Companies and the government

[chocolateorangeinhaler]

So I'm confused about what I just heard on ITV news.

Apparently schools can't get food because of lorry driver shortages. Labour have immediately piped up saying no child should go hungry (no shit labour - but well done for trying to be relevant) the other claim from them is that the government should be listening to what companies are telling them to do.

Really ??

Don't we regularly have news stories where big corporations interfere in government and lobby for legislation to suit their own interests.

AIBU for thinking any government should absolutely not ever be directly acting on instructions of private companies wants.

You must have been watching a different report to me, and to that reported online.

www.itv.com/news/2021-10-07/schools-asked-to-stock-up-on-food-as-labour-shortages-impact-meals

Businesses are telling the government that the food supply chain is breaking down, and a key part in that is the lack of HGV drivers. They need to sort out the delays in training and registration, and find some way of replacing the drivers we lost due to Brexit.

The issue here is that the government need telling this. They're either completely ignorant or incompetent (possibly both).

Labour said:

“The government has been warned about driver shortages and the risk to supply chains for months, but they have failed to prepare and children are again being left to bear the brunt of this Conservatives chaos.

“The prime minister’s speech shows they’re burying their heads in the sand while families are faced with empty shelves and petrol pumps running dry.

“A plan to recruit and train more drivers now is urgently needed or this chaos will continue. No school must be left without the food supplies it needs, and no child left going hungry."

The LibDems said similar.

Do you have selective hearing?

The government has ballsed this one up (and in a propaganda master stroke is now pretending that this was always part of the plan and businesses should have prepared for the thing they said was definitely not going to happen…)

Government has a role to sort things out when things go to shit, especially where the vulnerable are affected.

Even more so when a decent part of the problem - not the only factor, but by god it’s making all the other pressures worse than they need to be — was created by them in the first place.

You don’t seem quite as worked up at the ‘get back to work’ rhetoric aimed at getting people back into city centres 5 days a week at the behest of their corporate landlord donors….