Firstly thanks for the positive respones fellas.
I'm thinking that a sparky/plumber is the sort of trade which people will always need and it seems like intersting work. I did the 16th edition years ago just for interest value and to do something with my time, but that was 2001 and i haven't used it since.
I've also thought about the air conditioning trade but have no experince of it.
I've been an engineer in the Navy for 18+ years. Mainly mechanical but i've worked on plenty of electical systems including 440v, 3 phase all the way down to 12v communication units. Also done hydraulic and pnuematic stuff but that was a few years ago. Bit of a jack of all trades, master of none.
At the moment i'm teaching the lads to become armourers on ships but there isn't much call for repairing machine guns on civvy street!!!
I need to become retrained/qualified to be attractive to an employer, so which courses can you recommend, and which are the training courses to avoid as i've heard that some of them are quite poor?
Many thanks,

Muffster.