Headline, July23, 2013

''''JUST LONG LONG WAY ROUND'''

Who would have thought, and frankly, no one ever did-  that Spain and Greece would run up unemployed figures right up to 50%. And now China's economy is slowing down and don't forget that China was a manufacturer to the whole world. How would China skill and move upscale? Let's watch. Small world, isn't it? But turning gruesome as the economies sputter and don't pick up!

But what is really strange is the fact that it doesn't seem people in general think '' that they can demand of the government anymore. We are divided between  people who don't think government can do anything and other people who think we can't demand anything. What then is a good spur to change that?

The author, from South Yorkshire, recalls this episode: ''On the way back, we swapped the usual stories and it turned out that he was a coal miner, a once common occupation in our area. Sadly, most mines closed during the the 1980s and skilled men faced a lifetime scratching around on minimum-wage jobs in warehouses and supermarkets. Imported coal was cheaper, so a way of life disappeared almost overnight.

Trust me, it was grim up north in the Eighties!!

Except it didn't turn out like that for the chap. He ended up working all over the world and is now based in the Ivory Coast, training up local workers to take over the skilled mining jobs. His family lives in Spain, with one daughter aged fourteen, already fluent in three languages.

Everyone's circumstances are different, of course, and not everyone can swap continents at the drop of a hat. But given that many economies will be squeezed for a generation, more and more people will move to find work. They won't have much choice in the matter.

''That might sound obvious to anyone in an expat-dominated country. It certainly wasn't seen as an option some thirty odd years ago in Yorkshire. Who knew how fast things could happen and change? Globalisation was a barely understood concept back then, with industrial disputes instead couched in the language of left versus right.

Today it's a reality that extends far beyond cheap televisions, Indian call centres and foreign holidays. Over Two Hundred Million Chinese have moved from villages to the cities in the past many years. Globalisation has swept like a tornado over most of the Planet and it has changed everything. Those Chinese farmers uprooted their families and their lives for exactly one reason. They went where the work was.

The author continues  ''My brother-in-law trained as an electrician much to his academic parents' despair. He's progressed from building sites to railways and is doing an engineering degree on the side. Can you imagine how many opportunities there will be to work on high speed rail networks in the developing countries? I say this because I meet people all the time with interesting jobs that never would have occurred to me as potential careers''.

To navigate through this uncertain future, schools, universities, employers and governments should all offer realtime guidance that addresses the world as it is right now.

Where are the skill shortages? What industries are growing? Which countries are we talking about? In other words look for opportunities and stay ahead of the curve, or you all we'll go the way the UK's mining industry did.

I must inform you all  -especially this region and the developing world-  that according to some very painstaking research, your governments are not exactly brimming with practical solutions to meet today's challenges. If not now, then when?

Be warned that the political world in general is mired in negative campaigning and outmoded ideas that just don't address your new reality. President Bill Clinton gets out of the box to enlighten a solution for America:

''But we can't pull the walls up again. You couldn't do it even if you tried. They still just take it from you. And I believe we can do much to adapt to the structural changes in the global economy, get high-end manufacturing back here.

Set up cluster of economic activity where you have, among other things, continuous retraining of people well into their middle years so that they never become irrelevant to the current job market. We're going to have to retrain workers in every business the way the military trains. One of the reasons that people stay in the military is that they pick up skill after skill after skill''.

And by the way, in the American economy, you produce ''7000''  jobs per billion dollars. Feel free to flex. Let me leave the maths to you.

With respectful dedication to the Students and Professors of Canada. See you all on the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless: Where Knowledge and serving is Power!.

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless