![\"Man](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/\/974c66b4-9b8b-4ce0-b760-24916b8fa5d4.jpg\")
<\/p>\nEven though he\u2019s not a child any more, Child A is not sure what he wants to do when he grows up. Child B, who is on the verge of adulthood, is very sure. He wants to run a private militia. I\u2019m relaxed about Child A\u2019s lack of direction. I\u2019m not relaxed at all about the militia.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook what happened to Prigozhin though,\u201d I say, showing him an interview with Yevgeny\u2019s poor old mum. \u201cShe\u2019s still waiting to find out why the plane crashed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019m going to have one of the ethically sound private militias,\u201d he says, with an entirely straight face. \u201cI\u2019ll only help the good guys.\u201d <\/p>\n
This is what happens when you don\u2019t insist all your children do history GCSE, but it does rather raise the question: what on earth do kids do these days? Anything involving words, numbers and white collars will now be done by the robots, so you can forget law, journalism, banking, coding and whatever they do at Deloitte. Data entry and call centres \u2014 the only way I ate in my early twenties \u2014 are gone too. Which leaves? Plumbing and building. Good money. Choose your own hours. Feel superior to the husband of the person who called you. Perfect. Sadly it is impossible for anyone in our family to build or plumb. It\u2019s a genetic thing. <\/p>\n
Read more of Matt Rudd\u2019s columns<\/p>\n
Last weekend I followed a Transit van into Asda. I wasn\u2019t doing this because of bad career choices. Even people who love their jobs follow vans into Asda. The point is this one had the words \u201cUnexploded ordnance disposal\u201d printed across its rear doors. It wasn\u2019t a military truck. I don\u2019t think it was even a private military truck. The driver and his mate weren\u2019t wearing fatigues. They looked like plasterers and so my mind started to boggle. Is there a lot of demand for private bomb disposal in Kent? And is it safe to follow these chaps into a supermarket? <\/p>\n
During our one brief meeting in 1991, my school careers adviser never mentioned the possibility of unexploded ordnance disposal. If he had, I might have pointed out that the word \u201cunexploded\u201d was superfluous as no one cares about ordnance that has already exploded. Alas, he didn\u2019t. The only thing I recall him saying was a very rehearsed: \u201cDon\u2019t, whatever you do, become a careers adviser. Ha!\u201d Still, it would have been nice to know about the ordnance disposal industry.<\/p>\n
The internet says that several companies offer unexploded ordnance disposal services in the home counties. I suspect the training would be stressful and the health and safety would be extensive but think of the job satisfaction. Most of the time you\u2019d sit around doing killer sudokus and then boom (or, ideally, not boom), the phone would ring and you\u2019d be off.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t worry, lady,\u201d you\u2019d say with your reassuringly rugged smile to the distressed allotment owner who had just found something ticking under her compost. \u201cUnexploded ordnance disposal is here.\u201d Then you\u2019d get your pliers out of your van and cut the red wire. Then you\u2019d drive to Asda.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Most of the men I know are retraining to be psychotherapists, but they\u2019re middle-aged, so it doesn\u2019t count. By the time my kids are middle-aged the therapists will have gone the way of the lawyers. Instead, the next generation of workers will have to think outside the Nvidia-powered box. I know someone who does marine insurance, which doesn\u2019t sound future-proofed until he explains that it involves deep-sea diving for some reason. I also know a professional acrobat, but running away to join the circus feels too 1970s. <\/p>\n
When I ask AI to suggest careers that won\u2019t be ruined by AI, it suggests choreography, firefighting and landscape gardening. When pushed it adds train driver \u2014 I can\u2019t tell if it\u2019s being sarcastic. It is at least possible that long after every single other aspect of society has been automated, Aslef will still be insisting that trains can\u2019t drive themselves. <\/p>\n
\u201cHave you thought about choreography?\u201d I ask Child B. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t pay as well as having your own militia but the worst that can happen is blisters.\u201d <\/p>\n
He is not keen so I tell him about the van I followed. I mention the rugged smile and the killer sudoku. He says he has maths homework to do. I don\u2019t tell him there\u2019s no point. Who knows, after all, if you need trigonometry to dispose of a bomb?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even though he\u2019s not a child any more, Child A is not sure what he wants to do…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-295851","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}