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The last Labour government screwed the country good and proper. We can't afford all the non-jobs in the public service. We need to be making a profit through industry so that the service industry can be feeding off it. Look at what we import and set about making it ourselves. I could do so much more and expand if the workforce was there and there were incentives to open up new workshops. I had to turn down some nice work last year because I couldn't do the work in the required time slot. I didn't have the labour or the facilities - and don't make me laugh about the bank's willingness to help. Yet what are they teaching our kids at school? Very little as far as I can see.
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I need people in my industry, in engineering. We have kids coming out of school quite incapable of basic maths or writing ability or, in many cases, verbal ability. We need skilled workers and we are getting them from Europe instead of from our own people. Added to that the high cost of business units, rent, rates, human rights and all that old bollocks that makes a small businessman like me very reluctant to take anybody on. I got turned down to do work for the Olympics because I didn't have something called an equal opportunities policy. Sorry. A one armed welder is no use to me. Icould have downloaded a form so that some public sector jobsworth could tick a box. Were I to download the form, I would be supporting the PC rubbish that brought this daft piece of legislation into being in the first place. What happened to plain old common sense? I have no interest in knowing whether somebody is gay or lesbian or whatever else I am supposed to deal with. Can they do the bloody job and are they willing to work? So I end up doing work for a Spanish company that is on the Olympics supplier's list and who sub-contracted the work out to people like me.
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In my day as an apprentice in the 1960's/70's I benefited from proper maths, technical drawing and metal work at school. Nowadays, schools teach maths that it is of no practical use in the real world and the very thought of using a lathe or a drill simply won't happen in case one of the little dears hurts themselves and the parents sue the school. Now I am approaching retirement, who can I pass on my knowledge to? I am not big enough to take on an apprentice. Our industry has gone. The Lathe Company and Paxmans and Woods of Colchester, all sold out to the property speculator. Betts, Bracketts, Ozalid, Dynapert, Regulators Europa, Mohler, etc. All those jobs lost for short term financial gain.
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....and now we are carping on about there being no jobs for our young people. Cameron and Co are sitting pretty but with no prospect of new industry creation. Meanwhile we are bringing unskilled migrants and their dependant families in by the drove, huge ghettoisation of our once proud industrial cities, the NHS and benefits culture all under a strain that this country cannot afford to pay for. Our benefits system makes it unnecessary to work any more. What hope for the future?
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Only this morning I heard that Barclays only paid 2.5% in Corporation Tax on its profits. How'd they do that then?
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Don't start me off!
