I’ve been banging on about this for donkey’s years — and I’ll keep shouting until someone in Westminster gets off their backside. Britain’s got a skills shortage the size of the Channel Tunnel. And unless we start churning out apprentices like a proper production line, the country’s going to seize up.
We Need skills!
We’ve got this daft obsession with sending every kid to university. “Get a degree, son. That’s the ticket.” Yeah, right. You can’t tile a bathroom with a philosophy degree. A diploma in media studies won’t fix your nan’s boiler. I’m not knocking brains — but right now, we need hands. Skilled ones.
The government loves to bang on about growth, productivity, levelling up. Well, newsflash — you can’t do any of that without trades. No brickies, no houses. No sparks, no factories. No plumbers, no hot showers. And don’t get me started on plasterers — they’re rarer than a straight answer from a politician.
This isn’t just some boring economic problem. It’s in your face. You try getting a decent tradesperson without waiting weeks. Prices are going through the roof because demand’s smashing supply. And for businesses like mine, finding good staff is like trying to find a left-handed spanner — you can do it, but it’ll cost you.
The answer’s obvious: train more people. And the way to do that is with proper apprenticeships. Not that box-ticking rubbish that’s just there for the paperwork. I mean the real deal — boots on the ground, tools in hand, learning from someone who’s been there and done it.
Everybody wins. Young people get a career without racking up £50k of debt. Businesses get staff trained their way. The country gets a skilled army to actually build all these houses and roads politicians keep promising.
But here’s the kicker — the system was a shambles. The apprenticeship levy was a good idea… on paper. But it was so tangled in red tape, it made spaghetti look straight. Small businesses didn’t stand a chance. Colleges couldn’t afford top-class training. And schools? Too many are still peddling the cobblers that apprenticeships are just for kids who “can’t cut it” academically.
That one really winds me up. I’ve met sparkies, chippies, and brickies who could run rings round some so-called “high-flyers” in boardrooms. Working with your hands doesn’t mean switching your brain off — if anything, it means using it twice as much.
We need a full-on culture shift. Parents and teachers should be telling kids that apprenticeships are a first-class ticket. Government should rip up the red tape and make it dead easy for any business to take on an apprentice. Colleges need proper funding so training’s bang up to date. And we need to crack on now — because every year we faff about, the skills gap gets bigger.
Britain’s got talent, alright. But too much of it’s sitting in classrooms, thinking the only way forward is three years of lectures and a lifetime of student debt. Let’s show them there’s another way — one where you learn, earn, and build a future as solid as the brickwork you lay.
We don’t just need more tradespeople. We need a new generation of grafters. So let’s roll up our sleeves, sharpen our tools, and get to work — because talking about it won’t fix the leak.
