if you're going to graduate with up to £100k in debt with a company that the govt can sell why the fuck would you take a job at that pathetic starting rate where you're debt will be running up each year?

i'm genuinely tired of various businesses in this country whining like little kuds about lack of skills when they all essentially supported introducing fees because they didn't want to pay taxes,

the dept of business at tech london happily offering visas, encouraging firms to offshore & outsource just adds to the fuckwittery,

i would happily stand there in front of a class of A Level students and tell them to do medicine & go to canada or australia, or do plumbing. ANYTHING but a STEM degree.

the ppl i spoke to there genuinely couldnt get their heads around how only an idiot would get in debt gor a job that might not last past 5 years before being offshored or sold out

A long time ago, I was invited as a sole trader to meet up with a bunch of Treasury "high flyers" who were touring the regions in the forlorn hope they might learn something about actual businesses that might inform their future decision making.

It was at a time that the government was hoping to encourage investment by offering substantial tax breaks on IT equipment purchases - but they were only available to limited companies. I mentioned that I was in the process of setting up a company as the savings outweighed the costs and inconvenience. They government folk were all dumbfounded by the idea that I would change my status simply to take advantage of a change of fiscal policy and they didn't seem to have considered the possible costs if a significant number of others had done the same.

It seems endemic in government that the inevitable consequential costs of policy decisions are simply ignored. You save money on maintenance of public buildings and schools and hospitals start to fall down. You fail to invest in the public water boards so you have to privatise them to bring the infrastructure up to scratch, but the private companies also underinvest and skim off the profits and you risk having to renationalise them. You sell of council houses and refuse to allow them to be replaced then add a few million to the population of the country and scratch you head because there's a housing crisis.

If you want positive outcomes, they have to be planned for. That's not just in education, housing and health but in every sector of activity. If you want a space industry, or a strategic steel industry, or even just IT services that aren't under the thumb of a potentially-hostile foreign power then you need a credible strategy to deliver them.

"It seems endemic in government that the inevitable consequential costs of policy decisions are simply ignored. You save money on maintenance of public buildings and schools and hospitals start to fall down."

That's not the government's fault. It's the fault of the voters who are unwilling to pay more tax. Most people seem to assume that they are not well off enough to pay more tax and that someone else should be paying more. No political party in the UK would win an election based on policies of high-enough taxes to fund the services that we all say we want but are not willing to pay for.

it is the governments fault. other countries understand the trade off. yet here it took 20 years from thatcher onwards to con ppl into believing that you could have a functioning democracy on us levels of tax.

government has to take the bull by the horns and start explaining this shit. people are actually silly's when you treat them like it.

fire all the consultancies like pwc and accenture. have a uk first rule on govt contracts so you get rid of infosys etc.. MASSIVE taxes on EVERY employee offshored, even if to a 3rd party. make it uneconomical. if firms dont like it, they can fuck off & miss out on a market of 70 million odd ppl.

no more shipping cash out of the country, either to US firms ir indian or south african firms.

otherwise why the fuck would ANYONE do a degree unless daddy already knows soneone in the City that can give Tilly or Tommy a job?

Makes me wonder how the Commonwealth (Commonwealth of Nations, formerly British Commonwealth, formerly British Empire, ...) plays into this. There is space engineering expertise in India and IT expertise in South Africa (both members), shouldn't that expertise be leveraged?

And yet taxation levels now are far in excess of Pre-Thatcher levels, and yet we have lousy services.

We have a shortage of good jobs, paying good salaries, that would increase the total tax take without increasing the rate of taxation.

But we globalised them all away. Our cars come from China, our IT services come from India, our (insert manufactured thing) comes from China. Big corps make out like bandits on this, and we all pay.

@Headley_Grange

"No political party in the UK would win an election based on policies of high-enough taxes to fund the services that we all say we want but are not willing to pay for."

Or consider the idea of shrinking down the ever expanding beast of government and public sector. The idea of a solution now is to throw money at problems and wonder why they still aint fixed. Look at the calls to tax the rich without understanding they are the rich. The UK saw doctors retire because of the green eyed tax grab.

@abend0c4

"You fail to invest in the public water boards so you have to privatise them to bring the infrastructure up to scratch, but the private companies also underinvest and skim off the profits and you risk having to renationalise them."

There is a misunderstanding there by attacking Englands private water provision without looking at the rest of the UK. The private system not only performs better but is under more pressure and regulation than the government run ones AND has problems inflicted upon it by government that it gets blamed for.

You'll struggle to convince me that the privatised water companies are perfoming better unless it's from the perspective of a shareholder cashing in while watching your company literally shit on the country. Thames has paid a total of £7.2 billion pounds in dividends since it was privatized and it's effectively bankrupt after having pumped shit into the nation's waterways for much of that time while leveraging debt to pay those dividends. Now the PEs lining up to make what money they can out of the dregs before it is, inevitably, re-nationalized are trying to cut immunity deals for the directors so they don't have to waste potential £dividend on, you know, actuall running a water company. If I were the minister I'd tell the world that they get no special deals and that the government policy will be to wait until the share price hits £0.00 and then it'll be nationalized for market value.

Pocket-lining-debt-leveraging-private-equity-cunts' dividends aside, I'm not claiming that performance would have been any different if it had been a national industry** but you can hardly hold it up as a beacon of a well-run company.

**although I don't remember the water boards being a shit storm of underperformance pre-privatization.

@Headley_Grange

"You'll struggle to convince me that the privatised water companies are perfoming better unless it's from the perspective of a shareholder cashing in while watching your company literally shit on the country."

The whole complaint about outflows of sewage. England monitors that because it is regulated to do so. Scotland barely monitors and as far as I am aware that is the same for Wales and Ireland. Tim Worstall likes to point out they did a report way back when comparing UK water management and England won in terms of price, quality, etc and after that stopped comparing.

"Thames has paid a total of £7.2 billion pounds in dividends since it was privatized and it's effectively bankrupt after having pumped shit into the nation's waterways for much of that time while leveraging debt to pay those dividends"

This is an interesting one. The regulator tells them how much they can charge and how much they are to invest and the companies do it. So the regulator piled on new upgrades but wont let them raise money until the upgrades are done which doesnt work. Also isnt it Thames who have been applying for a new reservoir for years but is denied, has current ones full (recently reported) and yet hose pipe bans expected to be occurring this summer?

"If I were the minister I'd tell the world that they get no special deals and that the government policy will be to wait until the share price hits £0.00 and then it'll be nationalized for market value."

So as government you would bankrupt the company and then steal the company because otherwise it would succeed? Since the damage is government inflicted anyway that seems like the kind of action from a commie dictatorship instead of a functioning country. Also the upgrades are still demanded by the regulator so the gov (taxpayer) would be on the hook for the upgrades now demanded while our own gov is broke.

"**although I don't remember the water boards being a shit storm of underperformance pre-privatization."

All I care about is water when I turn on the tap and not overly polluting. From what I hear England leads the UK so the others need to get up to scratch before we turn on our suppliers.

"voters who are unwilling to pay more tax"

But but but... we've been told that all we need to do is tax the rich and have a wealth tax on the rich and all us proles will be swimming in free government stuff.

As for your later comment about water companies. Things are a LOT better than they were in the 70s and 80s. You don't see turds, used condoms or sanitary items floating about in the waterways. Even the railways have improved. It was proper bleak in the UK during the late 70s and early 80s.

Some of last years UK GP graduates i.e. finished 10 years of post 'A' level training

Are still unemployed, as despite everyone wanting more Doctors, the government has not given the Surgery's more money to employ these Doctors.

The choice for many has been simple: be unemployed in the UK, or go to a foreign country where you are appreciated with good terms and conditions, respect and salary?

GP surgeries are private companies. Most of the docs at my local 'NHS' GP are part time.

Yes private companies paid by the NHS to provide specified services.

Yes private companies who charge the NHS to provide specified services.

could be worth $1.8 trillion by 2035, nearly tripling its current value, according to McKinsey

The fact is that there is not merely an imbalance of income in these professions, but also of prestige. Teachers have not had the status they once had for decades. Space science is 'sexy'. Bankers may be despised, but they console themselves with second homes and Mercedes cars.

A Mercedes? If you're a banker in a Merc then obviously you're either a new graduate recruit, or a failure.

According to the first banking industry survey I bothered to scan (efinancialcareers), the AVERAGE banker salary in London is just north of $300k, made up of salary of c$160k and the balance on bonuses. Barclays were paying $350k, Standard Chartered $470k. Failures work at places like HSBC ($214k), or Natwest ($243k).

I recall the time when three bankers from two different firms parked their cars side by side in the shared basement garage at work. The chap from the smaller of the two banks was driving a very high end prestige car, yet the two from the top tier bank were driving old bangers, one of which was an old, worse for wear, Ford Fiesta. The prestige car driver mocked the other two and implied their jobs couldn't be going well based on what they were driving. The next day, and only that day they both brough in their good cars. Cars which they didn't normally subject to London streets. The parked either side of him. The Fiesta driver brough in one of his two Maclaren F1's. I can't remember what the second one was driving but it was in the £ million plus bracket too. He also jokingly pointed out that he would have come in in his helicopter if it would fit in the carpark.

McLaren F1? 2 out of only 64 built in the 1990s for road use?

This is a Jay Leno level car.

The esteemed actor Rowan Atkinson had one of those, but wrapped it around a tree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-14414889

"Actor Rowan Atkinson was hurt when he crashed his McLaren F1 supercar into a tree in Cambridgeshire.

The Blackadder and Mr Bean star suffered a shoulder injury in the accident, near Peterborough.

He is said to have walked from the car, which caught fire, after the crash on the A605 at Haddon on Thursday evening and waited for an ambulance."

Yep he had two. In total there were 106 F1's built. One of his was part of the standard 64 and the second was apparently a bit "special", which is why he had two. I never saw it and it's too long back for me to remember the details, so I can't say if it was a race variant or one of the other handful of road legal cars.

Wait. Aren't those the same banks rescued by the taxpayers' money last time? And mostly profiteering from mortgages?

Solution: ban mortgages on *existing* housing (cash buys exclusively). Only loans for newly built property or renovation should be allowed. This will accelerate building permits etc, as what would bankers not do to generate profits?

Maybe then banks pay down-to-earth salaries.

Solution: ban mortgages on *existing* housing (cash buys exclusively)

Have you thought through the implications of this policy?

"ban mortgages on *existing* housing"

Which makes it absolutely unaffordable to buy a used house; dunno about you, but I don't have that kind of cash lying around. Which would make it impossible to SELL a used house, so anyone who absolutely had to move (like taking a job in another county) would lose their shirt.

This is a really, insanely bad idea.

They could try banning the use of illegal funds from Russian oligarchs to buy houses in London, oh but that would mean rich people losing money.

As you were.

Chinese property investors are worse. It is a proper sad state of affairs when you can buy a house/flat off plan, leave it empty for a few years and then sell for a very nice profit.

@AC

"Chinese property investors are worse. It is a proper sad state of affairs when you can buy a house/flat off plan, leave it empty for a few years and then sell for a very nice profit."

Why? What is wrong with that?

The whole speculation thing. Most of these living units are built specifically for the investment market. The developers often get some sort of tax break. And in the US, usually because they have a friend in local govt, they get the land very cheap. Many cases of local governments using eminent domain to take land very cheaply from private ownership to sell on to developers.

Because developers can make a nice sum from these dealings there is little incentive to make normal housing. So they go cap in hand to govt for some handouts, sell houses as leasehold and jack the costs year on year and lastly just make proper shoddy houses.

It is creating an artificial scarcity.

As someone who has worked in the space industry as an engineer and consultant for well over 3 decades, I have to say that this article pretty much hits the nail on the head. The sort of people who are needed in the space industry (intelligent, pragmatic, capable of looking at problems and coming up with simple, well engineered and workable solutions) are also precisely the the sort of people who are wanted in other industries, and sadly there are few who cam compete with banks and management consultancies in the salary game. I tend to find that the people who come into the space industry and stay in it tend to be motivated more by the engineering challenges than the salaries that they can command elsewhere.

I case to note: I was once offered a job in the banking industry that would have nearly tripled my salary, I turned it down because i knew it would not challenge me and i would be bored within 6 months.

I imagine that also depends what the job actually involved.

Banks and other financial entities do employ postgraduates with strong (applied) mathematical backgrounds to work on modelling.

One chap I knew was went from the lowest academic rung (peanuts) to professorial salary+ working on financial models involving large coupled non linear differential equations which, minus the financial application, were exactly what he was working on before jumping ship.

Although to be honest he wasn't safe to be let out on his own; doubtless tying his shoelaces was a challenge but I imagine a young managing lady in his workplace with a view to her future will have taken him in hand by now. :)

"intelligent, pragmatic, capable of looking at problems and coming up with simple, well engineered and workable solutions"

Really? In which alternate universe does ANY of that apply to Banking IT?

These people don't usually end up in banking IT, they end up being data scientists or quants stuff like that.

There are many many examples in banking IT. Possibly not in Retail Banking but certainly in Investment Banking.

One obvious example would be in High Frequency Trading where firms spend tens of millions on infrastructure like co-location (placing servers next to exchange data centers) and custom hardware to shave off nanoseconds. There is evidence to show that a 1-microsecond reduction in latency can be worth millions annually in arbitrage profits, so every nanosecond counts.

I started in Formula 1 - hardware, software and telecoms for the first in-car telemetry systems, lap timing, remote speed traps, etc. It was the same situation - my brother was making more money milking cows!

I have now been in bleeding edge aero, space and defence for nearly 3 decades. 2 decades doing hardware and software, and the past decade on software only. I do it for the challenge, and I am certainly paid much less than £90K! But, I get to look out of my home office window across across fields and woods for a mile to the next hill top.

I once had a job interview at a long standing multinational firm where it was advertised at literally twice the salary I was on. I did the IQ test and then went to see the person who would be my manager if taken on. As I was shown through the door he said "You've scored the highest we've ever seen from a candidate - you will be bored - goodbye." And I was shown out again before even reaching the chair to sit down.

I case to note: I was once offered a job in the banking industry that would have nearly tripled my salary, I turned it down because i knew it would not challenge me and i would be bored within 6 months.

Therein lies the problem. So what's needed are graduates that could go work in the banking industry for say 3-5yrs, building up the knowledge and contacts or just cash to then put together a pitch to switch to the 'space industry'. Then laugh madly as your wealth exceeds Musks. However the grad needs the idea that needed the seed money.

Otherwise the 'space industry' could end up a space charity or tulip industry. If government can't define the industry it wants, it can't decide how to fill pipelines to resource it. Steel industry is simple because people need to buy steel. People don't currently need to buy space. Unless UK Plc commits to developing and building more aircraft, does it need aerospace engineers? If we don't need to launch lots of stuff into space, we don't need rocket scientists.

What we probably do need are more people working for government, either directly or indirectly who can prowl universities and talent scout students who are coming up with crazy ideas that might just work and then incubating those.

The UK has a vibrant satellite industry.

The UK rocket industry basically shut down over night when a bit of rocket fell in a tribal sacred area and now we send millions to India to basically fund its space industry. India gets money from the UK to help with basic hygiene, whereas India decides not to spend money on that, but choses Space Exploration instead. It's all down to political will and UK politicians can't see past the end of the latest brown envelope.

The UK aircraft industry was sold off many decades ago. The little innovation the UK has folds due to lack of investment.

The usual Labour solution would be to ban banks hiring graduates at high salaries.

All these rocket scientists and they can’t figure out this puzzle! (Hint: the average salary for an aerospace engineer in the US is six figures)

And the difference is even bigger when you factor in the average total tax burden (combining all taxes, income tax, VAT, council tax, fuel tax, etc). For the UK it is ~40% for the US (specifically California) it is ~20%.

But a lot of it seems to be down to pork-barrel politics and can suddenly change - as has been graphically demonstrated in the past few months.

that they have not encountered the coarse saw concerning peanuts and monkeys?

You cannot make butter without purchasing the cream.

that they have not encountered the coarse saw concerning peanuts and monkeys?

You cannot make butter without purchasing the cream

Unless it's peanut butter.

The finance sector has been Dutch Disease-ing the rest of the economy for decades.

The finance sector has been Dutch Disease-ing the rest of the economy for decades.

Nah, that's the public sector. So Rachel from accounts dropped her 5-year spending plan giving DESNZ £45bn to waste. Sadly not on making Ed Milliband the UK's first Helionaut. Or just investing in a B-ark. But ohnoes!

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/06/17/2-billion-uk-hydrogen-plant-cancelled/#more-87196

So in this upside down world of Net Zero, we make hydrogen from natural gas, emitting lots of CO2, then combine it with nitrogen in another energy intensive process to make ammonia. This is then shipped half way around the world, where in another energy intensive process the hydrogen is then split out again, so we can burn it in exactly the same way as would the natural gas in the first place!

Luckily that one hasn't now been given subsidies. But we've wasted well over £200bn tilting at windmills that could have been invesed in STEM instead. It still wouldn't have produced a decent sized space industry because that needs some brains to come up with some ideas for profitable, sustainable space businesses.

Speaking as an engineer, who has done a bit of work for space projects occasionally, there are a *lot* of requirements, and the result of failing to spot that you haven't met a requirement (or declaring you have met one when you haven't!) could mean failure of a mission that has cost multiple millions. How much do I get paid for a full time roll? - less than someone who works in IT part time 3 days a week.

However, on the bright side, I'm doing the job I dreamed of since I was in primary school...

And please El Reg, in the UK we have graduates in Mathematics, or "Maths" if you must shorten it.

Completely baffled at the decision making of "liberal" politicians when they've whinged for years about

"If it moves, tax it".

Tax it. Use the taxation pressures as an excise on the non productive (in the sense of actual goods and services not measures of GDP) financial services industry. Tax offshoring firms to death.

Make it annoying to be fee'd and fined to death as a banker while relaxing it on productive occupations. People will follow the incentives.

Trump stupid as he is has forced a re-examination of a lot of prior assumptions. You don't need to fucking launder Russian blood (oil) money in London with a vestigial nation filled with crack dens if you have your own industry and services.

Maybe Britain doesn't get to be the shipyard of the world, this time but it can still make rudders?

China GDP Growth (1995 to present): 11% per annum

UK GDP Growth (1995 to present): 2% per annum

.....so guess who has money to pay graduates!

UK Sourcing Strategy (1995 to present): Get everything on the cheap from China

Consequences of UK Sourcing Strategy:

(1) The Chinese learn about product design and manufacture

(2) The Chinese (eventually) learn about independent design and manufacture (see Huawei for details)

(3) The customers of the Chinese (i.e. Brits) end up with NO DESIGN OR MANUFACTURING capability at all

(4) Wealthy Chinese youngsters end up supporting the UK educational system (with cash that came from the UK!)

So......the UK ends up with the consequences of a really stupid strategy.................

.............and I end up reading articles like this full of whining about "unintended consequences"...................

... by which I mean, the same as if they were in the industry using their skills to do the job. Only then will you have a chance to attract people good enough to teach it well.

I would have loved to teach computer science... but not for less than one third of my current income.

if it's going to be worth 1.8 trillion and you want to invest in the people then it sounds like 90k is the investment you have to make.

offer 25k then bitching that you're not going to be ready is no one's fault but your own

if you can't justify it then the 1.8 trillion figure is just PR bollocks, so choose one

These days, 'banking' stands upon a pedestal created through self-glorification and overweening avarice. It portrays itself as complicated and requiring considerable intellectual input: indeed it is.

Yet, honest banking is simple . Basically, the principles as once applied to erstwhile British Building Societies, mutual not-for-profit savings and lending institutions, are broadened to encompass service for businesses e.g. manufacturing, retail, and the service sector. For-profit honest banking is not intellectually demanding, yet it can be a source of steady income. Historically, banking has been dependent upon trust between bank and customer; any hint of a bank lacking integrity would cause a run on its resources and collapse. Attributes of a sound banker rested upon a cautious outlook, good judgement of human nature, attention to detail, and sober assessment of potential innovation.

When, deliberately misapplied, ideas from the economist Friedrich von Hayek gave the excuse for what's now the dominant economic movement known as Neoliberalism, the change in banking and much else in the governance of polities was dramatic. This gained public awareness after Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan - each with good qualities, but neither of whom was well-placed to pose searching questions to academic economists - were persuaded to adopt the neoliberal outlook. During their concurrent terms in high political office, starting in the early-eighties, each introduced policies intended to free commerce from onerous constraints; additionally, they sought to privatise hitherto communally owned services and, upon those services remaining in the public domain, to demand the introduction of supposedly beneficial 'business-like management'.

Thatcher's policies were presented plausibly, and cunningly tempted well-off people, literally, to buy-into the new ethos through the purchase of discounted shares in privatised concerns; the less well-off were inducted into 'property owning democracy' through the generously priced sell-off of 'council housing' (aka communally owned 'social housing'). A major event was the City of London 'Big Bang' in 1986 when 'deregulation' was introduced.

Following the 'Bang', in the City, and after its introduction in other nations, the 'financialised' (non-productive and immensely pseudo-wealth producing) economy emerged; it soon to dwarf traditional manufacturing, much to the detriment of present-day Europe and the USA. Alongside this, 'casino banking' arose; a shift of emphasis in banking, and in associated financial concerns, to 'profit maximisation' by almost any means, and little heed given to risk: progenitor of the 2008/9 banking fiasco and anticipated worse yet to come.

A few examples of the rot include the following. Relaxation/near-abandonment of prudent fractional reserve banking. Introducing opaque and dodgy financial instruments known as 'derivatives'. Rehypothecation of assets, e.g. 'paper gold' far in excess of available physical gold. Algorithmic trading, the rise of 'hedge funds', rampant market manipulation through 'shorting' stock ('naked shorting' being the worst), predatory venture capitalism, and so forth. The distortional effect upon medium to long-term business planning resulting from bonus culture. Profit-maximisation and 'never mind externalities'. Truly a playground for the corrupt.

Many of the aforementioned ploys, 'clever wheezes', and 'casino' activities, depend upon people devising mathematical models, statistical tools, and automated trading algorithms to gain 'an edge' on competitors, and to run rings around managers of pension funds, and, of course, lay folk. It's doubtful whether banking CEO's have a grip upon the technologies they rely upon; no matter, so long as money flows in, bonuses accrue, and share allocations for retirement grow, why should they care whether the whole house of cards falls one day? Bear in mind that banking CEOs are not entrepreneurs. They are mere employees of shareholders. They lack emotional, or financial, 'skin in the game'. Furthermore, they cream off that which they can. Meanwhile, the City, via ancient traditions, maintains a grip on Parliament. This is strengthened by the ease with which political figures are 'bought'; that either through mechanisms for current handouts (recollect 'brown envelopes') or via promises of lucrative sinecures upon retirement from politics and when 'conflict of interest' may be denied; why do the names Blair, Clegg, and Johnson, suddenly pop up in my mind?

Perhaps, Dr Heidi Thiemann, and similar people concerned with space technology, or people interested in other spheres demanding high intellect and skills, ought not bemoan the 'loss' of graduates to the City. Clearly, those graduates are not 'driven' by curiosity into anything of deep cultural import. They will fit well into the motivations, shallow concerns, and short-sighted thinking, of the people offering them employment.