Can I just be erm. lemmy think...the 3rd person! to admit to working in retail!!
Yea, it's not an ideal situation for everybody Vlad, but think about it, where would you buy your books, dvd's, food etc if everybody in Scotland decided to stop working in shops? I assume the same goes for cinemas, petrol stations.....I could go on!
We need a higher minimum wage, and people like that guy who offered a girl less than minimum wage should be reported and prosecuted. Most folk who work in retail (that I've met, ok, this is not a generalisation) are either (a) in Uni, keeping themselves solvent while they study, (b) Happy to work there for a while but have definite plans to move on, (c) People who have children or a dependent adult to look after and can't work more than a part time job.
We can't ALL be top of the line in our fields of work, we need a chain of folk, from the school leavers to the been-working-here-30 years, man and boy types. Retail is a very important sector, yes, but it's not the be all and end all. But people still want somewhere to spend those hard earned wages, and not everybody's gonna buy premium bonds or invest in stocks and shares. If folk want to buy pap, let them buy it, it's their money!
Industry's never gonna be what it was in Scotland, refer to whatever century you please here. We have to work with the new industries. But I can tell you for a fact, the IT industry in Scotland is so overcrowded that the wages are less here than they are for the same jobs in places like Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham. Sillicon Valley is flooded!
And as for Tesco, don't get me started! Now here's a thing, I'm dead against the development of the one in Partick, as I feel the area does not in all honesty need one. But I am in favour of the one in Pollock, as it seems to me that it clearly does. I was on a training course in the area, with the aim of getting a job out that way, and saw all the info and bumpf and stats for the project, but I decided not to go for a job out that way, it's just slightly too far from where I am for a reasonable journey on public transport.