21–30 of 352 posts
Of course, they will suffer economically for a while, but that was part of the game with Brexit.
The voters however - were slightly lied to regarding the immediate downsides. It's probably important to keep the big picture in mind.
Appears to be _mostly_ a mediagenic phenomenon: the driver shortage caused a few stations to run out, a minister told everyone not to panic buy, so they immediately started panic buying. Like the great toilet paper shortage. The lorry driver shortage inflicted by Brexit is starting to cause problems, though.
I honestly think Brexit was only a very small part of this. It's probably also a combination of IR35 making the entire endeavour not worthwhile for UK AND European workers and the government not having enough HGV tests available to bring newly qualified drivers into the workforce. It's a combination of a lot of different things.
What Brexit did impact it was that it removed EU cabotage and availability of drivers. For example, cargo would arrive on a RoRo ship in Dover, without changing to a british driver. The same driver could take other cargo while in UK (for example having delivered to point A, then taking a load from point A to another british location at point B, and finally taking a load from point B to a continental destination at point C). With Brexit, you suddenly have extra demand (as even with dimnished cargo traffic you need more drivers to service ports as cargo no longer comes with its own drivers) and inability to hire (whether complete firms through cabotage laws or simply due to smaller pool of candidates.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not unlike the panic buying at the start of the pandemic. The media is driving this hysteria because a) it fits their narrative around brexit, and b) fear & outrage sells.
The media may have made the problem appear a little faster, but they can't be the actual cause of the shortage, the supply strain existed well before the first headline was ever pushed.
Unlike the toilet paper panic buying there is limited capacity people can buy, so I would expect this to naturally end short term when people don’t have capacity to buy any more. What concerns me is government planning to address this looks a lot more forward looking than a few days/a week, so I can see it getting worse. Interesting how the government say it’s not a shortage, if the refineries were running low you wo…
Over many decades, employees in easy-to-learn and especially easy-to-outsource jobs were treated as disposable cogs, and now after Corona and other crisis crunches the whole house of cards comes crushing down.
Not suggesting that there are not other factors (Brexit, Covid etc) but the media have to shoulder the "panic" element of this. E.g. stop publishing photos of queueing cars and cordoned off pumps and report purely on the statistics of the matter. Too many media outlets are entirely hell bent on getting clicks without a care for the furore they induce in the general public as a result. Social media does of course ampl…
It's not unlike the panic buying at the start of the pandemic. The media is driving this hysteria because a) it fits their narrative around brexit, and b) fear & outrage sells.
Or put another way, fear & outrage buy.
Not suggesting that there are not other factors (Brexit, Covid etc) but the media have to shoulder the "panic" element of this. E.g. stop publishing photos of queueing cars and cordoned off pumps and report purely on the statistics of the matter. Too many media outlets are entirely hell bent on getting clicks without a care for the furore they induce in the general public as a result. Social media does of course ampl…
> "The free movement of labour is part of the European Union, and we tried very hard to convince the British not to leave the Union," said Olaf Scholz, the Social Democrat candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor. "They decided differently. I hope they will manage the problems coming from that," Scholz said. Man, I can smell the schadenfreude from all the way over here.
Appears to be _mostly_ a mediagenic phenomenon: the driver shortage caused a few stations to run out, a minister told everyone not to panic buy, so they immediately started panic buying. Like the great toilet paper shortage. The lorry driver shortage inflicted by Brexit is starting to cause problems, though.
https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/britain-facing-long-...