You are joking right?
This is starting to look habitual however. If the specifics of your post are of no interest to you, perhaps find a different way to post, especially if it involves discussing quite specific details.
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Hubby worked alongside people who went into engineering with A levels in maths and physics, but no degree. They were never as senior as him because you had to have a degree to be chartered, but, as my husband freely admits, they were no worse an engineer than he was.
Hubby said he struggled in his first years in work because, while he had the mathematical ability he had never applied it in the particular setting he worked in and that ability, to make sound judgments etc only came with on the job experience.
Hubby enjoyed his university years and it gave him access to jobs those with just A levels couldn’t even apply for, but, he would argue, it didn’t make him a better engineer.
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My brother when his his mid 30’s and been in building since 16 wth his C&G went back to get a business management degree but ended up teaching the class and the lecturers how to use a theodolite and other building practices because the lecturers had never had on the site/job experiences or information on how it all works. He said they were about as qualified as a chocolate teapot.
In my experience the best acountants I have ever met were those who weren’t Chartered.
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And preferably not accountants 
I’ve met and dealt with many Chartered Accountants over the years, they are salesmen, the articled clerks did all the work and the partner just produced the Mont Blanc to sign the audit at the end.
They were always trying to upsell you on something. Often with the support of the CFO because he was one of the Chartered cabal too. A report or study or any old thing that they were totally unqualified to deliver. Some spotty apprentice for a month at 2K a day to tell you SFA about SFA 
Just to boost revenue and look good in the partner’s revenue stakes at year end, when bonuses are dealt out 
.
Just for info, I’m not talking about fly by night accountants here. My experience comes from decades of working with partners in PWC (poor), KPMG (slightly less poor, but one was the father of my daughter’s best pal at school, so I might be biased).
All lovely people, quite a few I’d call friends, but at this stage, let’s call a spade a spade on how the system works
I’m not sure I ever dealt with the professional (and I use the term loosely) wing of EY or Deloitte but if their IT consulting colleagues were anything to go by 
Back on topic.
Long chat with a pal today. I know him and his family and extended family well for many, many years. Both he and his wife have small businesses and they have four children. They have their own house and the grandparents are near so childcare isn’t too onerous. But they are struggling (not, I suspect, like in the UK, but in their view, struggling).
They are voting Le Pen… la France aux Français has traction. My pal tells me that all their friends are voting the same way.
"“The French live in heaven, but think they live in hell”..
Are there really that many problems caused by foreigners in France?
Maybe all their friends are going to vote for Le Penn, but, how many times have I heard people say, " so are all my friends" to justify their own decisions and make you feel like the odd one out? Too many to mention.
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Consultants will be on my B Ark which be launched towards the nearest black hole.
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I was in what I still call SuperU today prior to my main shopping at Biocoop and as I was looking for a till with a shorter queue I saw the one at the end had only a couple of people, for some reason. As I joined them I could see that they were, at a guess based on their looks, gypsies from the site up the road. Just like anyone else otherwise.
I don’t have a problem with gypsies/romanys but having spent some eye-opening times on a UK farmer’s forum TFF to question “conventional” farming (65% Reform free-speech fanatics, they stopped me eventually) know that they are hated almost viscerally. (I don’t read any newspapers exc The Guardian, the DM is not my territory).
As the neoliberal experiment closes to an unfortunate end the tribal element will take over, hardly anyone remembers WW2 and what the post-war settlement represents.
Back in Devon where I also live, the tiny caravan parked on the verge near the local church with a single part -time resident, has just been smashed up and looted. It had been pushed by a very powerful vehicle into a nearby tree and concertina’d. Farmer’s tractor, possibly.
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The. pal I was talking to about Le Pen also updated me on our local “gypsy alert”. They have descended on his village and the burglaries have started. It was the villages annual fète last weekend, which everyone attends, and there were thirteen burglaries in one night alone. Quick hits for cash, jewellery and computers. They have been very active in their other fields of endeavour too. For example, power tools being stolen from tradesmen’s vans outside restos at lunch time.
The extraordinary price of diesel has given them a new business opportunity. They hit the depot of a plant hire business in the village run by a mate of my pal. The whole operation was caught on CCTV, which my pal saw on his pal’s phone.
There were six of them, very organised. Two went from machine to machine, mini pelles and bigger and stuck a screwdriver into the diesel tank, wiggled it around to open out the hole, stuck a tube in and used a pump (probably a Lidl one 
) to empty the tank into 5lt bidons, which the other four shuttled back to a white van with no registration. All wore cagoules.
They didn’t go near the depot’s main diesel tank because they knew that area was alarmed. The owner reckons the made off with around €1,600 worth of diesel. But now (I forget how many) machines tanks have to be replaced and there’s the loss of revenue too.
These are very nasty, lawless people and they need to be stopped. It cost the village €400k to clean up the “halting site” after their last sojourn. I’ve seen them turn a pristine lounge area on a ferry into a pig sty in thirty minutes.
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Did their cagoules have “gypsy” written on the back? 
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Over the years, when I’ve asked for people’s opinion, because I’m white, comfortably off and centre left, I think people have politely responded in a manner which I would feel comfortable with. Now I’m being more devious and asking trusted friends who are honest with me what their friends honestly think.
Tried it out again at the marché coffee this morning with friends. Some very close. Whereas some years ago one would get a vehement rejection of the FN (as was) now one gets le shrug. And we all know what that means 
BTW, I blame the “wokes” for want of a better word. Their extremism has given the Right all the ammunition it needed to derail a moderate left agenda.
For example, men with willies who have just decided, par hasard, they were female allowed into women’s’ changing rooms WTF. Even I would vote against any fool supporting that. Small boats, all a result of BREXIT but that hasn’t been explained, explained again and again. Ammo for the far Right.
Plus, in my neck of the woods there are too many Arabs (shock, gasp). Men sitting drinking coffee, bullshitting and scratching their bottoms while the women, stuck in traditional dress, are working and minding the kids.
Once again this problem as been avoided by the politicians. Is it any wonder that the French (at least in the South) are up for the removal of the bottom scratchers. And Madame la Fascist has the solution.
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So it"s Arabs they don’t like? I know whether it’s admitted or not people from the Maghreb seem to be discriminated against. What about Africans in general? Is it people from former French colonies or other nations with “history” with France that they’re uncomfortable with? or anybody whose lineage is not white and more or less French ? (I’m including the White Russians who came early last century in “French”). What exactly are people uncomfortable with?
The problem is, all third country nationals will get caught up in any negative changes and these days that’s us. Especially those of us who are committed to France and would like to apply for nationality, but whose majority income comes from outside France for reasons they can’t change.
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I do like that it’s always someone else’s fault that the far right are on the rise. The reality is that the likes of LePen and Farage have made it acceptable again to be racist, sexist and any other ist that you care to choose. I’ve seen a few comments here suggesting (to paraphrase) that “we’ll be fine, they’ll only be after the darkies” which, apart from being abhorrent in it’s own right, is really quite naive as history shows. Once momentum builds, anyone different is fair game.
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That’s how politics works. People vote against ideas as much as for them. Remember, it worked for Labour and gave it a stonking majority when the Tories were so rubbish.
Though the real problem with wokeism is the stultifying effect it has on its adherents. They know what they believe but can’t articulate why (because the “what” is based on emotion and a belief that they are the only good, kind, wise people, and all other views must be suppressed), so they have to resort to calling their opponents names.
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Like “woke” you mean, which has moved far from its original meaning to a catch all insult for anyone left of Attila.
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Not at all.
The reason woke people don’t like it is that it’s a handy term, which woke people themselves created, summarising exactly what they believe on a huge variety of topics—unlike “racist” and “fascist” (and not infrequently “facist”), which depend on the politics and beliefs of the person using the term.
(You’ll have noticed the striking homogeneity of beliefs that woke people have, which is why @Roger_Lapin stands out. For them, he’s sound on Gaza and Israel, but appalling on trans ideology. How dare anyone have views diverging from the norm?)
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The reality is that it’s normal, possibly even hard-wired into humans to other and exclude those who are different. Some may perceive this as terribly wrong, but it’s common and possibly a survival trait to be tribal and protect your own while rejecting the other.
It’s also unclear who is ‘other’ at times, and we’ve been amazed at the friendliness of people in an area that votes RN.
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