Applications have opened for the position of a chief engineer in a highly technical post in the aerospace industry, those applying need specialist knowledge of all aspects of the industry and vast experience in how to get these highly specified projects underway, including how to create new innovations in this specialist work.
So how should the best applicant be chosen? Should it be by proving they have a great deal of knowledge and experience in the aerospace industry with a C.V. and qualifications to prove they are the best person for the job. Or should it be put out to anyone, no matter who they are, and let the people vote for who they want? The obvious answer is that the job should go to the most experienced and qualified engineer.
However, in the strange world of politics your local dustman, who may have a big gob, who stands for election and has a bigger mouth than his opponents, which helps him to win a seat in Parliament, then by toadying up to his party leader, may find himself the minister in charge of technology and making important decisions regarding the future of the aerospace industry despite a total lack of knowledge in that industry. His only real qualification may be the best way to empty a dustbin!
When we look at past and present governments we have seen all sorts of people, no matter what their life experiences of qualifications, put in charge of many very important matters covering industry, technology, health, finance and much else without any real qualifications regarding whatever they make important decisions for. Over the years I have come to despair at the number of thick politicians getting into Government. At one of our regular gatherings for a lunchtime pint and to put the world to rights with some old political campaigning friends, I once made the comment that far too many of our politicians were thick! Some disagreed until I made my point by stating that after standing in six general elections I too may have been elected to Parliament, which made them laugh, but what experience did I have, had I been elected and made a minister?
Like that proverbial dustman I can waffle on about politics, but in reality I left school at the age of fifteen without any GCE's or other bits of paper to say how clever I was. As that fifteen year old bolshy teenager I did not know what I wanted to do, nor cared much, so my no nonsense mother ensured I got onto a two year City and Guilds course at my local technical college so at least I would have a qualification, which in my case was as a gents hairdresser, which was where I learned the art of banter and chatting with all my regular and other customers once I started work. After six years in the trade, ending with me having a go working for myself, which lasted a year, my dad then roped me into our family business where I had to learn a new trade all over again. Instead of cutting hair I was now cutting and carving stone.
Over my thirty following years in the family business I learned a lot about our trade and had to adapt to changing trends, I finished up running the business after my parents retired to North Wales. With, by then, all my years of past experience I knew how to design and make the products our customers wanted and how the business ran, what I struggled with was how to cope with the impact of decisions made by faceless politicians who had not a clue how businesses worked or the negative effects their grand plans had on trade and industry, including our little family business.
After a bit of a tough time, by the end of 1989 we had begun to recover and closed for Christmas that year with a bit of money in the bank. Unfortunately, the first thing I had to do when we reopened after the Christmas holiday, at the start of 1990, was to see that money vanish after writing a large cheque to send to H.M. Customs and Excise as our V.A.T. payment. Sadly, at the same time the vicious recession of the early nineties had begun to bite and customers became thin on the ground making life extremely difficult and stressful. So what was the cause of that recession that meant many businesses went to the wall, cost people their jobs and in many cases their homes? The answer of course was due to a bad political decision, made by people who had never run a business and made that awful job wrecking decision, all for the sake of their own pet political project. Sadly financial mayhem followed and both large and tiny businesses such as ours took the hit. That ridiculous project was, of course, John Major's pet project to ensure Britain would be joining the EU's single currency in its run up when he insisted we join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) which created financial havoc. Although we survived our business never really recovered.
Sadly, political pet projects often create much misery as politicians enact them with little regard or knowledge of the harm they will do, we see it over and over again. Harold Wilson introduced the Selective Employment Tax (SET), which cost many in retail their jobs and did much harm to the retail industry and Margaret Thatcher, who I greatly admired, dropped a real political clanger with the Poll Tax which began her downfall as it gave a perfect excuse to get rid of her by the Euro fanatics in her party. Wilson was followed by Heath whose pet project was to sacrifice Britain to control by the Common Market, later to morph into the EU which did immense damage to Britain, our democracy and sovereignty. And today our Chancellor is wrecking businesses and jobs with her insane N.I. hike for employers.
All Labour Governments are bad, now we have one of the worst ever with its vague plans for change. We have a Chancellor who self declared she was an economist on the premise she worked in a bank. Unfortunately, she forgot to inform everyone her job was dealing with complaints, not any actual work an economist would do. We also have a Foreign Minister representing Britain abroad who could not even answer simple questions in a dumbed down celebrity Mastermind. It is no wonder Britain is in such trouble with politicians running the country who do not know how industry works who just want to push through their pet projects, no matter the cost and harm to the nation. Soon, when the lights go out, when people begin to find it difficult to find petrol stations with petrol or diesel, when the cost of driving an internal combustion vehicle into towns and urban areas becomes either impossible due to the cost of ULEZ and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods or forced to drive around at impossibly low speed limits, we will be cursing Ed Miliband and others for their latest obsession - net zero.
Ministers in Government, no matter what past life experience they had, can claim that they have advisers in the Civil Service to help them regarding making laws. However, the problem is, although many Civil Servants may be intelligent people with university degrees, like many politicians, they do not have experience of running a business or are affected by many of the decisions they help to make. They live in a politically cushioned world, their jobs are safe as long as they go along with the politically correct, woke, net zero thinking that infects today's political world, they know they will eventually retire on pensions many self employed and low income families can only dream of, the loss of the winter fuel payments is not a worry to them in their gilded political world.
Sadly, we have two worlds, one is a real world where people work and strive to do their best to survive, care for their families and attempt to keep businesses solvent, the other a political world which lives in oblivion of the struggles of the people. Over my life I have seen these two worlds drift further apart, it is time to make changes and for those who want to stand for election it is time for them to ensure before they entered politics they have run a business or have expertise and qualifications in a trade or science and have worked in those positions for at least ten years. That way, as long as they don't lose touch and go native, our elected politicians will know what they are doing and talking about and how their decisions will impact on businesses and the lives of the people. Even the elected dustman, as an expert on recycling and waste disposal, could become the minister in charge of refuse because he will know what he is talking about from when he lived in the real world.
