Athos - not only is it strange it is bloody maddeningathos wrote: Comet,
"I am regarded as untrainable and therefore unemployable in Britain"
Looks strange to me. If someone wants to work even tough it's below what he was trained for, you should find work. The most important thing is, find work and prove you are able to work.
I will go 
fftopic: to answer your question and say why I am regarded as "unemployable" and "untrainable". I left college aged 18 - back then employers would only provide training for 16-17 year olds. They had the "Youth Training Scheme" and if you weren't eligible for that (ie if you were 18 or above) you were expected to have gained two years experience in employment. As I left school at 18 this was impossible for me. I was told by employers that they would only train people who were under the age of 18.
When I reached the age of 20, the fashionable training age became 16-18 (why wasn't it like that when I was 18) and you were regarded as too old at age 19.
This continued until I was 27, when the Blair government were voted in. Blair introduced the "New Deal" for unemployed 18-24 year olds, and provided a financial incentive for employers to take on people under 24, which meant that people over 24 had no chance of finding work if they were unemployed. People over 25 can join the New Deal, but only if they have been out of work for 18 consecutive months (if you are under 25 you only need to be out of work for 6 months
) And then the employer receives no allowance for training towards a qualification, unlike with the under 25s. Hot on the heels of the New Deal came the hideous Modern Apprenticeship scheme, again for people under 25. At the same time, funding for many work schemes for over 25s was scrapped by the Blair government. From September, it was announced that the upper age limit for the Modern Apprenticeship would be axed and anyone could do one. But of course there is a catch - there is only funding available for apprentices under the age of 25, which means that no employer will train someone over 25 at their own cost when they can have someone younger and it won't cost a penny
The Blair government has announced it will outlaw age discrimination in the workplace, but what the hell is the point when there is the legalised discrimination like New Deal and Modern :censored: Apprenticeships?
And what really p*sses me off is that anyone out of work is automatically labelled as "idle work shy layabouts". I want to work, I love to work, but thanks to Tony :censored: Blair I will never have trhe opportunity to work because I am over twenty :censored: five!!!!!
