Brexit Megathread - Part 1 because it's not over by a long shot

[vera99]

Started a new thread for all things Brexity as the last generic dumping ground reached its 1000 post limit. As this developing shitshow unfolds it's going to be important to share and unload. Clav of course will punt a contrarian view along with unrepentant 'taking back control' so-called Brexiteers. I look forward to seeing the benefits.

The bottom line is people are looking to their own (a phrase redolent with the echoes of falling empires) and not trusting anything this government says or does.

Yes, it made me think of the collapse of the USSR and East Germany - queues and shortages and cynicism about the Government.

But hey, we have started talks with the Trans Pacific Partnership. Pity there is no partnership nearby.

No spoof I'm afraid - it was quite famous at the time. According to Mumsnet, we're up shit creek - you don't say !

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10036479/Parents-share-fears-state-UK-including-fuel-crisis-food-shortage-soaring-tax.html

Appeared on my LInkedIn

There isn’t actually a shortage of drivers, what we have, is a shortage of people who can drive, that are willing to drive any more. You might wonder why that is. I can’t answer for all drivers, but I can give you the reason I no longer drive. Driving was something I always yearned to do as a young boy, and as soon as I could, I managed to get my driving licence, I even joined the army to get my HGV licence faster, I held my licence at the age of 17. It was all I ever wanted to do.I had that vision of being a knight of the roads, bringing the goods to everyone, providing a service everyone needed.

What I didn’t take into account was the absolute abuse my profession would get over the years. I have seen a massive decline in the respect this trade has, first, it was the erosion of truck parking and transport café’s, then it was the massive increase in restricting where I could stop, timed weight limits in just about every city and town, but not all the time, you can get there to do your delivery, but you can’t stay there, nobody wants an empty truck, nobody wants you there once they have what they did want.

Compare France to the UK. I can park in nearly every town or village, they have marked truck parking bays, and somewhere nearby, will be a small routier, where I can get a meal and a shower, the locals respect me, and have no problems with me or my truck being there for the night.

Go out onto the motorway services, and I can park for no cost, go into the service area, and get a shower for a minimal cost, and have freshly cooked food, I even get to jump the queues, because others know that my time is limited, and respect I am there because it is my job. Add to that, I even get a 20% discount of all I purchase. Compare that to the UK £25-£40 just to park overnight, dirty showers, and expensive, dried (under heat lamps) food that is overpriced, and I have no choice but to park there, because you don’t want me in your towns and cities.

Ask yourself how you would feel, if doing your job actually cost you money at the end of the day, just so you could rest.

Not only have we been rejected from our towns and cities, but we have also suffered massive pay cuts, because of the influx of foreign drivers willing to work for a wage that is high where they come from, companies eagerly recruited from the eastern bloc, who can blame them, why pay good money when you can get cheap labour, and a never ending supply of it as well.

I know Canterbury has the grand total of zero truck parking facilities, but does have a lot of restrictions, making it difficult for trucks to stop anywhere. Do you want me to go back to driving trucks? Give me a good reason to do so.

Perhaps once you work out why you can’t, you will understand why your shelves are not as full as they could be. I tried it for over 30 years, but will never go back, you just couldn't pay me enough.

Credit: Jim Titheridge - former Knight of the Road.

It's slowly (for some) becoming clear that the quickest way to reverse Brexit is to ensure that it becomes synonymous with the Tory party.

#ToryBrexit

Interesting to hear the views of German and Dutch drivers about why they won't come back to the UK:

twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1442612743396372480?s=20

Not only have we been rejected from our towns and cities, but we have also suffered massive pay cuts, because of the influx of foreign drivers willing to work for a wage that is high where they come from, companies eagerly recruited from the eastern bloc, who can blame them, why pay good money when you can get cheap labour, and a never ending supply of it as well.

The important part here is that those countries had been communist and poor. The boot is now on the other foot. Poland and the Czech Republic are now relatively prosperous, so why bother to come to a country which is rapidly turning into how your own used to be in your father's day? Unless there is a misplaced sense of Ostalgie?

The French fight for their rights and get violent if they are pushed to the brink - got rid of their monarch as well. From Thatcher onwards, the tories like to paint Europe as some failing socialised state that would ultimately hit the buffers whilst all along privatising and selling off critical assets to the highest, usually foreign bidder. Same with social housing and neutering organised labour.

And here we are with a failing state where a cabal of Eurosceptic nutjobs have taken over the ruling party and weaponised that social dissatisfaction and use the EU as some generic whipping boy launching us onto a disastrous trajectory.

Hopefully, the so-called Red Wall will wake up and realise that the tories are not only not their friends but are the architects of our current unfolding disaster, and Brexit never was nor will be the answer and Labour need to grow a pair and talk about the elephant in the room.

But I fear we have a long way to go on that one. Looks like Clav along with her handler is hiding in a fridge.

The German truck driver makes the point that EU citizens could enter on ID cards. From next week they won't be able to. Who is going to stump up the cost of a passport they didn't need before to come to a country they don't want to come to?

Also, will those few truckers applying for these visas also have to pay for the use of the NHS? In addition to the cost of a passport that they don't need for travel within the EU/EFTA ?

That reminds me of the times we went on holiday (Holland to Germany or France) and my dad always choose service stations with loads of trucks for a break as the food would be so much better.

They should have put Europe Is Not That Crap on the side of that bus. Photo is the look on their faces at their Leave 'winner' press conference. They weren't supposed to win and then the coke kicked in ...

Yet it is not Brexit as such which is at the root of the problem. Rather it is the pretence that Brexit would be easy, and the consequent failure to anticipate its immediate dislocations, including labour shortages

Is this the closest that The Torygraph can bring itself to say ‘oops’?

Apparently De Spaffle has had enough of the negative fuel crisis headlines and is going to unleash hell in Northern Ireland to knock it off the news.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-northern-ireland-brexit-b1928403.html?utm_content=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR24zE2gbGfBpG-9ErbDEFxhGA-pxP-wMLP7tPs4sdTDcwQWkISm08L_brI#Echobox=1632834541

oops indeed though Jeremy Warner is regarded as dubious by the hard-line Brexiteers though that band is dwindling by the day. Most tories worth their salt are getting fed up and disspirited by the engulfing incompetence and chaos Johnson brings in his wake.

Elsewhere in that article ...

The significance lies rather in the panic's symbolism, and the pitiful buck-passing by ministers and their apologists as they desperately search for explanations that don't reflect badly on themselves or Brexit.

On both counts this is ridiculous, but particularly the second; the present chaos is quite plainly linked to Brexit. Not the act of leaving the European Union as such, but incompetent failure to prepare for the inevitable dislocations Brexit would cause.

Blame hauliers and supermarkets instead if you like; it's true that they've cynically used cheap foreign labour to grind down wages, and failed to invest appropriately in native drivers. Yet this in turn was only a response to public and political demand for ultra low prices.

Also true is that the current shortage of lorry drivers is a Europe-wide, even worldwide, phenomenon.

But it is worse in Britain than elsewhere, and that's because during more than 45 years of membership of the EU, Britain has become more dependent on cheap migrant labour from Europe than almost anywhere else, particularly in the last two decades of EU expansion into Eastern Europe.

@FatCatThinCat
And I bet it will work. Poke Leaves with a bit of EU hatred to keep them on side. Ffs, when are voters going to see through it?

Speaking of NI, the absence of petrol and food shortages there surely shows that Brexit is the dominant cause of our problems, whatever the Beleavers might say.

Blame hauliers and supermarkets instead if you like; it's true that they've cynically used cheap foreign labour to grind down wages, and failed to invest appropriately in native drivers. Yet this in turn was only a response to public and political demand for ultra low prices.

Also true is that the current shortage of lorry drivers is a Europe-wide, even worldwide, phenomenon.

But it is worse in Britain than elsewhere, and that's because during more than 45 years of membership of the EU, Britain has become more dependent on cheap migrant labour from Europe than almost anywhere else, particularly in the last two decades of EU expansion into Eastern Europe.

You have to ask yourself why the UK was one of the main supporters of enlarging the EU eastward. I imagine the reason was partly geopolitical, and done at the behest of Washington as a means of sticking it to the Russian Federation, and to heck with western liberal values and the ethos of the EU. I suspect the thought of all that cheap labour was also a galvanising force.

Enlarging to the east allowed British business to continue to avoid investing properly in training, apprenticeships, and pressing government for massive increases in funding for British schools and vocational training. Why would any of that be necessary when former Communist school systems are turning out people with a solid work ethic, trained in vocational tracks, mobile...

The British version of capitalism has always been slash and burn, exploit and exhaust, refuse to invest, and blame the poor who cannot afford farm fresh food delivery when the inevitable happens -
Blame hauliers and supermarkets instead if you like; it's true that they've cynically used cheap foreign labour to grind down wages, and failed to invest appropriately in native drivers. Yet this in turn was only a response to public and political demand for ultra low prices.

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-58716625

Rail operator Southeastern managed to tuck away £25m of taxpayer money it should have declared.
A statement from the DfT said it had found evidence that since October 2014 historical taxpayer funding of £25m, which should have been returned, had not been declared.

Yet another example of trickle down economics revealed to be 'trickle up'.

But it is worse in Britain than elsewhere, and that's because during more than 45 years of membership of the EU, Britain has become more dependent on cheap migrant labour from Europe than almost anywhere else, particularly in the last two decades of EU expansion into Eastern Europe.

I'm sorry, I don't understand this, I've even started a thread about it.
We had a shortage of drivers years ago, even while in the EU with the doors open to EU drivers. Despite this, we still had a shortage and pay and conditions were still bad despite the shortage of drivers.

Yet this in turn was only a response to public and political demand for ultra low prices.

This statement needs closer examination. Why do the public 'demand' low prices - because they have shit wages. Those with a steady income which they feel is enough to satisfy their needs with a little left over, are happy to pay for slightly better quality.

mathanxiety - yes, I have always thought that Major's encouragement of East Europe was to stick it to the Russians. Blair compounded it by completely underestimating the numbers who might want to come - especially since they could come here more easily than say Germany.

They are now finding out the hard way, (although desperately screaming about squirrels), that people go to where FoM makes it easy to move.

Well as a matter of post-war policy we always followed the US lead and consolidating the former Soviet bloc into NATO and the EU would have been no doubt a core part of that agenda. Yes Blair totally underestimated the disparity in economic realities that made the UK (and the fact we speak English) such a pull and fuelled the issues that made Brexit so powerful and toxic.

One can never forget the long shadow of the war (my dear departed father fought in it). If Churchill had has his way we would have joined well before we did under Heath.

Based on these author’s research, many UK employers found immigrant labour to be more skilled and have a stronger work ethic than domestic workers…. See chp 10 in particular. Yes, it was from 2010, but I’d hazard a guess that not much has changed since then. Until now of course.

The problem as I see it is the old Irish joke conundrum.

"A traveller stops to ask a farmer the way to Dublin. The farmer thinks for a while and then says "If you want to go there I would not start from here."

But here we are. As ever Cold War Steve nails it ...

If Churchill had has his way we would have joined well before we did under Heath.

Yes, but, from what I remember of his speech, he still envisaged that the UK would be a bit detached and would still look towards the Commonwealth.