A UK Newspaper.

Jimmy Gillies

Here is what they are saying in the UK papers !!!
Pipeline to a valuable future.
I remember my mother mentioning, in the sort of hushed tones normally reserved for gynaecolgical details, that an acquaintance's husband was ''a plumber''.
Despite taht, she added hastily, he was a very nice man.
How the tables have turned. These days plumbers earn up to £70,000 a year-if you can get one-and easily pip doctors and surveyors to the post of ideal son-in-law material.
Ministers predict that the UK will need another 17,000 engineers, 22,000 plumbers and 400,000 building workers over the next five years. They're a darn sight more valuable to all of us than yet another university graduate with a paper degree in psychology or media studies and a £25,000 dept on his shoulders.
Mothers, lead the way. Encourage your offspring - both sexes - to seek apprenticeships and learn a practical and very lucrative trade. At least that way I'd stand a chance of having my U-bend unbunged.

What do you think Dad's & Mum's????

Gary Fereday

Absolute !

It will be that way everywhere. What we need is the attitude of "I can do" in each of the new recuits. Just to be there is not enough. We need folks that want to be there.I gues that is why so many of the techs are sons of techs. They learn at an early age what fun and challenge is.
oh well my .02 $ worth bigugh

Aidan (UK)

UK papers

Two letters printed in the UK Daily telegraph in the past few days.

Re: Apprentices needed

Date: 26 November 2002

Sir - While supporting the view that 18-year-olds who can vote and fight for their country should also pay for their education, I am becoming frustrated by the assumption that what we need is more and more graduates. Another 10,000 graduates in media studies or leisure and tourism will not get the central heating working again.

What this nation desperately needs is more plumbers, gas technicians, electricians and so on.The introduction of the Youth Opportunities Programme scheme some years ago virtually killed off apprenticeships. Government and educationalists have since created a climate where the only thing which matters is a degree.

Skilled tradesmen are at a premium, and there are no incentives for those left to train the next generation.Technical colleges across the country are offering fewer courses. Someone living in Hereford wishing to train as a plumber is faced with a 60-mile round trip daily to attend a college.Once qualified, there is no incentive to undertake the additional training to become a gas technician. In this area any qualified plumber has a waiting list of at least a month. Why take on extra training when he has all the work he ever needs?

From:John Palmer, Wellington, Herefordshire




Re: Golf dayDate:

28 November 2002

Sir - I quite agree with John Palmer (letter, Nov. 26). My grandmother asked a plumber to attend to a severe leak last Wednesday, but was told that was the day he put aside for golf. He did, however, kindly visit the next day, in his soft-top Mercedes.

From:Charlie Longe, London SW11