scootb

When people are forced onto training courses,they are taken off the unemployment figures,a trick that parties have used for decades in the UK!
Did the bank of lies not say that the recession was over a couple of years ago?

I can post links too:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23079082

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/n...ist-Grice.html

http://rt.com/news/workers-cut-wages-recession-570/

christmasoompa

No, they said it ended in 2012, as it did. Don't confuse a recovering but slow economy with a recession. The UK is not in recession now.

The first and second links (which is 6 months or so old!) confirm that the expected 'double dip' recession never happened, and the third is again dated several months ago and talking historically, plus is a Russian website.

The links I gave you are only a few days old just FYI. But my original point is simply that the UK is, just like Canada, out of recession and slowly recovering.

Shard

Moi aussi

Novocastrian

Me too. Canada is the only country I've lived in twice. 1982-86 and 2003-present.

Moving on for good in 2015, Beelzebub willing.

Shard

Novocastrian

Err, I meant to say 1993- present.

The Devil was in me.

Steve_

Or Hwy 99 or the Trans-Canada in the Fraser Valley.

The 400 and 401 during rush hour (and Hwy 7 in Markham) is why I live in Calgary, tbh.

They have actually done quite well at sorting out the traffic jams on the A38 and M6/M5 using various traffic light techniques (the M6 toll may have helped but it's not popular). But it's still a nightmare compared to here.

cjones

It's understandable why you're as aerated as you are about all this. Judging by your timeline dates, you managed to get yourself out of the UK just as things were starting to pick up and now find yourself stuck in Edmonton with the winter coming on, and to top all that, you find yourself lumbered with a Dodge Caravan... If I were you, I'd be pig sick too.

scootb

Things will slowly pick up for years,but the UK will never fully recover,I don't mind a dry winter,I lived in the Scottish countryside long enough to experience driving in all sorts of weather without any problems.
I am far from Pig sick,I am away from Benefits Britain and deportation is the only way I will return.
The UK is a small island with limited resources and employment with an increasing population,that unemployment backlog will always be there,ask the majority of Uni students that had to take up work in McD's etc..

Besides I have no road tax,MOT,or TV licence to pay for now,filling my tank in my trusty Dodge Caravan costs me just over 2 hours wages,try fill a tank in the UK for that!

Best of luck to the OP regardless.

bats

Ah the Albertan paradise. How much do you pay for cable tv? How safe are the cars on the roads? Who maintains the roads? Through taxes?

Is that all you earn? In Alberta?

not2old

cough once. Right now you are probably young, healthy & fit enough to work & are as happy as Larry.

I wish you all the luck in the world that your present situation will last forever until the day you retire

cough twice. Now how many have said that one, then at some point end up going back.

Never say never - leave your options open scootb.

now choking ...

I asked that same question to some uni students & grads in Toronto - it would seem several are working at McDonalds. They were saying the same thing... no jobs for their qualifications. Only in the UK you say.

We have to stop all those immigrants with degrees or who are highly skilled & qualified from coming to Canada that end up driving cabs, working at gas stations, in variety stores or in menial jobs so that Canadian graduates can get those jobs.

http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/05/24/w...elp-from-afar/

Faced with public outrage at a time when unemployment is stuck at 7.2 per cent, the normally business-friendly Conservative federal government moved quickly to make its Temporary Foreign Worker Program more difficult and expensive for companies to access. But for all the populist headlines about foreigners being parachuted into the country to steal jobs from Canadians, the reality is that many businesses remain desperate for employees and, more often than not, the jobs going to temporary foreign workers are positions Canadians are either unable, or simply unwilling, to fill. “The real effect of this is going to be frustration of business owners,” says Audrey Guth, the director of Toronto’s Diamond Global Recruitment Inc., which specializes in helping Canadian businesses bring in foreign workers. “If you make it too difficult, businesses are going to close down.”

Many of the 213,516 temporary foreign workers who came to Canada last year filled low-paying, menial jobs, according to data provided by Citizenship and Immigration. More than 31,000 were agricultural workers. Another 6,200 were nannies, while 4,000 became counter staff or fast-food cooks. Others filled higher-paid skilled positions—often, recruiters say, because there aren’t enough Canadians with the necessary training, or because the jobs are located in smaller, more remote communities that don’t appeal to Canada’s highly urbanized population. They include truck drivers (1,620 workers), mechanical engineers (1,490) and computer programmers (2,005). The trend has created a distorted labour market. In Newfoundland and Labrador, for example, employers brought in 2,285 temporary foreign workers last year, up 75 per cent from 2008, despite an unemployment rate of 12 per cent in the province, nearly double the national average.

Shard

I think part of the problem is that over the years HR departments have focussed far too much on selection, but not enough on training the individual. As the article points out:

A recent study by the Conference Board of Canada found that investment in employee training has fallen nearly 40 per cent in Canada since the early 1990s—a trend that obviously needs to change.

There is no reason for graduates having to work at McJobs (unless they desire to); companies ought to lower their expectations and raise their training. Newly minted employees could be kept on with deferred and/or progressive remuneration schemes.

Steve_

Attempts to equate the cost of living in Alberta with the cost of living in the UK will fail, Mike lives in Ontario so that's an easier comparison to make.

But car registration in Alberta is $85, how much is a tax disc in the UK now?

Steve_

Mmm, north sea oil was one of the main things that ended the recession in the 1980s, when that's gone...

However most of the problems the UK seems to have always seem to track back to the fact that it is so densely populated. I feel claustrophobic now when I go there.

Shard

£140 / £225 depending on engine size.

But at least they're bloody good roads!