Still have one in the van Dave , a bell strapped to some batteries , quite useful if working on your own .
What do think the biggest changes in our trade have been?
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The worst changes?
The loss of the government apprentice subsidy.
The loss of the EITB scheme.
The introduction of money making schemes.
The IET loosing its way issuing pointless (money making) regulations.
No, I’m not happy with the changes over the years since I joined our beloved trade. We’re no longer at the top of skills ladder as we should be.
The loss of the government apprentice subsidy.
The loss of the EITB scheme.
The introduction of money making schemes.
The IET loosing its way issuing pointless (money making) regulations.
No, I’m not happy with the changes over the years since I joined our beloved trade. We’re no longer at the top of skills ladder as we should be.
Anyone that needs to rely on "trade secrets" Is not very good at what they do and know it...
If anyone asked me something about welding, do you think i would say; "cant say, trade secret"...
john..
well youre not qualified to give that advice anyway, youre only a 5WW welder not a proper blacksmith
ruston
Well-known member
Well you have to know them in the first place lol.
Maybe it was a bit Glib but our industry is not what it was .
Sharpend
"It Just Is"
At the current rate of change it's hardly the same for more than two years!!!!!!
Doc Hudson
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The two big fundamental changes for every trade and industry brought about by the analogue to digital revolution from around the late 70's to 1980's onward are communications and computing.
COMMUNICATIONS: There was an era when to speak to your office, boss, or customers, about a job, you had to go to a physically connected telephone at your place of work, or a phone box in the street. Without this hardwired connection you were running solo, unobtainable, working on a trust and mutual respect principle that you will be at the job at the correct time and work a full day before disappearing off home. Nowadays you can be contacted and your whereabouts traced to within a few yards via your hands-free mobile phone even whilst driving.
COMPUTING: There was an era when letters, quotes or invoices had to be typed onto sheets of headed paper by office staff (typically girls). Photocopying was an expensive luxury, 99% of printed documents were in black and white. And not many companies were able to receive an electronic document via a new fancy device called a FAX machine. The thought of running a small business from your home office in the spare bedroom was almost sci-fi in concept. Nowadays anyone with the balls, motivation or guts to give it a go can run a professional looking business from their home with very modest initial cost expenditure.
Doc H.
COMMUNICATIONS: There was an era when to speak to your office, boss, or customers, about a job, you had to go to a physically connected telephone at your place of work, or a phone box in the street. Without this hardwired connection you were running solo, unobtainable, working on a trust and mutual respect principle that you will be at the job at the correct time and work a full day before disappearing off home. Nowadays you can be contacted and your whereabouts traced to within a few yards via your hands-free mobile phone even whilst driving.
COMPUTING: There was an era when letters, quotes or invoices had to be typed onto sheets of headed paper by office staff (typically girls). Photocopying was an expensive luxury, 99% of printed documents were in black and white. And not many companies were able to receive an electronic document via a new fancy device called a FAX machine. The thought of running a small business from your home office in the spare bedroom was almost sci-fi in concept. Nowadays anyone with the balls, motivation or guts to give it a go can run a professional looking business from their home with very modest initial cost expenditure.
Doc H.
I know of some fire alarm guys who have trackers in their vans. If they spend longer than necessary for a job they get a phone call, looking to know what's happening.
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Am I the only one that remembers sending and receiving a telex message?
I am no expert at all in these matters, but it seems to me that the root of all this was that courgettewit Thatcher. The attack on the miners [who were later proved entirely correct] was nothing but "class war" The courgettewit knew that she had to destroy the unions and turn people against each other, and was prepared to do just that at any cost.
Meanwhile, joe public was allowed to go and buy up all the social housing at a fraction of what it cost. House prices went up, [as they would]. and half of these muppets took out further mortgages, and also turned their backs on the unions, as they had convinced themselves that they were now "middle class" and what did they want to be in a union for.
Now they were up a creek without a paddle.. back in the union days, there was NO WAY that you were going to be allowed to work as an electrician unless you actually were one, and secondly, you had "job demarkation" I remember in the hospital years ago, i was going to change a light bulb, and once i was going to paint a wall. On both occasions i was told "NO WAY" as apparently the whole lot would have walked out on strike..
No though, anyone can call themselves an electrician, and, having destroyed their own unions and trapped themselves into great big mortgages, the average worker could not even afford to go on strike even if they wanted to.
They undid EVERYTHING the labour movement had done to improve the lot of the working man.
Now they wonder why people from Romania think they can do a 3 month course and turn up here and be an "electrician" Fact is, they CAN... They might not get a job in industry, but the average householder does not care, all they want is it works and it was cheap. Think the government will help?? Dream on. It suits them. NO WAY do they want the working man to regain any sort of organised group power, if you like. Divide and rule, and that is what they have done.
You have all undermined yourselves...
john..
Sharpend
"It Just Is"
That’s got to be an all time sensible post.
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To balance that, I don't think the closed shop was in any way good for the country. A strike over something trivial like the wrong person changing a light bulb happened regularly.
I remember the 70's strikes, rolling power cuts, rubbish stacked high in the street, winter of discontent etc.
SOMETHING had to change, the country could not continue like that. Thatcher largely "fixed" that problem, but in doing so created many different problems so I am not saying she was right.
I would NOT want to go back to how it was in the 70's.
I remember the 70's strikes, rolling power cuts, rubbish stacked high in the street, winter of discontent etc.
SOMETHING had to change, the country could not continue like that. Thatcher largely "fixed" that problem, but in doing so created many different problems so I am not saying she was right.
I would NOT want to go back to how it was in the 70's.
Sharpend
"It Just Is"
Quite agree Dave the balance between the unions and capitalism is a very fine line, if capitalism was to embrace the people as much as it does the money then we may live in a harmonised society.
The unions whilst beneficial had their flaws, capitalism the same only from the polar opposite end of the spectrum.
There has to be a system that puts people first and foremost but due to the world operating on a financial market it would have to acknowledge this also.
The leaders of unions in my opinion are/were hypocrites, I really don't believe they needed to strike for more pay or better conditions as they all seemed to do rather well from it themselves.
The unions whilst beneficial had their flaws, capitalism the same only from the polar opposite end of the spectrum.
There has to be a system that puts people first and foremost but due to the world operating on a financial market it would have to acknowledge this also.
The leaders of unions in my opinion are/were hypocrites, I really don't believe they needed to strike for more pay or better conditions as they all seemed to do rather well from it themselves.
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No..... In an earlier job role incarnation I used to install and maintain Telex machines...
Just about the time when the old punched tape readers were being superseded with "electronic" VDU screen based machines that had a 'massive 8K RAM memory!' for composing your message before transmitting and printing out hard copy to file!
I think some actually progressed up to 32K memory...
Much on a par with the 'home PC's' such as Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore, Acorns and early Amstrads etc...
Those were the days!!!
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Just as I was departing my old employer, (in a not very amicable manner), they were fitting some sort of tracker and job allocation device in all the company vans. ...
Only so they could have a more efficient approach to responding to customers call-outs etc.. of course..
Nothing at all to do with keeping an eye on the workers, as they knew everyone was hard working and never tried to fiddle a short day!! :innocent
( That would have been around 97-98... Started self employment in Feb 1999.....)
That is certainly one of the things I do not miss at all....
having any office managers trying to contact you to re-arrange your day that you have already got nicely planed out!!!
:|
I was a union member for years .. when I joined the ETU was ripping it's self apart getting rid of the communist leadership. All voting for leadership was rigged and the way for communists to try bringing down democratic governments was to manipulate the working man through the power of strike.
The plumbers joined and the union became the EEPTU ...the leadership elections were monitored by the Electoral Reform Society .
However the shop floor leaders as in Shop Stewards retained their communist or left wing leanings and continued to maintain their little empires and their grip on power . I never met one who wasn't a bolshie bugger . They even spoke in the same vernacular .
They used the electrical members in power generating and leading industries like steel and the car manufacturers as cannon fodder in their war against governments , mainly Conservative .......... and couldn't give a toss for contracting sparks because they couldn't be organized .
They didn't like me because when they inspected my card , which was often , it was marked to show I didn't pay the Labour Party levy ...didn't go down well .
