Things you miss from pre-recession

Ray Palmer wrote: »

I just simply don't understand this an have no idea what the complaints are other than less money. Did you rip out your heating system and put in a new one that was less efficient? Why are people thinking you are incompetent or a criminal due to the recession?

I miss people being able to afford to go out. I am doing fine but lots aren't.

OK, I will explain it in a bit more detail.


Being able to earn more than I need to spend.

For all sorts of reasons, not recession related, I ended up having to become self employed, which was fine for a while, but then when the recession kicked in, many of the people I did work for had to cut back big time, and being self employed, there's NO safety net, or social welfare, or any other supports. Things like electricity, and other services haven't gone down, and reducing usage can only be taken so far.


Wholesalers who actually have real stock in country that they want to sell.

A huge number of suppliers are now responding with "We don't have that in stock, we can have it for you in 24 hours", which means that they're getting it in overnight from (probably) the UK. Well, guess what guys, if you can get it from the UK overnight, so can I, and usually for considerably less than you're going to charge me for it. I don't mind buying locally, but I very much resent paying a significant mark up to a box shifter who is not holding stock, and not as such providing a service.

Customer service departments that are available the hours the service operates.

Services like the Internet/phones/electricity/gas/water are 24/7. It's no help at all when late on Dec 20th, a fault occurs, you ring their service number to get a recorded message that says something like "thank you for calling ......., Our offices are now closed and will reopen at 9 am on January 6th. If they are providing a 24/7 service, then it's not unreasonable to be able to make contact with them when it goes wrong in less than 2 WEEKS. I wonder if we should be pushing for legislation that would only allow suppliers to charge for a service during the hours they can be contacted.


Heating systems that could be run in winter without a mortgage.

Heating oil is now costing something like €850 per thousand litres, due to circumstances outlined above, that's about the total I will get as "income" in a couple of months, and there are a lot of other bills to pay before oil comes to the top of the list. There's been very little real action in the last while to find and promote viable alternatives to oil, things like wood pellet are all very well for young 20 year olds that don't mind humping several 25 Kg bags of pellets around each day, but at the wrong side of 60, that concept doesn't appeal too much, and the supposed alternative of bulk wood pellets isn't happening, "because there's no demand". It's slightly crazy that the cheapest home heating fuel right now is peat, followed by coal, and there's a massive jump in price per kilowatt before things like oil, gas and electric come into the table.



Being able to do simple things like work on a house alarm, or replace a circuit breaker without being regarded as either incompetent, or a criminal, or both.

My skills were learned a long time ago, and covered areas such as (large) computing, power supply to them, and over time, I've done work on self build of properties, including installing power, gas, plumbing and alarms.
Now, due to the introduction of "regulation", I can't repair an alarm system for my daughter if she pays me to do it, (She would be liable to a €3000 fine for using an "unregistered contractor") despite the fact that an alarm is just a simple specialised computer, which I've worked with for over 40 years. The only way I can do that sort of work now is to join the trade registration body, which will cost a fortune to do, (several thousands of €), just so that I can do things like change a battery on a small box fitted to a window!

The same is now true for Electrics, I know exactly what is involved in replacing a circuit breaker in a switch panel, I've done it (and far more complex) for years, but because I don't have the right piece of paper from the "designated" registration body, which has nothing to do with my skills, and everything to do with restrictive practise, I am now deemed to be either "incompetent", or a criminal for doing things that I have been doing in complete safety for over 40 years.

Try to find a kitchen fitter that will fit gas or Electric appliances now. It's going to be almost impossible, simply because those kitchen fitters won't have been members of the relevant closed membership trade bodies that now control the industry. That means a kitchen fitter now has to have 2 other people on call to fit a kitchen, having them on his payroll won't be even close to viable or economic, and have you tried recently to make a fixed time appointment with a gas fitter or an electrician to get a job done? If you are lucky, you will get a specific day, which may or may not happen, that's no good to someone like a kitchen fitter with a whole range of things to do to complete the job.

Some of these changes have come about because the "trade bodies" are not happy about "their" members losing work, and they've been able to lobby to get restrictions put into place on who can do what. It wouldn't be quite so bad if those same trade bodies would get rid of non performing members, but since when did turkeys vote for Christmas, you don't throw people out that are paying large annual fees to be "members" of the club.

I've had to sort out more celtic cowboy messes on things like electrics than I care to think about, and that was work carried out by supposed professional suppliers, and there are plenty more out there that people don't always know about yet.

Does that clarify what I miss about a few years ago?

Tradesmen in particular were warned that the money they were making would not last and they should save. You are old enough and bold enough to remember that building trade goes in cycles.

And where did I say that my main area of work was building trade? You have made so many assumptions and jumped to so many wrong conclusions. I will just bow out before I say something offensive