COUNTRIES all over the world are struggling to cope with serious economic problems and many people in Britain, and elsewhere, will have to accept a fall in their standard of living because banks in the USA, Britain and in other countries, have recklessly lent money to people who have now lost their homes because they couldn't keep up their mortgage payments when interest rates were increased.
The banks were making huge profits, and colossal bonuses were paid out to the bosses and staff who were taking the risks. Making profits came before sound banking practices and that, in addition to big increases in the prices of oil, food and other c
ommodities, has resulted in the possibility of a world-wide recession.
Today, Britain faces serious financial challenges. Firstly, we have to replace one third of our power stations and this means building coal-fired stations quickly to make sure we avoid serious power cuts while new nuclear stations are being completed.
In addition, we have to host the London Olympics in 2012, complete the £30b London Crossrail line and rebuild or remodel every secondary school in the country. Unfortunately we are unlikely to have enough qualified engineers and scientists to work on these huge projects and many British workers are likely to be doing the labouring jobs while foreign engineers and scientists do the complex, well-paid work.
We also have to pay for the increasingly costly NHS because great advances in clinical care continue to be made. The NHS will need large numbers of doctors, nurses and other qualified people and we can't assume that qualified people will always want to come to Britain to work in general practice and in our hospitals.
Obviously we need to persuade many more of our school pupils to study maths, physics, chemistry and biology so that well-qualified engineers, scientists, doctors and other technicians will leave our universities and play their part in creating a technologically successful Britain.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of evidence which indicates that school examinations in Britain have been made easier over the last 20 years while, at the same time, pupils have been avoiding maths and the sciences in favour of other subjects.
It seems that our education system will have huge problems to overcome if Britain is to produce the required numbers of highly competent graduates in engineering, science and medicine.
I very much hope that any necessary improvements in educational attainment can be achieved. Britain's future depends on it.
Jim Allan,
Hartlepool.
The full article contains 422 words and appears in Hartlepool Mail newspaper.
