Hands that do Dishes

Once we led the way to an industrialised society. Utilising the skills of all our craftsmen and artisans honed over the centuries, we fashioned new ways to meeting tomorrows desires. Now we hardly make anything or at best assemble some others production. Too puny to take on the world markets with an exhausted worn out industry that has since been pulverised. Just the memories of a once rich trading nation linger on.


End of the line? Relegated forever to being a service provider, licking the boots of those nations with the wealth? Not my view of our Nation. We do have to reinvent ourselves of course. As a staring point then, an inventory. An inventory of our handworking skills, not our software or accounting, but those skills we have had to make or fashion objects. As a nation we are noted for being creative, skilled in adapting, having a high technical competences and a wealth of generations of passed on craft skills. 

This is the resource pool we need to capitalise on before we lose everything. We promote ourselves to do what we are really good at. The one-off, the proto-type the pre-production modelling, the mould maker, the pre-production test bed, this is our forte. Able to access and modify the electronics and software controls with the craft skills to fashion hightech products out of raw material or re-cycled spare parts. With the ingenuity to see solutions where others see impossible problems and a high design backoffice to call on. This is what we take to the world market and flog. Got an idea, let us flesh it out for you and demonstrate how it can be turned into a marketable product and on to mass production.


We have to seize this vision of a future and invest in the infrastructure to make it happen. Invest in apprenticeships in all the old and current production techniques, encourage the setting up of production plant and develop the skills to operate them. So invest in schools, training, materials sciences, production techniques and electronic and software controls. Certainly not directly by central government who have a proven deadhand in the status quo but making start-up grants and loans readily available with generous extended paybacks for 'successful' businesses. Let our budding entrepreneurs seek out the rich seams, let them use their ingenuity to overcome market obstacles. Government being there, consistent, supportive, encouraging, being helpful when needed and quick to network problems to solution finders. That way we might still have a meaningful future as a Nation.

Body for Sale

Jamie Oliver writing about his new series the Dream School and the pupils he wants to create opportunities for, referred to a willingness to graft. We all have to sell what we have. Some are lucky, born rich and all they have to do is sell their connection to a past wealth. Some are born intellectually endowed and they have a fertile mind to sell. Their challenge being to settle on which academic field best utilises their particular brain capabilities, juggling mathematical formula, dissecting or crafting tight sentences or creatively investigating and deducing from scant evidence. Others are just born with a well endowed body and have no qualms in selling that for as long as it lasts. We are all out to offer a unique selling point that makes our offer stand out from the crowd, to be irresistible to the employing, hiring, income generating select few.

Some have the gift of creativity to offer but the mass of us are short on such gifts. Perhaps we have a nurturing caring nature and can find a niche there. What Jamie said made sense. The most of us have no particular skill or gift but what we do have and can offer is the willingness to graft. To put in the hours of effort and determination, to learn from the tasks presented and thus makes ourselves indispensable and desirable to be employed. It takes all sorts to make this world go round, we cannot not all be at the top. The grinding mass of everyday work is just as, or as equally important, to keeping the wheels turning as some flash of inspiration.

We all need each other and are dependant on each other, so we all can succeed.