Graduate attacks outsourcing of UK water engineering jobs to India etc as a cheap electoral gimmick by way of keeping water bills down.

This raises several questions about what exactly the rest of us who can’t work as highly paid bankers, footballers or celebrities but who  can make things (or could make things given the chance) are supposed to do in the future.

Also, why is the government and the Engineering Employers Federation not getting together and setting out a planned strategy to build home grown energy sources, be it nuclear or renewables, to properly stimulate the economy with things that will earn a return, rather than being frittered away on new cars and plasma tvs, which merely come with an imported fuel tag?

China seems to be doing just that – ie investing heavily in green energy technologies of whatever kind – in my opinion we should be doing the same, and the situation is so dire we cannot merely rely on failed (look around you) market approaches.

The whole de-indsutrialisation of UK is part of a tacit collusion between the banking and finance ” industries” (most politicisans know if they play ball they can walk into lucrative non-exec posts in the finance / energy sector (Mr A. Blair – JP Morgan, £1m salary for doing what? John Hutton ex Trade Secretary to EDF, Brian McAllister ex Minister for Energy to AMEC etc) with the collusion of the national press whose sepciaslist reporters are bought off by the media department of the big companies – if you play ball you will get fed juyicy snipets from time to time, and taken on freeby trips abroad.  No wonder radical parties are gaining ground and being attached by all the main parties.

This is also a result of our lamentable first past the post viting system, which allows the Prime Minister enormous personal power and means that large vested interestes only have to nobble 1 party – this is much harder in say Germany whereeven  the greens have to be bought into any deal meaning a better chance of a fair deal.

kind regards

Dave Andrews

Claverton Group

The consultant I work for is undergoing a major redundancy process in the water engineering side of the business, with the majority of jobs being lost at graduate level and below.

We have been informed that the reasons for this are that the draft determination from Ofwat appears particularly tough and as such, we won’t be getting any work out of the water companies for possibly as much as a year. It is also apparent that when the work does start to come, unachievable efficiency will be required, forcing consultants to “offshore” work to India and the like.

To make graduates redundant in this country, only to employ staff in India in their place does not seem acceptable. If we, as an industry, are left with this as the only option to be able to survive, then it would seem that Ofwat has got it wrong and we should be doing more to influence its decision making.

This is a very important issue for the country as we have already practically lost manufacturing as an industry and cannot afford to lose construction skills overseas.

It is also clear that the reason for the harsh determination is that the government doesn’t want to put water bills up because it is still hoping to win the approaching General Election.

This is unacceptable and is destroying an industry. What is the ICE doing about this?

• Joe Andrews,