Are we in a bubble?

[Mark Bolam]

The media seem to focus on some people who are hard hit, but were running a shit business before the pandemic.

One hipster was selling loaves of artisan bread to people in house boats, baked in a normal kitchen oven.

 

Probably made about £20 a day.

 

’Lockdown ruined my life’.

 

Boo hoo hoo.

[s o c]

Many of the rural/village pubs have been struggling for a good while 

[Mick Dempsey]

@Mark Bolam
 

Reminds me of a story.

 

My mum used to bake Irish bread for us, it’s unleaven so a bit sort of primitive but nice anyway.

So down the lane there were a couple of hipster (it was the late 80s so that didn’t exist but you get the idea) poofs who owned and ran a kennel for Great Danes got to hear about it and asked her if they could have some of it ‘happy to pay’

For a number of years one of them used to turn up every few days to collect and pay the 50p or whatever, if we didn’t have the change for a quid he’d get a bit anxious, I don’t know if he thought us Oirish with no self control would lose our minds with all that extra money and descend into drunkenness but we had to find it anyway.

Pissed ourselves laughing about them regularly.

Mum never worked up the courage to tell them she couldn’t be arsed. 
They moved away in the end.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Mick Dempsey

[Paddy1000111]

29 minutes ago, Mark Bolam said:

What’s the craic in the aviation industry when the world opens up again Paddy?

Will it still be a long time before they need the same amount of people doing the jobs?

 

Obviously hospitality is bolloxed, but I can see it bouncing back very, very quickly.

Chatting to my friends who are still working in it by the sounds of things its going to be at least 2 years until full recovery. There's going to be a spike after the pandemic with everyone going on holiday, all flights will be maxed out, hospitality maxed out etc etc BUT you have to think of all the companies that have gone under. Whilst the industry is going to be booming, airlines, hotels and agencies don't pop up overnight. Using random numbers for example, let's say before the pandemic there was 500 jobs in one sector and everything was flooded before the pandemic, too many people too little work. After the pandemic there will be say 200. I think it will take 2 years to get to 400 because most of these companies learnt their lesson that there were too many slackers and the usual too many chiefs not enough Indians story! 

[JaySmith]

100% we are in a bubble. All of the firms around here have never been busier, everybody is saying they’ve got months of work ahead and doing 6 days at week. True? Maybe. Obviously many people have been hard hit by the pandemic and lost jobs and loved ones and probably not worried about getting the hedge trimmed as they’ve got bigger fish to fry. However for others who have been on furlough or working from home and saving money in commuting, eating out, holidays etc are wondering what to spend their money on. This has definitely made things very buoyant around our way. From my own point of view I was on furlough for a bit in the first lockdown on 100% money and since then I’ve been doing 6 days a week as I can’t do much else so for me I’ve got more cash in my pocket than I would normally have. I’m very much of the view I’m making hay while the sun shines as I think we’ll be in for a correction at some point and I want to weather the storm. I think as an arb business if you have a varied client base, ie not all domestic with a decent mix of commercial, schools, councils, churches etc then there will always be work there.

I think many tradespeople will be caught with their trousers down when the gravy train hits the buffers. I’m doing up a house at the moment to rent back out, I’m doing some of the work myself after work and weekends and luckily my girlfriends family are all in trades so i can access decent people who help me out. However for stuff we haven’t got contacts for getting somebody to even come out and quote or have the decency to say they won’t be coming is hard to find. I personally think a lot of people are resting on their laurels at the moment as they’ve got so much work on but when the tap is turned off they’ll be the first ones moaning. I had a guy coming out today to look at some replacements doors and a couple of windows, a couple of grands worth of work. Having already cancelled the appointment on Thursday he was a no show after two hours, texted him to find out what was going on and his response was it will have to be some time next week when i can get round mate, no apology or anything. The job was his as I know people who’ve used him and work is quality but he couldn’t even be bothered to pick the phone up. I need it doing before I can move on with other bits of the project but I ain’t that desperate!

[Mick Dempsey]

3 minutes ago, JaySmith said:

100% we are in a bubble. All of the firms around here have never been busier, everybody is saying they’ve got months of work ahead and doing 6 days at week. True? Maybe. Obviously many people have been hard hit by the pandemic and lost jobs and loved ones and probably not worried about getting the hedge trimmed as they’ve got bigger fish to fry. However for others who have been on furlough or working from home and saving money in commuting, eating out, holidays etc are wondering what to spend their money on. This has definitely made things very buoyant around our way. From my own point of view I was on furlough for a bit in the first lockdown on 100% money and since then I’ve been doing 6 days a week as I can’t do much else so for me I’ve got more cash in my pocket than I would normally have. I’m very much of the view I’m making hay while the sun shines as I think we’ll be in for a correction at some point and I want to weather the storm. I think as an arb business if you have a varied client base, ie not all domestic with a decent mix of commercial, schools, councils, churches etc then there will always be work there.

I think many tradespeople will be caught with their trousers down when the gravy train hits the buffers. I’m doing up a house at the moment to rent back out, I’m doing some of the work myself after work and weekends and luckily my girlfriends family are all in trades so i can access decent people who help me out. However for stuff we haven’t got contacts for getting somebody to even come out and quote or have the decency to say they won’t be coming is hard to find. I personally think a lot of people are resting on their laurels at the moment as they’ve got so much work on but when the tap is turned off they’ll be the first ones moaning. I had a guy coming out today to look at some replacements doors and a couple of windows, a couple of grands worth of work. Having already cancelled the appointment on Thursday he was a no show after two hours, texted him to find out what was going on and his response was it will have to be some time next week when i can get round mate, no apology or anything. The job was his as I know people who’ve used him and work is quality but he couldn’t even be bothered to pick the phone up. I need it doing before I can move on with other bits of the project but I ain’t that desperate!

I just want to congratulate you on the amount of metaphors you’ve used. 
fish to fry 

make hay

weather the storm

trousers down

Gravy train hitting the buffers (two in one)

resting on laurels

tap is turned off.

 

Marvelous stuff:)

[JaySmith]

I just want to congratulate you on the amount of metaphors you’ve used. 
fish to fry 
make hay
weather the storm
trousers down
Gravy train hitting the buffers (two in one)
resting on laurels
tap is turned off.
 
Marvelous stuff:)

Haha wasn’t even planned! Must be the way I talk, I’ll be all shy and self conscious now!

[Mick Dempsey]

You’ll be more nervous than a virgin at a prison rodeo!

[Mark Bolam]

Hahahaha, if arb goes tits-up Jay you’d get a job writing headlines for The Sun no problem!

[agg221]

1 hour ago, Paddy1000111 said:

Funny that! My experience is my old aviation buddies and there's bugger all work on and most are unemployed or doing a "filler" job like working at princess yachts. The engineering sector has been fully shafted! 

It's very odd in engineering.

 

The UK never trained enough engineers. We always used to recruit a lot from mainland Europe, but where I work our European staff have mostly chosen to go back to the EU, partly because they didn't feel that Britain really wanted them and partly because they felt they had more flexibility by doing so (including the fact that they could visit their families). Last year we made 100 redundancies (out of 700 staff) and we made three more last week so it looks set to continue - there was strong signposting of what would probably be another 50 or so. Against that, we have had nearly 20 departures already this year due to people either retiring or finding other, better jobs and all the people I knew who were made redundant last year have gone on to new jobs, some of them significantly better than the old one.

 

Aerospace has never looked worse and oil & gas is long-term shaky, but energy as a whole is buoyant, including nuclear at Hinkley point with Sizewell to follow and the Rolls Royce SMR programme, together with major investment in fusion. There are also new wind turbine facilities being built - blades on Teesside and towers in Scotland. There is a huge amount going on with electric vehicles too and hydrogen is very much up and coming. Yellow goods looks like it will be OK as there are various infrastructure programmes starting, such as widening the reach of superfast broadband, which will probably underpin Civil too, along with telecoms. Medical engineering has never been a better business to be in.

 

I think what's happening is a realignment. Good companies will lose staff due to contraction, bad companies will lose staff due to there being a shortage of engineers. I think engineering will be one of the sectors which sorts itself out in the fairly near term. The problem is going to be trying to guess where in the country you need to relocate to.

 

Alec