Don't let the government near a brewery - they'd bankrupt it

Iknow there are many, many important issues on the table just now across the UK that need dealt with by a capable government.
Apprenticeships are important; important enough for the government to get it rightApprenticeships are important; important enough for the government to get it right
Apprenticeships are important; important enough for the government to get it right

However in the absence of one, both here and in London, we’re going to have to rub along on our own as usual.

I mean, what administration of any political persuasion, or none, could think it was acceptable to draw up a scheme that went hunting for people who arrived in this country as children, were educated, given National Insurance numbers worked and paid taxes only to be told they were here illegally and could be facing deportation to a ‘foreign’ country in their 60s and 70s and were losing their jobs and rights to healthcare?

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In that light it’s hardly surprising that the issue of apprenticeships has proven such an unmitigated disaster in spite of the warnings issued by business from the outset.

This week, it emerged that the number of people starting apprenticeships under one of the Tory’s flagship schemes has dropped by almost 25%.

Set up a year ago, the project was supposed to help create 3,000,000 apprentices by 2020 but companies have been left increasingly angry and frustrated by what the British Chambers of Commerce branded the “restrictions and inflexibility” of the scheme.

Here, where things quite often take a further, semi-surreal twist due to our ‘special’ circumstances, very little has happened at all - except that the money paid into the scheme by local firms has been piling up in Stormont, figuratively speaking, because there’s nobody there to dole it back out.

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Of course, we train lots of young people and train them well. This week also saw the announcement of a £7 million investment in the Springtown campus of the North West Regional College, Londonderry, to hugely enhance its training facilities.

We also do well on a regular basis in events such as Worldskills where our young people often excel against international competition.

But we are still facing a skills shortage in a variety of sectors from construction,and engineering to hospitality and beyond.

It would be nice to have a government which could create a functioning scheme - and a local adminstration that could help implement it.