It may be boring but it is a fact, don't bury your head in the sand. I can't believe people wont take good advice. The power of positive thought will not pay your debts and it will not get you a job, bad things DO happen. I WISH I had taken WWWs advice two years ago and Scroggs as well, and I have had a relatively risk free way of training. Airline pilots should not be risk takers and anyone even remotely considering training now is a BIG risk taker and deluded. And that goes for training with the likes of CTC or OAA or anywhere else - and I don't think it displays very good decision making either. I am not talking about the poor buggers who started before all this happened, people could be forgiven thinking WWW was a doom monger, but he was completely right. And not to the point of small detail like $200 a barrel perhaps but HE WAS COMPLETELY RIGHT AND IS STILL.You are doing it just because you want to and because all other work is boring and hard graft at the moment. It is not the right time and those are not the right reasons. EVERYONE I know bar a few deluded fools who believe in the ' I must, I must, I must increase my bust' technique are very worried and regretful of training - but we didn't have the warning backed up by facts like you guys and girls do. Sure you can buy a type rating with Ryanair or some other airline and pay to work but it is all on a very short term contract basis and you can be chopped out pretty quickly if needs be and the only people who will be stuffed are you and your families left with £100000 of secured loan on your homes. 6 months flying will NOT service your loan, it may fulfil your dream momentarily, but it will NOT service your loan. Think about it. I am not qualified to give detailed advice on the economy but the worst must be still to come, I'll fall through my arse if it has passed us or does anytime soon. The economy still has momentum from Christmas and the shock of it has helped carry things along a bit. At the moment companies are being as proactive as they can be but eventually, as a function of human nature, people will get tired of diminshing results. That coupled with the fact that the 'results' and statistics that people are quoting are probably 3 -4 months old - around the time of the busy Christmas period, so think how bad they are now. PLEASE DO NOT kid yourselves, things are not good at the moment and things are not going to recover in 2009 or 2010 and beyond that, who knows. I am not trying to stop competition from training, I am honestly just trying to do the right thing, I LOVE flying but I would not begin training anywhere near now.