Youths need work; work needs doing. Why is it so hard?

WHILE the announcement of any funding from central government for the South West - of which Cornwall is a (small) part - is welcome, it's hard to get too excited about the offer of “up to” £25m for Skills Boot-camps which, Labour tells us, are part of its plans to “steer the economy forward” with reforms which will “refocus the skills landscape towards young, domestic talent”.

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There's nothing to object to in the aspiration - with as many as one in eight 16to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training, something clearly needs to be done - but attempts to improve the skills of the nation's young people have a long and, at least in recent years, ignominious history.

Centuries ago skilled tradesmen formed guilds which set and maintained standards of craftsmanship and took responsibility for training the generation which would succeed them (the first national apprenticeship system was introduced by the Statute of Artificers and Apprentices back in 1563).