Please also remember we have a chronic shortage of trained engineers in the country you cannot just go down to the Job Centre and pick them up. Professional Engineers (4 years University then on the job training) and Technicians all take many years to train. We are also short of the raw material in that our Schools are not inspiring their pupils to study Physics even to GCSE and Maths to A levels. This is therefore not going to be easy to fix.
My late father often used to echo your words ellendune. My cause wasn't helped by failing Physics O Level, only to discover he had helped to set some of the questions!