The comparison with other countries is staggering to say the least, notably Germany where an Engineer is in charge of most if not ALL companies instead of bean counters.

Short term bucks and no long term strategy, the British disease of rubbish management. The car industry being the best example of our crap managers. Even FIAT and ALFA ROMEO outlived the British car industry.(and oh boy were they rubbish)

Next on the block are the oil industry employees… then in 5 years the oil industry will be screaming for skilled labour, lol, and blaming the government for not producing enough cannon fodder for them to abuse

Seen it all before in the 1980s

Edited By Ady1 on 22/12/2014 01:09:50

Regarding "claims" to be an Engineer:

The etymology of the word profession is quite interesting.

MichaelG.

Engineers have it lucky, I'm a Chartered Environmentalist, and most people think an 'environmentalist' is a form mono-manical deep-green…

Neil

A man from the CBI was on the news this morning, complaining about the lack of skilled workers. I had to laugh, just to stop myself banging my head against the wall. Seems we are short of brickies, plumbers sparkies, as well as engineers. When I was working just about everybody was rated above engineers, sales people being near the top. Our German relatives can not believe it.

I see my post crossed with V8's. I think the main reason is that Britain changed it's priorities, quick profit is the thing now, no thought of the future. Reading about the Japanese Bullet train- 50 years old now, no fatalities, protests if they are a few seconds late.

Engineering (design)
Woukd be well loved if the function and “innards” of the latest ‘phone were as valued as the colour.

I concur with Ady1.. companies were / are only interested in short term profit… for the shareholders, with no long term view of business interests for this country, I too remember the 'eighties' when the common statement was ' Tom / Harry retires next month… who's going to replace him' ?. Companies were very reluctant to invest in apprenticeships per se; plus also very reluctant re 'Elf 'n' safety application in the plant or on site, now companies are asking the question 'who's going to fix this'? or .. 'you can't do that, H&S won't allow it.

I served my time back in the sixties as 'Fitter / Turner & then separated out into Plant / Maint. fitter .. ( with the approval of the AEEWU..AEU ) then spent a lot of my career on contracts abroad & the North Sea.. inc. 2 yrs as 'Jnr & 4th Engineer' in the MN, plus positions as 'site / flank Engineer in the Middle east with responsibility for Gas turbine / pumping sites etc. Back in my time in the Middle East 1975 – 84, – 1998 – 2004, the title 'Engineer' was given by the Co. as & when you had the experience to run sites / plant with the ability to manage maint.teams & apply budgetary control, in my case 3 water distribution plants, 21 satellite stations, all the associated maint. people plus a budget of $1,000,000 (1 million ), & I have only a HNC from college.

There are a lot of 'Engineers' around to day that I would use the term loosely, but in the same context there are a lot around that I would be pleased to call Engineers & that includes a whole raft of MEW members, I have taught 'Graduate Engineers' BSc, B.Eng. degree qualified, who in practical aspects, didn't know one end of a radial arm drill from another or what a 'datum point' was but would loose a lot of us with calculations on thermal heat loss of various insulating materials of buildings / furnaces et al, … I am also a Tech.Member of I.O.S.H. (retired ) entitled to use letters after my name… so do I call myself a 'Safety Engineer'… ?  .

George. Tech.I.O.S.H.

Edited By mechman48 on 22/12/2014 11:22:03

Edited By mechman48 on 22/12/2014 11:26:09

I think there is a clue to the problem in Russell's title , Euro Ing. Some of the continental countries that respect the qualification retain the "Ingenious" root of the word. The UK and several other countries blur the word with the word "engine" and in so doing merge mechanics, technicians, designers smiths etc. etc.all into one title, "Engineer"
Bob D

Shareholders – you mean my pension.

I think I should point out that although I am prepared to mix with you inferior 'Engineers' I am a 'Scientist'.

Back in 1991, BT were planning to "roll out"(yuk) high speed optical fibre across the UK. But Thatcher felt that it was more important to break up BT's monopoly than to build an infrastructure for the future (and possibly concerned about its impact on the BBC) so she put the kibosh on it. Classic triumph of so-called free market forces over national interests. Think where we'd be now if we'd got proper internet back then instead of 56k dial up!!

Particularly irritating and ironic to see that (our) tax payers money is now being used by her ideological offspring in government to advertise "high speed internet" on giant posters all around the country. Why do they need to do that?

Rantworthy

Edited By Muzzer on 22/12/2014 13:50:54

When I left school in 1973, the majority of jobs were going into the clerical / scientific areas, with only half a dozen of us going into the 'engineering' trades.

Some went into the Dockyard as Fitter / Turners, some went into the electronics side of things at Marconi and Plessey. I opted for an Aeronautical Apprenticship with The MoD, and qualified five years later with a TEng CEI AMSLAET set of letters to carry about.

Every year that firm took on another 25 to 30 new apprentices and I don't think more than one or two failed to complete the training.

Looking back, most of my school friends that took the option of a non-engineering career are now dead, some quite a while ago, so all the extra stress (money) didn't do them a lot of good it would appear.

The remaining few that did chose their careers wisely are all still with us. Personally I stayed with the MoD for 29 years on the Aero side until they decided that they couldn't afford to keep all the Civil Servants, so the Technician Engineers had to go.

Fortunately I was offered a training position looking after those same apprentices and now I'm part of a large company thet sees the training and education of some 400 apprentices a year in the Nuclear, Rail and other industries (Jaguar /Landrover, Volkswagen / BMW to name a couple).

So it would appear that the 'Engineer' Industry is getting stronger and I am proud to be known as one.

I do remember some while ago someone mentioning Environmental Engineers – we used to call them Gardeners

I worked as a machinist at one engineering Gulag, where after being handed a particularly nasty job to make I quipped to the engineer next to me that I must have done some really bad in my last incarnation, to which his sage like reply was"all engineers did something really bad in their last incarnations!"