General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

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?