The 'Tickets'

As we used to call them.

ie technical qualifications:

Yesterday, had Gas engineers working in my home. Chewing the fat over a cuppa, one of them told me his daughter was trying to enter the profession from which I had retired, and he was bemoaning how long it takes to qualify.

At one point he said, "Should become a Gas Engineer: it only takes a year." I presume he meant one year to become gas registered.

I did not pursue the issue with him, as I wanted to allow them to get on with their work, and have my house back to me.

Anyway, being curious, I later had a Google, and it appears that you can qualify as such in one year.

So, my question is, why do we have shortages of skilled tradesmen who can perform such tasks, if we can train them in such a short period? Not limiting this to gas, either.

Surely as taxpayers, we would get a better deal paying for those willing to be trained, where it can be done so economically, than paying long term/repeating benefits to people who either are out of work, or only manage to obtain poor quality work.

How say you?

Why do they insist on calling them 'engineers' when they don't hold any such qualifications?

I had an “engineer” to fit gas and electricity smart meters who did not fill me with any confidence.He said he worked in an office,did a training course and became a qualified engineer.His tool skills were very poor and was very untidy.The most important tool he had was his phone to get advice.

Ena, They are called, fast track certs, we have a few on here, I know a pit mon who did a fast track cert in electronics, he used to visit my plumbing site to gain knowledge and no it was't Tonker, it was the now famous technical electrical engineer and company owner who makes legs go lectric but does not advertise it, because ,have you are hinting, no one learns a craft overnight but. it became a desk jockeys dream to have folks attending schemes of promises to earn a plumbers wage so. they invented all sorts of micky mouse courses for the hard of thinking and gassafe was one of those, The Sun newspaper wrote of Lawyers packing in lawyering and going plumbing and a fast track in was, Get gassafe registered in 6 weeks, A lot did and got robbed of £zillions,
It, any job, even a shelf stocker takes experience and, you can't buy that,

Ah, maybe the chap who said that to me intended it to be a satirical comment, and at the time it had gone over my head.

Your right lectriclegs, very misleading term engineer, it can be anyone from somebody who installs a washing machine to the designer of the space shuttle.

When I left school in 1969 I started with the NCB on a 31/2 year apprenticeship to become a pitmon does this make me a mineral extraction engineer

Unlike many other countries the use of the title Engineer does not have protected status in the UK. So anyone can be termed an Engineer trained or not but the Title Chartered Engineer can only be used by someone having been accepted by the Engineering Council from a proposal by their professional institution,
Suffice to say that Chartered Engineers could not operate without the skill and support of the many 'Engineers'.