Government’s youth jobs push is welcome, but it still doesn’t go far enough
The government’s new £1 billion youth employment drive, designed to create 200,000 jobs and apprenticeships, is a positive step. Any serious effort to get young people into work deserves recognition. But if we’re honest about the scale of the problem, the reality is this: we’re still tinkering around the edges. The UK has been playing […]
The Real Enemy: It’s not the dinghies, it’s the algorithm coming for your kid’s first job
Middle England has been told, day after day, that the great threat to its living standards is illegal migration. Pressure on wages. Pressure on schools. Pressure on the NHS. Pressure on housing. A sense that the ladder of opportunity is being pulled up for their kids. It’s a compelling story because it comes with a […]
Good intentions don’t create jobs – businesses do
I’ve built businesses from nothing, and I’ll tell you a simple truth. Employers hire when it feels safe to hire. Right now, it doesn’t. The government is making hiring a risk A survey of 2,000 firms shows 37% plan to cut permanent recruitment because of the new workers’ rights reforms. That isn’t politics, it’s predictable […]
Britain doesn’t have a jobs crisis. It has a work ethic crisis
We’re not short of jobs, we’re short of workers I don’t often find myself agreeing with supermarket bosses, but Tesco’s Ashwin Prasad has got this one right. Britain is drifting into a worklessness crisis and far too many people are still pretending it isn’t happening. I’ve spent my life employing people, from apprentices to engineers […]
Britain is driving family businesses off a cliff and pretending it’s progress
I’ve never been one for sugar-coating things, so let’s be clear. Britain has become one of the worst places in the developed world to be an entrepreneur, and the Government seems either oblivious or indifferent to the damage it’s doing. Recent polling by think tank the Jobs Foundation of more than 1,150 family businesses and […]
As the political smoke cleared from yesterday’s defection drama the spoils of war definitely went to Nigel!
IN THE calamitous political piss-up that ended with Tory Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick being fired by one political boss only to be hired by another a couple of hours later there was only one winner. It sounds like a complete cockup with Jenrick, or someone in his team, leaving his resignation speech kicking around […]
There’s only one way to run a successful service company: the customer must always be King!
From the day I founded Pimlico Plumbers back in the 1970s everything I did was aimed at making sure my customers were 100% satisfied. Much has changed in the plumbing world in the 50 odd years since I finished my apprenticeship, especially at Pimlico Plumbers. But I never thought I’d see the day when customer […]
The United Kingdom is a Homeless Shelter Run by Idiots…
Yesterday I was thinking about why some countries in the world are able to organise things in a way that creates a lot of wealth for their citizens by embracing foreign expertise to maximise the economic and lifestyle benefits for everyone involved. And of course the nations that don’t. It seems to me that the […]
Part-time and Saturday jobs are a force for good in an entitled world that’s losing its work ethic!
The other day I was asked to come onto the BBC’s Radio 2 to give my thoughts on the time-honoured custom of the ‘Saturday-Job’. This is a proper part-time job done by a school-age boys or girls, with agreed hours (often on a Saturday) and a pay-packet to show for it. As far as I […]
WeFix London – Our 2026 New Year Resolution – to Remain ‘Simply the Best!!’
The past 12-months has been a truly revolutionary year for WeFix London. History will show that 2025, our first full year of trading, eclipsed our wildest predictions for the Mullins family’s return to the plumbing and home services business. Better than all the Rest! We set out to be – as Tina Turner famously declared […]