I think the reality irrespective of who is residing in downing street....is as a country the welfare system as we know it has become unsustainable.
Ageing population, putting pressure on pensions, a large part of the community the young mainly disenfranchised by previous policies........irrespective of the colour of government have left us in a mess...and the wheels of industry to dig us out of it are flat.....recessions. foreign competition etc.
Any government I think has to radically overhaul so many things to keep us in the running.
The problem with change is it ultimately effects folk and puts them often in a situation of loss.
Or at least perceived loss.
For those who haven't , visit harehills in Leeds, the manor Sheffield as examples,the desperation and sense of hope as all but vanished.
There will be some pain before we dig ourselves out of this One
Channa
Part of the problem is Government, be it local or national burying their head in the sand.
Over 25 years a go, the government were being warned of the ageing population and the financial issues that were in store, along with housing, youth unemployment etc, yet they did very little about it.
Short term fire fighting has always been the modus operandi in many cases. After all, an election is always on the horizon
I have virtually no faith in national government, who plough on regardless keeping their buddies sweet. Whilst local, national and international finances are not the same as a household budget, if the average Joe in the street gets concerned with say the massive rise in the cost of property, as a result in many ways of the financial institutions lack of common sense in lending money, why doesn't someone up there think "this is going to end up in a pile of sh*t" and do something about it, they were quick enough when said financial institutions fell into the sh*t they created. As I said, firefighting and keeping their buddies sweet.
I too have worked in a wide range of employment, from project managing multi million pound jobs to labouring, so have a good perspective of the good and bad.
Having worked with local government and health services, I am still baffled as to why a simple project becomes overly complex, with enough paper to deforest a small county and costs a fortune.
Part of the problem is that "Qualifications" have more meaning than the ability to actually "Do" the job, this is becoming more prevalent in both local government and health. About 25 years a go, I was contracted to a bank in London to "get them out of the sh*t, literally what I was told!" The IT director introduced me to his team to relocate IT from 5 sites into one, there were firsts galore, masters and doctorates, in the team, each one of them could write academic gobbledegook till it came out of their ears, but virtually all of them had no practical experience at all. At this point I realised that "Educated" did not always equate to "Intelligent" and certainly common sense was very thin on the ground.
Yes, there are some very capable people who have gone through our education system, but I've also met some incredible people who can just "Do things" with their hands and brains.
As qualifications alone are now being used as a filter rather than the ability to actually do the job, here is a major problem, we are placing the qualified in positions where they have to think in practical terms, something they don't teach at Uni!! (probably because the very lecturers haven't actually "done it" in the real world!" or if they tried, they were so poor they decided to teach.
Yes, I'm generalising a lot, but it's been my experience that I'm not far from the truth.
