You are doing exactly the right thing mate. Good on you. Mate of mine became a plumber at 45, hasn’t looked back since and wished he’d done it years ago.

Wonder if anyone in the public sector gets minimum wage?

Public service is a mixed bag. For example, nurses - they don't get much money and are often inconvenienced with overtime, courses or regulations. Of course, some do better than others, some love it, some grow to hate it. Similar with teaching or the Police force.
A lot of admin people in Public service are very low paid, often the employment laws that the government has are not enforced in the public service. Conversely, usually the Unions are pervasive and relatively strong but will sell you down the river to suit themselves whenever they feel like it.
Two of my sisters are in public service, one works flexitime, has good wages, holidays and a pension. The other one is a low grade secretary in the NHS. Her bosses treat her like sh1t. Her wages are crap and her working conditions far from ideal. She will be leaving.
So, just wanted to make a point that not all public servants are sitting around, or getting good money, or being lazy. I can say that no one I know in the civil service/public service has stopped working during the pandemic but obviously experiences differ.

Red and Blue Army!

Fair enough, the rich basically live in gated communities now. They have little idea of the common person - I totally agree.
Where I will differ with many on this thread is that I believe that a minimum wage should exist - and it should be a decent wage. If companies are so sh1t that they don't make enough money to pay a decent wage, then my opinion is they're not good enough to be viable companies. Plus people need enough income to rent or buy housing, food and utilities. Plenty of times in my life, I had to go without food or electricity, or a roof over my head. I don't think that's really acceptable in a supposedly civil society. A decent minimum wage has not caused unemployment in Ireland - it's around 10 euro an hour. I think it's going up to 10.20 or so. What I would say is get rid of age differentiation - just have a flat minimum wage across the board. In England I'd say around 5.50 or so an hour. Where I would perhaps make it more would be London - with other areas to be checked for prices/ affordability. I would exempt very small, family businesses in some way. the corner shop etc would likely have small margins and they should be able to employ 15/16 year olds in my opinion - like the good old days when I worked from the age of 12/13 for something like 60p an hour, rising to 1.25 when I thought I was rich. I'm not that old by the way - middle aged let's say.

Red and Blue Army!

Many many more will be on low wages now and over the near future.

COYP

I think the minimum wage should be £9 per hour, £10 per hour in the London Boroughs. Anyone under the age of 18, £4 per hour. How that compares with current public pay I have no idea. Maybe if these levels were brought in there would be less people happy to sit on their hands for benefits.