PROFIT FROM PARTS DIARY OF A SEASON - LONGHAM MOWERS FACE TO FACE - KUBOTA'S DAVE ROBERTS TRAINING & EDUCATION LAUNCH OF BUSINESS MONITOR INDUSTRY AWARDS INFO BTME & LAMMA REVIEWS PRODUCT NEWS JIM GREEN
EVERYTHING IS AWESOME . . . . . but it depends on where you sit
LAST weekend, I went with my grandchildren to see The Lego Movie. It was terrific on so many levels. The young ones loved the whiz-bang action scenes, the characters and the extraordinary special effects. Whilst there were plenty of satire gags and ironic observations in the dialogue for the ‘oldies’ to lap up.
And of course, here is a toy that spans the generations in a way that Meccano and its ilk have failed to achieve. Pervading the film, and indeed annoyingly the eardrums afterwards, was the theme tune, Everything is Awesome, a thumping disco ditty which lodges in the brain for days on end.
So, thanks George Osborne.
The tune was starting to subside in my head when up jumps the Chancellor on Wednesday, and to paraphrase his message Everything is Awesome.
Not only that, the image of rows upon rows of Lego builders, construction workers, helpers and others, all with painted smiles on their faces, creating massive townships with all the infrastructure in place came back to me from the film.
Everything was up, up, up. The economy of GB PLC is leading the world whilst others are playing catch up.
By contrast, Ed Milliband painted a picture of Dickensian Britain. The rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, food banks working overtime, the lights about to go out. His trigger word is Crisis, and his ditty might have been Everything is Awful.
Meanwhile the country is entitled to ask. How can two of our political leaders, eyeball to eyeball in the confines of the Westminster Chamber, present such diametrically opposed visions of our country today?
If we simply put it down to politics, then that in itself is a very sad reflection.
I guess the truth about the current state of the nation lies somewhere in the middle of the Osborne / Milliband visions. As a grey haired pensioner, you might conclude that there were parts of the Budget that I found agreeable.
But then I’m not a 20 - 25 year old either trying to look for work or on the first rung of the housing market ladder.
That said, I always prefer a positive approach than a bucketful of negatives. A can-do attitude rather than a can’t do. Resourcefulness rather than waiting for things to happen.
And it is reassuring to see apprenticeships rising to the top of the political agenda. That in itself presents our industry with its own challenge.
How do we utilise our resourcefulness in order to attract new recruits into this unsung, under-reported, under publicised, under-funded but highly addictive and satisfying industry of ours?
