"Whats worse is the kids will see their parents not working and see that as the norm and i would wager a healthy sum be happy to take up the same career."
Sadly endemic in this neck of the woods, and much of it can be traced back to the 84 strike – lot of blokes found themselves on the scrapheap and ended up believing they were worthless, months turned into years and now we have a whole generation that have never gone out to work. I wont be so glib as to blame it all on the Thatcher government, but she played a part, of that I have no doubt. I made a total career change when I left the pit, but I saw a lot of people that werent able to do that. It feels like the working classes have been replaced by the 'benefit' classes sometimes. Having said that, dont believe everything the media tells you, they've always got an angle of their own to cover.