Comment: A necessary evil?
1 Jul 2009
Fundamental flaws in the government’s strategy of building up mountains of national debt to prop up any industry – especially one as self-serving as the financial sector – are now appearing thick and fast.
London - There is a general, if grudging, acceptance that the hundreds of billions of pounds stumped up to bail out the banking sector was a necessary evil to save the economy from collapse.
However, the fundamental flaws in the government’s strategy of building up mountains of national debt to naively prop up any industry – especially one as self-serving as the financial sector – are now appearing thick and fast.
The injustice of the situation we are now in is well illustrated by the plight of apprentices in the process industries who face losing their training placements in the current spate of plant closures – and for whom Government support is so reluctantly – if at all – being conceded. (See News Story).
These hard-working youngsters represent the future of this country, not the many fat cats of the financial world, whose bonuses still exceed what most of us will earn in a lifetime.
Meanwhile, the UK is still having problems filling engineering positions despite the impact of the recession, according to a major international survey. The poll of some 39,000 employers across 33 countries, revealed that 11% of employers in the UK are having difficulty filling positions due to lack of suitable talent. Engineering positions were proving the most difficult to fill.
Lee Narraway, managing director of Warrington-based recruitment firm Antal International, believes that problems finding talent in the engineering sector could become far worse in the coming years.
While the recession has led to a greater pool of labour, in the UK and globally firms are still having difficulty finding people with the right expertise for many engineering roles, according to Narraway.
“Engineering clients report to us that there is a shortage of new talent coming through. Added to this the result of redundancies being made in the industry is leading to experienced and potential talent being lost, with redundant workers taking jobs abroad or retraining in different areas,” he said. “We are already seeing the shortage of suitable engineering talent now, but when the economy does recover this could become a major issue.”
Please email your views to the editor: patrick.raleigh@centaur.co.uk
