Tagzy, get yourself over to the railway! Plenty of good roles where your training would be paid for and your salary would be good. There's a fair few signallers who get more than £30k during training, drivers get decent money during training too. No shortage of applicants but the employers want people with life experience and they pay good money for that reason.
Back to aviation, the main thing that troubles me with the current environment is the lack of social mobility. I was reading an interview with a well-known former BA captain, he grew up in a mining village with a very working class background, got a scholarship to university where he ended up doing a PhD and flying in the University Air Squadron, before making it onto BOAC's sponsored programme. If someone from that background applied today, they might well achieve the required aptitude, though finances would prevent them from realising their potential. Hardly progress is it?
There were some decent training schemes open in the past few years, the Aer Lingus one was the pick of the bunch but no-one knows when, or even if, it will re-open. As someone pointed out in another thread, one step forward, three steps back.