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With army on standby, Johnson says UK fuel crisis improving

14 Comments
By JILL LAWLESS

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I hope Bozo is planning to use experienced fuel truck drivers to deliver civilian fuels. There are a lot of ways to make costly mistakes delivering fuel including but not limited to blends (wrong product in the underground tank, say the driver put gasoline in the diesel tank, it happens even with experienced drivers), load the wrong product on the truck or have a spill at the loading rack (punched in the wrong number of liters on the loading control) or at the gas station (whole bunch of ways to have spills and I think I have done most of them, luckily for me very late at night in the dark and nobody saw them before I cleaned them up, lol)

1 ( +4 / -3 )

“We tried that for a long time — 20 years or so, perhaps longer,” the prime minister said. “And in the end, people could see that it was leading to a low-wage, low-skill approach without enough investment in people or in equipment, in capital."

Thank the Tories for failing to invest in people, and purloining the family silver for decades.

4 ( +6 / -2 )

“At the beginning of the millennium, people from Eastern Europe — from Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria — went to Britain and filled the same gap that Britain is experiencing now," he said. “But then came Brexit.”

Rashkov cited a combination of feeling unwelcome, high British taxes, steep rents and new red tape as deterrents to Eastern European drivers.

So xenophobia, low pay, high living costs and red tape is putting off Eastern Europeans going to drive trucks in the UK now.

“We tried that for a long time — 20 years or so, perhaps longer,” the prime minister said. “And in the end, people could see that it was leading to a low-wage, low-skill approach without enough investment in people or in equipment, in capital."

Standard Tory gaslighting here, blaming foreign drivers who left the UK because of Brexit for causing the current driver shortage. This is the "feeling unwelcome" Nikolay Rashkov was speaking about.

Given that Brexit happened in 2016, where are the contingency plans that the Tories, working with the Ministry of Transport and the road haulage organizations, must have drawn up to create high-paying, high-skill jobs with investment in people and equipment?

3 ( +6 / -3 )

The wages of leaving the EU.

0 ( +3 / -3 )

Johnson, who is strongly pro-Brexit, said that “uncontrolled immigration” was not the answer to Britain's problems.

BoZo was not “strongly pro-Brexit” He licked a finger, stuck it in the air to see which way the wind was blowing and then stabbed PM May in the back so that he could take her place

“We tried that for a long time — 20 years or so, perhaps longer,” the prime minister said. “And in the end, people could see that it was leading to a low-wage, low-skill approach without enough investment in people or in equipment, in capital."

Actually, this would indeed be the best solution. “Low wage” immigrants could do “low skill” jobs allowing Briton’s supposedly higher skill workers to focus on more value-added tasks.

So now the UK is using (would like to use) higher skilled workers to do lower skilled jobs resulting in not only higher costs for consumers but less quantity supplied due to labor shortages.

This is basic ECON 101 stuff. I know because I taught it for a decade. Granted, some things in economics are vague and debatable. This isn’t one of those things.

Artificially reducing the labor supply through immigration restrictions results in a shift of the supply curve to the left (less supplied at all price combinations) and generally higher prices.

But you can’t put that in a 15 second commercial....

4 ( +5 / -1 )

From WhatsApp:

The UK government has brought forward its plans to get all petrol-driven cars off the roads from 2030 to next Wednesday.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

True story: BBC NI correspondent covering petrol panic buying was called Phil McCann.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

It is important to fully comprehend the predicament for HGV drivers, contributing to this malaise of chronic HGV driver shortage.

And thus separating the politics of Brexit from the realities of the appalling manner HGV driver have been treated by the industry/RHA.

Let not get trapped with the tone, immigrants

You may be aware of the term owner/driver.

let me flesh this out a little, with the reform IR35, and the term off payroll.

IR35 reforms : Be Prepared.

Here is what it mean for a clients and drivers

https://driverrequire.co.uk/ir35

1. The drivers could take a cut in their net income, though it is feared that if this is too severe many British nationals will give up LGV driving for a career, while continental European drivers will “vote with their feet” and seek employment on the continent, where net pay will be higher and they will be “closer to home”.

Please read because this is another underlying cause for the chaos. Not Brexit.

Certainly Brexit visa restriction have taken there toll, the conditions these HGV driver have to endure have added to the situation. The pandemic has created a further storm of woe.

The Johnson Government failure to plan ahead, legislate to end toxic sector wide employment practices is a disgrace

All HGV drivers, European and British, equally have been shamefully betrayed.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Wouldn't this be the perfect timing to fully embrace the green technology? Add some solar panels to your car, coupled with a pair of wind turbines and off you go! Who needs the bloody fossil fuels, right? Just ask Greta.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

Please read because this is another underlying cause for the chaos. Not Brexit.

A survey of the Road Haulage Association puts Brexit slightly higher than IR35 as a reason for the driver shortage.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58709018

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Yes, albaleo, I agree the, Brexit visa restrictions plus Covid lockdowns dealt a hammer blow to any notion of supply chain cohesion.

Road Haulage Association has been fully aware of the issues since 2005, the erosion of HGV driver terms and conditions.

They just ignored the data.

The race to the bottom, the exploitation of EU HGV drivers was a shameful act of cynical manipulation in an attempt to enforce wage restraint without any form of conciliatory safety net.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

A fleet of tricycles built for freight would do the trick. Would slim down the U.K.'s collective waistline, too.

Lol, the future of UK freight haulage:

https://www.dreamstime.com/chinese-man-riding-cargo-tricycle-loaded-goods-wrapped-cardboard-street-china-bikes-freight-tricycles-popular-image139481372

3 ( +3 / -0 )

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