CynicAl

It is at least a measure that helps to reduce the advantage that BTL'ers have over people who actually want homes. Still waiting for a Land Tax though.....or pitchforks and burning torches.

I wonder what would happen if we factored in the 'state subsidy' to low paying private companies.. If we added in the extra benefits paid to low hourly rate staff in the private sector. Would that go some way to redressing this issue?

I am completely unconvinced that this will revolutionise anything for most people. Most people can barely cook a meal in our modern society, so the idea that they will strip down their lawnmower, identify the crack in the carburretor housing, locate a suitable CAD file on the web for the cheap Chinese injection moulding, print it, then refit it to the lawnmower seems entirely unlikely to me. There will be some techno-savvy people that will use the technology, but even then, not a lot. The physical properties of printed items in terms of strenght don't match normal manufacturing processes. We have an all singing and dancing 3D printer where I work, and we use it for rapid prototypes etc., it's very useful for what we do, but I don't think a single 'homer' job has been put through due to the material properties. We can print you a brilliant X-Wing Fighter though!

Off topic, but the immigrants we have the biggest problem with are the descendants of the Norman invaders in the 11th century. They still own most of the country and retain a large proportion of the wealth of the country.

We have about 50% of our direct labour who are indigenous. About 90% of all office and supervisory and managerial staff are indigenous. You propose what? Increase wages to attract higher quality British staff (assuming that the repetitive and low skilled nature of the work does not put them of anyway), start making losing business to the competition due to our uncompetitive nature and then all sign on after the jobs are relocated overseas as we cannot offer the level of ROI that our owners require? We operate in the environment we find ourselves in.

A big chunk of the decrease in net immigration is to do with Brits fleeing the UK. I keep contemplating doing the same, if only for the better weather...

It's a merry go round. It'll stop at some point.

Personally, I'd like to see a sea change in government policy to place much more emphasis on making stuff. A few world class engineering companies still exist in this country, and we could have more. If we were a net exporter of manufactured goods, then we may have a very different perspective on free trade.

We can only react to the situation we are in. If high quality domestic workers won't work for the wages we need to pay to compete with international competition, then we will employ people who will. If we don't, then almost all the jobs go overseas. We pay significantly above NMW for unskilled labour, and we need to compete against companies with an hourly that equates to about 1/3 of ours. Before the entry of Poland et al into the EU we got by with domestic workers as our competition was domestic or Western European. Things changed, and we had to change in response. We have a choice, we can find industrious immigrant workers or (mostly) much less able domestic workers for the wage level we can afford to pay. There are 1,000 things wrong with government policy, but we can't change that, but by employing immigrants we get to keep the more highly paid jobs in the UK.

Yup, tariffs would let us compete, the question is, would we be better off out of the free trade area that we are in? Companies heavily reliant on exports to the EU would probably go to the wall, but other companies would have a greater opportunity to service the domestic market. We've destroyed most of our manufacturing base, might be worth a punt.

I was only talking about our workers, not healthcare tourists. Still, best not to talk about the NHS and immigrants, we appear to go round the world taking all the trained doctors and nurses from the 3rd world to work in it. And we don't have to pay for their training. Leaves them a bit short, right enough...

Sorry, you'll have to explain what is subsidised about these jobs. Most of our immigrant staff are young and I don't believe that they will qualify for any help from the government. They earn enough that they don't qualify for housing benefit and they usually share houses with everyone in the house working. I could be wrong though as my investigations have only been through the online government calculators. As for the cost imposed, NHS etc.? I'd think they pay more in tax than they take out, and without them there'd be another lot of UK workers without employment.

"Utter rubbish!" - Maybe in your experience, but demonstrably not in mine. How exactly do you propose we try harder to recruit Brits? We have tried numerous ways. All our apprentices are British, and we have found about 25% of them to have a decent work ethic. When we have an need to increase production we initially employ temps, and if that increase looks to be permanent, we offer the premanent jobs to those that have proven themselves to be good. We also advertise in the local press, job centres and use agencies. As for moving the factory to Poland, our parent company has done just that to some of the other Western European sites we had. We are battling to ensure that it doesn't happen to us. Fortunately, it would seem the case that the people that are willing to cross Europe to get a job are pretty motivated once in a job. The immigrants that we employ in the UK outperform the staff we have employed in Poland. About 75% of our sales are in the UK. If people were willing to pay a premium for items manufactured by Brits, then we wouldn't have any worries. Unfortunately, price is king. That'll be why we don't have a textiles business in the UK of any note any more, Primark is rammed full of customers buying cheap clothing made in Turkey, Vietnam, China etc. The reality is that when our domestic and immigrant workers are compared as two populations, our immigrant workers are more productive, more reliable, more flexible and have fewer days off.

I work for a manufacturing company that is heavily reliant upon immigrant workers; mainly Poles, but also Lithuanians and Hungarians. We have difficulty in getting British staff that can match the productivity of the immigrants. We compete with businesses across Europe, and were it not for the immigrants we probably would have difficulty competing. The immigrants do suppress wages, but the alternative is that our business would not exist. At our site we employ c.150 people, about 40 of these are immigrants doing semi-skilled or unskilled work. About 50 British workers, mainly office based or supervisory rely upon the hard work of the immigrants. So, if the immigrants go home we lose 50 skilled or managerial jobs in the UK. The British semi-skilled and unskilled would lose their jobs too. We'd be left with a Sales force selling the products made by our sister sites in Europe. Withdraw from Europe and the job I do disappears. Edit: spelling

The course for primary school teachers is quite vocational, with significant periods of time spent in classrooms assisting experienced teachers. It's funny that you are in Switzerland, as for their pre-school teachers they have an apprentice-type qualification system. They also pay nearly twice as much as the UK, certainly in the Swiss-German cantons. i agree with you that there are many jobs for which degrees are not needed, in the UK we have pursued a policy of sending most children to University in order to delay their addition to the unemployment figures. I think another poster hits the nail on the head about my point of lack of parental contribution; we have encouraged a society where we do not believe that raising our own children is the best use of our time. I don't disagree with your view on teaching assistants, but they do vary massively from best to worst. Some are are a liability, but many are fully qualified teachers doing the teaching assistant role to stay in the profession (up to date with latest policies and practices) but to balance working with raising a family. Another problem with teaching at the moment is greatly highlighted by some in this thread. The respect for teachers has declined. Twenty years ago most parents would side with the teacher's view of things. Now, they will be much more protective and believing of their child, however young the child is. Teachers often don't get parental support and this alone makes the job much harder.

Just as good an now? No. You would get teachers with no idea of how to teach. Young kids don't get taught anything that the average adult doesn't know, but getting the kids to learn is the hard bit. Step inside a classroom before you make such ill-informed statements. Half the reason for the need for extra staff in classrooms has been the reduction in the amount of time that parents spend with their children developing their basic skills. Many parents cannot be trusted to complete the guided reading that young children are assigned. Hence there was a reduction in reading ability and the introduction of so many assistants so the 1:1 tuition can be done. Every child has must be listened to reading every week. If you assume 15 minutes per child, then in a class of 30 (the maximum allowable) the equates to 7.5 hours, a bit more than 1 academic day. So >20% of a teacher's week spent listening to reading. That's just one example, there are lots of others. Maybe if parents spent more time with their kids rather than expecting school to provide 100% of their education we'd not need to spend so much money on them.

Why waste your time doing it at all? Faster checkout operators do not increase velocity through the tills, therefore it is wasting everybody's time to assess it. They'd be better analysing the causes of the customer slowing down the process, e.g. More ergonomic bagging processes. Look at Theory of Constraints by Eli Goldratt. As an operations professional (that sounds really arsey, but not sure how else to describe what I do)I have found the changes they have made to 'speed things up' amusing. It just results in the cashier waiting on me packing. It has the negative effect of making the customer feel pressured too, but my experience of working with some of the big multiples is that they are not staffed with intelligent people, but lots of 'aggressive go-getters' , so I'm not surprised.

I think we are going to see nominal price rises in house prices until the shtf in a huge way. The government will devalue, pursue an inflationary policy and underwrite the housing market. The take up on the 20% guarantee will be much higher than most of us hoped, and then that's the government tied in another way to inflating the housing market. The Tories are 'local-ising' planning decisions which will ensure more nimby-ism, so supply is going to be restricted for a while. Credit availability is going up and the 20% means that the banks will lend to people that shouldn't be in a position to buy a house. 5 year 2.5% mortgages are hardly onerous, so once again the prudent will get a kicking. Short term-ism will win the day again. We had a massive financial crash and we still have ridiculous house prices, but as only the old vote and high house prices are important to them, that's what we will get. - I don't see a way out. I should have bet my deposit on house-builders shares like I considered (if they go down so have house prices, if house prices go up then so do shares) I'd have the cash to buy a decent house without a mortgage!

You must be having a laugh! 'basically they're the same'? You have no idea about child development. Go and read some psychology and pedagogy books on the subject. The difference in the ability of kids at school is greater the younger they are. A kid who is 5 years and 1 day old can be in the same class as one who is exactly 6 years old. The difference in ability, and thus what and how you teach them is vast. If a school followed your advice, the Department of Education would have it put in special measures.

+1 They keep changing the topics around which even the core stuff is taught, which means replanning an entirely good lesson. We wouldn't do that in industry, if you get something right, keep it! Not the DofE, they change it round every couple of years so that they are seen to be doing something.

No offence, but you are completely ignorant of reality. I have married into a family of teachers and get to see what they actually do. My wife is a primary school teacher. She gets to work at 8 and leaves at 6.30. She does lessons planning usually 3 evenings a week. In addition, she'll be researching and creating teaching materials. Half-term holidays are usually filled with report writing. Half of Summer holidays is taken up with planning for the next academic year. If there is a school trip to be planned, she does that at weekends as they involve a visit to the destination to do risk assessments and plan the day. She works probably 15 hours more a week than I do, and I am a manager in a busy manufacturing company. She does get a great pension though, but her pay hasn't gone up in 3 years, even with extra responsibilities given to her, because there is no budget in the school. And she has to deal with parents who think that their little angel can do no wrong and expects the teachers to provide any duscipline. And she has to do 'voluntary' after school clubs too.

I used to live in Dunfermline, it was an enjoyable place to live. The prices haven't dipped that much, they dropped significantly for about a year, fair bit of panic about, but sadly they recovered. It's still chepaer than peak but only c.10%. The Eastern extension, where this house is located was, I believe, the biggest housebuilding project as a percentage of town size in Europe when it was going up, so there is plenty of supply, but loads of folk were selling up in Edinburgh and moving over the Forth. As for 6 bedrooms, looks like 2 are in the roofspace.

I don't believe a word they say, because regardless of the accuracy it has to be couched with the prevalent political wind. The Tories want to downsize the state because they think it is right (not because it is the right or wrong thing to do at the moment). You also have to factor in the statistical manipulation in recent years. All the low paid jobs were sent to the private sector, so all the cleaners on minimum wage are now employed privately rather than publicly, thus the average public sector pay goes up.

I'd ditch speculation too, and the taxation route with post-delivery refund seems apt. I think that with current information technology all speculators do is pervert the market.Major buyers and users of commodities like Unilever are sufficient to signal requirements forward without the help of the parasitic speculators. The cost of all the speculation ends up in the cost of the commodity, and consumers get to spend more than the true market price would be without their intervention.

I think we should cut the working week to 4 days, make the unemployed pick up litter and clear up streams, canals and the like (so that they realise that nothing is for free and will look for a job) and in that way we have near full employment and can dramatically cut public expenditure. We'd need to pass legislation to cut tax avoidance/evasion, say 20% finders fee and complete anonymity for the finder. We'd all have an extra day off. Brilliant. What can possibly go wrong?