(A teacher stands in a classroom, scuffed mortarboard on head. Lights flicker due to an electricity shortage) "So boys and girls, your task was to... Yes, yes, I know, Ms Gender, boys, girls, inters, bis, Sith lords and little furry creature from Zog..."
(He scratches his hed wondering why he chose teaching) "As I was saying, your task was to write an essay on what you stand for. Messers Phillips and Carnaby, well done. I particularly like your use of metaphor on equality as it impacts ants, who, as we all know, have now been granted human rights. The rest of you, good efforts as well. Except ..."
(He picks up two essays. One is so thick that it wore out two printers. The other is a piece of fag paper. He throw them onto the floor. The floor rocks as the heavy one hits; the fag paper floats down and rests insultingly on top.) "Master Starmer. I do appreciate you have a lot to say to the world, and you believe it earnestly. Many people do. But when your task is to write 250 words, scribing 11,500 is not acceptable. I'd also add that I noticed the 'Corbo smells' you wrote in the margin on the section about ... well just about every section. Fail." (A sour-looking boy sitting by himself in the corner of the room beside a Palestinian flag sobs)
(A final sigh, as he fixes his weary gaze on a blonde boy with tousled hair.) "And you, Master Johnson. I finally managed to decipher the crayoned text. "I stand for fun!" was short, succinct and, I fear, true. But adding "Smithers stands for I nicked his chair," was just cruel. But at least your essay was short, and I was at school with your father (at least, we think he was your father). A+"
My supplier went out of business in May and Ofgem appointed EDF who extended my contract terms with the previous supplier by 3 months to the end of August then I agreed a new 2 year contract with EDF at a higher tariff as you would when any contract concludes
The lack of knowledge by those who tweet and post these comments show they simply do not have knowledge of the subject
He isn't talking long term. The minister said that people would keep their tariff from the bankrupt company with the new company the consumer is allocated to. Thats just plain wrong - he doesn't know how the process he is responsible for works.
Its not a major crime, just a little embarrassing.
You are wrong
That is exactly what happened to my contract
EDF took it over in May, extended the same terms for 3 months beyond its previous expiry date and only sought a new contract then
So same tariff and an extra 3 months was very fair
That was then and this is now. The world (and gas market) has changed since then
It would be interesting to know when it changed and whether the consumer had a fixed price contract
It never changed - the decision is made by the company (in your case EDF) taking over the contract. They can choose to continue on the old terms and conditions or switch users to their standard tariff.
The “what happens if the wind doesn’t blow” question will at least partly be addressed in due course with battery storage, but we sometimes miss the big picture on renewables.
The reason we only have 1-2gw of wind power in calm anti cyclonic conditions is because we only have about 18gw of peak capacity. Build 10x as much, plus more solar (which often generates well during times there is little wind) and even in calm periods we have 10-20gw being generated. We have massive latency in traditional generation capacity. We need to get used to latency in renewables too. It’s already happening in parts of the US and China with solar. The infrastructure is cheap enough that it’s viable simply to build much more than you need and switch it off when there’s too much sun. (Or use the excess to smelt aluminium / make carbon fibre / isolate hydrogen).
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't just pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
Currently all we are discovering is how much the most desperate firm is willing to pay to steal workers from elsewhere.
We've hit the top already according to my contacts. My client's business has contracts with two providers. Both said "we'll hire new drivers", both have the same shortage they started with and a huge wage increase that we're paying for. The question has already been asked of them "why bother". Especially for DHL, whose bought in agency drivers at emergency pay rates have fuck all clue what they are doing.
"Just use another firm" I hear Philip say. Yes, one of our customers uses DPD. The same. Another Hermes. The same. They are all fucked. Because you can't attract people to do the work at any money with no training at the drop of a hat.
Yes I do say that. If they're whinging they can't get staff they've not increased wages by more than their competitors. You have no divine right to cheap serfs.
My supplier went out of business in May and Ofgem appointed EDF who extended my contract terms with the previous supplier by 3 months to the end of August then I agreed a new 2 year contract with EDF at a higher tariff as you would when any contract concludes
The lack of knowledge by those who tweet and post these comments show they simply do not have knowledge of the subject
Lucky you. EDF email to me:
On 14 September 2021, Utility Point stopped trading so Ofgem (the industry regulator) chose EDF as your new energy supplier. EDF started supplying your energy on 18 September. Your prices will be matched to Standard (Variable) to give you a guaranteed rate through winter, as well as protection from changing wholesale energy prices. These are our cheapest prices^. We're delighted to welcome you on board.
^ Standard (Variable) is EDF's cheapest tariff (excluding our GoElectric range of tariffs, designed for EV drivers) based on national average prices at Ofgem typical consumption (standard electricity meter 2,900 kWh, Economy 7 electricity meter 4,200 kWh (58% on day rate and 42% on night rate), and Gas 12,000 kWh), when purchased directly from EDF (correct as of 20 September 2021).
When was your previous fixed price contract due to terminate
17 July 2022.
Really
Then I accept it has changed but it must have been very recent and I was very fortunate, as the contact extension I received from EDF was 40% less than their new 2 year fix I agreed at the beginning of September
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
Talking to you on this subject is like the Blackadder sketch teaching Baldrick to add. Paying more does does not produce new drivers. You need to recruit people who want to drive trucks. The pay rise isn't doing that. So we have the same shortage of drivers and a vastly inflated wage bill.
What will this mean? Logistics companies folding. What used to be NFT is about to topple (again) and its unlikely that PE will step in to save it this time. Which rather fucks Asda and Sainsburys chilled supplies. Yes the vehicles can be bought (as we also have a shortage of those due to Brexit) and the drivers hired by a new company. That takes time though.
Paying more does produce new drivers.
It also lowers demand for drivers.
More? Yes. Anywhere near enough? No. Which is why so many of these companies have now stopped with cash incentives and pay rises. They have paid out lots and made no material change to the problem.
Then let the companies that can't afford more staff go without drivers and out of business and let those who can afford to do so gain the drivers.
My supplier went out of business in May and Ofgem appointed EDF who extended my contract terms with the previous supplier by 3 months to the end of August then I agreed a new 2 year contract with EDF at a higher tariff as you would when any contract concludes
The lack of knowledge by those who tweet and post these comments show they simply do not have knowledge of the subject
He isn't talking long term. The minister said that people would keep their tariff from the bankrupt company with the new company the consumer is allocated to. Thats just plain wrong - he doesn't know how the process he is responsible for works.
Its not a major crime, just a little embarrassing.
You are wrong
That is exactly what happened to my contract
EDF took it over in May, extended the same terms for 3 months beyond its previous expiry date and only sought a new contract then
So same tariff and an extra 3 months was very fair
That was then and this is now. The world (and gas market) has changed since then
It would be interesting to know when it changed and whether the consumer had a fixed price contract
It never changed - the decision is made by the company (in your case EDF) taking over the contract. They can choose to continue on the old terms and conditions or switch users to their standard tariff.
I cannot be the only consumer who was switched this way but I assume during the summer nobody anticipated this crisis
My supplier went out of business in May and Ofgem appointed EDF who extended my contract terms with the previous supplier by 3 months to the end of August then I agreed a new 2 year contract with EDF at a higher tariff as you would when any contract concludes
The lack of knowledge by those who tweet and post these comments show they simply do not have knowledge of the subject
They are contradictory - Will keep current tariff Will NOT keep tariff
one or other statement cannot be true.
Agree. Back to Aristotle Course 101. to see if they are contradictory you have to examine the words, not some actual doings of gas companies.
The only way they can not be contradictory is if there is use of equivocation (using 'bat' to mean cricket bat and flying mouse without distinguishing) . This is a form of argument which I can unequivocally state is never used by politicians except when it is.
Oh yes, here is another: the word 'people' is unquantified (all, some, six, none); so it can be argued to mean 'some' people (not the same ones) in each case. Non quantification is a great favourite of politicians and headline writers
My supplier went out of business in May and Ofgem appointed EDF who extended my contract terms with the previous supplier by 3 months to the end of August then I agreed a new 2 year contract with EDF at a higher tariff as you would when any contract concludes
The lack of knowledge by those who tweet and post these comments show they simply do not have knowledge of the subject
He isn't talking long term. The minister said that people would keep their tariff from the bankrupt company with the new company the consumer is allocated to. Thats just plain wrong - he doesn't know how the process he is responsible for works.
Its not a major crime, just a little embarrassing.
You are wrong
That is exactly what happened to my contract
EDF took it over in May, extended the same terms for 3 months beyond its previous expiry date and only sought a new contract then
So same tariff and an extra 3 months was very fair
Lol. I am not wrong. It has literally happened to us last week. You go onto their standard tariff. Your old tariff goes in the bin. What happened to you in May is not ehat is happening now. As so many others are reporting.
The question really is were you on a previous fixed price contract
Big G let me help you out:
May - no gas price crisis June - no gas price crisis July - no gas price crisis Aug - mumblings about gas price crisis Sep - gas price crisis
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't just pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
Currently all we are discovering is how much the most desperate firm is willing to pay to steal workers from elsewhere.
We've hit the top already according to my contacts. My client's business has contracts with two providers. Both said "we'll hire new drivers", both have the same shortage they started with and a huge wage increase that we're paying for. The question has already been asked of them "why bother". Especially for DHL, whose bought in agency drivers at emergency pay rates have fuck all clue what they are doing.
"Just use another firm" I hear Philip say. Yes, one of our customers uses DPD. The same. Another Hermes. The same. They are all fucked. Because you can't attract people to do the work at any money with no training at the drop of a hat.
Yes I do say that. If they're whinging they can't get staff they've not increased wages by more than their competitors. You have no divine right to cheap serfs.
The driver shortage is in large part due to Covid restrictions having shut down the training of new drivers. Raising wages cannot retrospectively fix this and magic into existence all the new drivers who would have qualified in normal times. All it can do is move the pool of existing drivers around, which will help at the margins.
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
As was explained this morning the shortage of HGV drivers is across Europe so there is no pool of drivers readily available
Not true. When we had a free trade agreement we had a cavalcade of EU trucks coming across the border. Trucks would spend a few days in the UK working from one end to the other making drops and picking up.
Internal "cabotage" moves by EU trucks and EU drivers from UK address to UK address was an integral part of our driver and vehicle fleet. That was banned by our government so we lost that. Even if we recruit zero EU drivers to be based here, if we lift the cabotage ban we get an uplift in vehicles and drivers. And we need that.
Remember that the crisis we have endured is based on lower summer levels of goods. As we build towards the Christmas peak the crisis gets worse.
On HGV drivers it seems inevitable that the shortage will lead to lower growth and higher inflation in the short-term. This will have an impact on the public finances, though Sunak seemed to be hoping for a dose of inflation when he froze income tax thresholds, so it won't be all bad in that respect.
Then the question is how long it takes for more drivers to enter the workforce. A bit longer than the fuel crisis 21 years ago, but how much longer?
As was explained this morning the shortage of HGV drivers is across Europe so there is no pool of drivers readily available
Once again the PB brain trust "knows better" than the boss of a major food retailer...
Get a grip lads.
There is a European shortage of HGV drivers no matter you try to deflect the argument so where is the pool
Maybe answer the question
I would say that in a set of countries within the EU with FoM, HGV drivers can move around the group easily covering gaps here and there, smoothing peaks and troughs. They must be doing something like it as there doesn't seem to be anything like the shortages in the EU that we have, and not just in Food delivery.
My supplier went out of business in May and Ofgem appointed EDF who extended my contract terms with the previous supplier by 3 months to the end of August then I agreed a new 2 year contract with EDF at a higher tariff as you would when any contract concludes
The lack of knowledge by those who tweet and post these comments show they simply do not have knowledge of the subject
He isn't talking long term. The minister said that people would keep their tariff from the bankrupt company with the new company the consumer is allocated to. Thats just plain wrong - he doesn't know how the process he is responsible for works.
Its not a major crime, just a little embarrassing.
You are wrong
That is exactly what happened to my contract
EDF took it over in May, extended the same terms for 3 months beyond its previous expiry date and only sought a new contract then
So same tariff and an extra 3 months was very fair
Lol. I am not wrong. It has literally happened to us last week. You go onto their standard tariff. Your old tariff goes in the bin. What happened to you in May is not ehat is happening now. As so many others are reporting.
The question really is were you on a previous fixed price contract
Big G let me help you out:
May - no gas price crisis June - no gas price crisis July - no gas price crisis Aug - mumblings about gas price crisis Sep - gas price crisis
Yes - I have accepted that I was very fortunate in the circumstances
I would just comment that I have received my weekly Asda order with no items missing or unavailable
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't just pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
Currently all we are discovering is how much the most desperate firm is willing to pay to steal workers from elsewhere.
We've hit the top already according to my contacts. My client's business has contracts with two providers. Both said "we'll hire new drivers", both have the same shortage they started with and a huge wage increase that we're paying for. The question has already been asked of them "why bother". Especially for DHL, whose bought in agency drivers at emergency pay rates have fuck all clue what they are doing.
"Just use another firm" I hear Philip say. Yes, one of our customers uses DPD. The same. Another Hermes. The same. They are all fucked. Because you can't attract people to do the work at any money with no training at the drop of a hat.
Yes I do say that. If they're whinging they can't get staff they've not increased wages by more than their competitors. You have no divine right to cheap serfs.
You have just made my point. "by more than their competitors". You can poach driver from firm a to firm b. Firm A now has enough drivers. Firm B does not. The net impact to the industry is zero - you still have the same shortage no matter which firm the drivers you have drive for.
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
As was explained this morning the shortage of HGV drivers is across Europe so there is no pool of drivers readily available
Not true. When we had a free trade agreement we had a cavalcade of EU trucks coming across the border. Trucks would spend a few days in the UK working from one end to the other making drops and picking up.
Internal "cabotage" moves by EU trucks and EU drivers from UK address to UK address was an integral part of our driver and vehicle fleet. That was banned by our government so we lost that. Even if we recruit zero EU drivers to be based here, if we lift the cabotage ban we get an uplift in vehicles and drivers. And we need that.
Remember that the crisis we have endured is based on lower summer levels of goods. As we build towards the Christmas peak the crisis gets worse.
Are you really saying there are no HGV drivers shortages in Europe when even the media are highlighting it
On HGV drivers it seems inevitable that the shortage will lead to lower growth and higher inflation in the short-term. This will have an impact on the public finances, though Sunak seemed to be hoping for a dose of inflation when he froze income tax thresholds, so it won't be all bad in that respect.
Then the question is how long it takes for more drivers to enter the workforce. A bit longer than the fuel crisis 21 years ago, but how much longer?
3 to 4 years. Possibly 24 to 36 months given the reduced test requirements and the possibility that companies may take greater risks on newly qualified drivers to save a few quid.
I expect a lot of railway lines will have cancellations due to drivers using non lorry sat navs and hitting bridges.
My supplier went out of business in May and Ofgem appointed EDF who extended my contract terms with the previous supplier by 3 months to the end of August then I agreed a new 2 year contract with EDF at a higher tariff as you would when any contract concludes
The lack of knowledge by those who tweet and post these comments show they simply do not have knowledge of the subject
He isn't talking long term. The minister said that people would keep their tariff from the bankrupt company with the new company the consumer is allocated to. Thats just plain wrong - he doesn't know how the process he is responsible for works.
Its not a major crime, just a little embarrassing.
You are wrong
That is exactly what happened to my contract
EDF took it over in May, extended the same terms for 3 months beyond its previous expiry date and only sought a new contract then
So same tariff and an extra 3 months was very fair
That was then and this is now. The world (and gas market) has changed since then
It would be interesting to know when it changed and whether the consumer had a fixed price contract
It never changed - the decision is made by the company (in your case EDF) taking over the contract. They can choose to continue on the old terms and conditions or switch users to their standard tariff.
I cannot be the only consumer who was switched this way but I assume during the summer nobody anticipated this crisis
I do accept your explanation
Which is why Kwarteng made such a tit of himself this morning. He is the minister responsible for the provider of last resort mechanism. And has no clue how it works.
As we had the Norniron Secretary insisting there was no customs border (despite he personally having the operations of it within his department) we shouldn't be surprised that these clueless clowns are in cabinet.
There is good news though Big_G! You quit the party! You no longer need to keep defending their stupidity.
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't just pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
Currently all we are discovering is how much the most desperate firm is willing to pay to steal workers from elsewhere.
We've hit the top already according to my contacts. My client's business has contracts with two providers. Both said "we'll hire new drivers", both have the same shortage they started with and a huge wage increase that we're paying for. The question has already been asked of them "why bother". Especially for DHL, whose bought in agency drivers at emergency pay rates have fuck all clue what they are doing.
"Just use another firm" I hear Philip say. Yes, one of our customers uses DPD. The same. Another Hermes. The same. They are all fucked. Because you can't attract people to do the work at any money with no training at the drop of a hat.
Yes I do say that. If they're whinging they can't get staff they've not increased wages by more than their competitors. You have no divine right to cheap serfs.
The driver shortage is in large part due to Covid restrictions having shut down the training of new drivers. Raising wages cannot retrospectively fix this and magic into existence all the new drivers who would have qualified in normal times. All it can do is move the pool of existing drivers around, which will help at the margins.
Higher pay can also attract back qualified drivers who recently retired, or who quit lorry driving for other professions.
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
On HGV drivers it seems inevitable that the shortage will lead to lower growth and higher inflation in the short-term. This will have an impact on the public finances, though Sunak seemed to be hoping for a dose of inflation when he froze income tax thresholds, so it won't be all bad in that respect.
Then the question is how long it takes for more drivers to enter the workforce. A bit longer than the fuel crisis 21 years ago, but how much longer?
Will take 18-24 months to fill the hole according to the industry. We've had about 2 months so far so no earlier than Christmas 2022.
My supplier went out of business in May and Ofgem appointed EDF who extended my contract terms with the previous supplier by 3 months to the end of August then I agreed a new 2 year contract with EDF at a higher tariff as you would when any contract concludes
The lack of knowledge by those who tweet and post these comments show they simply do not have knowledge of the subject
He isn't talking long term. The minister said that people would keep their tariff from the bankrupt company with the new company the consumer is allocated to. Thats just plain wrong - he doesn't know how the process he is responsible for works.
Its not a major crime, just a little embarrassing.
You are wrong
That is exactly what happened to my contract
EDF took it over in May, extended the same terms for 3 months beyond its previous expiry date and only sought a new contract then
So same tariff and an extra 3 months was very fair
That was then and this is now. The world (and gas market) has changed since then
It would be interesting to know when it changed and whether the consumer had a fixed price contract
It never changed - the decision is made by the company (in your case EDF) taking over the contract. They can choose to continue on the old terms and conditions or switch users to their standard tariff.
I cannot be the only consumer who was switched this way but I assume during the summer nobody anticipated this crisis
I do accept your explanation
Which is why Kwarteng made such a tit of himself this morning. He is the minister responsible for the provider of last resort mechanism. And has no clue how it works.
As we had the Norniron Secretary insisting there was no customs border (despite he personally having the operations of it within his department) we shouldn't be surprised that these clueless clowns are in cabinet.
There is good news though Big_G! You quit the party! You no longer need to keep defending their stupidity.
But all the other parties are just as stupid if not more so
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
As was explained this morning the shortage of HGV drivers is across Europe so there is no pool of drivers readily available
Not true. When we had a free trade agreement we had a cavalcade of EU trucks coming across the border. Trucks would spend a few days in the UK working from one end to the other making drops and picking up.
Internal "cabotage" moves by EU trucks and EU drivers from UK address to UK address was an integral part of our driver and vehicle fleet. That was banned by our government so we lost that. Even if we recruit zero EU drivers to be based here, if we lift the cabotage ban we get an uplift in vehicles and drivers. And we need that.
Remember that the crisis we have endured is based on lower summer levels of goods. As we build towards the Christmas peak the crisis gets worse.
Are you really saying there are no HGV drivers shortages in Europe when even the media are highlighting it
No. He is saying that one Brexit change (stopping foreign lorries doing UK to UK deliveries) may be making the situation worse and that allowing that to restart could resolve a bit of the problem.
However there is a lorry driver shortage across Europe because it simply isn't a job a lot of people want to do.
On HGV drivers it seems inevitable that the shortage will lead to lower growth and higher inflation in the short-term. This will have an impact on the public finances, though Sunak seemed to be hoping for a dose of inflation when he froze income tax thresholds, so it won't be all bad in that respect.
Then the question is how long it takes for more drivers to enter the workforce. A bit longer than the fuel crisis 21 years ago, but how much longer?
Will take 18-24 months to fill the hole according to the industry. We've had about 2 months so far so no earlier than Christmas 2022.
My sources expect it to be longer than that. They know a lot of drivers are looking at getting out and it's only the current bumper pay days on agency work that is keeping them going.
I think it's 18-24 months to fill the current gap but that ignores people retiring.
My supplier went out of business in May and Ofgem appointed EDF who extended my contract terms with the previous supplier by 3 months to the end of August then I agreed a new 2 year contract with EDF at a higher tariff as you would when any contract concludes
The lack of knowledge by those who tweet and post these comments show they simply do not have knowledge of the subject
He isn't talking long term. The minister said that people would keep their tariff from the bankrupt company with the new company the consumer is allocated to. Thats just plain wrong - he doesn't know how the process he is responsible for works.
Its not a major crime, just a little embarrassing.
You are wrong
That is exactly what happened to my contract
EDF took it over in May, extended the same terms for 3 months beyond its previous expiry date and only sought a new contract then
So same tariff and an extra 3 months was very fair
Lol. I am not wrong. It has literally happened to us last week. You go onto their standard tariff. Your old tariff goes in the bin. What happened to you in May is not ehat is happening now. As so many others are reporting.
The question really is were you on a previous fixed price contract
Big G let me help you out:
May - no gas price crisis June - no gas price crisis July - no gas price crisis Aug - mumblings about gas price crisis Sep - gas price crisis
Yes - I have accepted that I was very fortunate in the circumstances
I would just comment that I have received my weekly Asda order with no items missing or unavailable
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't just pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
Currently all we are discovering is how much the most desperate firm is willing to pay to steal workers from elsewhere.
We've hit the top already according to my contacts. My client's business has contracts with two providers. Both said "we'll hire new drivers", both have the same shortage they started with and a huge wage increase that we're paying for. The question has already been asked of them "why bother". Especially for DHL, whose bought in agency drivers at emergency pay rates have fuck all clue what they are doing.
"Just use another firm" I hear Philip say. Yes, one of our customers uses DPD. The same. Another Hermes. The same. They are all fucked. Because you can't attract people to do the work at any money with no training at the drop of a hat.
Yes I do say that. If they're whinging they can't get staff they've not increased wages by more than their competitors. You have no divine right to cheap serfs.
The driver shortage is in large part due to Covid restrictions having shut down the training of new drivers. Raising wages cannot retrospectively fix this and magic into existence all the new drivers who would have qualified in normal times. All it can do is move the pool of existing drivers around, which will help at the margins.
Here is a simple partial fix, that costs very little, almost nothing directly and can be done straight away.
Temporarily allow hgv's (perhaps only those delivering food/other essentials) to use bus lanes.
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't just pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
Currently all we are discovering is how much the most desperate firm is willing to pay to steal workers from elsewhere.
We've hit the top already according to my contacts. My client's business has contracts with two providers. Both said "we'll hire new drivers", both have the same shortage they started with and a huge wage increase that we're paying for. The question has already been asked of them "why bother". Especially for DHL, whose bought in agency drivers at emergency pay rates have fuck all clue what they are doing.
"Just use another firm" I hear Philip say. Yes, one of our customers uses DPD. The same. Another Hermes. The same. They are all fucked. Because you can't attract people to do the work at any money with no training at the drop of a hat.
Yes I do say that. If they're whinging they can't get staff they've not increased wages by more than their competitors. You have no divine right to cheap serfs.
The driver shortage is in large part due to Covid restrictions having shut down the training of new drivers. Raising wages cannot retrospectively fix this and magic into existence all the new drivers who would have qualified in normal times. All it can do is move the pool of existing drivers around, which will help at the margins.
So arguably given that we have lived with the residual 50,000 shortage for years and years, Brexit contributed to 50% of the increased shortage and that, together with Covid, was responsible for where we are now.
On HGV drivers it seems inevitable that the shortage will lead to lower growth and higher inflation in the short-term. This will have an impact on the public finances, though Sunak seemed to be hoping for a dose of inflation when he froze income tax thresholds, so it won't be all bad in that respect.
Then the question is how long it takes for more drivers to enter the workforce. A bit longer than the fuel crisis 21 years ago, but how much longer?
Will take 18-24 months to fill the hole according to the industry. We've had about 2 months so far so no earlier than Christmas 2022.
My sources expect it to be longer than that. They know a lot of drivers are looking at getting out and it's only the current bumper pay days on agency work that is keeping them going.
Isn’t it the case, that the current cohort of lorry drivers are older than standard demographics might expect?
AIUI there’s quite a few approaching retirement, so hopefully the increased pay we are seeing might help with recruitment of a younger generation.
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
As was explained this morning the shortage of HGV drivers is across Europe so there is no pool of drivers readily available
Not true. When we had a free trade agreement we had a cavalcade of EU trucks coming across the border. Trucks would spend a few days in the UK working from one end to the other making drops and picking up.
Internal "cabotage" moves by EU trucks and EU drivers from UK address to UK address was an integral part of our driver and vehicle fleet. That was banned by our government so we lost that. Even if we recruit zero EU drivers to be based here, if we lift the cabotage ban we get an uplift in vehicles and drivers. And we need that.
Remember that the crisis we have endured is based on lower summer levels of goods. As we build towards the Christmas peak the crisis gets worse.
Are you really saying there are no HGV drivers shortages in Europe when even the media are highlighting it
And we cannot put the clock back
Erm, no. There are definitely shortages, though smaller and less problematic than ours. The UK had very specific UK only issues - no right for EU drivers to work here, a ban on EU drivers working vehicles into the UK doing cabotage drops, IR35, and general working conditions.
IR35 is now a non-issue, the pay rises have swept away the financial disincentives. Working conditions are structural (shit facilities (or a lack of shit facilities...) for drivers off the motorway network, a nationwide negative attitude to drivers and now the crisis operational conditions where pretty much every load is urgent.
So that leaves rights to work here and cabotage. In the single market shortages can be covered from other markets where there are no shortages. Or patched over by the integrated logistics network and cabotage. We have no access to either (by choice). We can't even have the once ubiquitous norbert dentressangle DE registered truck do UK supply runs.
So we could "put the clock back". Very simply by allowing cabotage. Thats a start. Then a short term visa to allow EU drivers to cover the Christmas season - with the vast UK pay offer they will come.
But we won't. Because there are no downsides to Brexit.
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
As was explained this morning the shortage of HGV drivers is across Europe so there is no pool of drivers readily available
Not true. When we had a free trade agreement we had a cavalcade of EU trucks coming across the border. Trucks would spend a few days in the UK working from one end to the other making drops and picking up.
Internal "cabotage" moves by EU trucks and EU drivers from UK address to UK address was an integral part of our driver and vehicle fleet. That was banned by our government so we lost that. Even if we recruit zero EU drivers to be based here, if we lift the cabotage ban we get an uplift in vehicles and drivers. And we need that.
Remember that the crisis we have endured is based on lower summer levels of goods. As we build towards the Christmas peak the crisis gets worse.
Would it be fair to summarise the situation as cabotage letting us use the existing freight system (however many drivers and lorries that is) more efficiently? And that by carving off GB as a separate zone, we've lost some of the efficiency of drivers, capital and fuel? In which case, you'd anticipate costs going up without anyone really benefiting.
(I imagine that the new equilibrium price for drivers will be higher than before all this, but considerably lower than we're seeing in this current intermediate state.)
On China it seems a bit unlikely that they allowed Covid to spread due to a malevolent desire to use a pandemic as cover for imposing authoritarian rule on Hong Kong.
It seems much more likely that there were several decision makers at different levels of the hierarchy who were unable to admit to the seriousness of the situation, preferring to hope for the best and save face in the short term.
That's pretty much what happened repeatedly in the UK, and most everyone on here is quick to criticise any accusation that a more competent response could have saved tens of thousands of lives, let alone an accusation that those deaths resulted from malevolence.
That's not to excuse the delay in taking action in either case, but I think an accusation of malevolent intent is hyperbole at best and more likely an example of a conspiracy theory.
Yes if only someone had told Emperor Xi what was happening earlier than 23rd Jan 2020!
On HGV drivers it seems inevitable that the shortage will lead to lower growth and higher inflation in the short-term. This will have an impact on the public finances, though Sunak seemed to be hoping for a dose of inflation when he froze income tax thresholds, so it won't be all bad in that respect.
Then the question is how long it takes for more drivers to enter the workforce. A bit longer than the fuel crisis 21 years ago, but how much longer?
Will take 18-24 months to fill the hole according to the industry. We've had about 2 months so far so no earlier than Christmas 2022.
If this more optimistic period is correct, rather than eek's estimate, then I'd guess some of the growth lost in the short term will be lost permanently.
That's counter-productive at the best of times, but particularly now given the debt we're servicing.
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't just pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
Currently all we are discovering is how much the most desperate firm is willing to pay to steal workers from elsewhere.
We've hit the top already according to my contacts. My client's business has contracts with two providers. Both said "we'll hire new drivers", both have the same shortage they started with and a huge wage increase that we're paying for. The question has already been asked of them "why bother". Especially for DHL, whose bought in agency drivers at emergency pay rates have fuck all clue what they are doing.
"Just use another firm" I hear Philip say. Yes, one of our customers uses DPD. The same. Another Hermes. The same. They are all fucked. Because you can't attract people to do the work at any money with no training at the drop of a hat.
Yes I do say that. If they're whinging they can't get staff they've not increased wages by more than their competitors. You have no divine right to cheap serfs.
The driver shortage is in large part due to Covid restrictions having shut down the training of new drivers. Raising wages cannot retrospectively fix this and magic into existence all the new drivers who would have qualified in normal times. All it can do is move the pool of existing drivers around, which will help at the margins.
Higher pay can also attract back qualified drivers who recently retired, or who quit lorry driving for other professions.
In theory. In practice it hasn't. Driving a truck isn't much fun - so drivers say. So the extra pay to do something they don't want to do isn't that big an incentive. And anyway their licences lapse very quickly - they may have the experience but they don't have a valid license which puts them into the lack of instructors / testers problem.
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
Edit doesnt work on my phone so excuse replying to myself.
I'm probs being a bit hard on customers just trying to find the best deal and it isnt easy to see how sound a company's finances are. But still no to keeping same tariffs.
Maybe these comparison sites could add a financial stability rating as well as customer service ratings.
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't just pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
Currently all we are discovering is how much the most desperate firm is willing to pay to steal workers from elsewhere.
We've hit the top already according to my contacts. My client's business has contracts with two providers. Both said "we'll hire new drivers", both have the same shortage they started with and a huge wage increase that we're paying for. The question has already been asked of them "why bother". Especially for DHL, whose bought in agency drivers at emergency pay rates have fuck all clue what they are doing.
"Just use another firm" I hear Philip say. Yes, one of our customers uses DPD. The same. Another Hermes. The same. They are all fucked. Because you can't attract people to do the work at any money with no training at the drop of a hat.
Yes I do say that. If they're whinging they can't get staff they've not increased wages by more than their competitors. You have no divine right to cheap serfs.
The driver shortage is in large part due to Covid restrictions having shut down the training of new drivers. Raising wages cannot retrospectively fix this and magic into existence all the new drivers who would have qualified in normal times. All it can do is move the pool of existing drivers around, which will help at the margins.
Higher pay can also attract back qualified drivers who recently retired, or who quit lorry driving for other professions.
In theory. In practice it hasn't. Driving a truck isn't much fun - so drivers say. So the extra pay to do something they don't want to do isn't that big an incentive. And anyway their licences lapse very quickly - they may have the experience but they don't have a valid license which puts them into the lack of instructors / testers problem.
Then the extra pay offered isn't extra enough. Stop moaning and offer even more until equilibrium is reached.
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't just pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
Currently all we are discovering is how much the most desperate firm is willing to pay to steal workers from elsewhere.
We've hit the top already according to my contacts. My client's business has contracts with two providers. Both said "we'll hire new drivers", both have the same shortage they started with and a huge wage increase that we're paying for. The question has already been asked of them "why bother". Especially for DHL, whose bought in agency drivers at emergency pay rates have fuck all clue what they are doing.
"Just use another firm" I hear Philip say. Yes, one of our customers uses DPD. The same. Another Hermes. The same. They are all fucked. Because you can't attract people to do the work at any money with no training at the drop of a hat.
Yes I do say that. If they're whinging they can't get staff they've not increased wages by more than their competitors. You have no divine right to cheap serfs.
The driver shortage is in large part due to Covid restrictions having shut down the training of new drivers. Raising wages cannot retrospectively fix this and magic into existence all the new drivers who would have qualified in normal times. All it can do is move the pool of existing drivers around, which will help at the margins.
So arguably given that we have lived with the residual 50,000 shortage for years and years, Brexit contributed to 50% of the increased shortage and that, together with Covid, was responsible for where we are now.
What about the loss of cabotage? This makes each driver less efficient, and can also be attributed to Brexit.
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
What a f*cking ridiculous comment.
Please share your list of which of the current 50 or more energy suppliers are sound and which are not going to go bust.
(To declare an interest: we are PFP customers waiting to find out what our new tariff will be once British Gas have taken our account over. How stupid of us not to have spotted last December that PFP were going to go bust.)
On HGV drivers it seems inevitable that the shortage will lead to lower growth and higher inflation in the short-term. This will have an impact on the public finances, though Sunak seemed to be hoping for a dose of inflation when he froze income tax thresholds, so it won't be all bad in that respect.
Then the question is how long it takes for more drivers to enter the workforce. A bit longer than the fuel crisis 21 years ago, but how much longer?
Will take 18-24 months to fill the hole according to the industry. We've had about 2 months so far so no earlier than Christmas 2022.
My sources expect it to be longer than that. They know a lot of drivers are looking at getting out and it's only the current bumper pay days on agency work that is keeping them going.
Isn’t it the case, that the current cohort of lorry drivers are older than standard demographics might expect?
AIUI there’s quite a few approaching retirement, so hopefully the increased pay we are seeing might help with recruitment of a younger generation.
Yep - average age was 53 in 2016 so it's only going to be higher now - although finding details is impossible (it took 5 attempts to find out that that 53 stat used everywhere came from a 2016 survey).
Then the question is how long it takes for more drivers to enter the workforce. A bit longer than the fuel crisis 21 years ago, but how much longer?
I have Cat C HGV and that took me four days plus one day for the test.
I thought I was going to buy a flatbed to move cars but ended up getting a beavertail 4th gen Transit that is habitually overloaded to an illegal level whenever I use it.
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't just pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
Currently all we are discovering is how much the most desperate firm is willing to pay to steal workers from elsewhere.
We've hit the top already according to my contacts. My client's business has contracts with two providers. Both said "we'll hire new drivers", both have the same shortage they started with and a huge wage increase that we're paying for. The question has already been asked of them "why bother". Especially for DHL, whose bought in agency drivers at emergency pay rates have fuck all clue what they are doing.
"Just use another firm" I hear Philip say. Yes, one of our customers uses DPD. The same. Another Hermes. The same. They are all fucked. Because you can't attract people to do the work at any money with no training at the drop of a hat.
Yes I do say that. If they're whinging they can't get staff they've not increased wages by more than their competitors. You have no divine right to cheap serfs.
You have just made my point. "by more than their competitors". You can poach driver from firm a to firm b. Firm A now has enough drivers. Firm B does not. The net impact to the industry is zero - you still have the same shortage no matter which firm the drivers you have drive for.
I must say that Philip's standard response is getting to sound ridiculous. He reminds me of Marvin the paranoid android from "hitchhikers guide".
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't just pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
Currently all we are discovering is how much the most desperate firm is willing to pay to steal workers from elsewhere.
We've hit the top already according to my contacts. My client's business has contracts with two providers. Both said "we'll hire new drivers", both have the same shortage they started with and a huge wage increase that we're paying for. The question has already been asked of them "why bother". Especially for DHL, whose bought in agency drivers at emergency pay rates have fuck all clue what they are doing.
"Just use another firm" I hear Philip say. Yes, one of our customers uses DPD. The same. Another Hermes. The same. They are all fucked. Because you can't attract people to do the work at any money with no training at the drop of a hat.
Yes I do say that. If they're whinging they can't get staff they've not increased wages by more than their competitors. You have no divine right to cheap serfs.
You have just made my point. "by more than their competitors". You can poach driver from firm a to firm b. Firm A now has enough drivers. Firm B does not. The net impact to the industry is zero - you still have the same shortage no matter which firm the drivers you have drive for.
I must say that Philip's standard response is getting to sound ridiculous. He reminds me of Marvin the paranoid android from "hitchhikers guide".
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't just pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
Currently all we are discovering is how much the most desperate firm is willing to pay to steal workers from elsewhere.
We've hit the top already according to my contacts. My client's business has contracts with two providers. Both said "we'll hire new drivers", both have the same shortage they started with and a huge wage increase that we're paying for. The question has already been asked of them "why bother". Especially for DHL, whose bought in agency drivers at emergency pay rates have fuck all clue what they are doing.
"Just use another firm" I hear Philip say. Yes, one of our customers uses DPD. The same. Another Hermes. The same. They are all fucked. Because you can't attract people to do the work at any money with no training at the drop of a hat.
Yes I do say that. If they're whinging they can't get staff they've not increased wages by more than their competitors. You have no divine right to cheap serfs.
You have just made my point. "by more than their competitors". You can poach driver from firm a to firm b. Firm A now has enough drivers. Firm B does not. The net impact to the industry is zero - you still have the same shortage no matter which firm the drivers you have drive for.
Wrong. Their competitors are not just in the industry. If you've got drivers who realised during the pandemic they can work from home instead of drive and get decent terms and conditions from that then they're no longer driving even if they're able to do so. Raise pay by enough to induce them back into the industry and there's extra drivers in the industry.
Plus you keep ignoring (deliberately or otherwise) the fact that S&D works both ways so increasing price lowers demand it doesn't just increase supply.
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
The same way we can have "a record rise in prices" of 3.2% 🤦♂️
That's not the same thing. A record rise is an empirical statement.
The adverb 'soar' is subjective and hyperbole. Sandpit was right to call it out. A price rise of 5% is not a soaring price.
Surely depends on the context. Let's say the earth's rotation typically at any time or periodically deviates 0.0005% around its axis. A 5% deviation would be a "soar" moment.
A 5% price rise could be, especially to certain demographics, also a soar moment.
As an example, Aldi house champagne soared in price from £12.99 to £13.49 (3.8% rise). Still worth it, though.
Then the question is how long it takes for more drivers to enter the workforce. A bit longer than the fuel crisis 21 years ago, but how much longer?
I have Cat C HGV and that took me four days plus one day for the test.
I thought I was going to buy a flatbed to move cars but ended up getting a beavertail 4th gen Transit that is habitually overloaded to an illegal level whenever I use it.
I suspect that you were vastly better prepared for the test than most other learners and that passing the test in 5 days is a rarity.
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
On HGV drivers it seems inevitable that the shortage will lead to lower growth and higher inflation in the short-term. This will have an impact on the public finances, though Sunak seemed to be hoping for a dose of inflation when he froze income tax thresholds, so it won't be all bad in that respect.
Then the question is how long it takes for more drivers to enter the workforce. A bit longer than the fuel crisis 21 years ago, but how much longer?
Will take 18-24 months to fill the hole according to the industry. We've had about 2 months so far so no earlier than Christmas 2022.
My sources expect it to be longer than that. They know a lot of drivers are looking at getting out and it's only the current bumper pay days on agency work that is keeping them going.
Isn’t it the case, that the current cohort of lorry drivers are older than standard demographics might expect?
AIUI there’s quite a few approaching retirement, so hopefully the increased pay we are seeing might help with recruitment of a younger generation.
Think the age profile may be down to lifestyle far far more than wages.
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't just pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
Currently all we are discovering is how much the most desperate firm is willing to pay to steal workers from elsewhere.
We've hit the top already according to my contacts. My client's business has contracts with two providers. Both said "we'll hire new drivers", both have the same shortage they started with and a huge wage increase that we're paying for. The question has already been asked of them "why bother". Especially for DHL, whose bought in agency drivers at emergency pay rates have fuck all clue what they are doing.
"Just use another firm" I hear Philip say. Yes, one of our customers uses DPD. The same. Another Hermes. The same. They are all fucked. Because you can't attract people to do the work at any money with no training at the drop of a hat.
Yes I do say that. If they're whinging they can't get staff they've not increased wages by more than their competitors. You have no divine right to cheap serfs.
The driver shortage is in large part due to Covid restrictions having shut down the training of new drivers. Raising wages cannot retrospectively fix this and magic into existence all the new drivers who would have qualified in normal times. All it can do is move the pool of existing drivers around, which will help at the margins.
So arguably given that we have lived with the residual 50,000 shortage for years and years, Brexit contributed to 50% of the increased shortage and that, together with Covid, was responsible for where we are now.
What about the loss of cabotage? This makes each driver less efficient, and can also be attributed to Brexit.
Another factor absolutely. I was talking about the oft-stated 100,000 shortage of HGV drivers.
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
Edit doesnt work on my phone so excuse replying to myself.
I'm probs being a bit hard on customers just trying to find the best deal and it isnt easy to see how sound a company's finances are. But still no to keeping same tariffs.
Maybe these comparison sites could add a financial stability rating as well as customer service ratings.
What criteria could be used for financial stability? The reason it isn't done is that for most things it just isn't something you can rate in a sane way.
For reference I'm working on doing financial checks for a particular industry - it is without doubt the hardest project I've ever worked on and it's only possible because this industry has very particular requirements and processes that just about make it possible.
Then the question is how long it takes for more drivers to enter the workforce. A bit longer than the fuel crisis 21 years ago, but how much longer?
I have Cat C HGV and that took me four days plus one day for the test.
I thought I was going to buy a flatbed to move cars but ended up getting a beavertail 4th gen Transit that is habitually overloaded to an illegal level whenever I use it.
I suspect that you were vastly better prepared for the test than most other learners and that passing the test in 5 days is a rarity.
An aviation background definitely helped. A lot of HGV driving seemed to be doing 'scans' constantly. Offside view, road position, mirrors, speed, roadside prostitutes, etc.
The same way we can have "a record rise in prices" of 3.2% 🤦♂️
That's not the same thing. A record rise is an empirical statement.
The adverb 'soar' is subjective and hyperbole. Sandpit was right to call it out. A price rise of 5% is not a soaring price.
A "record rise in prices" was not an empirical statement. Prices used to rise by double-digit amounts in my lifetime.
The "record rise in prices" claim was entirely fallacious hyperbole. If a price rise of 5% is not soaring, then lower than that certainly isn't a record rise either.
The media doesn't understand economics but they certainly understand how to use hyperbole.
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
As was explained this morning the shortage of HGV drivers is across Europe so there is no pool of drivers readily available
Not true. When we had a free trade agreement we had a cavalcade of EU trucks coming across the border. Trucks would spend a few days in the UK working from one end to the other making drops and picking up.
Internal "cabotage" moves by EU trucks and EU drivers from UK address to UK address was an integral part of our driver and vehicle fleet. That was banned by our government so we lost that. Even if we recruit zero EU drivers to be based here, if we lift the cabotage ban we get an uplift in vehicles and drivers. And we need that.
Remember that the crisis we have endured is based on lower summer levels of goods. As we build towards the Christmas peak the crisis gets worse.
Would it be fair to summarise the situation as cabotage letting us use the existing freight system (however many drivers and lorries that is) more efficiently? And that by carving off GB as a separate zone, we've lost some of the efficiency of drivers, capital and fuel? In which case, you'd anticipate costs going up without anyone really benefiting.
(I imagine that the new equilibrium price for drivers will be higher than before all this, but considerably lower than we're seeing in this current intermediate state.)
Yes. GB used to be an important regional node in an integrated European logistics network. We supplied not just GB but Ireland as well. EU-registered trucks would come in from across Europe, drop and collect loads here and then return.
What we have done is completely cut ourselves off from that network. Ireland is now supplied direct from the EU bypassing GB completely. EU trucks come here less often carrying less goods and are banned by our government from playing any role in the GB logistics network as they once did.
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
What a f*cking ridiculous comment.
Please share your list of which of the current 50 or more energy suppliers are sound and which are not going to go bust.
(To declare an interest: we are PFP customers waiting to find out what our new tariff will be once British Gas have taken our account over. How stupid of us not to have spotted last December that PFP were going to go bust.)
Are you saying that CHEEPO-E-Z-TARIFF-HONEST-NRG energy suppliers were dodge?
Ever wondered why the first five providers on USwitch you'd never heard of? Companies spend a lot on brand management for precisely this reason. I have heard of British Gas, EdF, Scottish Power, etc. I have not heard of the majority of those USwitch GasCos.
Did you never wonder why certain providers could offer you energy for so much less than the better known brands?
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
The boss of a company doesn't want to pay people more as a solution and wants to regain access to unlimited cheap labour instead?
I'm shocked, shocked at this completely unprecedented and unforeseen situation.
Sure there can and should be a wages hike. But that isn't going to generate new drivers this winter.
Yes it will. It will also lower demand.
Do you think there isn't a single driver who left the industry while the country was in lockdown (or elsewhere) that could be tempted back into the sector with a high enough payrise?
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
Edit doesnt work on my phone so excuse replying to myself.
I'm probs being a bit hard on customers just trying to find the best deal and it isnt easy to see how sound a company's finances are. But still no to keeping same tariffs.
Maybe these comparison sites could add a financial stability rating as well as customer service ratings.
What criteria could be used for financial stability? The reason it isn't done is that for most things it just isn't something you can rate in a sane way.
For reference I'm working on doing financial checks for a particular industry - it is without doubt the hardest project I've ever worked on and it's only possible because this industry has very particular requirements and processes that just about make it possible.
Good question. And I dont know. I guess even size doesnt make a company invulnerable to failure.
BTW, I'm not remotely implying that I would be capable and competent at driving 7 tons of Findus Crispy Pancakes from Hull to Basingstoke on daily basis just that 4+1 days was how long it took me to get the licence.
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't just pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
Currently all we are discovering is how much the most desperate firm is willing to pay to steal workers from elsewhere.
We've hit the top already according to my contacts. My client's business has contracts with two providers. Both said "we'll hire new drivers", both have the same shortage they started with and a huge wage increase that we're paying for. The question has already been asked of them "why bother". Especially for DHL, whose bought in agency drivers at emergency pay rates have fuck all clue what they are doing.
"Just use another firm" I hear Philip say. Yes, one of our customers uses DPD. The same. Another Hermes. The same. They are all fucked. Because you can't attract people to do the work at any money with no training at the drop of a hat.
Yes I do say that. If they're whinging they can't get staff they've not increased wages by more than their competitors. You have no divine right to cheap serfs.
You have just made my point. "by more than their competitors". You can poach driver from firm a to firm b. Firm A now has enough drivers. Firm B does not. The net impact to the industry is zero - you still have the same shortage no matter which firm the drivers you have drive for.
Wrong. Their competitors are not just in the industry. If you've got drivers who realised during the pandemic they can work from home instead of drive and get decent terms and conditions from that then they're no longer driving even if they're able to do so. Raise pay by enough to induce them back into the industry and there's extra drivers in the industry.
Plus you keep ignoring (deliberately or otherwise) the fact that S&D works both ways so increasing price lowers demand it doesn't just increase supply.
Transportation is a cost that most companies will just accept and work out how to handle the additional costs (swallow it, charge more for deliveries, charge more for each product). Regardless of supply, demand for it is very inelastic.
Another thought on the driver issues. In 1995, they changed the validation for a ‘standard’ driving licence from 7.5t to 3.5t. So most people older than 43 can actually drive a small lorry on their car licence, people younger can only drive a Transit or Sprinter van.
I was one of the last to receive the old validation, category C1.
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
What a f*cking ridiculous comment.
Please share your list of which of the current 50 or more energy suppliers are sound and which are not going to go bust.
(To declare an interest: we are PFP customers waiting to find out what our new tariff will be once British Gas have taken our account over. How stupid of us not to have spotted last December that PFP were going to go bust.)
Are you saying that CHEEPO-E-Z-TARIFF-HONEST-NRG energy suppliers were dodge?
Ever wondered why the first five providers on USwitch you'd never heard of? Companies spend a lot on brand management for precisely this reason. I have heard of British Gas, EdF, Scottish Power, etc. I have not heard of the majority of those USwitch GasCos.
Did you never wonder why certain providers could offer you energy for so much less than the better known brands?
Sorry, I’m with Benpointer on this.
Consumers were educated to treat the suppliers as interchangeable utilities. And why not?
As was explained this morning the shortage of HGV drivers is across Europe so there is no pool of drivers readily available
lads.
???
There are people who pop on here who aren't white male baby boomers.
Indeed.
Talking of which, in the last few days a woman teacher at a Lewisham primary school was murdered minutes from her home while crossing a park in Greenwich on her way home. Her name was Sabina Nessa. She was 28.
There has not been quite the same outpouring of disgust as there was over poor Sarah Everard. Greenwich Council is giving out alarms to women in the area.
So far there have been 106 women killed by men. This is where a suspect has been charged. In some cases the suspect went on to kill others, both men and women eg as in the Plymouth case or in the recent case where some children were also killed. In others no suspect has been charged. I do not know the equivalent figures for men murdered this year.
Horrible. May she and the others rest in peace. I hope the police catch the killer soon.
On topic, I remember Hacker's oddly appropriate description of his first meeting with the US President in Yes, Prime Minister:
"When we started our talks I read him my brief and he read me his, and then we decided it would be much quicker if we just swapped briefs and read them to ourselves. So we spent nearly all the time rubbishing the French. Terrific".
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't just pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
Currently all we are discovering is how much the most desperate firm is willing to pay to steal workers from elsewhere.
We've hit the top already according to my contacts. My client's business has contracts with two providers. Both said "we'll hire new drivers", both have the same shortage they started with and a huge wage increase that we're paying for. The question has already been asked of them "why bother". Especially for DHL, whose bought in agency drivers at emergency pay rates have fuck all clue what they are doing.
"Just use another firm" I hear Philip say. Yes, one of our customers uses DPD. The same. Another Hermes. The same. They are all fucked. Because you can't attract people to do the work at any money with no training at the drop of a hat.
Yes I do say that. If they're whinging they can't get staff they've not increased wages by more than their competitors. You have no divine right to cheap serfs.
You have just made my point. "by more than their competitors". You can poach driver from firm a to firm b. Firm A now has enough drivers. Firm B does not. The net impact to the industry is zero - you still have the same shortage no matter which firm the drivers you have drive for.
Wrong. Their competitors are not just in the industry. If you've got drivers who realised during the pandemic they can work from home instead of drive and get decent terms and conditions from that then they're no longer driving even if they're able to do so. Raise pay by enough to induce them back into the industry and there's extra drivers in the industry.
Plus you keep ignoring (deliberately or otherwise) the fact that S&D works both ways so increasing price lowers demand it doesn't just increase supply.
Transportation is a cost that most companies will just accept and work out how to handle the additional costs (swallow it, charge more for deliveries, charge more for each product). Regardless of supply, demand for it is very inelastic.
Then they should stop complaining and put the price up by enough then. 🤷♂️
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
What a f*cking ridiculous comment.
Please share your list of which of the current 50 or more energy suppliers are sound and which are not going to go bust.
(To declare an interest: we are PFP customers waiting to find out what our new tariff will be once British Gas have taken our account over. How stupid of us not to have spotted last December that PFP were going to go bust.)
Are you saying that CHEEPO-E-Z-TARIFF-HONEST-NRG energy suppliers were dodge?
Ever wondered why the first five providers on USwitch you'd never heard of? Companies spend a lot on brand management for precisely this reason. I have heard of British Gas, EdF, Scottish Power, etc. I have not heard of the majority of those USwitch GasCos.
Did you never wonder why certain providers could offer you energy for so much less than the better known brands?
A lot of branding isn't so much advertising - it comes from existing for X years so you start recognising the brand via osmosis.
A newly created energy company had little point advertising on TV (as they did in the olden days) nowadays it's easier to just pay the comparison sites their referral fees.
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
Edit doesnt work on my phone so excuse replying to myself.
I'm probs being a bit hard on customers just trying to find the best deal and it isnt easy to see how sound a company's finances are. But still no to keeping same tariffs.
Maybe these comparison sites could add a financial stability rating as well as customer service ratings.
What criteria could be used for financial stability? The reason it isn't done is that for most things it just isn't something you can rate in a sane way.
For reference I'm working on doing financial checks for a particular industry - it is without doubt the hardest project I've ever worked on and it's only possible because this industry has very particular requirements and processes that just about make it possible.
If a customer wants a spread bet on energy prices they need to put up a deposit with the spread firm to cover the volatility of that bet.
If an energy firms wants a spread bet on energy prices and uses that to entice customers, why not protect the customers by requiring a similar deposit is held with ofgem?
Instead the regulator does not even get involved where it is required to. From a 2017 report, so not hindsight:
"Paul Green, chief executive of Energyhelpline, says Ofgem is failing to check the 'financial integrity of new suppliers' and this is why companies, such as GB Energy which collapsed at the end of last year, are at risk of going bust.
He says there hasn't been enough regulation in place when it comes to new providers and he warns that more firms will close.
He says: 'Small suppliers are at risk of closure due to Ofgem's incompetence with its regulations.
'Ofgem is almost exclusively to blame for hundreds of thousands of customers being left in a whirlwind of uncertainty . The energy regulator has failed small suppliers due to lacklustre checks and easily obtainable customer targets.'
Green also mentions Ofgem's 'Confidence Code' when looking at the recent failing of GB Energy. It means accredited price comparison sites need to list all energy companies on the market.
Green says the code led to GB Energy wrongfully gaining the majority of its customers. This is because it had to be listed by the leading sites and as it was listed cheapest for long periods of time, it received more customers than it could handle.
He adds: 'If GB Energy were not given this 'free advertising' the company would have had to better plan the business' future, ensuring a more sustainable growth.'"
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
What a f*cking ridiculous comment.
Please share your list of which of the current 50 or more energy suppliers are sound and which are not going to go bust.
(To declare an interest: we are PFP customers waiting to find out what our new tariff will be once British Gas have taken our account over. How stupid of us not to have spotted last December that PFP were going to go bust.)
Are you saying that CHEEPO-E-Z-TARIFF-HONEST-NRG energy suppliers were dodge?
Ever wondered why the first five providers on USwitch you'd never heard of? Companies spend a lot on brand management for precisely this reason. I have heard of British Gas, EdF, Scottish Power, etc. I have not heard of the majority of those USwitch GasCos.
Did you never wonder why certain providers could offer you energy for so much less than the better known brands?
A lot of branding isn't so much advertising - it comes from existing for X years so you start recognising the brand via osmosis.
Somebody should let npower know there's no point to them partnering with Cricket then.
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
The boss of a company doesn't want to pay people more as a solution and wants to regain access to unlimited cheap labour instead?
I'm shocked, shocked at this completely unprecedented and unforeseen situation.
Sure there can and should be a wages hike. But that isn't going to generate new drivers this winter.
He isn't listening. His theory of capitalism trumps the real world practice of capitalism.
The industry have done every single thing he says they should do. Pay more. Offer better terms and conditions. Incentives to bring qualified drivers back. All it has done is explode the wage bill and is about to tip the first big firm over - it hasn't done the slightest thing to rapido fill the hole in driver numbers.
The industry said this would be the case from the start. Philip said they were wrong. It shouldn't be a surprise that the people who do this for a living were right.
They can't pay more to recruit drivers in the GB. They can't train more drivers even if they had the candidates which they don't. They can't continue the lottery of not knowing which driver will still be available for work tomorrow or will have been poached. And no, we can't bring in the army.
So we either go to the short term fix of limited time visas for imported drivers. Or we have increasing shortages of food and fuel and blood and gritter drivers and bin lorries. We know that the government will bow to the inevitable at the top of the crisis, so why not do it now?
Allowing in EU drivers on a temporary visa can be spun as "controlled migration". We need them, they are here, then they leave again. It should be a win for the government. They can even have that nice Ms Patel waving them off with a smirk when they depart in January.
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
What a f*cking ridiculous comment.
Please share your list of which of the current 50 or more energy suppliers are sound and which are not going to go bust.
(To declare an interest: we are PFP customers waiting to find out what our new tariff will be once British Gas have taken our account over. How stupid of us not to have spotted last December that PFP were going to go bust.)
Are you saying that CHEEPO-E-Z-TARIFF-HONEST-NRG energy suppliers were dodge?
Ever wondered why the first five providers on USwitch you'd never heard of? Companies spend a lot on brand management for precisely this reason. I have heard of British Gas, EdF, Scottish Power, etc. I have not heard of the majority of those USwitch GasCos.
Did you never wonder why certain providers could offer you energy for so much less than the better known brands?
A lot of branding isn't so much advertising - it comes from existing for X years so you start recognising the brand via osmosis.
Somebody should let npower know there's no point to them partnering with Cricket then.
How else would the directors justify their expensive hospitality boxes?
There is nothing wrong with brand marketing - but it's not the quickest way of building a customer base, branding is a long term investment.
As was explained this morning the shortage of HGV drivers is across Europe so there is no pool of drivers readily available
lads.
???
There are people who pop on here who aren't white male baby boomers.
Indeed.
Talking of which, in the last few days a woman teacher at a Lewisham primary school was murdered minutes from her home while crossing a park in Greenwich on her way home. Her name was Sabina Nessa. She was 28.
There has not been quite the same outpouring of disgust as there was over poor Sarah Everard. Greenwich Council is giving out alarms to women in the area.
So far there have been 106 women killed by men. This is where a suspect has been charged. In some cases the suspect went on to kill others, both men and women eg as in the Plymouth case or in the recent case where some children were also killed. In others no suspect has been charged. I do not know the equivalent figures for men murdered this year.
Horrible. May she and the others rest in peace. I hope the police catch the killer soon.
You have to wonder why this poor woman's terrible murder has not had the same level of publicity as Sarah Everard's.
There is of course no institutional or subconscious racism in the media. On no.
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
What a f*cking ridiculous comment.
Please share your list of which of the current 50 or more energy suppliers are sound and which are not going to go bust.
(To declare an interest: we are PFP customers waiting to find out what our new tariff will be once British Gas have taken our account over. How stupid of us not to have spotted last December that PFP were going to go bust.)
Are you saying that CHEEPO-E-Z-TARIFF-HONEST-NRG energy suppliers were dodge?
Ever wondered why the first five providers on USwitch you'd never heard of? Companies spend a lot on brand management for precisely this reason. I have heard of British Gas, EdF, Scottish Power, etc. I have not heard of the majority of those USwitch GasCos.
Did you never wonder why certain providers could offer you energy for so much less than the better known brands?
A lot of branding isn't so much advertising - it comes from existing for X years so you start recognising the brand via osmosis.
Somebody should let npower know there's no point to them partnering with Cricket then.
How else would the directors justify their expensive hospitality boxes?
There is nothing wrong with brand marketing - but it's not the quickest way of building a customer base, branding is a long term investment.
Which circles back to Topping's point.
Companies like nPower are in it for the long term. If they fail, something has gone badly wrong for them.
Companies like CHEEP-EZ-NRGY that you only know exist because they're listed first on Compare the Meerkat are not.
You can have sympathy for a young Liverpool family they begin with.
But this one ???
Only one tenant appeared in person during the session. She told the court she had been unable, during the pandemic, to find her usual agency work as an executive PA. This left her unable to afford the £1,600 a month rent on her one-bedroom flat in Hammersmith, west London.
She had racked up £24,000 in rent arrears. The court ordered her to leave her property by 4 October. In addition to her rent arrears, she must pay £604 in interest, and the landlord's £3,000 legal costs.
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
What a f*cking ridiculous comment.
Please share your list of which of the current 50 or more energy suppliers are sound and which are not going to go bust.
(To declare an interest: we are PFP customers waiting to find out what our new tariff will be once British Gas have taken our account over. How stupid of us not to have spotted last December that PFP were going to go bust.)
Are you saying that CHEEPO-E-Z-TARIFF-HONEST-NRG energy suppliers were dodge?
Ever wondered why the first five providers on USwitch you'd never heard of? Companies spend a lot on brand management for precisely this reason. I have heard of British Gas, EdF, Scottish Power, etc. I have not heard of the majority of those USwitch GasCos.
Did you never wonder why certain providers could offer you energy for so much less than the better known brands?
Sorry, I’m with Benpointer on this.
Consumers were educated to treat the suppliers as interchangeable utilities. And why not?
Tory regulation has failed.
It's not the best business for competition to shine. Multiple call centres, advertising budgets. I don't want a state-owned monopoly but not sure the best answer.
If you had private companies bidding for an X-year license to be the provider, as for the lottery, or one of a few providers, as for mobile phone networks, I'm not sure that would make things any better. And there would be staffing/redundancy issues if a company lost it's license
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
Edit doesnt work on my phone so excuse replying to myself.
I'm probs being a bit hard on customers just trying to find the best deal and it isnt easy to see how sound a company's finances are. But still no to keeping same tariffs.
Maybe these comparison sites could add a financial stability rating as well as customer service ratings.
What criteria could be used for financial stability? The reason it isn't done is that for most things it just isn't something you can rate in a sane way.
For reference I'm working on doing financial checks for a particular industry - it is without doubt the hardest project I've ever worked on and it's only possible because this industry has very particular requirements and processes that just about make it possible.
If a customer wants a spread bet on energy prices they need to put up a deposit with the spread firm to cover the volatility of that bet.
If an energy firms wants a spread bet on energy prices and uses that to entice customers, why not protect the customers by requiring a similar deposit is held with ofgem?
Instead the regulator does not even get involved where it is required to. From a 2017 report, so not hindsight:
"Paul Green, chief executive of Energyhelpline, says Ofgem is failing to check the 'financial integrity of new suppliers' and this is why companies, such as GB Energy which collapsed at the end of last year, are at risk of going bust.
He says there hasn't been enough regulation in place when it comes to new providers and he warns that more firms will close.
He says: 'Small suppliers are at risk of closure due to Ofgem's incompetence with its regulations.
'Ofgem is almost exclusively to blame for hundreds of thousands of customers being left in a whirlwind of uncertainty . The energy regulator has failed small suppliers due to lacklustre checks and easily obtainable customer targets.'
Green also mentions Ofgem's 'Confidence Code' when looking at the recent failing of GB Energy. It means accredited price comparison sites need to list all energy companies on the market.
Green says the code led to GB Energy wrongfully gaining the majority of its customers. This is because it had to be listed by the leading sites and as it was listed cheapest for long periods of time, it received more customers than it could handle.
He adds: 'If GB Energy were not given this 'free advertising' the company would have had to better plan the business' future, ensuring a more sustainable growth.'"
Good luck finding investors willing to invest £xm (£50m?) to sit in a pot within Ofgem.
The reason it wasn't done is that implementing such a scheme would stop startups from entering the market.
Also the 2017 issues are not today's issue. I suspect every energy firm is currently losing serious sums of money. Remember this Government is paying £50m to ensure a single fertiliser plant can buy 3 weeks of gas.
Another thought on the driver issues. In 1995, they changed the validation for a ‘standard’ driving licence from 7.5t to 3.5t. So most people older than 43 can actually drive a small lorry on their car licence, people younger can only drive a Transit or Sprinter van.
I was one of the last to receive the old validation, category C1.
I have one of those too. I enjoy driving. And I have owned and driven vans. A campervan, to be precise.
Occasionally I have toyed with the idea of learning to drive a truck, if people don't want me to sort out their investigations any more.
But don't worry. I am starting a new interesting project next week in the whistleblowing/investigations space for a prestigious institution. So what with that and making chips and serving customers in the evening the truck driving will have to wait.
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
The boss of a company doesn't want to pay people more as a solution and wants to regain access to unlimited cheap labour instead?
I'm shocked, shocked at this completely unprecedented and unforeseen situation.
Sure there can and should be a wages hike. But that isn't going to generate new drivers this winter.
He isn't listening. His theory of capitalism trumps the real world practice of capitalism.
The industry have done every single thing he says they should do. Pay more. Offer better terms and conditions. Incentives to bring qualified drivers back. All it has done is explode the wage bill and is about to tip the first big firm over - it hasn't done the slightest thing to rapido fill the hole in driver numbers.
The industry said this would be the case from the start. Philip said they were wrong. It shouldn't be a surprise that the people who do this for a living were right.
They can't pay more to recruit drivers in the GB. They can't train more drivers even if they had the candidates which they don't. They can't continue the lottery of not knowing which driver will still be available for work tomorrow or will have been poached. And no, we can't bring in the army.
So we either go to the short term fix of limited time visas for imported drivers. Or we have increasing shortages of food and fuel and blood and gritter drivers and bin lorries. We know that the government will bow to the inevitable at the top of the crisis, so why not do it now?
Allowing in EU drivers on a temporary visa can be spun as "controlled migration". We need them, they are here, then they leave again. It should be a win for the government. They can even have that nice Ms Patel waving them off with a smirk when they depart in January.
Except the issue has been fixed.
Companies that pay enough are getting their stock moved. Companies that don't are not.
What's the problem? 🤷♂️
PS if they don't have candidates to train then they're not paying enough to attract candidates. 🤷♂️
As was explained this morning the shortage of HGV drivers is across Europe so there is no pool of drivers readily available
lads.
???
There are people who pop on here who aren't white male baby boomers.
Indeed.
Talking of which, in the last few days a woman teacher at a Lewisham primary school was murdered minutes from her home while crossing a park in Greenwich on her way home. Her name was Sabina Nessa. She was 28.
There has not been quite the same outpouring of disgust as there was over poor Sarah Everard. Greenwich Council is giving out alarms to women in the area.
So far there have been 106 women killed by men. This is where a suspect has been charged. In some cases the suspect went on to kill others, both men and women eg as in the Plymouth case or in the recent case where some children were also killed. In others no suspect has been charged. I do not know the equivalent figures for men murdered this year.
Horrible. May she and the others rest in peace. I hope the police catch the killer soon.
Typically in the UK about 2/3 of murder victims are men although that gap has been closing slightly the last decade. The killers of women are mostly partners or family. The killers of men are mostly friends or strangers. Over 90% of killers are male.
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
As was explained this morning the shortage of HGV drivers is across Europe so there is no pool of drivers readily available
Not true. When we had a free trade agreement we had a cavalcade of EU trucks coming across the border. Trucks would spend a few days in the UK working from one end to the other making drops and picking up.
Internal "cabotage" moves by EU trucks and EU drivers from UK address to UK address was an integral part of our driver and vehicle fleet. That was banned by our government so we lost that. Even if we recruit zero EU drivers to be based here, if we lift the cabotage ban we get an uplift in vehicles and drivers. And we need that.
Remember that the crisis we have endured is based on lower summer levels of goods. As we build towards the Christmas peak the crisis gets worse.
Would it be fair to summarise the situation as cabotage letting us use the existing freight system (however many drivers and lorries that is) more efficiently? And that by carving off GB as a separate zone, we've lost some of the efficiency of drivers, capital and fuel? In which case, you'd anticipate costs going up without anyone really benefiting.
(I imagine that the new equilibrium price for drivers will be higher than before all this, but considerably lower than we're seeing in this current intermediate state.)
Yes. GB used to be an important regional node in an integrated European logistics network. We supplied not just GB but Ireland as well. EU-registered trucks would come in from across Europe, drop and collect loads here and then return.
What we have done is completely cut ourselves off from that network. Ireland is now supplied direct from the EU bypassing GB completely. EU trucks come here less often carrying less goods and are banned by our government from playing any role in the GB logistics network as they once did.
There still seems to be quite a lot of Irish trucks passing through our area on the A55 from and to Holyhead
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
What a f*cking ridiculous comment.
Please share your list of which of the current 50 or more energy suppliers are sound and which are not going to go bust.
(To declare an interest: we are PFP customers waiting to find out what our new tariff will be once British Gas have taken our account over. How stupid of us not to have spotted last December that PFP were going to go bust.)
Are you saying that CHEEPO-E-Z-TARIFF-HONEST-NRG energy suppliers were dodge?
Ever wondered why the first five providers on USwitch you'd never heard of? Companies spend a lot on brand management for precisely this reason. I have heard of British Gas, EdF, Scottish Power, etc. I have not heard of the majority of those USwitch GasCos.
Did you never wonder why certain providers could offer you energy for so much less than the better known brands?
Sorry, I’m with Benpointer on this.
Consumers were educated to treat the suppliers as interchangeable utilities. And why not?
Tory regulation has failed.
As has the the Tory dream of trying to creata a false market out of a monopoly. (See also the railways.)
As was explained this morning the shortage of HGV drivers is across Europe so there is no pool of drivers readily available
lads.
???
There are people who pop on here who aren't white male baby boomers.
Indeed.
Talking of which, in the last few days a woman teacher at a Lewisham primary school was murdered minutes from her home while crossing a park in Greenwich on her way home. Her name was Sabina Nessa. She was 28.
There has not been quite the same outpouring of disgust as there was over poor Sarah Everard. Greenwich Council is giving out alarms to women in the area.
So far there have been 106 women killed by men. This is where a suspect has been charged. In some cases the suspect went on to kill others, both men and women eg as in the Plymouth case or in the recent case where some children were also killed. In others no suspect has been charged. I do not know the equivalent figures for men murdered this year.
Horrible. May she and the others rest in peace. I hope the police catch the killer soon.
You have to wonder why this poor woman's terrible murder has not had the same level of publicity as Sarah Everard's.
There is of course no institutional or subconscious racism in the media. On no.
Sadly, she doesn’t look like or live near the media people who report on these things, and wasn’t missing for a few days before her body was found.
Many of the journalists reporting on the Sarah Everard case, realised that she might just have easily been themself.
The same way we can have "a record rise in prices" of 3.2% 🤦♂️
That's not the same thing. A record rise is an empirical statement.
The adverb 'soar' is subjective and hyperbole. Sandpit was right to call it out. A price rise of 5% is not a soaring price.
A 'record' rise is not generally an empirical statement, because experience does not in general tell us about every rise there might have been. It can sometimes be an empirical statement if, and only if, a careful and complete description is given of the qualifications that have to be met to count as a 'rise' in the particular case. Only then is it testable (if you are lucky).
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
Edit doesnt work on my phone so excuse replying to myself.
I'm probs being a bit hard on customers just trying to find the best deal and it isnt easy to see how sound a company's finances are. But still no to keeping same tariffs.
Maybe these comparison sites could add a financial stability rating as well as customer service ratings.
What criteria could be used for financial stability? The reason it isn't done is that for most things it just isn't something you can rate in a sane way.
For reference I'm working on doing financial checks for a particular industry - it is without doubt the hardest project I've ever worked on and it's only possible because this industry has very particular requirements and processes that just about make it possible.
If a customer wants a spread bet on energy prices they need to put up a deposit with the spread firm to cover the volatility of that bet.
If an energy firms wants a spread bet on energy prices and uses that to entice customers, why not protect the customers by requiring a similar deposit is held with ofgem?
Instead the regulator does not even get involved where it is required to. From a 2017 report, so not hindsight:
"Paul Green, chief executive of Energyhelpline, says Ofgem is failing to check the 'financial integrity of new suppliers' and this is why companies, such as GB Energy which collapsed at the end of last year, are at risk of going bust.
He says there hasn't been enough regulation in place when it comes to new providers and he warns that more firms will close.
He says: 'Small suppliers are at risk of closure due to Ofgem's incompetence with its regulations.
'Ofgem is almost exclusively to blame for hundreds of thousands of customers being left in a whirlwind of uncertainty . The energy regulator has failed small suppliers due to lacklustre checks and easily obtainable customer targets.'
Green also mentions Ofgem's 'Confidence Code' when looking at the recent failing of GB Energy. It means accredited price comparison sites need to list all energy companies on the market.
Green says the code led to GB Energy wrongfully gaining the majority of its customers. This is because it had to be listed by the leading sites and as it was listed cheapest for long periods of time, it received more customers than it could handle.
He adds: 'If GB Energy were not given this 'free advertising' the company would have had to better plan the business' future, ensuring a more sustainable growth.'"
Good luck finding investors willing to invest £xm (£50m?) to sit in a pot within Ofgem.
The reason it wasn't done is that implementing such a scheme would stop startups from entering the market.
Also the 2017 issues are not today's issue. I suspect every energy firm is currently losing serious sums of money. Remember this Government is paying £50m to ensure a single fertiliser plant can buy 3 weeks of gas.
But why do we need 70 poorly capitalised start ups? What would be wrong with competition between 5-10 big companies and then blocking mergers between them which would create a monopoly?
Another thought on the driver issues. In 1995, they changed the validation for a ‘standard’ driving licence from 7.5t to 3.5t. So most people older than 43 can actually drive a small lorry on their car licence, people younger can only drive a Transit or Sprinter van.
I was one of the last to receive the old validation, category C1.
I have one of those too. I enjoy driving. And I have owned and driven vans. A campervan, to be precise.
Occasionally I have toyed with the idea of learning to drive a truck, if people don't want me to sort out their investigations any more.
But don't worry. I am starting a new interesting project next week in the whistleblowing/investigations space for a prestigious institution. So what with that and making chips and serving customers in the evening the truck driving will have to wait.
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
What a f*cking ridiculous comment.
Please share your list of which of the current 50 or more energy suppliers are sound and which are not going to go bust.
(To declare an interest: we are PFP customers waiting to find out what our new tariff will be once British Gas have taken our account over. How stupid of us not to have spotted last December that PFP were going to go bust.)
Are you saying that CHEEPO-E-Z-TARIFF-HONEST-NRG energy suppliers were dodge?
Ever wondered why the first five providers on USwitch you'd never heard of? Companies spend a lot on brand management for precisely this reason. I have heard of British Gas, EdF, Scottish Power, etc. I have not heard of the majority of those USwitch GasCos.
Did you never wonder why certain providers could offer you energy for so much less than the better known brands?
That's all very well for brand new tiny suppliers, which I've tended to avoid (not so much in case they go bust, but in case they're unable to scale and get in a mess with billing and admin - it's not unheard of). But the likes of Avro are not really in that category - they had been around for quite some years, they came high in customer service ratings etc etc. They weren't the cheapest choice when I signed up. They were one of the cheapest with a decent track record.
If you're going to say that only big, well known companies should be trusted then we go back to the big six and look how well that worked out for consumers, particularly on their SVTs (not only prices, but the big six customer service has been, in my experience, often pretty shocking).
There's a danger that happends by default as customers get spooked by the bankruptcies, so Ofgem need to step up and try and ensure better robustness of the retail suppliers, to the extent that is possible.
(To be clear, I'm content that we get bumped on to another supplier's SVT and can then switch. No one should subsidise us for our supplier going bust, other than our credit balance - if that protection goes then we'll all just switch to payment in arrears as used to be the case and prices will go up to cover the credit cost and consumer bad debt - but blaming the consumer, who lacked information, is unfair)
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
The boss of a company doesn't want to pay people more as a solution and wants to regain access to unlimited cheap labour instead?
I'm shocked, shocked at this completely unprecedented and unforeseen situation.
Sure there can and should be a wages hike. But that isn't going to generate new drivers this winter.
He isn't listening. His theory of capitalism trumps the real world practice of capitalism.
The industry have done every single thing he says they should do. Pay more. Offer better terms and conditions. Incentives to bring qualified drivers back. All it has done is explode the wage bill and is about to tip the first big firm over - it hasn't done the slightest thing to rapido fill the hole in driver numbers.
The industry said this would be the case from the start. Philip said they were wrong. It shouldn't be a surprise that the people who do this for a living were right.
They can't pay more to recruit drivers in the GB. They can't train more drivers even if they had the candidates which they don't. They can't continue the lottery of not knowing which driver will still be available for work tomorrow or will have been poached. And no, we can't bring in the army.
So we either go to the short term fix of limited time visas for imported drivers. Or we have increasing shortages of food and fuel and blood and gritter drivers and bin lorries. We know that the government will bow to the inevitable at the top of the crisis, so why not do it now?
Allowing in EU drivers on a temporary visa can be spun as "controlled migration". We need them, they are here, then they leave again. It should be a win for the government. They can even have that nice Ms Patel waving them off with a smirk when they depart in January.
Except the issue has been fixed.
Companies that pay enough are getting their stock moved. Companies that don't are not.
What's the problem? 🤷♂️
PS if they don't have candidates to train then they're not paying enough to attract candidates. 🤷♂️
Genuine lol. "Companies that pay enough are getting their stock moved"
Well the companies in question say they are not. Perhaps they are wrong about what they are doing and you are right?
Seriously, you should either stop digging as its embarrassing for you, or keep digging because you enjoy doing a cabaret turn.
I hope they cant keep the same tariff. Then customers might take more care to buy from sound companies that dont go bust. Noone else should have to subsidise them when their supplier goes under.
Edit doesnt work on my phone so excuse replying to myself.
I'm probs being a bit hard on customers just trying to find the best deal and it isnt easy to see how sound a company's finances are. But still no to keeping same tariffs.
Maybe these comparison sites could add a financial stability rating as well as customer service ratings.
What criteria could be used for financial stability? The reason it isn't done is that for most things it just isn't something you can rate in a sane way.
For reference I'm working on doing financial checks for a particular industry - it is without doubt the hardest project I've ever worked on and it's only possible because this industry has very particular requirements and processes that just about make it possible.
If a customer wants a spread bet on energy prices they need to put up a deposit with the spread firm to cover the volatility of that bet.
If an energy firms wants a spread bet on energy prices and uses that to entice customers, why not protect the customers by requiring a similar deposit is held with ofgem?
Instead the regulator does not even get involved where it is required to. From a 2017 report, so not hindsight:
"Paul Green, chief executive of Energyhelpline, says Ofgem is failing to check the 'financial integrity of new suppliers' and this is why companies, such as GB Energy which collapsed at the end of last year, are at risk of going bust.
He says there hasn't been enough regulation in place when it comes to new providers and he warns that more firms will close.
He says: 'Small suppliers are at risk of closure due to Ofgem's incompetence with its regulations.
'Ofgem is almost exclusively to blame for hundreds of thousands of customers being left in a whirlwind of uncertainty . The energy regulator has failed small suppliers due to lacklustre checks and easily obtainable customer targets.'
Green also mentions Ofgem's 'Confidence Code' when looking at the recent failing of GB Energy. It means accredited price comparison sites need to list all energy companies on the market.
Green says the code led to GB Energy wrongfully gaining the majority of its customers. This is because it had to be listed by the leading sites and as it was listed cheapest for long periods of time, it received more customers than it could handle.
He adds: 'If GB Energy were not given this 'free advertising' the company would have had to better plan the business' future, ensuring a more sustainable growth.'"
Good luck finding investors willing to invest £xm (£50m?) to sit in a pot within Ofgem.
The reason it wasn't done is that implementing such a scheme would stop startups from entering the market.
Also the 2017 issues are not today's issue. I suspect every energy firm is currently losing serious sums of money. Remember this Government is paying £50m to ensure a single fertiliser plant can buy 3 weeks of gas.
But why do we need 70 poorly capitalised start ups? What would be wrong with competition between 5-10 big companies and then blocking mergers between them which would create a monopoly?
We don't need 70 poorly capitalised start ups but having start ups being able to enter the market to compete keeps the big companies honest.
And some of those start ups had good ideas and are doing well even through this rough spot. Some of them did sane things like hedge their costs so they're not exposed to the spot prices now.
The competition system is working. Good companies survive, bad companies die. Its creative destruction and it isn't a bad thing.
Another thought on the driver issues. In 1995, they changed the validation for a ‘standard’ driving licence from 7.5t to 3.5t. So most people older than 43 can actually drive a small lorry on their car licence, people younger can only drive a Transit or Sprinter van.
I was one of the last to receive the old validation, category C1.
Just checked. Yes I have C1 too.
I will just need to find a truck with an automatic gearbox, hand controls and a hoist to get me and the wheelshair into the cab and then I'm all set! How much are they paying, again?
Another thought on the driver issues. In 1995, they changed the validation for a ‘standard’ driving licence from 7.5t to 3.5t. So most people older than 43 can actually drive a small lorry on their car licence, people younger can only drive a Transit or Sprinter van.
I was one of the last to receive the old validation, category C1.
I have one of those too. I enjoy driving. And I have owned and driven vans. A campervan, to be precise.
Occasionally I have toyed with the idea of learning to drive a truck, if people don't want me to sort out their investigations any more.
But don't worry. I am starting a new interesting project next week in the whistleblowing/investigations space for a prestigious institution. So what with that and making chips and serving customers in the evening the truck driving will have to wait.
IIRC correctly, the C1/D1 was for personal use, not for work. So you could hire a van to move stuff, but if you want to work you need a different license.
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
The boss of a company doesn't want to pay people more as a solution and wants to regain access to unlimited cheap labour instead?
I'm shocked, shocked at this completely unprecedented and unforeseen situation.
Sure there can and should be a wages hike. But that isn't going to generate new drivers this winter.
He isn't listening. His theory of capitalism trumps the real world practice of capitalism.
The industry have done every single thing he says they should do. Pay more. Offer better terms and conditions. Incentives to bring qualified drivers back. All it has done is explode the wage bill and is about to tip the first big firm over - it hasn't done the slightest thing to rapido fill the hole in driver numbers.
The industry said this would be the case from the start. Philip said they were wrong. It shouldn't be a surprise that the people who do this for a living were right.
They can't pay more to recruit drivers in the GB. They can't train more drivers even if they had the candidates which they don't. They can't continue the lottery of not knowing which driver will still be available for work tomorrow or will have been poached. And no, we can't bring in the army.
So we either go to the short term fix of limited time visas for imported drivers. Or we have increasing shortages of food and fuel and blood and gritter drivers and bin lorries. We know that the government will bow to the inevitable at the top of the crisis, so why not do it now?
Allowing in EU drivers on a temporary visa can be spun as "controlled migration". We need them, they are here, then they leave again. It should be a win for the government. They can even have that nice Ms Patel waving them off with a smirk when they depart in January.
Except the issue has been fixed.
Companies that pay enough are getting their stock moved. Companies that don't are not.
What's the problem? 🤷♂️
PS if they don't have candidates to train then they're not paying enough to attract candidates. 🤷♂️
Genuine lol. "Companies that pay enough are getting their stock moved"
Well the companies in question say they are not. Perhaps they are wrong about what they are doing and you are right?
Seriously, you should either stop digging as its embarrassing for you, or keep digging because you enjoy doing a cabaret turn.
Maybe the companies in question aren't paying enough while their competitors are.
I get that you think we should listen to people with a vested interest in avoiding seeing their costs rise but this is embarrassing for you. Just because people moan and feel entitled to avoid paying people a decent wage doesn't make them right.
Comments
(A teacher stands in a classroom, scuffed mortarboard on head. Lights flicker due to an electricity shortage)
"So boys and girls, your task was to... Yes, yes, I know, Ms Gender, boys, girls, inters, bis, Sith lords and little furry creature from Zog..."
(He scratches his hed wondering why he chose teaching)
"As I was saying, your task was to write an essay on what you stand for. Messers Phillips and Carnaby, well done. I particularly like your use of metaphor on equality as it impacts ants, who, as we all know, have now been granted human rights. The rest of you, good efforts as well. Except ..."
(He picks up two essays. One is so thick that it wore out two printers. The other is a piece of fag paper. He throw them onto the floor. The floor rocks as the heavy one hits; the fag paper floats down and rests insultingly on top.)
"Master Starmer. I do appreciate you have a lot to say to the world, and you believe it earnestly. Many people do. But when your task is to write 250 words, scribing 11,500 is not acceptable. I'd also add that I noticed the 'Corbo smells' you wrote in the margin on the section about ... well just about every section. Fail."
(A sour-looking boy sitting by himself in the corner of the room beside a Palestinian flag sobs)
(A final sigh, as he fixes his weary gaze on a blonde boy with tousled hair.)
"And you, Master Johnson. I finally managed to decipher the crayoned text. "I stand for fun!" was short, succinct and, I fear, true. But adding "Smithers stands for I nicked his chair," was just cruel. But at least your essay was short, and I was at school with your father (at least, we think he was your father). A+"
The reason we only have 1-2gw of wind power in calm anti cyclonic conditions is because we only have about 18gw of peak capacity. Build 10x as much, plus more solar (which often generates well during times there is little wind) and even in calm periods we have 10-20gw being generated. We have massive latency in traditional generation capacity. We need to get used to latency in renewables too. It’s already happening in parts of the US and China with solar. The infrastructure is cheap enough that it’s viable simply to build much more than you need and switch it off when there’s too much sun. (Or use the excess to smelt aluminium / make carbon fibre / isolate hydrogen).
Then I accept it has changed but it must have been very recent and I was very fortunate, as the contact extension I received from EDF was 40% less than their new 2 year fix I agreed at the beginning of September
Maybe answer the question
I do accept your explanation
The only way they can not be contradictory is if there is use of equivocation (using 'bat' to mean cricket bat and flying mouse without distinguishing) . This is a form of argument which I can unequivocally state is never used by politicians except when it is.
Oh yes, here is another: the word 'people' is unquantified (all, some, six, none); so it can be argued to mean 'some' people (not the same ones) in each case. Non quantification is a great favourite of politicians and headline writers
May - no gas price crisis
June - no gas price crisis
July - no gas price crisis
Aug - mumblings about gas price crisis
Sep - gas price crisis
Internal "cabotage" moves by EU trucks and EU drivers from UK address to UK address was an integral part of our driver and vehicle fleet. That was banned by our government so we lost that. Even if we recruit zero EU drivers to be based here, if we lift the cabotage ban we get an uplift in vehicles and drivers. And we need that.
Remember that the crisis we have endured is based on lower summer levels of goods. As we build towards the Christmas peak the crisis gets worse.
Then the question is how long it takes for more drivers to enter the workforce. A bit longer than the fuel crisis 21 years ago, but how much longer?
I would just comment that I have received my weekly Asda order with no items missing or unavailable
And we cannot put the clock back
I expect a lot of railway lines will have cancellations due to drivers using non lorry sat navs and hitting bridges.
As we had the Norniron Secretary insisting there was no customs border (despite he personally having the operations of it within his department) we shouldn't be surprised that these clueless clowns are in cabinet.
There is good news though Big_G! You quit the party! You no longer need to keep defending their stupidity.
However there is a lorry driver shortage across Europe because it simply isn't a job a lot of people want to do.
I think it's 18-24 months to fill the current gap but that ignores people retiring.
Temporarily allow hgv's (perhaps only those delivering food/other essentials) to use bus lanes.
50,000 residual shortage
25,000 fewer tests (Covid)
25,000 fewer EU drivers (Brexit)
So arguably given that we have lived with the residual 50,000 shortage for years and years, Brexit contributed to 50% of the increased shortage and that, together with Covid, was responsible for where we are now.
AIUI there’s quite a few approaching retirement, so hopefully the increased pay we are seeing might help with recruitment of a younger generation.
IR35 is now a non-issue, the pay rises have swept away the financial disincentives. Working conditions are structural (shit facilities (or a lack of shit facilities...) for drivers off the motorway network, a nationwide negative attitude to drivers and now the crisis operational conditions where pretty much every load is urgent.
So that leaves rights to work here and cabotage. In the single market shortages can be covered from other markets where there are no shortages. Or patched over by the integrated logistics network and cabotage. We have no access to either (by choice). We can't even have the once ubiquitous norbert dentressangle DE registered truck do UK supply runs.
So we could "put the clock back". Very simply by allowing cabotage. Thats a start. Then a short term visa to allow EU drivers to cover the Christmas season - with the vast UK pay offer they will come.
But we won't. Because there are no downsides to Brexit.
(I imagine that the new equilibrium price for drivers will be higher than before all this, but considerably lower than we're seeing in this current intermediate state.)
You are coming across as naive in the extreme.
The adverb 'soar' is subjective and hyperbole. Sandpit was right to call it out. A price rise of 5% is not a soaring price.
That's counter-productive at the best of times, but particularly now given the debt we're servicing.
I'm probs being a bit hard on customers just trying to find the best deal and it isnt easy to see how sound a company's finances are. But still no to keeping same tariffs.
Maybe these comparison sites could add a financial stability rating as well as customer service ratings.
There are people who pop on here who aren't white male baby boomers.
This makes each driver less efficient, and can also be attributed to Brexit.
Please share your list of which of the current 50 or more energy suppliers are sound and which are not going to go bust.
(To declare an interest: we are PFP customers waiting to find out what our new tariff will be once British Gas have taken our account over. How stupid of us not to have spotted last December that PFP were going to go bust.)
I thought I was going to buy a flatbed to move cars but ended up getting a beavertail 4th gen Transit that is habitually overloaded to an illegal level whenever I use it.
https://trib.al/Q11CKrm https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1440943260281810945/video/1
Plus you keep ignoring (deliberately or otherwise) the fact that S&D works both ways so increasing price lowers demand it doesn't just increase supply.
And given he’s from Iceland, a “furriner” to boot.
A 5% price rise could be, especially to certain demographics, also a soar moment.
As an example, Aldi house champagne soared in price from £12.99 to £13.49 (3.8% rise). Still worth it, though.
I'm shocked, shocked at this completely unprecedented and unforeseen situation.
For reference I'm working on doing financial checks for a particular industry - it is without doubt the hardest project I've ever worked on and it's only possible because this industry has very particular requirements and processes that just about make it possible.
The "record rise in prices" claim was entirely fallacious hyperbole. If a price rise of 5% is not soaring, then lower than that certainly isn't a record rise either.
The media doesn't understand economics but they certainly understand how to use hyperbole.
What we have done is completely cut ourselves off from that network. Ireland is now supplied direct from the EU bypassing GB completely. EU trucks come here less often carrying less goods and are banned by our government from playing any role in the GB logistics network as they once did.
Ever wondered why the first five providers on USwitch you'd never heard of? Companies spend a lot on brand management for precisely this reason. I have heard of British Gas, EdF, Scottish Power, etc. I have not heard of the majority of those USwitch GasCos.
Did you never wonder why certain providers could offer you energy for so much less than the better known brands?
Do you think there isn't a single driver who left the industry while the country was in lockdown (or elsewhere) that could be tempted back into the sector with a high enough payrise?
I was one of the last to receive the old validation, category C1.
Consumers were educated to treat the suppliers as interchangeable utilities. And why not?
Tory regulation has failed.
Talking of which, in the last few days a woman teacher at a Lewisham primary school was murdered minutes from her home while crossing a park in Greenwich on her way home. Her name was Sabina Nessa. She was 28.
There has not been quite the same outpouring of disgust as there was over poor Sarah Everard. Greenwich Council is giving out alarms to women in the area.
So far there have been 106 women killed by men. This is where a suspect has been charged. In some cases the suspect went on to kill others, both men and women eg as in the Plymouth case or in the recent case where some children were also killed. In others no suspect has been charged. I do not know the equivalent figures for men murdered this year.
Horrible. May she and the others rest in peace. I hope the police catch the killer soon.
"When we started our talks I read him my brief and he read me his, and then we decided it would be much quicker if we just swapped briefs and read them to ourselves. So we spent nearly all the time rubbishing the French. Terrific".
A newly created energy company had little point advertising on TV (as they did in the olden days) nowadays it's easier to just pay the comparison sites their referral fees.
If an energy firms wants a spread bet on energy prices and uses that to entice customers, why not protect the customers by requiring a similar deposit is held with ofgem?
Instead the regulator does not even get involved where it is required to. From a 2017 report, so not hindsight:
"Paul Green, chief executive of Energyhelpline, says Ofgem is failing to check the 'financial integrity of new suppliers' and this is why companies, such as GB Energy which collapsed at the end of last year, are at risk of going bust.
He says there hasn't been enough regulation in place when it comes to new providers and he warns that more firms will close.
He says: 'Small suppliers are at risk of closure due to Ofgem's incompetence with its regulations.
'Ofgem is almost exclusively to blame for hundreds of thousands of customers being left in a whirlwind of uncertainty . The energy regulator has failed small suppliers due to lacklustre checks and easily obtainable customer targets.'
Green also mentions Ofgem's 'Confidence Code' when looking at the recent failing of GB Energy. It means accredited price comparison sites need to list all energy companies on the market.
Green says the code led to GB Energy wrongfully gaining the majority of its customers. This is because it had to be listed by the leading sites and as it was listed cheapest for long periods of time, it received more customers than it could handle.
He adds: 'If GB Energy were not given this 'free advertising' the company would have had to better plan the business' future, ensuring a more sustainable growth.'"
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-3978676/How-set-energy-firm-start-up.html
The industry have done every single thing he says they should do. Pay more. Offer better terms and conditions. Incentives to bring qualified drivers back. All it has done is explode the wage bill and is about to tip the first big firm over - it hasn't done the slightest thing to rapido fill the hole in driver numbers.
The industry said this would be the case from the start. Philip said they were wrong. It shouldn't be a surprise that the people who do this for a living were right.
They can't pay more to recruit drivers in the GB. They can't train more drivers even if they had the candidates which they don't. They can't continue the lottery of not knowing which driver will still be available for work tomorrow or will have been poached. And no, we can't bring in the army.
So we either go to the short term fix of limited time visas for imported drivers. Or we have increasing shortages of food and fuel and blood and gritter drivers and bin lorries. We know that the government will bow to the inevitable at the top of the crisis, so why not do it now?
Allowing in EU drivers on a temporary visa can be spun as "controlled migration". We need them, they are here, then they leave again. It should be a win for the government. They can even have that nice Ms Patel waving them off with a smirk when they depart in January.
There is nothing wrong with brand marketing - but it's not the quickest way of building a customer base, branding is a long term investment.
There is of course no institutional or subconscious racism in the media. On no.
Companies like nPower are in it for the long term. If they fail, something has gone badly wrong for them.
Companies like CHEEP-EZ-NRGY that you only know exist because they're listed first on Compare the Meerkat are not.
You can have sympathy for a young Liverpool family they begin with.
But this one ???
Only one tenant appeared in person during the session. She told the court she had been unable, during the pandemic, to find her usual agency work as an executive PA. This left her unable to afford the £1,600 a month rent on her one-bedroom flat in Hammersmith, west London.
She had racked up £24,000 in rent arrears. The court ordered her to leave her property by 4 October. In addition to her rent arrears, she must pay £604 in interest, and the landlord's £3,000 legal costs.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58643437
If you had private companies bidding for an X-year license to be the provider, as for the lottery, or one of a few providers, as for mobile phone networks, I'm not sure that would make things any better. And there would be staffing/redundancy issues if a company lost it's license
The reason it wasn't done is that implementing such a scheme would stop startups from entering the market.
Also the 2017 issues are not today's issue. I suspect every energy firm is currently losing serious sums of money. Remember this Government is paying £50m to ensure a single fertiliser plant can buy 3 weeks of gas.
I guess I’ll just stay on variable as it’s likely to be at the cap, I won’t get a decent fix now for love or money.
Occasionally I have toyed with the idea of learning to drive a truck, if people don't want me to sort out their investigations any more.
But don't worry. I am starting a new interesting project next week in the whistleblowing/investigations space for a prestigious institution. So what with that and making chips and serving customers in the evening the truck driving will have to wait.
Mr. Sandpit, if there's rain (which I did mention might happen) there's a risk the Russian Grand Prix might be interesting to watch.
Companies that pay enough are getting their stock moved.
Companies that don't are not.
What's the problem? 🤷♂️
PS if they don't have candidates to train then they're not paying enough to attract candidates. 🤷♂️
Many of the journalists reporting on the Sarah Everard case, realised that she might just have easily been themself.
Hardly the most internationalist of outlooks.
If you're going to say that only big, well known companies should be trusted then we go back to the big six and look how well that worked out for consumers, particularly on their SVTs (not only prices, but the big six customer service has been, in my experience, often pretty shocking).
There's a danger that happends by default as customers get spooked by the bankruptcies, so Ofgem need to step up and try and ensure better robustness of the retail suppliers, to the extent that is possible.
(To be clear, I'm content that we get bumped on to another supplier's SVT and can then switch. No one should subsidise us for our supplier going bust, other than our credit balance - if that protection goes then we'll all just switch to payment in arrears as used to be the case and prices will go up to cover the credit cost and consumer bad debt - but blaming the consumer, who lacked information, is unfair)
Well the companies in question say they are not. Perhaps they are wrong about what they are doing and you are right?
Seriously, you should either stop digging as its embarrassing for you, or keep digging because you enjoy doing a cabaret turn.
https://paulbigland.blog/2021/09/22/the-latest-public-accounts-comittee-report-on-hs2-is-out/
And some of those start ups had good ideas and are doing well even through this rough spot. Some of them did sane things like hedge their costs so they're not exposed to the spot prices now.
The competition system is working. Good companies survive, bad companies die. Its creative destruction and it isn't a bad thing.
As with the government every problem is deemed as global in a desperate effort to deflect from the impact of Brexit.
No ones saying there aren’t driver issues and gas price hikes everywhere but it’s strange how the UK seems to be getting the worst of it !
And just with the ref leavers apparently know more about the impact on business than those businesses themselves !
I will just need to find a truck with an automatic gearbox, hand controls and a hoist to get me and the wheelshair into the cab and then I'm all set! How much are they paying, again?
I get that you think we should listen to people with a vested interest in avoiding seeing their costs rise but this is embarrassing for you. Just because people moan and feel entitled to avoid paying people a decent wage doesn't make them right.