MY colleague Linda Whitwam produced an excellent story recently about Paragon Textiles.

After months of searching, the Huddersfield firm was unable to find any apprentice pattern weavers – despite the fact that Kirklees has one of the highest rates of youth unemployment in the country.

Linda’s piece came up in conversation with some friends last weekend and the verdict was near unanimous. The story demonstrated that most young people are feckless, work-shy layabouts.

I’m not sure if I go along with this entirely. But there is certainly a problem with a society which instils neither a work ethic nor a respect for education in its young people.

However, new research published this week suggests older workers are not just better motivated – they’re just plain better.

Scientists from the University of Mannheim have studied the behaviour of a group of workers on a Mercedes-Benz production line.

They found that older workers made more minor mistakes than their younger colleagues because of their declining physical ability.

However, the grey-haired staff made fewer major errors – and when they did get something wrong they were able to cope better than the whipper-snappers.

So, overall, the ageing German car workers were found to be more productive than their younger counterparts.

And this, remember, in a physical job which involves concentration and manual dexterity.

Perhaps there’s a lesson here for the textile firms of Huddersfield when they’re looking to take people on.