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Discuss How is the tiling industry serving us fixers.? in the UK Tiling Forum area at TilersForums.com.
The whole place is becoming one big call centre! I found my tradesmen to be great teachers not only in matters of tiling but teaching you respect discipline and the virtues of hard graft, something you dont get at uni, My wife seen us in a diffrent light a few years ago when she was studying at Glasgow uni when her favourite lecturer was lamenting about us Tilers & how he has much admiration for us.
Im a 4th generation fixer and love my trade, just so sad to see it become what it has the building trade as a whole.
My brother is a Carpenter and starts whistling the moment his tool belt is on again a proud tradesman, how is your son finding the career change?
Northern Italy, lake Como ( quite near George Clooney lol).
Although things are starting to slightly change here as well...
I always get into trouble expressing opinions.....
IMHO the UK (or GB to use the out of fashion phrase) is a relic of its Commonwealth. We still believe we are better than other nationalities and are definitely elitist and probably racist. That is a generalisation, and I apologise (before you all gang up on me) to those who have more open minded opinions, but before you place yourselves in that category, ask yourself these questions:
Do you judge peoples intelligence and ability by their qualifications or by the person they are and what they can achieve?
Does it actually matter at all who lives in this country?
Do you judge people by their origin or by their standards?
Is it more important to have a job well done or a job done by a person born and raised in the UK?
I have 6 O levels, 2 A levels, and a number of professional managerial qualifications. My wife has no qualifications, left school at 15 and has done manual work all her life. She is actually more intelligent than me, and has a much greater knowledge of many things - but I can write it better than her.
I have been involved in professional tiling for just 2 years. I am perfectly happy to tile, perfectly happy to compete with any other tiler for work, and accept that I am probably never going to achieve the skills that I have seen displayed by some other tilers. I watched a tiler from Poland at work recently - I still have an awful lot to aspire to achieve. That will not stop me from tiling, and making a living from it. We are still in a recession. Times are hard. You have to be prepared to work harder for less earnings - there is nothing to achieve by bemoaning the influx of tradesmen/women from other countries - who incidentally are also in recession.
My sole whinge is about people (from anywhere) who undercut my tiling business by taking on tiling work they are incapable of doing. I am currently writing up a quotation for a customer who has a partially tiled bathroom - 3 tradesmen said "oh, I can tile" then bodged it. Polished porcelain that is not level, excessively lipped, the cuts look like they were hammered, the grout lines are all different sizes, the corner tile grout lines are crooked and 1 tradesmen spent a whole day partially completing a window reveal. So thats 1 (English) plumber, 1 (English) carpenter and 1 (English) tiler who have bodged and failed to complete a relatively small tiling job. This has nothing to do with where a person is from and everything to do with greed and over confidence. But I guess that is one of the effects of our recession.
As a pro tiler with over twenty years experience, I find the industry in general has been and still is lacking any credibility. Until the trade is regulated in much the same way as gas and electric, it will continue to be a free for all, with the "anyone can tile" attitude, for many years to come!
Ok. So some of you think that downturn on the market is migrant foult. I do not think so. East European are doing lot of good work here, much more positives then problems. Europe is our place as well as French, Germans, Italians. Roosvelt and Churchill gave us under Stalin occupation, actually under 45 years occupation and that has ruined our countries. When it was econamical grow everyone was happy that migrants doing lot of work, that British can make more money. There is lot of British doing profit in Poland (eg BP, Tesco). So what wrong that migrants are here??!! Maybe it is socialists idiots foult. Socialists have ruled this country for last years, they gives lot of benefits to people who really dont deserve it. Law is so stupid that people choose to do nothing instead of working. There is so much demoralization in country which gives so many opportiunites, that is strage, that is socialists foult, they made people lazy, now when it is very important to do cuts, here is so many strikes, citizens get used to consumption. You need another Margaret.
As a pro tiler with over twenty years experience, I find the industry in general has been and still is lacking any credibility. Until the trade is regulated in much the same way as gas and electric, it will continue to be a free for all, with the "anyone can tile" attitude, for many years to come!
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