E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

The whole Fuel thing it's pathetic some little scrotum decides to run there mouth causing the mass panic because well obviously so many people believe anything the Government say is a lie, which is funny as hell because they will believe Jim Bob on Fakebook who heard from the cat of the cousin to the neighbour of the postman of the window cleaner to the owner of a petrol company that there is a shortage, but because of that people instantly panicked because the Government said "Don't Panic", people brought this on themselves for being so stupid!

I wonder if because so many people are that stupid and think the Government cannot be trusted and that everything that they say is a lie, I wonder if that would work if they were to say "Don't panic, there is no shortage of jobs", I wonder if that would cause the lazy feckless morons of society to get of there ass and fakebook and get a job for a change, if they are a lazy feckless moron I know not everyone is and some have legitimate reasons for not working but I would guess the vast majority don't have a valid reason.

As for this whole "Driver Shortage" I find it funny how people are claiming it's because of Brexit, so answer me this, "Did Brexit cause the driver shortage in Germany, Poland, America and other countries around the globe?"

No didn't think so but to many people will blame Brexit for it and the slightest little thing, car explodes it's brexit's fault, person has heart attack it's brexit's fault, house fall's down it's brexit's fault, earth get's invaded by aliens it's brexit's fault.

 

My brother was a HGV driver, got into it because it was decent money for someone without decent schooling (it actually wasn't a very good salary IMO) but he ultimately gave it up because no amount of money makes up for poor work conditions, he's thought about going back but he gets more time with family gets to have decent sleep, meals and a place to **** etc, just working in a warehouse for less dough.

When he was single and doing it, he actually got quite depressed as it was quite isolating and he didn't know how he would meet a woman etc, plus no time for them if he did, no amount of telling him he could take mine made him feel any better he is much happier out of it, lure of big cash would tempt him back I reckon, now his life is in a better place, even if it was for short term gain.

 

My brother basically said the same apart from when he left the army he had a few issues PTSD being the biggest one, but he can drive tankers with hazardous material and normal lorries with food etc.

He went working for Travis Perkins and for what he was doing he was underpaid by at least £5k per year but it was more than he could earn elsewhere at the time.

At one point his wife went in to labour with his first child, he had just left for a run to a supermarket when he got the call so turned around and explained to his boss he was going, his boss said "No don't care get back to work", my brother quit on the spot.

He went working for another firm who treated him better but still underpaid because drivers from other countries wanted his route, and my brother and his boss knew that he had to lump it basically because it was a job at the time.

Eventually he got himself sorted with a better job, and he quit driving lorries but there was 10 people waiting outside to take his job when he quit and all of them said they don't care how they get treated because it's more money than they would earn back home.

So that was the last time my brother ever drove lorries.

Not all drivers want more money, most do, but some want to be treated like humans and not worse than animals.

 

Pretty much similar situation for both my brother and brother in law doing dock work, cheap foreign labour coming through on agencies battering down their value to the point where they were told if you don't like it you can piss off, so in many ways he's quite happy they are all struggling, serves them right.

Treat them right in the first place they'll stick around, if you train new drivers now and continue to treat them the same way there will be no resolution to the problem as people will leave, it takes a certain type to stick that out.

 

Brexit isn't solely responsible for an HGV driver shortage, no. I'm happy to be corrected, but I don't think anyone has claimed that outright in the last few pages. But what Brexit and COVID-19 have done however is made an existing situation much much worse. This pot has been on the cusp of boiling over for a long time, and after COVID-19 and Brexit at the same time that pot is now well and truly boiling dry.

Like I said a few pages ago, it's almost as if someone could have thought about this **** and anticipated these problems in advance instead of chest-beating and yelling "GET BREXIT DONE" or "BREXIT MEANS BREXIT" for the last half decade.

It's not just about more money though, it's more money and better working conditions. It's about not grinding people into the dirt to extract as much profit as possible and then doing it again and again and again to extract even more profit.

It is absolutely not a fantasy that cheap labour from overseas has been used to fill many many low-skilled or low-paid roles (and those two are not the same). In a lot of cases that drove people to vote for Brexit because all they see is an influx of immigrants doing jobs that they used to do. But that isn't the fault of the people being brought over through agencies or whatever; the fault lies solely with the people who farm out the labour to third-party subcontractors because it's cheaper than paying for full time employees with good working conditions.

At the risk of sounding like the very stereotype of the liberal left-wing pacifist hippy, I've got absolutely no problem with commerce or people/companies earning fair profit for their work. But capitalism isn't about earning a fair profit, it's about earning all of the money. All of the money - not just "some" money, or "a lot of" money, all of the money - at the expense of everything else. Doesn't matter if your product literally kills the people who buy it, as long as you can earn all the money while still paying for legal fees, bad publicity, etc, then it's totally fair game (hello British American Tobacco by the way, with your £9.3 billion in profit for 2018).

That's a problem I don't currently see a way out of, not while there's any chance at all that people can still increase their net worth by ~$2000 per second while nearly 5 million people worldwide die in a global pandemic. There won't be a way out of it while people can amass so much money that it could't all be spent even if the next 5 generations of their family didn't earn any money at all. Not while companies with profits in the billions can shelter and protect actual sexual abusers and rapists who get paid millions upon millions of dollars per year.

We're not gonna "solve" capitalism any time soon. But the very least we can do is let long-distance HGV drivers get a quick nap without the fear of missing their delivery deadline. Or not charge them an extortionate fee to park overnight. Or give them a clean safe place to have a dump and a shower. Or give them more overnight parking spaces.

And yeah, if we can at least manage some basic human decency and fairly value the labour of workers then maybe, juuuuuuust maybe, we've got a long-term shot pulling off something like a universal basic income.

 

If you read the comments in the industry news it's a pretty grim picture, for example;
https://www.ukhaulier.co.uk/news/ro...years-and-we-must-brace-ourselves-for-impact/

 

In terms of automation, I think skilled lorry driver could be reduced to unskilled machine operator. Sort of like someone in a tesla on autopilot, keeping an eye on things but not actually operating the vehicle. So a job reduced to, sit here, check these three or four things and press this button to bring the truck to a safe stop and wait for a repair crew or remote tech support if anything weird happens. Maybe that kind of operation could be done remotely eventually from control centres. One person managing a fleet, rather than a single lorry. That's the trend of automation general.

Soon if not already automation will be able to handle the more difficult manoeuvring, where the operations would be very slow and very safe.

Anyway that's not now and won't fix the UK's problems anytime soon.

 

Actually it is worse than that.

Because even if one succeeded at earning all of the money they would still be required to earn moar next time as steady profit = epic fail.

 

Stock markets are really funny like that. "Company X has beaten analysts' forecasts of 10% yoy growth and delivered 15%"... .stock goes down because (not making this up, it happened recently to a large tech company) "it has beaten the analysts' forecast by less than expected". Sure, makes sense.

 

See: the games "industry". It's not enough to make a game and sell it at full price, now there has to be DLC. And then at some point it's not enough to just have a full-price game with DLC, now there has to be multiple "seasons" of DLC. And then at some point it's not enough to just have a full-price game with multiple "seasons" of DLC, now there has to be season passes. And then at some point it's not enough to just have a full-price game with multiple "seasons" of DLC that can be purchased individually or with a season pass, we now have to have microtransactions. And then it's in-game gambling (loot boxes). And then it's virtual currency. And then it's live services. And then it's battle passes. And next it'll be something else. And even after that there'll be something else.

There certainly is something trickling down through our capitalist economy - let me give you a hint: it isn't money.

 

Sorry, missed these...

I'll be honest, I hadn't even considered the impact of IR35 rule changes. A bright idea that was sold as a way to clamp down on tax cheats but actually just ends up costing people even more money and totally ignores the enormous tax-dodging elephants in the room like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, etc.

I can't think of a worse idea. A Tesla "autopilot" driver is supposed to keep their hands and feet on the controls at all times, they're supposed to be basically driving the car but without pushing the pedals and turning the wheel. Except that they don't actually do that: https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-drivers-using-autopilot-watch-190000950.html

It's already literally killing people and we're only talking about your average (albeit large) saloon car. You can even buy devices that trick the car into detecting hands on the wheel so the algorithm assumes that the driver is paying attention... when in fact the driver could actually be giving someone a handjob. The prospect of putting a system like that in an articulated lorry is, frankly, absolutely terrifying.

 

I think somewhere along the way to autonomous cars and other vehicles on the public road, the problem of liability will scare manufacturers off. It will cost them a fortune, either directly or via massive insurance costs. It just won't be worth the financial cost, or the potential damage to reputation and sales, if a software glitch results in multiple crashes.

 

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Even with the driver shortages, the EU seem to be doing ok (for note, I'm linking the tweet purely because the entire Times article is visible in the picture, otherwise it's paywalled on their site)

 

Just to assure you, yes, there actually IS fuel in Germany....everywhere.
So someone's lying.

 

There's not really a fuel shortage here yet though is there, there's a panic situation caused by the media as usual making people and go out in there millions to horde stuff, leading to a shortage because demand is many times greater than the typically required supply.

You have people now topping off £4-5 in the petrol stations to make sure they are full just in case......it's the whole toilet paper scenario all over again

Still I like my new wall art installation, should put up a no smoking sign

 

Yep we are good around here all stations fine now, just last weekend after the news was a little annoying, had to take my daughter to an away game 100 miles round trip and I only had a 1/4 to a 1/3 of a tank, a fill is ~9 gallons, normally do ~28-33mpg driving like an uummm knob figured I'd just have enough and use recovery services if in trouble but somehow the little Abarth nudged 50mpg, got back with loads spare. 65mph on the motorway though......

 

Of actual fuel - no there is no shortage. And while the panic obviously kicked everything into lightspeed, the thing that started this was a lack of at least one type of fuel at 100 fuel stations. For them to have made this remark initially, I'd imagine that's not the norm. (i am not an expert!)

Your art work has made me fancy kebabs......