Yes in late 60's or early 70's

Germany is not here, the culture is very different to compare is like comparing apples to oranges, yes they are fruit but that is as far as meaningful comparison goes. Why not compare Germany to China? it simply cannot be done with any sense of gravitas. What works in one country is not necessarily transferrable to another.

One of the problems with pencils is that the lead can break inside the pencil if it falls on a hard floor. This means that when sharpened the point can keep breaking away. Eagle invented and patented a method of bonding the lead to the wood so that the lead could flex and not break on impact (chemi-sealed) This meant although more expensive to buy the Eagle pencil lasted much longer and was in fact better and cheaper in the long run.

To demonstrate and prove this to unbelieving teachers we used to bash an Eagle pencil on the desk and then throw it on the floor with gusto before slitting open the pencil to show the unbroken lead inside.

I remember one NUT Easter conference (at Blackpool or perhaps the Isle of Man) when we had a stand in the exhibition hall where teachers could updated their knowledge of books and educational equipment. Our stand was on the first floor balcony and a colleague was in full flow demonstrating a "chemi-sealed" pencil to a group of teachers and was a little more enthusiastic than usual as he threw the pencil onto the hardwood floor where it bounced on its end and flew into the air and over the balcony railings. It continued its fall landing at the feet of a snooty publisher on a book stand below. It may have been the Oxford University Press, Macmillan or similar.

It should be pointed out at this stage that the sales personel of these publishers were a snooty lot that considered getting their hands dirty by actually selling was beneath them and they always looked down their noses at those of us from the educational equipment companies that didn't have such hang ups. Any way this 'book rep' was so annoyed that his peace and quite had been disturbed that he chose to throw the offending pencil back. It sailed up from the ground floor and back over the railings to land at the feet of my colleague who cooly continued his pitch, picking up the pencil cutting it open to show the proof to the astonished and open mouthed teachers.

Throughout the rest of the weekend we had groups of teachers coming onto our stand for an encore.

Has the well-deserved backlash started?

[url=http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/21/hovis-bakery-workers-strike-zero-hour-contractsHovis workers vote to strike over zero-hours contracts[/url

No you can't compare Germany to China. Or the UK to China. To suggest you can't compare the UK to Germany is ridiculous. In terms of trading and employment legislation, economic development and culture we have far more in common than we have differences. The fact there [iare[/i differences in the way employment works over there despite the similarities is the very thing that needs to be understood and and learned from but it is certainly not meaningless to make such comparisons.

Not really. In fact we have way more in common with Germany than most other European countries.

Apart from management philosophy & practice.

Oh and levels of union membership

After you have gone to great lengths talking about political theory (not limiting your arguments to the UK) and how things you disagree with CANNOT work and how socialism has been proven NOT to work in other countries (other countries with other cultures, I might point out), I then point at one of the countries where social democracy does work and, in that instance, has provided the strongest economy in continental Europe ... and the best you can come up with is that it's a different culture?
Sorry Sal, but if you are going to use other countries as examples to try to show how the extreme version of something won't work, you cannot then dismiss those employing the more moderate version where it does.

Just losing interest, 'tis all.

I was speaking to a former colleague on Saturday night who informed me that one leading contract research organisation, that performs scientific studies for all the major pharmaceutical companies, is now employing PhD qualified Chemists on zero hour contracts. These people will not be on good money either when they do work. The job market for Chemistry graduates has got worse since I finished University in the early 90s. Graduate salaries for Chemists have not risen massively despite the alleged demand for scientists. I have seen positions advertised for graduate Chemists with salaries that are barely higher than the minimum wage.

My main reason for staying on to do a PhD was the lack of jobs at the time. At least I wasn't burdened with a massive debt after six years of study. Successive governments have encouraged young people to obtain a University Education in order to obtain a career with good prospects. In actual fact all that many have to look forward to is a massive debt hanging over them while they slave away in a low paid job where their qualifications have very little worth or relevance.

There is a simple way to circumvent zero hours contracts: introduce an aggregated annual hours contract. That should cover the vast majority of all "real" jobs and take account of any seasonal demands. Employers would have the flexibility of labour and employees would have the safety-net of knowing what they'd be earning each week/month.

It would of course require managing, maybe that's where the UK and US fall short?

Quote ="cod'ead"It does seem rather strange that the most productive period most of the western world enjoyed was during the 1960s, when labour was highy regulated and unionised and income taxes were high. Kinda gives a lie to the oft trotted out mantra that success only follows deregulated labour markets and lower taxes'" This is a fine example of mistaking a symptom with a cause. After WWII there was the baby boom, and the social, cultural and technological trends that came on the back of the industrialisation and reconstruction legacies of the war. That unions and other sectional interests that drove regulation were able to capture power on the back of those conditions is an entirely different matter to actually creating them. And those conditions couldn't last forever as the stagflation era of 1970s showed. And whilst the West enjoyed the post-WWII boom the "developing" world was relatively rather less developed and lacked the same conditions for growth, so when those countries adopted their own statist policies like high regulation barriers, protectionism and import substitution industrialisation the result was a short lived burst of very high growth rates (from a very low absolute base) followed by long periods of stagnation until they started to liberalise and catch-up. So it's not clear at all to me how greater statism in the UK would recreate the conditions of the post-WWII boom. And back on the subject of zero hours contracts, I find this piece provides a well rounded view from someone who knows what they are talking about: flipchartfairytales.wordpress.co ... be-banned/

Quote ="cod'ead"It does seem rather strange that the most productive period most of the western world enjoyed was during the 1960s, when labour was highy regulated and unionised and income taxes were high. Kinda gives a lie to the oft trotted out mantra that success only follows deregulated labour markets and lower taxes'" This is a fine example of mistaking a symptom with a cause. After WWII there was the baby boom, and the social, cultural and technological trends that came on the back of the industrialisation and reconstruction legacies of the war. That unions and other sectional interests that drove regulation were able to capture power on the back of those conditions is an entirely different matter to actually creating them. And those conditions couldn't last forever as the stagflation era of 1970s showed. And whilst the West enjoyed the post-WWII boom the "developing" world was relatively rather less developed and lacked the same conditions for growth, so when those countries adopted their own statist policies like high regulation barriers, protectionism and import substitution industrialisation the result was a short lived burst of very high growth rates (from a very low absolute base) followed by long periods of stagnation until they started to liberalise and catch-up. So it's not clear at all to me how greater statism in the UK would recreate the conditions of the post-WWII boom. And back on the subject of zero hours contracts, I find this piece provides a well rounded view from someone who knows what they are talking about: flipchartfairytales.wordpress.co ... be-banned/

Germany is effectively no different to here the wealth is generated by private companies - it has a different relationship with unions than we do here. Essentially the people making the decisions around wealth generation are the directors of private sector companies i.e. Capitalism or have I got that wrong? are there great swathes of public sector manufacturing, mining, banking and service providers in Germany? Germany is a federal state of course it will have different nuances to here - the fact still remains that wealth generation doesn't originate with the state.

Show me a truly socialist state where the average standard of living even approaches here?

Agreed.


Slightly, yes.
Unions and employers work together.
Factories and companies are legally obliged to have works councils.
It's not simply "the management" telling "the workers" that it's my way or the highway.


Not that I know of.
We weren't talking about nationalisation, we were talking about a fairer society, your response was "Fairer society - more claptrap".


Yes it is, a federal state is a great system IMHO (the Allies imposed it on Germany after WWII as being a fair system ... but it's not for us, oh no).
But because we are not a federal state shouldn't be a barrier to us being a fairer state.


I didn't say it did. (I wouldn't say it should either).
I pointed at a country with the sort of benefits that you say won't work in a successful economy.
By the way, the state does have a procurement policy of buying from companies that are judged to be looking good for the national economy ... the TUC here in the UK recommended this and the tories were going to adopt it but I've heard no more about it since.


I don't know what your definition of "truly socialist" would be, although I suspect you might mean Marxist Communist, miles away from what I'm talking about.

Germany has built a fairer state on [usocial democratic[/u principles, resulting in all the benefits I listed in my earlier posts PLUS a strong economy.
As a social democrat myself, I see the best system as being one that utilises the market and capital but maintains restraint on the excesses of capitalism and ensures that the economy is for the benefit of the people rather than the other way round ... like Germany so far, in fact.

I'm hoping, in the not too distant future, to be able to research a piece on how the local economy works in Collioure, where we've been holidaying for a few years. You see the same people - of all ages - doing the same jobs. Yet there must be an off-season' period, so how does it work, both for those individuals and for the wider local economy.

Not least since the wider area used to be the poorest in France, but is shrugging that off quite seriously.

One interesting point though: the local mayor is a member of the socialist party and is locally considered to have done a massive amount to boost the town's tourist appeal - not least by very judicious use of planning rules. Planning rules have kept the chains out and kept building low rise and complimentary to the old village. Collioure rules the roost of the local villages in terms of holidaymakers - not least because it has retained real charm in a way other places have not, yet is growing econonomically in other ways too (increased wine producetion by a local cooperative, of wines that are now getting much greater recognition, for instance).

It would be an interesting case study.

That's the main reason I didn't go to university. When I was at school 7 years ago and before that growing up towards the end of my tenure we had university rammed down our throats. Everyone had to go to uni. But all I saw was debt. I looked at myself and thought, you're not very academically gifted so all it's going to be is some average degree at an average university which has no direct route into a tangible career and will do little to further my situation in life when I leave. Sure there partying and getting drunk, but i could do that while earning a full time wage. If i had gone to Uni i would be in a similiar situation as I am now except with debt. In fact probably worse as i would have less emplyment experience and i'd be looking for a job at a time when the market was in a downward spiral. I think thousands of young people have been duped into going to uni.

It keeps them occupied for the next three (or longer) years, hopefully until things improve on the job's front.

Completely agree.

My experience is somewhat similar to yours in the sense that schools were only interested in pushing HE. I did go to university in the end, but was fortunate to fall into an industry that I happen to have made a very good career out of. Yes, for many, university is the best way forward but for many others, it very much the opposite. My brother, for example, was not academically minded but was still persuaded that a degree was the best option. He dropped out after a year.

There is no doubt in my mind that young people are being sold a lie that going to university is a golden ticket to a lifetime of riches. Schools are consistently pushing HE at young people, under the pretence that your earnings with A-levels and degrees will be so much more that you won't have to worry about the collossal debt that you're building up. It was a nonsense in 2003 when I went to uni and it's an even bigger nonsense today.

Those graduates come out of the system at the other end and guess what? There isn't enough graduate jobs to go around. So your typical grad, even with a good degree, is applying for £15k entry level roles - this wasn't in the university sales brochure (my mistake - they call them 'prospectuses') , was it?

Throw in to the mix the dwindling prospect of home ownership and starting a family, it's little wonder that young people are left feeling that they have been let down. Those who aren't academically minded are made to feel that they're inferior whilst the rest find that they have spent the best part of £20k, only to find that their degree counts for nothing against candidates with decades of experience when they apply for what they were led to believe was a "graduate" opening.

£13 to £15K jobs are pretty much the norm for a 21 year old graduate now and the "degree necessary" qualification is just a default tagline on the advert for many companies, many of whom do not actually need degree educated workers but stick it on there thinking that it will filter out a couple of hundred applicants if they do.

To give two examples my daughter #1 got a position in a large law firm with her law degree a couple of years ago but after she started she was told that the degree, its mark and the status of the uni she took it at were all irrelevant to them, they were only interested in her attitude, which was good as it shows that the company were genuinely interviewing candidates and not just going through the motions and then compiling a league table of degrees.

Her sister, daughter #2 has just got a job at the same company without a degree for exactly the same reason, she interviewed well (coached by her sister) and works hard, again showing that they know what they are looking for in an interview and seem to be pretty switched on about what personality they are looking and the view that they will teach you the rest - which is how it should be but too often is not.

They are both earning salaries that, like for like and with inflation taken into account, I would have dreamed of when I was their age.

Mind you, that isn't saying much



When I started work at 16 in 1975 my annual salary was less than their nett monthly pay, by the time I was 21 the company had added free use of a company van to my stipend and a few more quid and they thought that was over generous



When I left that company ten years later my wage was £140 a week and a company car (they always sold the company car as a big deal, it was a fekkin Ford Escort Pop), and I left to join my dads company where my pay packet was the enormous amount of £80 a week and a second hand Talbot Solara, topped up by whatever cash fiddles he had going that week

The first part, I'm sorry to say, sounds oddly familiar.

That said, we are better than most companies in that regard. Our recruitment manager has a wealth of experience as a head hunter and can see past the degree to pick up on the more intangible things like you describe - attitude, work ethic, willingness, etc. Whilst we don't explicitly ask for degrees for entry level roles, it's probably fair to say that our recruitment is geared more towards grads (we'd sooner advertise through the university than JC+). Invariably, grads do lose some faith in the system when the best we can offer their experience level is a £15k entry level role.

I worked bloody hard to get a good degree and I've got a CV that demonstrates that I'm a grafter, but there's no denying that there is an element of fortune behind where I am today. The company I work for today was a name I had never heard of before and an industry that I barely knew existed. It was complete chance that I landed on the website of a company that would go on to be a Sunday Times Tech Track 100 firm and expand from 20 to 120 staff in the time I have been here.

(I'll stop the shameful plugging now

)

Has Collioure still got that public toilet near the beach, where they sell you a couple of pieces of toilet paper as you go in to find the toilet is just a hole in the ground? It is though, like most of the South of France, a staggeringly beautiful place.

Higher education is a striking example of how the ideas of "nobody fails" added to "everybody needs further education" changed the face of HE in this country.

Back in the day, the first dividing line was the infamous 11+, the results of which would broadly speaking route you either to grammar school or a secondary comprehensive. And you would thus (again in general terms) be aiming for either GCEs or else CSEs.

From secondary school, the brightest kids would go to university, those less gifted would go to polytechnic, or college.

Of course we all know what happened to 11+, and the exam system was changed so that pretty much everyone who makes any effort passes, but the drawback is that the qualifications are rendered much less meaningful as there are so many more of them about.

Then it was decided by someone that polys etc were viewed as inferior, so we had a phase of all of them being rebranded as universities.

Back in the day, kids who passed their exams and went to uni would generally qualify for a grant. But as the numbers of kids going to "university" expanded exponentially, the government decided that all students would instead have to now pay for their own course.

Similarly, many institutions (in a similar way to examination boards, and of course schools) completely changed the way they work as teaching kids was no longer your main priority, it was now box ticking, record-keeping, hoop-jumping and beauty parading. I make an analogy with major companies and their "customer care". In general, they actually don't give a flying fart about customer care, you can't get through, you can't even find a number or if you do get past endless menus and queues, you can't speak to a human except to a first-line script reader in a call centre. But that's not important. What is important is that that company will have been voted the best customer experience by 99%, it will have numerous gold stars and platinum rankings, and will have a million stats to prove how ell they do. It will greatly surpass all KPIs. Service may be utter crap, but they can prove it's great. Statistics will demonstrate whatever you want, and spin-doctors will present everything as a major triumph.

In similar ways, OFSTED and the rest have generated a complete new level of administration, with many parallels to managers in the NHS (who also prove everything is fantastic). The emphasis is on smoke and mirrors, not on reality, and the processes of accreditation drain resources and deflect those within the institutions from what they actually are supposed to be doing.

Add to teh mix people running the show, such as the present incumbent, the moron Gove, changing everything at least twice a year, and it is no surprise that we are now lumbered with a system which is unfit for purpose. Somewhere along the way, everybody gradually lost sight of what it was we were actually trying to achieve, which is NOT to force everybody through the machine, but to produce well-educated, well-rounded individuals, which in many cases (for example) would be more appropriately done by leaving school at 16 and going straight into a job they want to do, and like, and suit.

My issues with HE include that under the present system, in many cases, the courses and degrees are of little use; the unfortunate students (in England, anyway) have little choice but to rack up a monster debt; and that the major concern of too many institutions is the statistics they churn out rather than their graduates. It is no surprise that the worth of many of their qualifications has been gradually and substantially devalued.

Chuck into the mix the fact that back in the day every employer was expected to continue with your education in the form of in-job-training, often involving industry approved training courses and certification PAID FOR BY THE EMPLOYER.

So you did a period of a number of years as a trainee or even as an indentured apprentice, which for those too young to remember means that the employer could not get rid of you by sacking or other excuses unless the business failed in which case your trade or professional association would be obliged to find you another placement - nett result is that young people up to the age of 21 need not miss out on employment or recognised qualifications just because they did not choose an academic route.


The situation now ?

Have a look around any job offer for an 18 to 21 year old and see if it mentions whether the employer will continue to fund your education.

When did you last visit?

There's one right next to the beach at Port d'Avall that we use, which is three cubicles with squats inside, plus one 'disabled' cubicle with a conventional toilet, which I tend to use – I've never seen anyone flogging bog roll, but I always take my own. All these are proper fittings – even the squats – and are washed down thoroughly (with hose) at least three times a day, so maybe it's improved. So basic, but essentially clean. I haven't used the ones for years that are up steps and in the little side bit of the church near Boramar beach.

I only really discovered, this summer, that it's an incredibly new, in terms of serious tourist trade. Just 30 years ago, there were still fishing boats on the beach and the old women in black lined up by the wall. It was one of the poorest regions in the country, but it's been an astonishing turnaround – specifically for Collioure – since then. Thirty years ago, there were no galleries, for instance.

And then there are things like the vineyards above the village: although those hills were first planted with vines something like 3,000 years ago, many had been allowed to get into a state of disrepair. There's a cooperative in the village making good wines already, and slowly reclaiming and rebuilding the terraces, which with the increasing opportunities to market the regional wines beyond Roussillon is obviously a rather good idea.

But you're absolutely right about it being staggering beautiful.