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Consequences Of Brexit [Part 9] Read First Post Before Posting

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14 hours ago, Carbuncle said:

I am not disagreeing ... the bit of mine you quote contains the word 'simply'.

 

On the other hand, I am not agreeing either. What is the evidence there is a long-term issue? I know haulage associations in multiple countries suggest there is an issue but is there more concrete evidence? Ordinarily, one might expect the market to lure lapsed HGV drivers back in with better pay and conditions as I think they are now trying but that is recent as far as I know.

A shortage of HGV drivers, gradually caused by the substantial ageing of drivers, severely lagging pay/perks, worsening working conditions, profit-eating fiscal incentives (IR35 reform in UK), etc. had long been announced by the RHA and other union/industry-wide bodies and associations. Long before COVID and long before Brexit.
 

The web is replete with articles, press releases, etc. about these issues, all long pre-dating 2021.

 

But nobody (beside drivers themselves, and any industry ‘experts’ who wrote about them) paid any attention to these issues then or since…until shelves started going a little bare.

 

It is a crisis that is not going to get solved short-term either, whether in the UK or elsewhere.

 

13 hours ago, Tony said:

No willy waving from me @L00b, quite the opposite. I'm just bemused how confirmation bias still hangs on with some people five years after the Brexit vote, living in the past, inward looking, constantly banging on about the Empire. And that's just the Remainers. ;)  

 

(…)

Brexit and its consequences are 9 months old. And that’s not the full-fat ‘oven-ready’ version yet. Time will tell a lot indeed 😉

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Indeed @L00b , Brexit has been excellent at exposing many decades of underinvestment in people and infrastructure so long as they weren't in London. The same can be said throughout First World nations where ewe have been fortunate enough to have foreigners who are even worse off to do dirty work at knockdown prices. Meantime we comfort ourselves with the pretence that everyone should have a degree because Brits are too good to shove our arms down drains or whatever. It would be nice to think that some people might start to get an inkling of why so many people voted to leave the EU, but I expect not. Biases are very strong on this one. 

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1 hour ago, L00b said:

A shortage of HGV drivers, gradually caused by the substantial ageing of drivers, severely lagging pay/perks, worsening working conditions, profit-eating fiscal incentives (IR35 reform in UK), etc. had long been announced by the RHA and other union/industry-wide bodies and associations. Long before COVID and long before Brexit.
 

The web is replete with articles, press releases, etc. about these issues, all long pre-dating 2021.

I am sorry but I do not trust the RHA on the matter. They have been pushing this '100 000 drivers short' line which is BS. The 100 000 was constructed by adding three numbers which were not comparable (vacancies, EU returnees, reduction in HGV test passes). Once one sees this kind of propaganda / foolishness from people who should know better one should be sceptical of everything they say.

 

Being sceptical means I don't immediately accept a certain weight of articles, press releases as evidence either. I have not read these articles ... I was hoping to piggyback on your knowledge. Bit unreasonable, I know, but you seem to know what you are talking about.

 

All this is not to say that there has not been a long-term shortage just that what I personally know doesn't establish it.

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2 hours ago, Tony said:

Yea, I thought that was a bit barmy too. So barmy that it didn't sound credible and I checked and found out that it's not true. I hear that Polish HGV drivers haven't passed a HGV test, preferring to rely on their tractor driving test instead.

 

None of this is really very helpful when there's a worldwide shortage of truck drivers. It's the height of Little Britain thinking to believe that the UK deserves HGV drivers any more than anywhere else.

Thanks for the link. It's good that somebody is assessing them - I'm not sure who that somebody is though. Hopefully somebody qualified, we don't need a repeat of PIP assessments.

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1 hour ago, Tony said:

Indeed @L00b , Brexit has been excellent at exposing many decades of underinvestment in people and infrastructure so long as they weren't in London. The same can be said throughout First World nations where ewe have been fortunate enough to have foreigners who are even worse off to do dirty work at knockdown prices. Meantime we comfort ourselves with the pretence that everyone should have a degree because Brits are too good to shove our arms down drains or whatever. It would be nice to think that some people might start to get an inkling of why so many people voted to leave the EU, but I expect not. Biases are very strong on this one. 

“Foreigners immigrating in search of opportunities and starting on the bottom rung”, is the  socio-economic story of the world since the year dot, Tony. Likewise the fact that some will improve their lot over time, others will stay on that bottom rung, yet others will go home, with full or empty pockets, after a month or a lifetime or anytime in-between. 
 

Recent history shows that blaming these “decades of underinvestment in people and infrastructure” on foreigners, as much of the pro-Brexit politicians and supporters steadfastly did, rather than on the very architects of these  “decades of underinvestment in people and infrastructure”themselves, was simply history repeating itself: whenever there has been a substantial economic contraction, anywhere you care to look at, sooner or later immigrant workers end up as designated scapegoats.
 

Years later, things eventually perk up, and round and round she goes.

1 hour ago, Carbuncle said:

I am sorry but I do not trust the RHA on the matter. They have been pushing this '100 000 drivers short' line which is BS. The 100 000 was constructed by adding three numbers which were not comparable (vacancies, EU returnees, reduction in HGV test passes). Once one sees this kind of propaganda / foolishness from people who should know better one should be sceptical of everything they say.

 

Being sceptical means I don't immediately accept a certain weight of articles, press releases as evidence either. I have not read these articles ... I was hoping to piggyback on your knowledge. Bit unreasonable, I know, but you seem to know what you are talking about.

 

All this is not to say that there has not been a long-term shortage just that what I personally know doesn't establish it.

I mentioned the RHA, as they have been rather much in the news about this recently, but they have been at that particular coalface (dwindling British HGV driver numbers, loss of attractiveness for the profession, vanishing services and amenities for roadies, etc) for a very, very long time. Unsurprisingly so, given their role and purpose.

 

But the RHA are *very* far from being alone, nor does anyone need to consider them authoritative, in this sub-debate: haulage companies themselves, and haulage industry suppliers and experts, economic observers, logistics analysts, supply chain specialists and more, have all been clamouring about an incoming shortage of drivers, just as much as the RHA. Customs and logistics expert (retired) and Twitter commentator @vivamjm was on about Brexit turbo-charging the existing combination of issues (driver average age, IR35, job getting ever harder, no prestige) *years* ago.

 

My “knowledge” is, like everybody else’s, composited from myriad sources of information, official and not, in print or digital or video, and supplemented by personal/anecdotal experience. And a little critical thinking, to sort the wheat from the chaff 🙂

 

The volume of commentary that I have seen on the issue of HGV drivers, data in tables and charts like demographics and trends over past years, estimate data about EU27 HGV drivers in UK pre-/-since Brexit, factual data about COVID-cancelled HGV tests in UK and elsewhere, factual data about pay levels and operational models, factual data about IR35, myriad UK/FR/other documentaries about driving life featuring HGVers, degree-level understanding of customs and cabotage rules pre-/-since Brexit, etc, etc, etc. - all lead me to conclude that this was a crisis long-in-waiting, which the combination of Brexit legal/technical effects (according to the choice of Brexit made by Johnson/Frost), COVID pandemic measures, and post-Covid recovery effort, have now precipitated.

 

It is what it is. Now, to set about getting it resolved.

Edited by L00b

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@tinfoilhat phew, let's not go THERE! 🤐

2 minutes ago, L00b said:

“Foreigners immigrating in search of opportunities and starting on the bottom rung”, is the  socio-economic story of the world since the year dot, Tony. Likewise the fact that some will improve their lot over time, others will stay on that bottom rung, yet others will go home, with full or empty pockets, after a month or a lifetime or anytime in-between. 
 

Recent history shows that blaming these “decades of underinvestment in people and infrastructure” on foreigners, as much of the pro-Brexit politicians and supporters steadfastly did, rather than on the very architects of these  “decades of underinvestment in people and infrastructure”themselves, was simply history repeating itself: whenever there has been a substantial economic contraction, anywhere you care to look at, sooner or later immigrant workers end up as designated scapegoats. 

Dunno about you but I have them down as victims, not scapegoats. Just like all those Brits who have been let down for decades. My problem is with the hard of thinking middle classes who act as a self appointed intelligentsia, pulling up ladders and raising drawbridges as fast as their newly minted Sociology degrees will allow. They are very lucky to be living in times when we aren't rooting out these silly air-headed bourgeoisie and leading them to the scaffold. 

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43 minutes ago, Tony said:

@tinfoilhat phew, let's not go THERE! 🤐

Dunno about you but I have them down as victims, not scapegoats. Just like all those Brits who have been let down for decades. My problem is with the hard of thinking middle classes who act as a self appointed intelligentsia, pulling up ladders and raising drawbridges as fast as their newly minted Sociology degrees will allow. They are very lucky to be living in times when we aren't rooting out these silly air-headed bourgeoisie and leading them to the scaffold. 

Much like one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, immigrant workers are one man’s victims of capitalism and another man’s job thieves.
 

It’s always a question of perspective; but crucially, seemingly always an external perspective in these debate, not the perspective of the immigrant worker him/herself: do they consider themselves a victim or a scapegoat? Or something else, if anything at all?

 

Those “Brits who have been let down for decades”, had decades to vote in solution builders and providers, rather than more of the same over-promising-and-never-delivering. If they are victims at all, then they are victims of their cumulative, common (democratic) choices. And as victims, they can either suffer their fate or try and do something about it. Seems that many let-down Brits sought better fortunes as migrant workers across Europe in the 70s, if vintage TV series are representative at all 🙃😉

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14 hours ago, Tony said:

Let's examine that @Dardandec. Oh, let's not waste time though because while the UK apparently needs 100k drivers, Poland is short of 124k drivers. Wherever those who were working in the UK have gone, it's certainly not back to Poland.

So because they are lorry drivers they have to do that for a living? You don't know what they do. How do you know they don't do other jobs instead, maybe lorry driving in Poland is not as lucrative as other jobs. I'm a qualified HGV mechanic but I don't do that for a living because I prefer the lighter stuff, nearly did a stint on the wind tunnel at Handsworth back in the day (That's the nick name for the HGV testing station) or used to be at that time when it was open. 

Edited by Dardandec
typo

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9 minutes ago, Dardandec said:

 

 

Edited by Dardandec

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9 hours ago, Tony said:

@tinfoilhat phew, let's not go THERE! 🤐

Dunno about you but I have them down as victims, not scapegoats. Just like all those Brits who have been let down for decades. My problem is with the hard of thinking middle classes who act as a self appointed intelligentsia, pulling up ladders and raising drawbridges as fast as their newly minted Sociology degrees will allow. They are very lucky to be living in times when we aren't rooting out these silly air-headed bourgeoisie and leading them to the scaffold. 

If you really wanted to enhance opportunities for the let down brits, then you could always have voted Corbyn.

 

I’m genuinely unconvinced by right wingers posing as champions of the people. That way almost always ends badly.

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