Preparedness for when

[Deleted User]

Rabbits? Alexanders? Apple trees? Bath? Pizza?.......

Frugalsod

Perplexed_Pineapple wrote: »

All very depressing but we (as a nation) have been through bad times before and life carries on.


Does anyone remember those "Tomorrow's World" type programmes from the 70s where there was much enthusiasm for the way in which automation would free up lots of leisure time for ordinary workers, and what a great thing this would be? In a sense it is good, because fewer working hours create more productivity. The problem is the uneven distribution of the spoils - the people who control the means of production take a much bigger slice of the pie than there depleted workforce. On the other hand this slice is redistributed by our progressive tax system - it isn't perfect, but the top 1% of earners pay something like 30% of income tax. It's funny old world....

The problem is that they are funding the political class so they can get it down to 1%. It is not just income taxes that need to be looked at but especially capital gains taxes.

Frugalsod

MrsLurcherwalker wrote: »

Rabbits? Alexanders? Apple trees? Bath? Pizza?.......

Are you from the Peoples Front of Judea?

[Deleted User]

Dammit!!!! found out!!!

ivyleaf

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Certainly training is something that is woefully short here and has been for quite some time. Everyone going seems to skive out of accepting responsibility for training and re-training (be it Government or private employers).

There used to be a lot more available - eg apprenticeships. We can all see that we have a shortage of properly-trained workers for jobs like plumbers, electricians, carpenters and the like and we all suffer from it (ie when we try to find suitably-skilled workers in these trades for work on our homes and the like).

I've long been cynical about "absolutely everyone" trying not to take responsibility for the provision of training. I seem to recall that, when I joined the workforce many years back there was the chance to retrain for a different job if needed and be paid a decent income whilst doing so. However, when I realised the skill I had was becoming outdated (whilst I was still quite a few years from retirement) then I looked around for chances to re-train and keep a reasonable income whilst doing so - and there weren't any.

I worked in the public sector forgawdsake and one of my reasons for doing so was because I could see that, during the course of a 40 year or so worklife, that they would probably need to re-train some of their workforce because of their skills becoming outdated. When I looked around to see what opportunities they were providing for their staff to re-train (ie for totally different type of work) I darn soon realised why many of us could see this fact as clearly as I could - but could see it was being left to us as individuals to work out ways to cope with this and we would then have little option but to "dig our heels in" and cling on to what we had (outdated as it was) and hope it would last us (by hook or by crook) until retirement.

I was in the public sector too, and there came a time when younger management came in and simply assumed that we were all fully computer-literate, but of course the older staff members weren't, having left school before computers were in general use and "Computer Studies" barely existed as a subject. it was very worrying to suddenly find we were expected to write a letter on a computer when we had no idea how to use things like Word, or how a spreadsheet worked!

Is that the sort of thing you're thinking of, moneyistooshort?

ETA Previously, we had written our letters in longhand and sent them to the typists, who of course ended up being made redundant.

moneyistooshorttomention

ivyleaf wrote: »

I was in the public sector too, and there came a time when younger management came in and simply assumed that we were all fully computer-literate, but of course the older staff members weren't, having left school before computers were in general use and "Computer Studies" barely existed as a subject. it was very worrying to suddenly find we were expected to write a letter on a computer when we had no idea how to use things like Word, or how a spreadsheet worked!

Is that the sort of thing you're thinking of, moneyistooshort?

ETA Previously, we had written our letters in longhand and sent them to the typists, who of course ended up being made redundant.

That's part of it - at the most immediate level. It certainly felt very odd to assume older staff would have a level of knowledge that just wasn't "available" when we were at school iyswim. So - at what point were said older staff supposed to have acquired this knowledge - and at whose expense (ie presumably their own)?

But, at a very different level, was the thing about re-training for a very different type of job altogether (ie not a basic office job at all) - as there were clearly so many fewer employees needed in the office than had been the case in the past. Yet...no attempt was made to find out who might be prepared (all else being equal) to even think of re-training for a totally different type of job. It used to strike me as very odd - as I was well aware (as a single person) that the public sector was going to have no option but to hand me some income one way or another (be it salary on the one hand or dole money on the other hand) and therefore it would have made sense to make funding available to cover the cost of training for something else and having a decent income level whilst doing so.

Presumably it applied/still applies right across the public sector that latterly we were basically told to "skate through" the work as quickly as possible, rather than "doing it properly" and some of the slack could/would have been taken up by continuing to allow us to do our jobs to a decent standard (rather than making many of us take shortcuts and thus give a much worse service to the public than many of us were happy with providing).

After all....otherwise the employees were going to hang on and hang on and fight and fight again to keep jobs that realistically were no longer there (because of the technology on the one hand reducing the amount of work available and the instructions to change our work standards to "skate through" level on the other hand) - because there was no other alternative than the dole presenting itself. Put like that....then, of course, most staff chose to stay put and cling on/fight as long as possible.

GreyQueen

I'm of the generation which didn't have computers in their schooling either; I got myself to adult ed classes and clawed my way up through the RSA qualifications, ECDL etc etc. Not easy to motivate yourself, when you have ME and are struggling to manage, to climb on a pushbike on rainy dark winter evenings and pedal off to far-flung high schools to get those classes done.

I did it because of a realistic understanding that the world had changed and that if I wanted to by employable, I needed to get with the program (sic).

My neighbours are mostly not bad men, the cannabis-dealing being more of a nuisance than anything else, rather it was weed than anything like crack, and we've had people dealing that here, before. They chat to me in passing, they hang around outside chatting to each other at all hours, they do favours and help out with pushbike and appliance repairs, help look after neighbours' dogs etc. They've all got the potential to be doing something worth renumeration, but they probably don't have the advanced literacy to handle certain kinds of work, but we're not all cut from the same cloth, and no one should expect that we would be.

This whole wretched mess in a by-product of the petroleum age. I blame the commercial castes who leveraged cheap transportation in order to export British jobs to the far ends of the globe, where they could exploit the poorest and most wretched workers. And us for buying the stuff thus produced, and the politicians for aiding and abetting it.

Seems to me that treason would be a reasonable charge to bring against those who've sent our work abroad. Oh, silly me, treason is only when plotting against a country's PTB, not plotting against its people.:mad:

********************

I think my motto will have to be I came, I saw, I gardened. Have been playing around on the allotment, mostly weeding. I expect to be doing a lot more of it this summer. Gardening is a useful activity as it slows you down to the speed of the planet and reminds you that you don't get owt for nowt in nature.

thriftwizard, I think I would like to meet your yurt-maker friend. Seems to me he's got his head screwed on the right way and long may he continue to live as he wishes.

When oil runs low, there won't be tanks of red diesel on the farms powering the tractors etc. There will be a lot of openings for labourers. Perhaps my rural family might even return to the villages we were forced out of in recent generations; no work due to mechanisation, no accomodation (formerly tied cottages) due to no work, and not enough money to commute into towns for work because of not earning enough to run a vehicle. So we packed up and moved to where the work was, and we may end up reversing the trend someday.

[Deleted User]

That's when we'll all need YURTS!!!

jk0

jk0 wrote: »

Yeah. I quite agree that having tradesmen trust you is important. (Even more important if you're a landlord.)

A number of my tenants however call me out for the stupidest jobs. One recently was unable to reset the trip on his consumer unit. Give me strength!

In view of this, I think it pays to have a little basic electrical knowledge, and a test meter that you know how to use.

This will make you guys chuckle. Especially those who have a little electrical knowledge.

I just got home from Sunday lunch with my mother to see my answerphone blinking. My Romanian tenants rang at lunchtime because their toaster had fused the sockets.

I rang the wife back and told her how to reset the trip. About 5 minutes later, the husband rang back to say the trip just popped immediately again.

'Did you unplug the toaster?' I asked.

'No it's still full of butter,' he replied.

'No, I meant remove the plug from the wall, then turn on the trip.'

That did the trick.

Frugalsod

GreyQueen wrote: »

thriftwizard, I think I would like to meet your yurt-maker friend. Seems to me he's got his head screwed on the right way and long may he continue to live as he wishes.

I suspect that Yurts and mobile homes will make a lot more sense for the young in the future. Homes are too expensive for them to ever buy and so a yurt provides a home and warmth. The downsides of such living is that a consumer society will be unable to cope with the drop in demand for products as we will simply not have the space to keep them. This will mean that every product over time will become artisan.

Yurts also solve the problem of flooding. As sea levels rise you simply move.

GreyQueen wrote: »

When oil runs low, there won't be tanks of red diesel on the farms powering the tractors etc. There will be a lot of openings for labourers. Perhaps my rural family might even return to the villages we were forced out of in recent generations; no work due to mechanisation, no accomodation (formerly tied cottages) due to no work, and not enough money to commute into towns for work because of not earning enough to run a vehicle. So we packed up and moved to where the work was, and we may end up reversing the trend someday.

Even oil refineries need significant throughput to make it cost effective so with most people over the next 40 years being unable to buy petrol only the very rich will be able to afford it. I suspect that there will become small scale craft refineries to produce petrol but at a price. There will be oil for several hundred years but the cost of getting it will rise significantly for new finds and so most of us will be priced out of the car market until TPTB force a transformation to clean renewable energy and allow us access to electric cars. Electric cars combined with renewables will solve our energy problems but I do not see our glorious leaders having the intelligence to appreciate that reality.