4whites
I am sorry to hear that you were made redundant and getting back on the job ladder, is of course a lot harder in the tough times that we are in at the moment.
I found myself unemployed back in December, after the airline that I was working for went into administration. The one thing that I quickly established and perhaps quicker than my colleagues, was that I needed to look outside of the UK and perhaps Europe for the best chance of getting employed again. I therefore found it interesting when you said:
despite driving around the UK for the past three weeks giving my CV to anyone who would take it there are just no jobs to be had.
Out of the colleagues that I worked with at my last outfit, less than 5 percent are working in the UK and the rest like me are now working abroad. I don't view this as a long term move and it is simply a stop gap until things improve back home. However if you can get some flying done and qualify for non residency status during your spell out of the UK, then you can perhaps do quite nicely during the economic slump.
I would advise against going onto a new type at the moment. There are pools of pilots out there who are rated on Boeing or Airbus equipment and I suspect that this pool will expand further before it retracts. Stick to the type your on and hunt down every operator in the world who has them. E-mail, fax, phone and do what ever you can to make contact and get your name known. It paid dividends for me and if you look hard enough then there are job out there. That is what I always said to myself and it managed to keep me focused when I sometimes felt I was bashing my head against a brick wall.
Best of luck!