Every other day there seems to be some major signal failure or even
worse such as last nights power failure. Are there any competant engineers
left in this country?

B2003

In article , d ()
wrote:

Every other day there seems to be some major signal failure or even
worse such as last nights power failure. Are there any competant
engineers left in this country?

Perhaps not. See
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home...-needed-after-
blunder-20032011.htm.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In message , d
writes

Are there any competant engineers left in this country?

Very few, and many of them are due to retire. There is an enormous
shortage of engineers in the UK, mostly due to the under-funding of
Further Education and government policies to encourage youngsters to
take degrees in subjects such as tourism or media studies.

What the country needs is technicians (not graduates) in engineering,
but it is becoming increasingly difficult even to recruit them from
abroad, as countries such as Germany are having similar problems.
--
Paul Terry

On 20/04/2011 19:39, Paul Terry wrote:

There is an enormous
shortage of engineers in the UK, mostly due to the under-funding of
Further Education and government policies to encourage youngsters to
take degrees in subjects such as tourism or media studies.

Is it? Or is it because there are non-engineering jobs open to people
with an education in engineering which can pay a lot more than
engineering businesses will, and sooner?

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

d wrote on 20 April 2011 10:08:07 ...
Every other day there seems to be some major signal failure or even
worse such as last nights power failure. Are there any competant engineers
left in this country?

Or railway managers?

Given the incompetence of the Standard's reporting today, I'm not sure
what happened last night, but something fell off a train or a trackside
cabinet and shorted the current rails. This was apparently in east
London. Why then was it necessary for passengers in north-west London
to be detrained along the tracks? Don't we have section switches any
more to enable parts of the line to run when others have the current
switched off?

To shut down the entire Jubilee Line for many hours because of a single
incident at one location is ridiculous. Or is there more to this fiasco
than is apparent from news reports?
--
Richard J.
(to email me, swap 'uk' and 'yon' in address)

On Apr 20, 10:02*pm, Arthur Figgis
wrote:

On 20/04/2011 19:39, Paul Terry wrote:

There is an enormous
shortage of engineers in the UK, mostly due to the under-funding of
Further Education and government policies to encourage youngsters to
take degrees in subjects such as tourism or media studies.

Is it? Or is it because there are non-engineering jobs open to people
with an education in engineering which can pay a lot more than
engineering businesses will, and sooner?

And provide great opportunities to engineer the economy... to
destruction.

There's more to life than getting paid oodles of cash - shame that
both engineering companies don't seem to be able to promote such a
notion, and many engineering graduates seem to reject it too... cue
some sort of vague rant about the Thatcherised and atomised 'I'm
alright Jack' attitude which, in the spirit of this thread, I'll only
make a half-arsed effort to construct.

On Apr 20, 7:39*pm, Paul Terry wrote:

In message ,
writes

Are there any competant engineers left in this country?

Very few, and many of them are due to retire. There is an enormous
shortage of engineers in the UK, mostly due to the under-funding of
Further Education and government policies to encourage youngsters to
take degrees in subjects such as tourism or media studies.

What the country needs is technicians (not graduates) in engineering,
but it is becoming increasingly difficult even to recruit them from
abroad, as countries such as Germany are having similar problems.

I know there is this and that out there, but from the outside there
often appears to be scant pathways into engineering - I'm thinking
about the likes of accessible apprenticeships for youngsters who'd
love to get stuck in to such a career but just don't have any way in.

On 20/04/2011 23:05, Mizter T wrote:

On Apr 20, 10:02 pm, Arthur
wrote:

On 20/04/2011 19:39, Paul Terry wrote:

There is an enormous
shortage of engineers in the UK, mostly due to the under-funding of
Further Education and government policies to encourage youngsters to
take degrees in subjects such as tourism or media studies.

Is it? Or is it because there are non-engineering jobs open to people
with an education in engineering which can pay a lot more than
engineering businesses will, and sooner?

And provide great opportunities to engineer the economy... to
destruction.

The people doing it don't seem to be doing too badly!

There's more to life than getting paid oodles of cash

But oodles of cash generally do help get the more (so people with oodles
of cash tell me, anyway).


- shame that
both engineering companies don't seem to be able to promote such a
notion, and many engineering graduates seem to reject it too... cue
some sort of vague rant about the Thatcherised and atomised 'I'm
alright Jack' attitude which, in the spirit of this thread, I'll only
make a half-arsed effort to construct.

Plus the Stalinist system, the EU, Gordon Brown, Bilderbergers, Bob Crow
etc.

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

On Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:08:54 -0500
wrote:
In article , d ()
wrote:

Every other day there seems to be some major signal failure or even
worse such as last nights power failure. Are there any competant
engineers left in this country?

Perhaps not. See
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home...-needed-after-
blunder-20032011.htm.

I'll give it 10 years before that busway is closed down due to high
maintenance costs and bus operators no longer wanting to pay to use it
when they can use the roads for free.

B2003

On Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:05:55 -0700 (PDT)
Mizter T wrote:
There's more to life than getting paid oodles of cash - shame that
both engineering companies don't seem to be able to promote such a
notion, and many engineering graduates seem to reject it too... cue

Unfortunately in this country engineers and scientists are at best
treated as slightly dotty boffins. At worst , greasy haired sociopaths
who wouldn't be allowed in polite company. There are a few exceptions
who are allowed into polite society , usually biologists because thats
a slightly more soft focused subject that the liberal arts types can almost
understand the simpler concepts of so they don't feel so threatened.

Until this mindset changes science and engineering in this country is
pretty much doomed since if kids don't see it as attractive by the time
they're old enough to go to university its pretty much too late.

B2003