...Sadly there's nothing I can change. There is a recruitment freeze at work and with no one to take up my work I'd not get any voluntary redundancy. There are a good many incompetent staff in my place of work and none of them have been got rid of or been given any form of disciplinary for that matter, so there's no chance of that either..
Well, that does at least simplify your decisions! In my early years in local government I saw people in their 40s just going through the motions until early retirement, so I left in my early 30s to set up my own business and have never regretted it. My philosophy was 'I might be working for an idiot, but at least I wasn't surrounded by them'.
Two warnings:-
- you really do have to do some research if you are making a big change. 'Just going for it' is attractive, but you can end up somewhere worse, especially if it is your own business. There are few things worse for sanity and health than trying to keep a marginal business afloat. You need to be very realistic about your skills and contacts, what demand there is for them and where, and what you want out of life. Don't laugh at putting it down in a spreadsheet and going through it with someone whose judgement you respect.
- once you start down that road, it has its own momentum. You quickly become even more dissatisfied with where you are and that can push you into unwise choices.
You haven't given any details about what you do and what you want to do, but FWIW I can't think of many areas where at your age your career would be enhanced by a degree as opposed to making good use of the three+ years it would take.