for pretty much all things Brexit but having taken this decision I am not for having more EU lorry drivers. For starters the EU seems to be short of drivers themselves, and we historically drive on the wrong side of the road compared to everyone else which must have safety issues, so let’s either think about using our trains more for trunk routes or pay whatever the market will clear to get enough drivers and stop taking the piss on pay and conditions. Yes, life will get more expensive. One of the reasons I could imagine voting for Brexit made sense for some is at the low end finding yourself competing with EU young free and single folk who can afford to put up with crap conditions for a few years to make a decent wedge. It’s odd to feel myself in alignment with Grant Shapps but BoJo showed Brexit voters terrific bad faith in saying he will waive the rules. Some things have to get worse to get better and it takes time to resolve them, the hauliers and care workers being two cases in point.
We had two choices with Brexit, leave the EU stay in the SM and eat the freedom of movement and effectively pay enough benefits to retire (early – very early for the very bottom end) people who don’t have the capacity to compete in that marketplace.
We chose the other, which is to axe FoM and give the middle finger to the single market. Since we are going to eat the multifarious downsides of that in economic terms, then squandering one of the main wins seems barmy – that removing low end competition might increase the number and reward of blue-collar jobs.
In the early 1980s I did some of these jobs – kitchen portering and waiting tables. They were crap jobs but there was still some basic dignity in the job, compared to being yanked around on your chain by a smartphone app.
The leitmotif of all this is that life in Britain is going to get dearer. Hello inflation, my old friend. And please, please please, can we have a jolly good October stock market crash to bring valuations down or earth 😉
As ermine says inflation is coming back. I for one would mind paying a bit more for food. I’m regularly speaking to young lads on building sites booking in over 1000 and closer to 1500 a week. Our food bill is just over 100 a week.
Also this comment bang on the money.
Lots of building. A fair amount of demolition. Big investment in building standards and the rebirth of enforcment of BR.
There are so many old (and modern) houses which literally need ripping down they perform so badly.
@xeny (#18)
Why focus on politicians?
IMO this behaviour applies to all, and there seems to be an increasing tendency to immediately blame others too!
“We also, however, need to stop bailing out customers. If they decided to take their energy from a cheap company and it defaults, they should be exposed to the possible downside of that, rather than asking the broader population to insure their cheapo decisions.”
I completely disagree with this. The average person has no reasonable ability to fully assess the quality and safety of all manner of purchases, from electronics to drugs to food to clothing and so on.
For example, if I buy a TV and it explodes and kills me, it hardly seems fair to say I should have checked the internal electronics of the thing to make sure it wasn’t going to blow up, and that I deserve to suffer the downsides of buying a cheap TV.
That’s why we have regulatory standards for all manner of things.
So in the same way that insurers have to show they can withstand a 1-in-200-year worst-case scenario, it seems reasonable that energy suppliers should meet similarly appropriate standards of robustness.
@TI. I’d get rid of FSCS aswell. Putting your money with “Crap bank plc” for an extra 1%/annum, risking 100% of principal? Those people deserve to lose their savings.
@Ermine. I was anti-Brexit but given we’ve done it, I also think we shouldn’t allow immigrants in to do these jobs.
A slim majority of the UK population voted against globalization, JIT and zero non-tariff barriers. Their hope was this might cause wages to go up. Well let them get their victory on that score. A few may do very well but the bulk will end up poorer. Because for every £ they might get in their pay packet, they will lose £2 due to the higher cost of living.
Personally, I’m perfectly happy to pay a more for essentials like food and energy since it’s < 10% of my outgoings. That won't be the same for most though.
@ ZXSpectrum48k
Personally, I’m perfectly happy to pay a more for essentials like food and energy since it’s < 10% of my outgoings. … "
Good for you.
"….We also, however, need to stop bailing out customers. If they decided to take their energy from a cheap company and it defaults, they should be exposed to the possible downside of that, rather than asking the broader population to insure their cheapo decisions….".
Sounds rather like contempt for those who struggle to get by.
And/or the voice of someone who's grown arrogant in their financial success.
Or did you grow up in an affluent, but cold, hard place ?
I see a lot of people above saying they are quite happy to see lower paid people in the UK get paid more because of Brexit
However I think the reality is rather like clap for carers
People will say it because it is socially correct but once the time comes to put their hands in their pockets to pay for it they will be wailing
There is a huge tightening coming in the UK with stimulus spending winding down and taxes rising
@ermine et al — Yes, it does seem pretty pointless to go through with the Brexit nonsense only to exempt away the impact for various special interests. Sadly we probably do need to painfully reconfigure; likely in part via automation I suspect. With that said there’s a point where the pain on the lowest rungs, as @ZX alludes, may make this stoic position too costly in terms of everyday life.
@neverland — How about we assume anonymous commentators on this website are saying what they believe unless demonstrated otherwise as they extend the same courtesy to you, rather than trying to start a fight?
I agree with your prognosis about the fiscal situation, absent an unlikely multiyear boom.
It isn’t hard to come up with financial scams involving the taking of risks that pay off 95% of the time, result in a total wipeout the other 5% of the time, but with the wipeout barely impacting the perpetrators. However, since the GFC such scams have been harder to implement in the financial sector due to stronger regulation and increased capital requirements. Has Ofgem overseen a market where such scams can be easily implemented? That is an interesting suggestion and would be highly likely to attract spivs if it were true.
Whether true or not, the sheer number of energy firms that have failed indicates to me a lack of capital and oversight. What is wrong here is that the cost of bailing out customers is passed on to other customers via the industry levy. That really should be a last resort as the costs of failure should be borne by the failing firm’s shareholders, bond and other debt holders. Ofgem should act much like the PRA would do when faced with a failing bank. Regulation and reporting needs to be tighter and intervention made early enough to resolve the situation without recourse to the industry levy.
For the reasons that John Kingham points out, the suggestion that the costs of failure should fall on customers is ludicrous. If Ofgem cannot spot unsustainable risk taking and mismanagement it is completely unreasonable to expect customers to be able to.
Apart from a few able to go off grid, all of us are required to participate in the mess we have for an energy market and use an energy supplier, just as we are required to use banks. These energy firms are deposit takers and as such should be as tightly regulated as other deposit takers.
I can empathise with the suggestion that we should take the pain caused by the Brexit vote – it’s what you voted for, so suck it up. But only 52% voted for Brexit and probably only a minority would have wanted the hard Brexit we ended up with, with lack of freedom of movement, all the new red tape, trading frictions, NI Protocol, etc. This government came up with the Brexit we have and I don’t see it as unreasonable to tweek things in areas that are not working out. If anything I would like to see even more pragmatism in order to reduce trading friction and red tape. There are plenty of easy wins that could be made if only this bone headed government would backtrack on some of the pointless ideological positions it has taken.
My energy was with Green and they’ve gone bust. Why did I go with a “cheapo company”? Why the hell not? They were going to save me £200/yr, which pays all my broker fees, or a few nice dinners out with the girlfriend.
It’s the same electricity coming down the wires. Going with a big firm provides no benefit. Electricity and gas isn’t qualitative.
A web form for you to provide the occasional meter reading, a monthly email sending out a bill, and a direct debit setup is all these companies need to execute properly. If i never have to speak to them, so much the better.
Green going bust is no real hassle. The power’s still on. Worst case I’m going to spend 2 minutes providing a meter reading to a new firm. Big whoop.
For those thinking the lorry driver shortage is to do with Brexit it’s nothing to do with Brexit. In fact the resulting wage rises since we finally left the EU have addressed one of the reasons that over the last 15 years hundreds of thousands of British HGV drivers left the industry, 50,000 in 2019 alone who thanks to the Covid lockdown and furlough finally had the chance to see just how shit working 12-15hr days, workign an average 55hr week and up to 84hrs a week being out in the lorry all week was in regards to the impact on their mental wellbeing, family and social life. If anything Brexit ending the freedom of movement and the resulting wage rises has prevented an inevitable long time coming situation from being much worse.
There are over 600,000 British HGV licence holders not driving lorries for a living, finally driven to giving it up after a decade and a half of wage compression and erosion of work conditions (things like the death of overtime after 8hrs a day/40hrs a week, time and half on Saturdays, Double time on Sundays) thanks to EU migration and the prospect of being one of the third of lorry drivers who sleep in their lorries overnight who have to park in laybys or on industrial estates without access to even a toilet after the end of a 15hr shift, something brought on by investors wanting more returns so truckstop sites being sold by land owners to put up warehouses on and NIMBYs campaigning against new truckstops being built. Nothing to do with Brexit.
Companies didn’t bother training drivers anymore because they had an unlimited source of already licenced drivers who’d work for NMW from the EU. Not only that they couldn’t afford to anyway because due to investors wanting maximum returns and dividends the businesses they transported goods for drove down the rates so much they couldn’t afford to train anyone. Again nothing to do with Brexit.
So for those remainers who are blaming it all on Brexit, it had nothing to do with Brexit but it did have everything to do with over a decade and a half of people like yourselves wanting stuff ever cheaper whilst investors like yourselves wanted ever higher returns on your money. The UK is not unique in this, the whole of the first world has a shortage of lorry drivers. The EU is 400,000 short with 120,000 short in Poland, 80,000 in Germany. Haulage companies in the USA and Canada are offering $10,000 sign up bonuses. Again, nothing to do with Brexit.
Hey, @Ermine, easy there. My supplier also went bust. My line of thinking was: better to have £200 a year in my pockets than in theirs. I mean, one of the big benefits of modern society is that you don’t need to know how stuff works inside out. You are given a price and you decide whether you pay it ot not.
I don’t know or care that much how wheat is grown, I just pay for the bread. Or else you and I wouldn’t be here, using technology (the result of someone else’s work) to communicate with each other.
@Conor, I don’t think anyone has said the HGV driver shortage was all to do with Brexit. That’s a typical Brexiter straw man argument. We were short of drivers before Brexit. Brexit has added to the shortage.
@Conor
Are their mile long tailbacks queuing to panic buy petrol in the EU and USA?
Are the supermarket shelves empty in the EU and USA?
Hmm, what is the one thing which is unique about the UK I wonder…
…”nothing to do with Brexit” my arse.
This site is becoming more like a University woke political debating society every day. Shame.
@Neverland — “Are their mile long tailbacks queuing to panic buy petrol in the EU and USA?
Are the supermarket shelves empty in the EU and USA?” —
I’m in north Italy and yes, there are some empty shelves in the supermarkets. Of course, the ‘world stops at Dover’ mentality of your tabloids means that the Brits are unlikely to ever hear about it, and if it’s not in the rag-mags, it doesn’t exist, does it?
I’ll find out about the petrol situation tomorrow. I take the bus to work and don’t have to use my car very often. The petrol shortage 20 years ago in the UK left a deep impression and these days I stick to a diesel car. I used to keep about 15 litres diesel stored, just in case. Maybe start doing it again.
@Andrew #30 and @The Weasel #32
Many years ago, when I dabbled in trading, I read an article which was titled ‘always leave 10% for the other guy’. It was good advice – chase nothing to the very end. Don’t pick pennies up in front of a steamroller.
In any distribution of prices, the bottom end* is often the realm of spivs and charlatans. That principle served me well. You will be on the cap for your winter fuel, and I will be on the fix until it terminates in March. You saved a bit more than me over the last few years, I will save about that much probably on this winter’s power and we will both be paying a lot more from then on. But I had an easier time. As I got older, I came to value comfort over speed. I electively paid a little more, not to associate with spivs.
You don’t need to understand the technology or the inner workings. I have avoided several things that turned out to be scams on the old principle if it looks too good to be true, it most likely isn’t.
*So is the top end in some markets of Veblen goods, but power is probably not a Veblen good.
@ Conor, ZX, Ermine – here’s a related-problem by way of analogy – my roof was damaged in a storm several months ago.
I can’t get a roofer to fix it. Why? Because they’re too busy on better paying jobs. Maybe I should pay them more? I can’t get some of them to quote. Too busy. Those that quote don’t then want to do the job at the price they specified. Too busy.
If there’s a new generation of roofers being trained up then I hope they hit the market soon before it rains much more.
If there’s a pool of non-British roofers out there prepared to do the job then I hope someone lets them into the country soon because I could really do with having my roof fixed.
@Chris, shame on Monevator for acting like a typical remoaner – coming up with conspiracy theories while conveniently ignoring how much the wage workers have been underpaid due to immigration from EU.
Inflation my arse, people gorged on cheap prices and strong dividends for decades and now hate the fact blue collar workers earn a bit more.
But then negative news sells. So more click bait at monevator? Of course!
@BuildBackBetter: My article literally says:
But then you believed fatuous nonsense on the side of a bus so I should be more patient and sympathetic.
I would reply but I’m enjoying a lecture from our professor Marina Hyde this morning:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/24/uk-prime-minister-shortage-crisis-boris-johnson-new-york
@TA – I had the same issue with getting the outside of my house decorated. Must have contacted at least 6 people to quote, some did some didn’t. Still haven’t sorted it. However when I speak to all the tradesman they say it’s mainly due to a lack of youngsters coming through the system. They don’t want to be decorators, roofers, plumbers, gardeners….etc. They say it’s not glamorous enough and it’s dammed hard work! But it’s always been like this hasn’t it? It’s more of a British culture thing (IMO). Much easier to become a youTuber or create a website and build up subscribers (and a lot better paid as well).
So let’s not be too quick to jump on a bandwagon and politicise this.
@Investor – please don’t get upset. My only point is that I thought this site was about investment strategies. I have no issue with your or anyone else’s political views it’s just that I don’t feel its appropriate to read them here.
As you’ve just eluded to, let’s leave all the political stuff to the Guardian or Telegraph – whichever is your want. This site is so much better than this. Hope you get well soon.
@Chris – Thanks for your anecdotal feedback on tradespeople, I’ve found the same. (I often wonder if it’d be fun to re-tool as a plumber or better yet a tree surgeon. I think if I was 20 years younger I’d seriously consider the latter).
I hear what you’re saying about political views but after 14 years of this I’ve decided that personality is what makes a blog a blog. After going through the sturm and drang of Brexit and the debates, I don’t feel a need to cloak my beliefs, although I have generally reverted to containing them in this Weekend Reading section.
I accept it can be done: my co-blogger @TA is definitely more woke than me, but he doesn’t write commentary style pieces.
But I’d rather be me as I am, within reason, and readers can take me or leave me.
The lesson of the last ten years is sadly people will get angry and are on a hair-trigger about any view that differs from their own, anyway. Look at my article above? It’s hardly a fulminating leftist screed. Yet here we are debating politics in the comments.
Another example: I often see some of my investing-world friends railing against the BBC for its ludicrous left-wing bias, while on my social media my real-life friends rail against the BBC for being a right-wing prop of the government, particularly on Brexit. In this current climate it’s impossible to ‘win’ without being entirely bland.
At the end of the day, and especially after the Brexit debates of a few years ago, I’m confident the majority of readers of this blog lean in my direction politically, especially on Brexit. I’m very comfortable with this. We’ve definitely lost readers because of it, but I’m sure we’ve gained fans, too, especially as a slightly left-of-centre (socially) site about money and investing.
So that’s how it is. If people find it’s not to their taste, fair enough. I write for me and for people who want to read me.
Have a great weekend!
@TA this is actually a much deeper pathology of the UK. Those who make the decisions in the UK tend to be drawn from the land-owning and aristocratic classes, and deeply despise people who work with their hands from a cultural perspective. Technical and skilled trades worker training has both been disparaged and also made needlessly academic. We used to have many more colleges of further education that would do practical courses, when more of the workforce was employed at this end. I used to walk past the Construction Industry Training Board on the way to the pub in the 1990s. They used to teach youths how to lay bricks, among other things. Look at their website now, and pretend you’re a youth wanting to become a CITB apprentice. What do you need
WTF? Back in the day you’d learn either if family members were in the trade or you’d hit the foreman up for a basic grunt job and pick it up on the job enough to become a brickie’s mate and then progress if you had any aptitude, else you were out on your ear. I learned basic domestic plumbing watching my Dad do it (he was a fitter, so a bit ahead on the skills), and this was before I had Maths and English. He was part of the problem though – he hated showing me this because he wanted ‘no son of mine to work with his hands’ because he had seen how people look down on that. But a young mustelid had an inquisitive and observant snout, so I picked enough up – I have never hired a plumber yet, and his tools are still in service.
The favouring of the academic has also eliminated perfectly capable people from many of these trades. As an example, say you needed a satellite dish on your roof. I was on an installer’s course way back when, because I wanted to learn more about the practicalities of this, which was something we were going to commission a lot of on one project.
I had decent electronics skills, from working in the industry and the design and development level, and I wiped the floor on the academic stuff, well, this was arithmetic rather than maths, you had to avoid adjacent channels and the up 5s and up nines, some participants struggled with that. But when it came to installing a dish on a mock-up chimney I was the slowest of the lot. Any installing company employing me would have gone bust in a month.
But I carried off the first prize of an installer’s meter and some posh nosh in London, because I cleared about 99% on the test. They had never seen that. I designed headends for a while, this wasn’t hard, but it’s not what putting dishes on punters’ roofs is about. This was an industry training course, the sort of thing considered ‘vocational’ by people who look down their long noses at those who work with their hands.
I do hope you find someone to do the necessary for your roof. Roofing is dangerous and tough work – it’s bad enough getting on roofs to fit aerials. In the past you used to be able to work from a ladder lashed to a roof ladder, but the HSE stopped that so you need scaffolding now, adding to the cost and complexity. Our collective deficit in manual skilled work has been a long time in the creation – Tony Blair’s 50% university entrance ambition has taken a lot of people who could be doing your roofing, plumbing and electrical and building work, loaded them up with debt and sent them to university. At least we have graduate baristas now.
I have sympathy for Conor’s observation even if my politics is very different from his. The Covid shutdown probably did give an awful lot of people flogging their guts out for very little benefit the time out to ask themselves some searching questions about how they were living and did they want to carry on like this. It is possible that the suckout from this means that there isn’t enough capacity to carry the offered load. Some things really do have to get worse before they get better, and the contempt with which skilled trades are held is one of them. I know an electrician and a glazier and both are run ragged at the moment.
@Ermine
That’s a very cynical view. The only difference between these big firms and these small “spivs” is that if they foul uo the Government won’t bail them out.
These large, encumbants are no more deserving of our custom than these plucky upstarts taking risks in order to acquire customers and grow.
I’m also not sure what hassle was saved or comfort maintained over the years by staying with big firms and avoiding the switch. You are supposed to take occasional meter readings anyway (since none of these firms read your meter anymore), so you’re literally saving just 5 minutes every year for potentially a 3 figure sum.
The “I don’t mind paying more” crowd are always rationalizing their inaction. I believe the same is true of National Insurance. I’m certain most of the people claiming they don’t mind paying more to find social care are either not paying NI (living off wealth), are in denial, or are delusional enough to believe that this extra money is going to actually help improve social care. Meanwhile from April, me and partners household will lose over £1000/yr due to the increase in NI and our landlord will be increasing rent by at least another £1000/yr due to inflation indices.
Increased energy, increased rents and increased taxes are going to bite hard over the next year.
@Andrew
For the sake of clarity I switched either every year or every other year, because I had to due the the way this stupid system was set up. When MSE offered me all the possible offers I didn’t run a finger down the list to squeeze it all the way to the end. Because I was cynical enough to conclude that if it looked too good to be true, it probably wasn’t.
I have no particular love for the Big Six. But yeah, I didn’t punt on new firms in particular those with no customer service record. Still, you’re happy with your choice, I’m happy with mine. That’s what makes a market, I guess.
> Increased energy, increased rents and increased taxes are going to bite hard over the next year.
I think there’s general agreement on that. Hello inflation, my old friend, hey-ho back to the 1970s we go…
@ Chris – I was with you right until you said:
“So let’s not be too quick to jump on a bandwagon and politicise this.”
It’s been well and truly politicised already much to my regret. Really I just want my roof fixed. I don’t want anyone to have to work for a rate that stops them living a decent life. I don’t care where anyone comes from if they’re making a positive contribution to society.
You’d think that a decent minimum wage and universal rights to decent working conditions would go a long way to fixing most problems along with a flexible labour market. I detest bogus loopholes that allow employers to exploit people e.g. zero hours contracts. I’m against viewing everything in terms of unnecessary nationalistic divides.
If Brits really don’t want to do certain jobs then let’s allow people from other countries in who want to do the work. They can’t be stopping Brits earning a living if Brits don’t want to do those jobs can they? If we don’t want cheap immigrant labour forcing a race to the bottom then let’s enforce a living wage and invest properly in training.
It seems to me that the remedies are available, yet our system is riddled with contradiction, and *someone* is exploiting that for political ends.
@ Ermine – that’s valuable insight. I agree with you about cultural snobbery and also, in my experience, every trade I know is drowning in work. You’re right that sometimes things are darkest before dawn. I also agree that our system seems hellbent on squeezing the pips out of everyone and it wasn’t always this way.
@Ermine
You sure the “class snobbery” you are talking about isn’t just in your particular bubble?
Seriously you go to the UK fire thread on Reddit and the answer to every question on career is “learn a trade” which comes up so often I wish I got a pound every time it gets written
I’m an Avro customer awaiting news of my new supplier and the exact variable tariff I will pay. By my, MSE based, calculations the average ‘hit’ to my fellow 580k Avro customers is about £250 and about £150 when compared to the fix they still would have with one of the ‘big 6’. That was the ONLY exposure Avro customers had and it’s small beer compared with the saving a strategy of switching annually to the lowest MSE listed supplier, usually AVRO.
IMHO the cap must rise to allow surviving suppliers to take on the displaced customers at spot wholesale prices and I expect to hear this next week.
Given the regulatory protection which is in place and which was put in place to encourage switching and real competition in the market place why wouldn’t you have done this. I see not a lot of difference between an MSE best buy list and a Monevator list of cheap I decided trackers. Play the actual game and not the game you want. So the Avro founders looked after themselves? No different to Amazon paying hardly any tax or Vanguard domiciling their funds in Ireland.
News just in ..Avro customers move to… Octopus
@The Accumulator — I couldn’t agree more with this:
I voted for this in the last three elections, the last despite vast misgivings about Corbyn.
A higher minimum wage was always available as an option if we thought the lowest were paid too little.
Of course as was repeatedly shown in study after study, there was almost always no impact found from immigration on wages. ONE study found a *tiny* hit to the lowest decile of workers. This could have been far more easily solved with a higher minimum wage, tax and redistribution, or other targeted measures. (And before someone wheels out the old saw, the reason immigration isn’t like other supply/demand metrics is that immigration creates its own demand as well as its own supply).
So we had one study out of many showing a tiny hit to the lowest paid workers. On the back of this people voted for a fringe right-wing party movement that went mainstream for six months and kicked us out of the EU with all its benefits? And expect that party to suddenly be the most motivated by the plight of the lowest paid workers? Please.
Like I say I don’t think most of the problems we’re seeing now are particularly caused by Brexit issues, though I’m sure they are heightened by it.
But that doesn’t mean Brexit was sensible from an economic perspective. And if our total GDP is 10% lower in 10-15 years due to Brexit (extremely likely IMHO, even though I only expect a small annual hit, due to compounding) with all the consequent reduced tax revenues, diminished status of our global city London, loss of international competitiveness etc etc, then no I won’t consider it a success if (a HUGE if) the bottom 10% earn 5% more.
Because that boost was achievable by other much less destructive means — and far from not caring about their plight I voted for change in that direction in the last three general elections.
Meanwhile we have prominent Brexiteers calling for visa changes to allow in more HGV drivers because “such control was the whole point of Brexit”.
So a man in Whitehall is now going to dole out visas with one eye on the nearest petrol forecourt? Maybe another on strawberry fields and a third on @TA’s roof? I thought Tories believed in markets? You can’t make it up.
With people recanting their anti-vax stance from hospital beds up and down the country daily etc it’s a high bar these days to say something is supremely anti-rational, but Brexit can still hold its head high.
If you voted for Brexit for constitutional reasons / maximal technical sovereignty, I respect your argument though I disagree with your decision. Same if you generally don’t like immigration (or worse).
Those are rational motivations. There is no rational economic argument.
@Investor
“Meanwhile we have prominent Brexiteers calling for visa changes to allow in more HGV drivers because “such control was the whole point of Brexit”.
So a man in Whitehall is now going to dole out visas with one eye on the nearest petrol forecourt? Maybe another on strawberry fields and a third on @TA’s roof? I thought Tories believed in markets? You can’t make it up.”
As a remainer I think it is consistent, actually. And also likely to be popular, unfortunately.
Brexit was always a project to take back control by and for an english elite and sold to a demographic who were not that in favour of free markets or anything much liberal.
The definition of conservative is (in a political context) three things: favouring free enterprise; private ownership; and and socially traditional ideas.
There are three parts there only one part has anything to do with free markets. (Private ownership is not necessarily allied with a free market.)
@TI: You say, ‘There is no rational economic argument.’
Not sure. Perhaps the anti-globalists (as are most people who voted for Brexit I assume) are more likely to re-introduce an honest monetary system (i.e. Gold Standard) that is compatible with a true free-market, as opposed to the crony-capitalism we have now ?
@algernod
…but the current government *is* crony capitalism central, e.g. help to buy, track and trace, Covid-19 PPE procurement fast lane (and those are just the ones that trip off the tongue)…
Still nice to see “gold standard” enter the chat at post no. 53
@Neverland – I am perfectly aware that the govt. ‘*is* crony capitalism central’. It’s been that way all my life as far as I am aware (although it may be more blatent in recent years).
@xeny: I agree. One example: there’s an interesting chart in https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmenvfru/702/70204.htm which shows how self-sufficient the UK has been in food production from 1956-2013. The chart rises steadily from the ’50s to the mid-80s – presumably while memories of WWII food rationing and shortages were still strong amongst politicians and their electorate – but then falls steadily as the free-marketeers’ thinking becomes dominant.
Interested to read that Avro customers have been sent to Octopus Energy.
I’m actually a customer of Octopus Energy. They’re reasonably OK with their customer service. As I mentioned in a comment here a few of the blog posts ago…, they increased their variable tariff 8% last May. From mid-October there is a further increase of 13.1% coming through on my electricity-only tariff.
Part of the reason why Octopus are so successful is that they operate what looks like a Silicon Valley business model, ie the backers keep pouring in money, heavy marketing, make losses while building the customer base, until the competitition wilts. In the case of Octopus the backers seem to be some variation of a private equity outfit/hedge fund. Octopus, from the most recent annual accounts at Companies House are still making losses.
Octopus have long adopted a policy of portraying themselves as the new way of doing energy supply, and portray themselves almost as saints in their promotion of renewable energy. Here’s a comment from todays news article on the Guardian website….
“… Octopus entered the market in 2016 and claims to have been picking up 50,000 customers a month. It has been highly critical of the big players that dominate the sector, saying: “The energy industry in Britain is ruled by a handful of complacent dinosaurs peddling fossil fuels, pricing trickery and poor customer service.”.
The reality of Octopus is…
Which magazine a couple of years ago did an in depth review of which energy suppliers were really ‘green’, and either generated their own renewable energy, or had direct supply contracts with renewable energy generators. Which had great difficulty in obtaining information from Octopus, because Octopus Energy , as a company, is kept separate from the part of Octopus which contains whatever generation capacity it owns. And they weren’t letting on.
The truth is that Octopus, like many others make use of REGO’s, renewable energy certificates, which enable them to portray themselves as green. In fact, they are basically being used as a marketing deception, greenwash. For something like a £1 per customer for a REGO, an energy can call itself green, even if it has zero renewable energy capacity of its own. The truth about Octopus Energy lies in its annual accounts/report which lists under the heading of Business Risks…, any increase in the price of REGO’s.
I’m sticking with Octopus for now because…, I moved a year ago from Green Network Energy ( subsequently went bust ), to Bristol Energy. Bristol Energy had a really good tariff, 100% renewable through direct contracts with renewable generators. Two weeks after I switched to them, they were taken over by an outfit called Together Energy. The admin and support at Together Energy was abysmal, and they started making arbitrary adjustments to my direct debit. I switched from them as soon as I could. To Octopus Energy last March.
I view the whole privatised energy market as a failure. Like water. And the railways.
@TA (hope the roof gets sorted) TI et al.
Construction.
Having worked in construction training for 26 years I have seen a lot of changes. Most of them have been barriers to training apprentices. In the early 90’s we got NVQ’s. A free market was given out to training agencies to provide assessment for tradespeople, and to start with, it was poor quality, rife with fraud (one company giving out qualifications to dead people and people who never enrolled on a programme) and the only thing that saved technical colleges from this was the integrity and quality of their delivery. Some courses did not survive this. The expensive to deliver, despite an uplift in funding, saw many of the colleges ditch plumbing, lead work, wood machining and others to concentrate on brickwork, carpentry and joinery and painting. Areas with many colleges in cities managed to keep more of the trades and spread them around. Result. We train fewer people.
Apprenticeships have for many decades needed a level of English and maths, I had to have qualifications when I did my trade in the early eighties, I would argue that pricing a job and working out quantities and submitting a quote need these skills and, for carpentry, basic trigonometry is very useful. The students we get and have been getting for many years now are not acquiring them at school, and cutbacks in education now mean that students are taken out from their trade programme and put elsewhere to train in them if they do not come through the door with them. (at least in our college)
New qualifications have now recently come in “Standards” These rely upon training, on site evidence collection, a test for knowledge and a test for skills performed in exam conditions. They are proving more difficult to deliver than the old qualifications [Frameworks], more expensive and more space hungry – in colleges and centres that are getting smaller per pupil every time a new build college goes up.
The CITB are at an inflection point. Since the year I was born they have been able, by law, to collect a levy from the construction industry to provide training for it. Only the larger operations pay the levy – it goes on wage bill excluding directors and there is a lower limit. As 96% of the employment is in small firms in construction and most large firms rely on an army of self-employed subcontractors acting only in a management capacity, you might imagine that this was not enough to do the job properly. The health and safety requirements change drastically for firms with more than five employees too which is a barrier to many to grow. Add to this the new government training levy and even the big firms have a beef with CITB. Non of this has persuaded small firms to employ apprentices in any great number and larger firms are not sending enough either. Retention to end of programme from sign up is mediocre and achievement with the new qualification structure is dropping.
Add to this that over the last two years apprentices have lost 20 weeks of in college training (try learning guitar without a guitar) and many apprentices have been furloughed as their employers have not been working for a similar or longer time. This will not fix itself quickly.
Staff morale at colleges is at an all time low with many decades of effective cuts to funding and being forced to compete with private providers of varying quality. On entering the world of F.E. my wages were comparable to a school teacher and overtime was rewarded. Now after the colleges were incorporated in the nineties, wages are running £7k less on average than a school teacher and they are on a relatively reduced salary than they were in the nineties after inflation due to more than a decade of austerity and counting. This is leading to higher staff turnover and the ones who are left are fast approaching retirement in our organisation. And the trade have more than their fair share of grey hair too!
Basically the Reddit “get a trade” crew could not be more spot on, but yet we still don’t recruit enough into it. 1 – 1.5K per week is the reward if you can work. Be good at a trade and you will never be out of work.
Hell that turned into a rant. Sorry, it has always been a subject close to my heart.
JimJim
The ‘get a trade crew’ also neglect to mention the impact on your health. Being out in all weathers and performing physical labour in less than optimal conditions does not make old bones.
Looking out of the window now, I am glad that I work from an office and not on a piece of scaffolding.
@ JimJim – that’s eye-opening to say the least. How the hell did it get like that? I’ve asked many of the people I work with about apprentices. They say: “Been there, too much hassle.” But I’ve never understood why.
Re: TI in #43 – “my co-blogger @TA is definitely more woke than me”
This is true! I have to cancel TI 3 or 4 times every time we meet.
Meanwhile, I’m the unacceptable face of the Far-Centre in my own household 😉
Lol..
Petrol station queues … a self fulfilling prophecy.
Tradesmen …. Glad I am not the only one who finds it difficult to find tradesmen to turn up and even quote for work never mind actually do it.
I got a quote from one guy and he just refused to come and do the work.. had to find someone else.
We need more trades skilled people but it is not trendy. As someone else has said, the trend is to become a YouTuber and earn ‘easy money’. People are not mentioning the plumbers or electricians earning £100k.
Also the push to get everyone to have a degree means we have people with degrees and no chance of work. Having to work warehouse jobs where a degree is not necessary because they cannot get jobs for their qualifications.
I remember the fad for a degree subject that was supposedly in demand. Only for the graduates to find that the jobs did not exist at the end of their course.
I also remember a friend who gave up his builder job because people were having a go at him. He took an office job and now wishes he had stayed in building as he would have earned more over his lifetime. He was being paid to train and get qualifications (when companies use to do that).
Companies now do not want to pay to train anyone … why train someone when you can just hire someone who is already qualified.
@SparkleBee
The funding for an apprentice in construction is not too shabby. At the moment, it is a £3000 sign on grant, £2500 attendance grant per year in training and a £3500 completion award when they finish training.
https://www.citb.co.uk/levy-grants-and-funding/grants-funding/apprenticeship-grants/england-apprenticeship-grants/
What puts employers off is the paperwork necessary to get the grants (think huge form) and the demands of the course and their own input into training – Over the course of the apprenticeship, a record of “off the job” training must be kept that proves the equivalent of 1 day per week worked in training (“Non productive training”). Some of this must come from the employer themselves as colleges typically run 34 day release days per academic year leaving another 18 to account for assuming the apprentice is not absent from college. English and maths training should be done on top of this figure if it is necessary for the qualification taken. Review paperwork needs to be done regularly throughout the apprenticeship too.
The funding seems targeted at school levers and apprenticeship minimum wage only applies to the first year for older applicants so getting into the trades at a later age puts people at a disadvantage to school leavers- anyone who studies on a full time course for a trade (without an employer) ends up with a qualification that has little to no recognition in the industry and ends up, if eventually employed, taking an apprenticeship to gain a qualification at the point of employment.
A root and branch re-think is necessary to fix this. We need to train more people, of any age, to get into the trades. This at the moment is impossible without real work experience – something most employers are loath to offer as supervising new recruits takes work.
– Back on the hobby horse again – sorry!
JimJim
@Anthony Preston. “Sounds rather like contempt for those who struggle to get by … Or did you grow up in an affluent, but cold, hard place ?
No I don’t have contempt for those who struggle to get by. It’s broader. I have contempt for the “Great British Public” (“GBP”).
I grew in a place that was hard but the complete opposite of affluent. My dad disabled and left on the scrapheap. Eventually thrown of of their council house by the “GBP” and their love of Right to Buy and property gains. That ruined my dream of a career in academia. So I went and made money, as you all wanted me to. And now that I’ve played the game so much better than you, you don’t like it either.
Never mind the fact that the “GBP” considered me as a child mentally disabled due to my autism. Told by teachers that if I was a good boy I might be able to become a librarian. Oh the ambition you had for me!
If I have contempt it’s because the feeling has always been mutual. The Great British Public blame politicians, some nebulous “global elite”, or people like me, when they should blame themselves. They need to take responsibility for their actions. They are a bunch of Turkeys voting for Xmas over and over again. Voting for Brexit, voting for the Tories. Why are you suprised when you get completely plucked?
@ZXSpectrum48k
I didn’t vote for Xmas, Brexit or the Tories (but I did vote). I still get the fall-out.
The ‘Great British Public’ is just as nebulous as the “global elite”; 48% voted against Brexit, with the non-voters, more didn’t vote for Brexit than for it; ‘politicians’ by their nature as government and opposition are always blameable, but they are a very heterogeneous bunch, and they do choose to be in public view and claim to be able to fix things.
My parents eventually bought the council house we were put in after the council compulsorily purchased the house they had bought. Seemed only fair.
I bought my home on the open market, with my own money.
Really, I don’t know what I have to blame myself for – choosing to work less and enjoy life more, perhaps?