I’m not being obtuse but don’t actually understand what you mean?
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Yes I did think that was a very sexist stereotype post, those attitudes belong in the last century
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About the gym?
Just that when I go I meet people of various ages and physiques who generally enjoy the experience in their own way.
I guess gyms are far more accessible than they were in the past and less intimidating.
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I quite firmly agree with @HelenP !
One’s station in life?? Haven’t heard this phrase uttered here …ever! Only read about it in very old classic books. The times of keeping people under “a thumb” because of money or power has long passed.
Welcome to the 21st century!
We are individuals who choose who we become as adults in society. Work hard, have goals, earn respect, loyalty and support others who are invested in us and themselves. It’s possible, probable, and reality.
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What made you think that Helen?
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No nothing to do with gym, your previous post.
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That it’s. “Unnatural for blokes to sit on their bottom all day”
Is it natural for either sex to do so?
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Sorry for not being inclusive Helen, It’s unnatural for women to sit on their bottom’s all day when there’s Ironing to be done…
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It is not knowing ones station in life but how you treat others that count
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I can assure anyone who is interested that working in a high pressure finance environment is very hard work and very much real work.
Sometimes things get so complicated and you have to work and think so fast that something known as brain frying happens. I’ve worked all night more than once in my career. On occasions all weekend. It’s definitely physically exhausting, but also mentally very stressful. So when you are training, you do all this and then go home and spend what is left of your evening studying for professional exams. You spend your holiday leave studying too. The exams are grueling and very time pressured.
I may have spent a lot of time in my working life sitting and staring at a screen, but I was always very physically active outside work hiking up mountains, running, swimming, yoga etc and I was always very slim and fit. The only time I ever put on any weight was during covid lockdown when I developed long covid and my fitness nosedived. Thankfully that’s all gone back to normal now. But it wasn’t sitting at a desk that caused it but being forced to sit in the house and work from home.
I consider myself very lucky to have had these jobs, to have enjoyed being mentally challenged and appreciated for my problem solving or just for being me. I’ve worked with some really nice people and had lots of laughs and deep meaningful chats and that has made it all worthwhile.
I can’t think what else I could have done. After all it’s not like I am physically built to be a welder or bricklayer. I did once work as a chambermaid in a five star hotel in the summer when I was a teen doing A levels and I found that physically very exhausting. I remember some American tourists asking me what the heck I was doing in that job.
Every society needs people with the right skills to go to the jobs that need those skills. I think everyone of us should be valued for the work we do. We should all try to be the best at whatever it is we are doing and life is a learning experience so why not grab the opportunities and fulfill your potential whatever it may be.
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You should be proud Annie, not everyone could do your job. 
The UK has changed beyond recognition, finance is the new engineering, people these days need to be qualified to work with their brains, because all the jobs are in finance, admin, media, etc…I watch the chase every night and Bradley asks the contestants what jobs they do, there is very rarely a plumber, electrician, bricklayer, engineer, joiner, I don’t recognise most of the jobs, and those I do recognise are usually something to do with charities or universities.
When I ran the London marathon back in 1989 you had to state your occupation on the application, and the occupation of the largest number of runners was Engineer…
Not today… 
We are extinct!
I’ve loved every job I’ve done over my 50 year career, I was happy to go to work, and suffered very little or no stress. As you point out Annie, no so today…
The UK survives on people like you in finance, but what about all the people who work with their hands? What will they do now?
You have to ask yourself if the human body was designed to use it’s brain rather than it’s muscles, it certainly sounds like most humans are not properly equipped to use it’s mental attributes rather than it’s physical ones. Hence we have enormous amounts of stress, suicides, and health issues…
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these are actually the careers which are on the rise now, because we very much need professional and intelligent people who can do this type of work. It’s not valued enough in our society.
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Let’s ignore your strange method of identifying the numbers of people in different occupations (watching a quiz show rather than googling the information). 120,000 plumbers, 220,000 electricians, 190,000 car mechanics, 190,000 welders, 300,000 carpenters - even if very few enter TV quizzes. Maybe too busy at work making money.
The point you raise, though, is serious and highlights a serious failing by governments - starting with Thatcher. The move away from manufacturing and towards service industries started in earnest with Thatcher who fully championed this move. This move to outsourcing happened here and in the US and most western countries. And in both countries the idea was that people would be retrained and kids would be given training in the skills needed for this economy - IT skills, analytical skills, etc. Guess what - that bit cost money and required a strategy, and investment, and directing schools, colleges and universities to the right subjects and all the long term hard stuff that politicians can’t be bothered with. Same as in the US. So it did not happen.
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Are you sure you wanted to make that claim?
First, many jobs are a mix of both. An electrician has significant mental gymnastics to work wiring plans. A car mechanic faces ever more complex vehicles. There are very few jobs that simply require hitting something with a hammer or digging a hole.
Then consider the stresses of some desk based jobs (actually of any job). An inability to handle the stress comes from two place - bad management and lack of education on how to handle stress. Fix both those things and the stress is manageable.
Then ask - am I really saying that there are lots of thick people who can only do physical work? Sounds like you are insulting the vast majority of work force.
PS around 6 million people are employed in engineer & technology jobs in the UK. What was your point again?
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I agree. I was a professional engineer, specifically power electronics. Perhaps I was lucky it that got business everywhere - paper mills, steel mills, cement works, water turbines etc, but that has been dropped off significantly - except water…
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Did I say thick only thick people do physical jobs?
In the past most jobs (if not all) demanded physical attributes mixed with Mental ones, now the pendulum has swung to most jobs only requiring mental attributes and less, or no, physical ones. My demonstration seen in quiz games was a good example of this, being as most quiz games take a good cross section of the general public.
You rely on statistics probably assembled by some establishment wanting to make a point, as you obviously do, nobody assembled the contestants on a quiz show, they are completely random.
How many of the six million you quoted in engineering and technology jobs were in a financial or admin capacity?
The lack of education comes from most university students are being taught in the wrong subjects (if university was the correct choice at all) and acquiring qualifications for jobs that they will never do. Once upon a time you could judge a persons ability to do certain jobs by their qualifications because they were rare and only achieved by the academics of this world.
now qualifications are as widespread as driving licences and are thus devalued.
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Well you did state “sounds like most humans are not properly equipped to use it’s mental attributes rather than it’s physical ones.” Which looks a lot like you are saying that most people are not equipped to use their brain. How else should we read this?
Surely it is a sad state if further education is only for subjects that lead to jobs? You are ditching most arts courses and much of the science curriculum. If someone has a passion for medieval French, or whatever, and gets a good degree in that - why is that bad? Most people do not really have any experience of the career they end up doing and even students doing courses specifically for a profession aren’t much equipped for those jobs until they get work experience. And surely they can ditch that career after university if they so wish. This notion of further education to lead to specific jobs has never been the case for most, nor should it.
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Because their priority should be training for a job as soon as they leave school, arts courses are just hobbies and can be applied once they can feed and house themselves.
There’s a good reason why apprenticeships start as soon as you leave school at say 16 17 or 18. Because when they leave university at 21 they think they know it all and virtually impossible to train. Who wants to take orders from someone less qualified that they are.
It’s been my experience from my two grand daughters (and some of their friends) that the only thing that they came away from university with was a boyfriend/husband and none of them are doing jobs that they gained qualifications for…
I don’t blame the kids, they are classed as a failures today if they don’t get enough qualifications to go to the university of their choice, no wonder they exhibit so much stress and suicide…Too much peer pressure on them.
I blame that kretin Blair and the system. Farage will do things different… 
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I can’t remember whether it was a university lecturer or an A level teacher who told us that the main thing you gain from a university education is an ability to think. Which I would agree with.
Although these days some students are using chatgpt to do their essays so that may explain a lot.
I can understand why employers don’t like apprentices these days for the same reason as above. If kids are coming out of school with a poor education and a lack of work ethic they won’t last in an apprenticeship. We had 92 applications for an apprenticeship we ran a few years ago. In the end some of the applications were so poor that we ended up with a graduate apprentice. Some people thought it was ok to submit applications with poor grammar and spelling mistakes for a job that stated attention to detail as a required attribute. The apprenticeship scheme was so labour intensive on both us and the applicants that the person we recruited quit after a year and a half citing the pressure of the scheme as a reason. I refused to entertain doing it again.
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