No Ant, I understand that but, the last generation to retire in affluence is already passing. I’m likely to have to work until I’m seventy. There’ll be no final salary pension scheme for me–or millions of others. I’ve always paid into a private scheme. It’ll keep me in bread and shoes, but not much else. Sadly, the generation following mine, will be even worse off I fear. So many of them can’t even get a start on the earning stepladder, so pensions are a long way from their thoughts. As I said elsewhere, through not always their own fault, the young may not follow–they may be more interested in just surviving.

Actually Propstrike, you’re not far wrong but a little.
The Winters in this country are overly long and there’s nothing very much on the telly. So after a day of spannering things, and seeing as I’ve paid for the internet, I find a bit of healthy debate with folk entertaining. I must say that most of the time I see it as a bit of light banter, but when I see a bit of pomposity fringing a remark, I like to have a bit of fun. It’s like a our friend above–is he saying: ‘Well, bikers are bit rough and ready, so I have no intention of mixing with that sort of low life, so perhaps you could b*gger off there..?’ I did briefly wonder. Today on here I was threatened to the point of being ‘decked’–and that was by a moderator. Strangely I took it as joke–that’s because it was, and it’s the internet, and no one was insulting anyone’s Mother. It’s a funny old World, don’t you think..?

I’m not interested in bikes so will not be frequenting biker forums, or bars. Perhaps your opinions would be better suited there, Andy.

Well I’m not surprised by that.
I can post here if I want to thank you very much. Unless I directly insult you, or call you rude names, I’m not breaking any rules. I have a direct manner, and I’d be exactly the same if we met.
If you think I’m going to go, just because you find my tastes a bit strong–you’ll have a long wait.

Oh get over yourself. It’s an internet forum.
If you think this is bad, you should try some American biker forums.

Sadly, I think the education system has been perfectly tailored to the vision our current leaders have of the country. A few high-tech service jobs (banking finance etc) and a lot of very low paid ones (flipping burgers etc). I can’t see they see any need to teach people how to use a spanner (or even more so a Lathe) in that lot.
You say ‘within a generation’, and speak as if it’s already happening. Am I missing something? I confess, I long ago stopped watching/listening to the media, so I might have.
Please elaborate.
A.

Dean.
I’ll happily discuss on another thread but, here a few headers to consider.

1) Ageing dynamic of people interested.
2) Young people (often not entirely their fault) not interested.
3) Price of everything increasing.
4) Changing dynamic of society as a whole.
5) Current fashionable view of history.
6) Decreasing skilled base of labour in a post industrial country.

As they say:- Discuss..?

I can say this to kick it off. Every aspect of the ‘heritage leisure’ sector who I speak to, whether it be aviation, motor vehicles, motor cycles, railways, whatever, is suffering from an age issue. Twenty years from now, there will be about half the man-power available to all these clubs/organisations and the useful skilled labour base will be reduced to an even greater extent. As I said above, volunteers are OK, but what good are twenty completely unskilled volunteers..? Add to that, most organisations are almost without fail, not in any meaningful way, passing on what the skilled people know to the unskilled people. I’ll give an example. I have a friend who is project leader on the restoration of a large railway locomotive. He has a steady stream of volunteers (and in that respect he’s been lucky) who turn up, get asked what they can do, say ‘not much’ and then he has to give them very menial work because that’s what they are capable of doing. Then after a couple of sessions they pack it in, because this isn’t what they expected of volunteering. Begs the question what they did expect? I think you’ll find that almost everywhere. In some places, they are given skilled work to attempt–with the usual disastrous results. I’m sorry to sound negative, but this is the way it is in a lot of places, and it isn’t improving.
I’ve had to patiently explain to people that there’s a difference between metric and imperial threads–and it’s not a good idea to crowd one type of bolt into a hole threaded with the other.

David, I’d question the value of much of that too.

Well Andy, it might need doing if we were going to learn something, but we in this case are not.