@UrbanHiker - Cambridge; email me if serious.
errrmm ever heard of outsourcing = no jobs in uk = no skills
+1. My job was sent of to Delhi a few years back, although shortly afterwards they closed that office because it was too expensive. It's weird though that we're now seeing so many people from India. It all seems very mixed up.
It's hard to tell your kids to get a job in an industry that is so prone to this.
I think the way schools teach "ICT" doesn't help either. My eldest son started on the ICT GCSE course, aiming to do it a year early (had a broken arm so couldn't do PE). But we just gave up, it was such an utterly soul destroying course. It seemed to be designed to suck you dry of any kind of enthusiasm or interest in the subject, unless writing bogus user requirements documents and developing excel spreadsheets was the kind of thing that turned you on. I don't think C was even mentioned. Utterly pointless.