There was a landslip across the railway line, so the last part of our journey home was by taxi. German chef working during the 'off' season. I asked him why on earth he'd come here from Germany. He explained it had been fine before Brexit, but 'you idiots' had tanked the economy, broken the country. The trouble was, he said, that he'd been here so long that he had as much pensions savings here as back home. Lovely chap, we discussed the merits of various local eateries.
Any good recommendations I might not have come across.?
Wouldn't disagree with much of that.
Not sure we ever had "free school meals for all", certainly do not remember it in my lifetime.
Would agree entirely that Education provision is a Government responsibility, however, wouldn't you say that employers have at least some responsibility when it comes to training for work skills?, so, for example, if Farmers need skilled agricultural workers, they should be investing in training them, just as (say) IT Companies should be investing in training skilled IT workers, and so on for various industries.
Given how technology progresses, we also need Re-training provision.
Fwiw I do train people on my farm.
I don't get any help with the cost of that, but it's training on the job with meals accomodation and a stipend thrown in, in return for their help.
Many of them have gone on to find paid employment on similar farms..
Including on my own.
.
But this is an ad hoc arrangement set up by similarly minded farmers to fill the gap for training of this sort.
Government isn't offering any help with it.
We do, but we need to start with enough people with the basis of decent education, and decent health - and a large percentage population do not have that at age 16. I agree, we do need a far more 'diverse' education system to produce the essential people we need. We also need to engender aspiration and develop society to have different metrics than we have currently over how we value different kinds of work....
We still have a terrible (snobbish) attitude to manual, and service work in this country.
Care work, and all the essential trades and skills required by society.
And suggest that all our children should aspire to 'better than that'
Work such as mine has long been seen as only being fit for dullards - for people too 'stupid' to do white collar work.
Fwiw many of the people who come to train with me have university degrees in not necessarily related subjects.
Thankfully these intelligent people see the value of good nutritious food being grown in a less environmentally damaging way, and want to be part of that.
The education (and diet) of our young people in particular has been neglected for wayy too long
On school farms and growing areas feeding into those institutions themselves, and providing learning opportunities for the long term would be the ideal. Benefitting health and education outcomes in the long term
Trouble is all these are long term benefits
With our current fptp system it seems that any gov is highly disinclined to do anything that might not reap full rewards til 15 - 20 years down the line, just in case another administration might get the credit.
This is one of many reasons why we need PR - to get away from this binary 'winner takes all' system other civilised nations manage PR just fine.
And yes please let's rejoin.the EU asap -- If they'll have us 🙄
might be worth a drop in on the way back from somewhere..
