"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
Sure! But is "quite a lot" the same as "how many were before". And what is on the back of these trucks? This was the point that derailed the "ah Dover has almost as many vehicle moves as before" argument - a half-empty truck, or even a full truck that is now doing a single out and back move is not the same as a truck fully loaded with 10,000 different products that will make 10 stops.
"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.
Again, a genuine lol. Bravo. More!
You really do belong on the Tory backbenches. One of those gobby ones with all the rhetoric and no clue what the real world actually is.
So the pro-EU crowd want us to be able to poach HGV drivers from abroad to solve our shortage and make theirs worse.
Hardly the most internationalist of outlooks.
Its the free market. Surely you're in favour of that?
The free market is working as intended at the minute.
Companies prepared to pay what they need to pay are getting stock moved. The shelves were all full when I went to my local supermarket earlier this week.
Companies not prepared to can go and whine in the media instead. But Mandy Rice Davies applies.
"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. 🤷♂️
Jam this: 🤷♂️ as far up your arse as you can get it.
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)
Also, "go to a price comparator and pick a lower cost supplier" has been a standard response to concerns about rising energy bills.
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.
Yes I accept that there was not sufficient information about the mechanism of these "last mile" energy providers. But there must be some kind of caveat emptor element to buying this or anything else.
If it seems to be too good to be true then it is often too good to be true.
An expensive lesson for the govt and consumers and given no systemic risk I would say the energy-buying public is now the better off for it.
"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
Sure! But is "quite a lot" the same as "how many were before". And what is on the back of these trucks? This was the point that derailed the "ah Dover has almost as many vehicle moves as before" argument - a half-empty truck, or even a full truck that is now doing a single out and back move is not the same as a truck fully loaded with 10,000 different products that will make 10 stops.
Of course I do not travel the A55 regularly but when I have and a ferry has recently docked in Holyhead the Irish and other EU HGVs on the road are not dissimilar to pre brexit but I accept that is an anecdote
However it is misleading to suggest all the Irish/EU HGVs are now going by ferry direct to Europe
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.
The good idea these companies had is have a leveraged bet on energy prices staying low. If they win, they get the money. If they lose the losses are shared amongst taxpayer, customers and other firms. That is the business model, to me that is cheating, not business.
Oh and interesting that the free market principles cant keep 5-10 companies competing with each other in a homogenous market honest. If it doesnt even do that, perhaps your blind faith in the free market may need to be toned down a notch or seven.
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?
There are wheelchair bound HGV drivers out there, actually. Saw one not long ago - complete with a lift setup to get him to the cab. I presume an owner/operator? Not sure how they handle the loading/connecting up stuff.
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.
Why was this changed to exclude EVERYONE that passed after 1996 indefinitely..., a system whereby your license becomes automatically updated after 10 years to drive these sorts of vehicles would have solved the presumed issue that the gov't didn't want inexperienced drivers driving these sorts of vehicles. I passed in 1997 and have been driving for 24 years now.
"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.
You seem to be missing Rochdale Pioneers point.
Yes, wages have been increased but it's not solved any problems with the shortage of Lorry drivers as nothing could solve the supply side issue except for time.
All the higher wages has done is move the problems elsewhere and unsurprisingly the first casualty is seems to be a specialist (refrigeration) haulier. That's because they have an even smaller supply of drivers (it's harder work, requires additional training and less pleasant due to noise) and other agencies are stealing their drivers for easier (non refrigerated) work.
The issue once again is that 300,000 drivers cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers no matter how you try and change the rules.
"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.
With Philip Thompson on this one. Lots of movers and shakers still have no idea whatsoever why so many ordinary people voted Brexit. I am fairly sure Boris gets it. It is going to be very painful.
You hear the same badly hidden story all the time from employers. It is all dressed up, but what it means is :" We want cheap labour, a bad career structure, cheap training preferably at another country's expense, minimum wage and minimal prospects. Ah, Lithuania, Bulgaria, here we come searching"
This is a scandal, but bigger by far, and far reaching is that the NHS for decades has relied on the same model. One of the world's richest and best resourced countries in the world, the UK, has relied for decades on failing to train enough and more than enough of our own (so that we can help poorer countries) but instead taken thousands of highly skilled people from poorer countries, to their harm.
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.
There is also, IIRC, the fact that in the Everard case the police officer was fingered fairly quickly as a person of interest, which made it obviously an even bigger story.
The missing for a few days thing is also relevant - the days when someone is missing are big news. Maybe it's media bias, but the first I heard of this was when a body was found.
I don't in any way rule out that the differences are also due to ethnic group, but there are some other relevant differences.
(Disclosure: Sarah Everard's father is of my acquaintance - as in I have met him a few times, all before her murder. Indeed, I did not know him well enough to know he had a daughter before then and I did not make the connection until someone told me after her death was reported. So I don't think that biases my view, but thought I should mention it.)
I see the Leave brigade continue to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.
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 !
Getting the worst of what ? Rising pay ? Full employment ?
Indeed the only people complaining seem to be Remoaners (including zeal-of-the-convert Rochdale) and companies who are horrified at seeing pay rise and have a vested interest in seeing that come to a stop.
Who without a vested interest is saying there's an issue?
"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
Sure! But is "quite a lot" the same as "how many were before". And what is on the back of these trucks? This was the point that derailed the "ah Dover has almost as many vehicle moves as before" argument - a half-empty truck, or even a full truck that is now doing a single out and back move is not the same as a truck fully loaded with 10,000 different products that will make 10 stops.
Of course I do not travel the A55 regularly but when I have and a ferry has recently docked in Holyhead the Irish and other EU HGVs on the road are not dissimilar to pre brexit but I accept that is an anecdote
However it is misleading to suggest all the Irish/EU HGVs are now going by ferry direct to Europe
There are multiple France to Ireland (Republic) Ferry routes that exist now that weren't even imagined back in July last year.
I see the Leave brigade continue to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.
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 !
Remember the Brexit Excuse Matrix.
1. There is no problem 2. There is a problem, but it’s not cos of Brexit 3. There is a problem, caused by Brexit, but it’s actually a good thing 4. Revert to (1)
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.
The good idea these companies had is have a leveraged bet on energy prices staying low. If they win, they get the money. If they lose the losses are shared amongst taxpayer, customers and other firms. That is the business model, to me that is cheating, not business.
Oh and interesting that the free market principles cant keep 5-10 companies competing with each other in a homogenous market honest. If it doesnt even do that, perhaps your blind faith in the free market may need to be toned down a notch or seven.
That's not true, that's not all the companies did. EG some companies like Octopus Energy have been advertising other factors in how they deal with customers as a selling point rather than just betting on low energy prices.
Anyone who invested in these failed companies will have seen their capital wiped out, so its not like they've had no losses but that's how the market should work.
And ease of entry for new business is a good thing in a free market yes. The harder it is or the more regulated it is preventing new competition, the less free the market is - so I'm not sure why my belief in a free market should be tempered because of my belief that the market should be free?
"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.
With Philip Thompson on this one. Lots of movers and shakers still have no idea whatsoever why so many ordinary people voted Brexit. I am fairly sure Boris gets it. It is going to be very painful.
You hear the same badly hidden story all the time from employers. It is all dressed up, but what it means is :" We want cheap labour, a bad career structure, cheap training preferably at another country's expense, minimum wage and minimal prospects. Ah, Lithuania, Bulgaria, here we come searching"
This is a scandal, but bigger by far, and far reaching is that the NHS for decades has relied on the same model. One of the world's richest and best resourced countries in the world, the UK, has relied for decades on failing to train enough and more than enough of our own (so that we can help poorer countries) but instead taken thousands of highly skilled people from poorer countries, to their harm.
I found it interesting that the Labour Party never advocated raising the number of university and training places in the NHS to (say) 95% of the predicted requirement. IIRC the predicted requirement for the NHS for staff has always been an underestimate at that...
It will be interesting to see what happens in a few years - due to the A level/university entrance thing, a number of student courses have been increased in size by 20%. Or more. Given that failing at university is now not allowed (pretty much) there is going to be a 20% increase in the number of people with the qualifications to become doctors and nurses rolling out the door on graduation day......
"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.
Again, a genuine lol. Bravo. More!
You really do belong on the Tory backbenches. One of those gobby ones with all the rhetoric and no clue what the real world actually is.
In fact, are we sure you aren't a Tory MP....?
Philip occasionally grasps and understands a point made on here. Your typical Tory backbencher really doesn't.
My MP is now the PPS for the Trade minister. I must go and ask him about some paperwork for some exports to NI given that he promised it would never be required.
"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
Sure! But is "quite a lot" the same as "how many were before". And what is on the back of these trucks? This was the point that derailed the "ah Dover has almost as many vehicle moves as before" argument - a half-empty truck, or even a full truck that is now doing a single out and back move is not the same as a truck fully loaded with 10,000 different products that will make 10 stops.
Of course I do not travel the A55 regularly but when I have and a ferry has recently docked in Holyhead the Irish and other EU HGVs on the road are not dissimilar to pre brexit but I accept that is an anecdote
However it is misleading to suggest all the Irish/EU HGVs are now going by ferry direct to Europe
There are multiple France to Ireland (Republic) Ferry routes that exist now that weren't even imagined back in July last year.
I accept that but I can affirm that Irish/EU HGVs continue to use the A55 to and from Holyhead
"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
Sure! But is "quite a lot" the same as "how many were before". And what is on the back of these trucks? This was the point that derailed the "ah Dover has almost as many vehicle moves as before" argument - a half-empty truck, or even a full truck that is now doing a single out and back move is not the same as a truck fully loaded with 10,000 different products that will make 10 stops.
Of course I do not travel the A55 regularly but when I have and a ferry has recently docked in Holyhead the Irish and other EU HGVs on the road are not dissimilar to pre brexit but I accept that is an anecdote
However it is misleading to suggest all the Irish/EU HGVs are now going by ferry direct to Europe
There are multiple France to Ireland (Republic) Ferry routes that exist now that weren't even imagined back in July last year.
I accept that but I can affirm that Irish/EU HGVs continue to use the A55 to and from Holyhead
That route is still quicker if you aren't stopped at Dover (it's why it was used in the first place)
"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.
You seem to be missing Rochdale Pioneers point.
Yes, wages have been increased but it's not solved any problems with the shortage of Lorry drivers as nothing could solve the supply side issue except for time.
All the higher wages has done is move the problems elsewhere and unsurprisingly the first casualty is seems to be a specialist (refrigeration) haulier. That's because they have an even smaller supply of drivers (it's harder work, requires additional training and less pleasant due to noise) and other agencies are stealing their drivers for easier (non refrigerated) work.
The issue once again is that 300,000 drivers cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers no matter how you try and change the rules.
There's no reason for either the 300,000 number or the 400,000 number to be static though.
If pay rises go up enough the 300,000 number will go up as people who left the sector but still have a licence get tempted to rejoin it (or more people get attracted to do the training and get the licence) while the 400,000 number goes down.
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.
I flagged this last night and drew no response. It was mentioned on 5 Live this morning, and the reporter asked why it had not had the exposure that the Everard case did, with the reply being that this is usually the case for ethnic minority women who are murdered.
I would argue that the media have a huge role to play in this.
"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
Sure! But is "quite a lot" the same as "how many were before". And what is on the back of these trucks? This was the point that derailed the "ah Dover has almost as many vehicle moves as before" argument - a half-empty truck, or even a full truck that is now doing a single out and back move is not the same as a truck fully loaded with 10,000 different products that will make 10 stops.
Of course I do not travel the A55 regularly but when I have and a ferry has recently docked in Holyhead the Irish and other EU HGVs on the road are not dissimilar to pre brexit but I accept that is an anecdote
However it is misleading to suggest all the Irish/EU HGVs are now going by ferry direct to Europe
All? No. Most? Soon. The logistics network is remapping itself to exclude GB. Ferry direct from France to Ireland is slow and expensive and initially with limited capacity. But compared to the alternative its already the favoured route. As more boats go onto it, capacity increases and costs decrease it will be most traffic, to NI as well.
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.
There is also, IIRC, the fact that in the Everard case the police officer was fingered fairly quickly as a person of interest, which made it obviously an even bigger story.
The missing for a few days thing is also relevant - the days when someone is missing are big news. Maybe it's media bias, but the first I heard of this was when a body was found.
I don't in any way rule out that the differences are also due to ethnic group, but there are some other relevant differences.
(Disclosure: Sarah Everard's father is of my acquaintance - as in I have met him a few times, all before her murder. Indeed, I did not know him well enough to know he had a daughter before then and I did not make the connection until someone told me after her death was reported. So I don't think that biases my view, but thought I should mention it.)
Yes, it was a story that ran over more than a week, and involved the police officer which was an added dimension.
Many young female journalists and columnists walked through the same park on the same night, and the following night saw the park covered in misper posters. A missing person is a bugger story than a dead person, as there is an uncertainty and appeals to the public for information, that might result in a good outcome.
This story seems to be that a body was found in an East London park one morning, with no more detail at this point.
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.
That thought had occurred to me too. She is a similar age to Sarah Everard, pretty too and a teacher, living in Greenwich. It is an appalling thing to happen. I don't want demos and exhibitions of faux grief every time. But for God's sake we cannot just accept the murder of women by men or the murder of young men, often young black men as routine.
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.
Congratulations on the new project!
Thank you. It will be interesting, undoubtedly a headache at times but a good thing to be doing and very much in my sphere of expertise. So am really please to have got it. Been negotiating for a while but it was finally announced internally this morning. And one good thing is that I can mostly do it from home as the organisation has embraced hybrid working. So while I will be spending a little bit more time in London I will still be mostly in the Lakes whizzing up and down the M6 (or on the train) as the fancy takes.
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.
The good idea these companies had is have a leveraged bet on energy prices staying low. If they win, they get the money. If they lose the losses are shared amongst taxpayer, customers and other firms. That is the business model, to me that is cheating, not business.
Oh and interesting that the free market principles cant keep 5-10 companies competing with each other in a homogenous market honest. If it doesnt even do that, perhaps your blind faith in the free market may need to be toned down a notch or seven.
That's not true, that's not all the companies did. EG some companies like Octopus Energy have been advertising other factors in how they deal with customers as a selling point rather than just betting on low energy prices.
Anyone who invested in these failed companies will have seen their capital wiped out, so its not like they've had no losses but that's how the market should work.
And ease of entry for new business is a good thing in a free market yes. The harder it is or the more regulated it is preventing new competition, the less free the market is - so I'm not sure why my belief in a free market should be tempered because of my belief that the market should be free?
Most industries are dominated by a few big players. If 5-10 companies, with a regulator delivering an identical product can't be trusted to compete, then the free market does not work.
"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
Sure! But is "quite a lot" the same as "how many were before". And what is on the back of these trucks? This was the point that derailed the "ah Dover has almost as many vehicle moves as before" argument - a half-empty truck, or even a full truck that is now doing a single out and back move is not the same as a truck fully loaded with 10,000 different products that will make 10 stops.
Of course I do not travel the A55 regularly but when I have and a ferry has recently docked in Holyhead the Irish and other EU HGVs on the road are not dissimilar to pre brexit but I accept that is an anecdote
However it is misleading to suggest all the Irish/EU HGVs are now going by ferry direct to Europe
All? No. Most? Soon. The logistics network is remapping itself to exclude GB. Ferry direct from France to Ireland is slow and expensive and initially with limited capacity. But compared to the alternative its already the favoured route. As more boats go onto it, capacity increases and costs decrease it will be most traffic, to NI as well.
There is an argument that if these truckers are using Wales to Dover as a shortcut to Europe then we are better served with less congestion and pollution if they go a different way
This of course does not apply to truckers who are delivering on route into the UK
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.
Why was this changed to exclude EVERYONE that passed after 1996 indefinitely..., a system whereby your license becomes automatically updated after 10 years to drive these sorts of vehicles would have solved the presumed issue that the gov't didn't want inexperienced drivers driving these sorts of vehicles. I passed in 1997 and have been driving for 24 years now.
The reason we lost C1/D1 for new car drivers from 1997 was...European Union Directive 91/439/EEC
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.
The good idea these companies had is have a leveraged bet on energy prices staying low. If they win, they get the money. If they lose the losses are shared amongst taxpayer, customers and other firms. That is the business model, to me that is cheating, not business.
Oh and interesting that the free market principles cant keep 5-10 companies competing with each other in a homogenous market honest. If it doesnt even do that, perhaps your blind faith in the free market may need to be toned down a notch or seven.
That's not true, that's not all the companies did. EG some companies like Octopus Energy have been advertising other factors in how they deal with customers as a selling point rather than just betting on low energy prices.
Anyone who invested in these failed companies will have seen their capital wiped out, so its not like they've had no losses but that's how the market should work.
And ease of entry for new business is a good thing in a free market yes. The harder it is or the more regulated it is preventing new competition, the less free the market is - so I'm not sure why my belief in a free market should be tempered because of my belief that the market should be free?
Most industries are dominated by a few big players. If 5-10 companies, with a regulator delivering an identical product can't be trusted to compete, then the free market does not work.
If 5 companies exist with a regulator deliberately preventing new companies from joining the sector, then the market isn't free.
"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
Sure! But is "quite a lot" the same as "how many were before". And what is on the back of these trucks? This was the point that derailed the "ah Dover has almost as many vehicle moves as before" argument - a half-empty truck, or even a full truck that is now doing a single out and back move is not the same as a truck fully loaded with 10,000 different products that will make 10 stops.
Of course I do not travel the A55 regularly but when I have and a ferry has recently docked in Holyhead the Irish and other EU HGVs on the road are not dissimilar to pre brexit but I accept that is an anecdote
However it is misleading to suggest all the Irish/EU HGVs are now going by ferry direct to Europe
There are multiple France to Ireland (Republic) Ferry routes that exist now that weren't even imagined back in July last year.
I accept that but I can affirm that Irish/EU HGVs continue to use the A55 to and from Holyhead
Irish exports to Britain are up. Impossible to know whether an Irish HGV you see is delivering to Britain or transiting to the EU.
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.
The good idea these companies had is have a leveraged bet on energy prices staying low. If they win, they get the money. If they lose the losses are shared amongst taxpayer, customers and other firms. That is the business model, to me that is cheating, not business.
Oh and interesting that the free market principles cant keep 5-10 companies competing with each other in a homogenous market honest. If it doesnt even do that, perhaps your blind faith in the free market may need to be toned down a notch or seven.
That's not true, that's not all the companies did. EG some companies like Octopus Energy have been advertising other factors in how they deal with customers as a selling point rather than just betting on low energy prices.
Anyone who invested in these failed companies will have seen their capital wiped out, so its not like they've had no losses but that's how the market should work.
And ease of entry for new business is a good thing in a free market yes. The harder it is or the more regulated it is preventing new competition, the less free the market is - so I'm not sure why my belief in a free market should be tempered because of my belief that the market should be free?
Most industries are dominated by a few big players. If 5-10 companies, with a regulator delivering an identical product can't be trusted to compete, then the free market does not work.
Free markets don't work unless dead wood is allowed to die and new entrants are provided with the means of entering the market.
1. The collapse of energy suppliers. So what? That’s capitalism, and regulation has done a good job of moving customers smoothly onto remaining suppliers.
2. Soaring energy prices. Seems to be caused by bad planning and bad luck.
I haven’t seen a slam dunk explanation for why Brexit can be blamed for (2) although it’s very fishy that analysts warned that coming out of the single european energy market would increase the risk of what seems to have come about.
I see the Leave brigade continue to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.
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 !
Getting the worst of what ? Rising pay ? Full employment ?
Indeed the only people complaining seem to be Remoaners (including zeal-of-the-convert Rochdale) and companies who are horrified at seeing pay rise and have a vested interest in seeing that come to a stop.
Who without a vested interest is saying there's an issue?
Again lol and bravo!
As a (centre) leftie I have not only no problem with better pay and conditions its something I've backed for years! Nationally we have treated service jobs and those people doing them as a lower-order occupation. That has to change so that people actually want to do them.
The issue is that the immediate <40% pay rises haven't fixed the problem and won't be sustained (as once we have enough drivers again market pressures will start eroding them) and the conditions bit will take time and investment.
The thing about about a structural labour shortage is that you can't fix it with more pay, not in the real world no matter what your Adam Smith book tells you about the theory. If we could then the <40% pay rises would have fixed this. They haven't. They have barely moved the needle on the dial. Perhaps the pay rise should have been <80%, or perhaps <150%?
Never mind asking if you are a Tory MP, I have to ask if you aren't the reincarnation of Red Robbo. Demanding vast pay rises that make things worse not better was his favourite thing. Perhaps as the magic wand hasn't improved working conditions the drivers should also go on strike...?
"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.
You seem to be missing Rochdale Pioneers point.
Yes, wages have been increased but it's not solved any problems with the shortage of Lorry drivers as nothing could solve the supply side issue except for time.
All the higher wages has done is move the problems elsewhere and unsurprisingly the first casualty is seems to be a specialist (refrigeration) haulier. That's because they have an even smaller supply of drivers (it's harder work, requires additional training and less pleasant due to noise) and other agencies are stealing their drivers for easier (non refrigerated) work.
The issue once again is that 300,000 drivers cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers no matter how you try and change the rules.
And this is the bit that "the free market will just find a new equilibrium" misses.
Of course it will, over time. But what we're seeing now is a transient shock. It's a bit like the way that you have to push something harder to start it moving than you do to keep it moving.
By all means move to a situation where only UK citizens are doing UK driving, if that's what the UK wants. (Though maybe we should work through all of the consequences to be sure that is what the UK wants.) But creating a shock change that doesn't work with the various degrees of stickyness in the system is asking for trouble.
(And remember that something with lots of interacting parts like an economy will have lots of equilibrium points. And some of them will be a bit rubbish and progress towards any of them might be incredibly slow. The atoms in diamonds aren't in their optimal state, and they last basically forever.)
I see the Leave brigade continue to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.
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 !
Getting the worst of what ? Rising pay ? Full employment ?
Indeed the only people complaining seem to be Remoaners (including zeal-of-the-convert Rochdale) and companies who are horrified at seeing pay rise and have a vested interest in seeing that come to a stop.
Who without a vested interest is saying there's an issue?
Since the Referendum they've been expecting economic collapse and mass unemployment.
Now they see record vacancies and rising wages.
And what's worse for them is that the people who are benefitting are often the 'wrong sort of people' - the low paid, people who didn't go to university, people in places they couldn't find on a map, people who voted Leave, people who voted Conservative.
1. The collapse of energy suppliers. So what? That’s capitalism, and regulation has done a good job of moving customers smoothly onto remaining suppliers.
2. Soaring energy prices. Seems to be caused by bad planning and bad luck.
I haven’t seen a slam dunk explanation for why Brexit can be blamed for (2) although it’s very fishy that analysts warned that coming out of the single european energy market would increase the risk of what seems to have come about.
Currently 2 seems to be little to do with Brexit as the EU has the same issues.
It seems that Gazprom cannot produce the amount of gas required and is hitting capacity issues.
So the pro-EU crowd want us to be able to poach HGV drivers from abroad to solve our shortage and make theirs worse.
Hardly the most internationalist of outlooks.
Its the free market. Surely you're in favour of that?
I think you've read me wrong comrade.
I'd have a nationalised road haulage operator running all the HGVs.
OK its been done before. You run National Carriers (2021) Ltd. You have a 100k shortage of drivers and are facing a Christmas catastrofuck which will get you the sack. Drivers are available and willing to do the work, if only the government would let you hire them.
I see the Leave brigade continue to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.
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 !
Getting the worst of what ? Rising pay ? Full employment ?
Indeed the only people complaining seem to be Remoaners (including zeal-of-the-convert Rochdale) and companies who are horrified at seeing pay rise and have a vested interest in seeing that come to a stop.
Who without a vested interest is saying there's an issue?
Since the Referendum they've been expecting economic collapse and mass unemployment.
Now they see record vacancies and rising wages.
And what's worse for them is that the people who are benefitting are often the 'wrong sort of people' - the low paid, people who didn't go to university, people in places they couldn't find on a map, people who voted Leave, people who voted Conservative.
It’s that meme again.
The fake one that Brexiters are now so desperately clinging to rather than recognise that they voted the country up the Swanee.
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.
The good idea these companies had is have a leveraged bet on energy prices staying low. If they win, they get the money. If they lose the losses are shared amongst taxpayer, customers and other firms. That is the business model, to me that is cheating, not business.
Oh and interesting that the free market principles cant keep 5-10 companies competing with each other in a homogenous market honest. If it doesnt even do that, perhaps your blind faith in the free market may need to be toned down a notch or seven.
That's not true, that's not all the companies did. EG some companies like Octopus Energy have been advertising other factors in how they deal with customers as a selling point rather than just betting on low energy prices.
Anyone who invested in these failed companies will have seen their capital wiped out, so its not like they've had no losses but that's how the market should work.
And ease of entry for new business is a good thing in a free market yes. The harder it is or the more regulated it is preventing new competition, the less free the market is - so I'm not sure why my belief in a free market should be tempered because of my belief that the market should be free?
Most industries are dominated by a few big players. If 5-10 companies, with a regulator delivering an identical product can't be trusted to compete, then the free market does not work.
Free markets don't work unless dead wood is allowed to die and new entrants are provided with the means of entering the market.
Exactly. Five companies dominating the market because those are the best companies and they're winning the customers is one thing and that works in a free market.
Five companies dominating the market because the regulator is shielding those companies from competition is not a free market. Its the opposite of a free market.
Take supermarkets for instance. Aldi is a big player now and they seem to be going from strength to strength - and interestingly seem to not be struggling to keep the shelves full either. But they weren't one of the big five. Thankfully we have a free market so there was no regulator saying they were unable to join the market and compete.
If companies like Aldi can thrive while older competitors like Iceland or A N Other Supermarket goes bust because they've got a bad business model and they can't keep the shelves full without minimum wage drivers then that's the market working as intended it isn't the market failing.
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.
Why was this changed to exclude EVERYONE that passed after 1996 indefinitely..., a system whereby your license becomes automatically updated after 10 years to drive these sorts of vehicles would have solved the presumed issue that the gov't didn't want inexperienced drivers driving these sorts of vehicles. I passed in 1997 and have been driving for 24 years now.
The reason we lost C1/D1 for new car drivers from 1997 was...European Union Directive 91/439/EEC
Ah, so now there’s a chance we might be able to get it back.
I see the Leave brigade continue to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.
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 !
Remember the Brexit Excuse Matrix.
1. There is no problem 2. There is a problem, but it’s not cos of Brexit 3. There is a problem, caused by Brexit, but it’s actually a good thing 4. Revert to (1)
There's another one which is starting to be seen;
5. There is a problem, due to Brexit and it's a bad thing. But it's too late to do anything about it now.
Everything you need to know about politics is in Yes, (Prime) Minister.
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.
There is also, IIRC, the fact that in the Everard case the police officer was fingered fairly quickly as a person of interest, which made it obviously an even bigger story.
The missing for a few days thing is also relevant - the days when someone is missing are big news. Maybe it's media bias, but the first I heard of this was when a body was found.
I don't in any way rule out that the differences are also due to ethnic group, but there are some other relevant differences.
(Disclosure: Sarah Everard's father is of my acquaintance - as in I have met him a few times, all before her murder. Indeed, I did not know him well enough to know he had a daughter before then and I did not make the connection until someone told me after her death was reported. So I don't think that biases my view, but thought I should mention it.)
Yes, it was a story that ran over more than a week, and involved the police officer which was an added dimension.
Many young female journalists and columnists walked through the same park on the same night, and the following night saw the park covered in misper posters. A missing person is a bugger story than a dead person, as there is an uncertainty and appeals to the public for information, that might result in a good outcome.
This story seems to be that a body was found in an East London park one morning, with no more detail at this point.
Many women who are killed are killed by partners or men known to them. What made the Everard case different was that she was murdered by a stranger. The Sabine Nessa case does not appear to be a domestic violence case so, on the face of it, a murder by a stranger.
In a park in a nice part of London on her way home from work.
It ought to be a much bigger story. Unless we are simply going to shrug our shoulders at bodies being found in parks. And the fact that she is not white should absolutely not be an excuse to ignore this. All women in the area will now be a little bit more fearful, which is why Greenwich council is giving out alarms.
I see the Leave brigade continue to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.
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 !
Remember the Brexit Excuse Matrix.
1. There is no problem 2. There is a problem, but it’s not cos of Brexit 3. There is a problem, caused by Brexit, but it’s actually a good thing 4. Revert to (1)
There's another one which is starting to be seen;
5. There is a problem, due to Brexit and it's a bad thing. But it's too late to do anything about it now.
Everything you need to know about politics is in Yes, (Prime) Minister.
Yes, I have noticed a few of those. I will update the matrix.
I see the Leave brigade continue to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.
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 !
Getting the worst of what ? Rising pay ? Full employment ?
Indeed the only people complaining seem to be Remoaners (including zeal-of-the-convert Rochdale) and companies who are horrified at seeing pay rise and have a vested interest in seeing that come to a stop.
Who without a vested interest is saying there's an issue?
Again lol and bravo!
As a (centre) leftie I have not only no problem with better pay and conditions its something I've backed for years! Nationally we have treated service jobs and those people doing them as a lower-order occupation. That has to change so that people actually want to do them.
The issue is that the immediate less than 40% pay rises haven't fixed the problem and won't be sustained (as once we have enough drivers again market pressures will start eroding them) and the conditions bit will take time and investment.
The thing about about a structural labour shortage is that you can't fix it with more pay, not in the real world no matter what your Adam Smith book tells you about the theory. If we could then the less than 40% pay rises would have fixed this. They haven't. They have barely moved the needle on the dial. Perhaps the pay rise should have been less than 80%, or perhaps less than 150%?
Never mind asking if you are a Tory MP, I have to ask if you aren't the reincarnation of Red Robbo. Demanding vast pay rises that make things worse not better was his favourite thing. Perhaps as the magic wand hasn't improved working conditions the drivers should also go on strike...?
[I swapped your less than symbol for the words as it breaks blockquotes otherwise when quoted]
Yes if a less than 40% pay rise hasn't filled the vacancies then try more until you reach an equilibrium.
If you can't fill a vacancy for a shit wage, then there's no divine right to fill it for less than 140% of the shit wage either. Either keep increasing pay until you can't afford to (so demand falls, job done) or you fill the vacancy (so supply is met, job done).
Either way, its not the job of the state to get involved.
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.
Why was this changed to exclude EVERYONE that passed after 1996 indefinitely..., a system whereby your license becomes automatically updated after 10 years to drive these sorts of vehicles would have solved the presumed issue that the gov't didn't want inexperienced drivers driving these sorts of vehicles. I passed in 1997 and have been driving for 24 years now.
The reason we lost C1/D1 for new car drivers from 1997 was...European Union Directive 91/439/EEC
E-mailed my MP about it, he's as anti europe as it gets so he might have sympathy at least with my email.
1. The collapse of energy suppliers. So what? That’s capitalism, and regulation has done a good job of moving customers smoothly onto remaining suppliers.
2. Soaring energy prices. Seems to be caused by bad planning and bad luck.
I haven’t seen a slam dunk explanation for why Brexit can be blamed for (2) although it’s very fishy that analysts warned that coming out of the single european energy market would increase the risk of what seems to have come about.
Currently 2 seems to be little to do with Brexit as the EU has the same issues.
It seems that Gazprom cannot produce the amount of gas required and is hitting capacity issues.
Or, equally likely, Gazprom / Putin is enjoying the view of Europe understanding how dependent it is now is on Russian gas.
"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.
You seem to be missing Rochdale Pioneers point.
Yes, wages have been increased but it's not solved any problems with the shortage of Lorry drivers as nothing could solve the supply side issue except for time.
All the higher wages has done is move the problems elsewhere and unsurprisingly the first casualty is seems to be a specialist (refrigeration) haulier. That's because they have an even smaller supply of drivers (it's harder work, requires additional training and less pleasant due to noise) and other agencies are stealing their drivers for easier (non refrigerated) work.
The issue once again is that 300,000 drivers cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers no matter how you try and change the rules.
And this is the bit that "the free market will just find a new equilibrium" misses.
Of course it will, over time. But what we're seeing now is a transient shock. It's a bit like the way that you have to push something harder to start it moving than you do to keep it moving.
By all means move to a situation where only UK citizens are doing UK driving, if that's what the UK wants. (Though maybe we should work through all of the consequences to be sure that is what the UK wants.) But creating a shock change that doesn't work with the various degrees of stickyness in the system is asking for trouble.
(And remember that something with lots of interacting parts like an economy will have lots of equilibrium points. And some of them will be a bit rubbish and progress towards any of them might be incredibly slow. The atoms in diamonds aren't in their optimal state, and they last basically forever.)
So there's some trouble, its not the end of the world.
Companies that really, really need the stock moving will pay whatever they have to in order to get the stock moved. Hence why businesses like Aldi can keep their shelves full.
Companies that don't really need the stock moving won't.
Demand falls, supply rises, problem resolved.
Or we can do what Rochdale and the bosses of the companies petrified of paying a market wage want and get the state to meddle with the market - which will never be undone since this issue will arise any time you cease to meddle.
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.
There is also, IIRC, the fact that in the Everard case the police officer was fingered fairly quickly as a person of interest, which made it obviously an even bigger story.
The missing for a few days thing is also relevant - the days when someone is missing are big news. Maybe it's media bias, but the first I heard of this was when a body was found.
I don't in any way rule out that the differences are also due to ethnic group, but there are some other relevant differences.
(Disclosure: Sarah Everard's father is of my acquaintance - as in I have met him a few times, all before her murder. Indeed, I did not know him well enough to know he had a daughter before then and I did not make the connection until someone told me after her death was reported. So I don't think that biases my view, but thought I should mention it.)
Yes, it was a story that ran over more than a week, and involved the police officer which was an added dimension.
Many young female journalists and columnists walked through the same park on the same night, and the following night saw the park covered in misper posters. A missing person is a bugger story than a dead person, as there is an uncertainty and appeals to the public for information, that might result in a good outcome.
This story seems to be that a body was found in an East London park one morning, with no more detail at this point.
Many women who are killed are killed by partners or men known to them. What made the Everard case different was that she was murdered by a stranger. The Sabine Nessa case does not appear to be a domestic violence case so, on the face of it, a murder by a stranger.
In a park in a nice part of London on her way home from work.
It ought to be a much bigger story. Unless we are simply going to shrug our shoulders at bodies being found in parks. And the fact that she is not white should absolutely not be an excuse to ignore this. All women in the area will now be a little bit more fearful, which is why Greenwich council is giving out alarms.
This is just not acceptable.
One reason it's probably not a bigger story is that editors don't want to scare women outside the immediate area (where you do need women to be take more care).
A missing person is someone who may still be found, a body is an end point that removes a lot of the human interest rescue elements.
Equally though I do wonder if the name has reduced the media's interest. Is it possible that older stories got my interest because the victim was obviously white British.
F1: Haas confirm Schumacher and Mazepin as their drivers for next year.
I have to say, Stroll is a much nicer billionaire's son. Better driver, too.
Interesting, given how outspoken the German has been regarding the atmosphere in the team.
I had expected Ferrari to try and get him out of there, into the spare Sauber seat alongside Bottas, which would have been a much better environment and indicator of performance for MSC Jr.
1. The collapse of energy suppliers. So what? That’s capitalism, and regulation has done a good job of moving customers smoothly onto remaining suppliers.
2. Soaring energy prices. Seems to be caused by bad planning and bad luck.
I haven’t seen a slam dunk explanation for why Brexit can be blamed for (2) although it’s very fishy that analysts warned that coming out of the single european energy market would increase the risk of what seems to have come about.
On the energy markets, as I understand it (and may have got the wrong end of the stick), the EU energy market regulated prices. Flattened spikes. So even if there was a run on gas wholesale prices you had protection.
We also had gas storage. You can buy gas when cheap and hold it as a buffer. When the government did post-referendum Brexit planning they were advised that if they left the energy market we would be at risk of having to pay spot prices, mitigated in part by our storage capacity.
So what seems to have happened is the government regulator allowed Centrica to close the storage and it chose to leave the regulated market. So we're now liable to pay the spot prices because its no longer regulated and we have next to no storage capacity.
That isn't directly a result of Brexit, its a choice this government have made about what we do after Brexit. If we'd made no changes at all, or stayed in the market but shut the storage facility, or left the market and kept the storage facility we wouldn't be in this mess. Instead we did the thing the energy experts advised them not to do.
"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.
You seem to be missing Rochdale Pioneers point.
Yes, wages have been increased but it's not solved any problems with the shortage of Lorry drivers as nothing could solve the supply side issue except for time.
All the higher wages has done is move the problems elsewhere and unsurprisingly the first casualty is seems to be a specialist (refrigeration) haulier. That's because they have an even smaller supply of drivers (it's harder work, requires additional training and less pleasant due to noise) and other agencies are stealing their drivers for easier (non refrigerated) work.
The issue once again is that 300,000 drivers cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers no matter how you try and change the rules.
And this is the bit that "the free market will just find a new equilibrium" misses.
Of course it will, over time. But what we're seeing now is a transient shock. It's a bit like the way that you have to push something harder to start it moving than you do to keep it moving.
By all means move to a situation where only UK citizens are doing UK driving, if that's what the UK wants. (Though maybe we should work through all of the consequences to be sure that is what the UK wants.) But creating a shock change that doesn't work with the various degrees of stickyness in the system is asking for trouble.
(And remember that something with lots of interacting parts like an economy will have lots of equilibrium points. And some of them will be a bit rubbish and progress towards any of them might be incredibly slow. The atoms in diamonds aren't in their optimal state, and they last basically forever.)
So there's some trouble, its not the end of the world.
Companies that really, really need the stock moving will pay whatever they have to in order to get the stock moved. Hence why businesses like Aldi can keep their shelves full.
Companies that don't really need the stock moving won't.
Demand falls, supply rises, problem resolved.
Or we can do what Rochdale and the bosses of the companies petrified of paying a market wage want and get the state to meddle with the market - which will never be undone since this issue will arise any time you cease to meddle.
Um that isn't what Rochdale wants - all we are doing is pointing out
300,000 drivers working at legal limits cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers.
Getting to 400,000 drivers has a lead time of 2-3 years.
So we either need to get used to shortages or we need to import drivers on a time limited basis until enough GB drivers are trained up...
1. The collapse of energy suppliers. So what? That’s capitalism, and regulation has done a good job of moving customers smoothly onto remaining suppliers.
2. Soaring energy prices. Seems to be caused by bad planning and bad luck.
I haven’t seen a slam dunk explanation for why Brexit can be blamed for (2) although it’s very fishy that analysts warned that coming out of the single european energy market would increase the risk of what seems to have come about.
On the energy markets, as I understand it (and may have got the wrong end of the stick), the EU energy market regulated prices. Flattened spikes. So even if there was a run on gas wholesale prices you had protection.
We also had gas storage. You can buy gas when cheap and hold it as a buffer. When the government did post-referendum Brexit planning they were advised that if they left the energy market we would be at risk of having to pay spot prices, mitigated in part by our storage capacity.
So what seems to have happened is the government regulator allowed Centrica to close the storage and it chose to leave the regulated market. So we're now liable to pay the spot prices because its no longer regulated and we have next to no storage capacity.
That isn't directly a result of Brexit, its a choice this government have made about what we do after Brexit. If we'd made no changes at all, or stayed in the market but shut the storage facility, or left the market and kept the storage facility we wouldn't be in this mess. Instead we did the thing the energy experts advised them not to do.
Thanks yes.
Brexit made us vulnerable (to energy spikes), but we could have mitigated that vulnerability.
Have I missed something that my local town in Kent has no fuel at all on the forecourts of any kind and when I drove to the next town there was a queue with people filling canisters??
I see the Leave brigade continue to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.
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 !
Getting the worst of what ? Rising pay ? Full employment ?
Indeed the only people complaining seem to be Remoaners (including zeal-of-the-convert Rochdale) and companies who are horrified at seeing pay rise and have a vested interest in seeing that come to a stop.
Who without a vested interest is saying there's an issue?
Again lol and bravo!
As a (centre) leftie I have not only no problem with better pay and conditions its something I've backed for years! Nationally we have treated service jobs and those people doing them as a lower-order occupation. That has to change so that people actually want to do them.
The issue is that the immediate less than 40% pay rises haven't fixed the problem and won't be sustained (as once we have enough drivers again market pressures will start eroding them) and the conditions bit will take time and investment.
The thing about about a structural labour shortage is that you can't fix it with more pay, not in the real world no matter what your Adam Smith book tells you about the theory. If we could then the less than 40% pay rises would have fixed this. They haven't. They have barely moved the needle on the dial. Perhaps the pay rise should have been less than 80%, or perhaps less than 150%?
Never mind asking if you are a Tory MP, I have to ask if you aren't the reincarnation of Red Robbo. Demanding vast pay rises that make things worse not better was his favourite thing. Perhaps as the magic wand hasn't improved working conditions the drivers should also go on strike...?
[I swapped your less than symbol for the words as it breaks blockquotes otherwise when quoted]
Yes if a less than 40% pay rise hasn't filled the vacancies then try more until you reach an equilibrium.
If you can't fill a vacancy for a shit wage, then there's no divine right to fill it for less than 140% of the shit wage either. Either keep increasing pay until you can't afford to (so demand falls, job done) or you fill the vacancy (so supply is met, job done).
Either way, its not the job of the state to get involved.
For ref: < and > will give you < and > without breaking the blockquotes
1. The collapse of energy suppliers. So what? That’s capitalism, and regulation has done a good job of moving customers smoothly onto remaining suppliers.
2. Soaring energy prices. Seems to be caused by bad planning and bad luck.
I haven’t seen a slam dunk explanation for why Brexit can be blamed for (2) although it’s very fishy that analysts warned that coming out of the single european energy market would increase the risk of what seems to have come about.
Currently 2 seems to be little to do with Brexit as the EU has the same issues.
It seems that Gazprom cannot produce the amount of gas required and is hitting capacity issues.
Or, equally likely, Gazprom / Putin is enjoying the view of Europe understanding how dependent it is now is on Russian gas.
I saw somewhere from a reliable source that Gazprom are hitting capacity limits.
I do suspect however that in a market where you are a monopoly supplier there is little harm in using "capacity issues" to justify higher prices. Especially if it allows you to bankrupt a neighbouring country reliant on your supplies.
I see the Leave brigade continue to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.
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 !
Getting the worst of what ? Rising pay ? Full employment ?
Indeed the only people complaining seem to be Remoaners (including zeal-of-the-convert Rochdale) and companies who are horrified at seeing pay rise and have a vested interest in seeing that come to a stop.
Who without a vested interest is saying there's an issue?
Since the Referendum they've been expecting economic collapse and mass unemployment.
Now they see record vacancies and rising wages.
And what's worse for them is that the people who are benefitting are often the 'wrong sort of people' - the low paid, people who didn't go to university, people in places they couldn't find on a map, people who voted Leave, people who voted Conservative.
But Brexit is not finished. The full inward customs controls have not been activated.
"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.
You seem to be missing Rochdale Pioneers point.
Yes, wages have been increased but it's not solved any problems with the shortage of Lorry drivers as nothing could solve the supply side issue except for time.
All the higher wages has done is move the problems elsewhere and unsurprisingly the first casualty is seems to be a specialist (refrigeration) haulier. That's because they have an even smaller supply of drivers (it's harder work, requires additional training and less pleasant due to noise) and other agencies are stealing their drivers for easier (non refrigerated) work.
The issue once again is that 300,000 drivers cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers no matter how you try and change the rules.
And this is the bit that "the free market will just find a new equilibrium" misses.
Of course it will, over time. But what we're seeing now is a transient shock. It's a bit like the way that you have to push something harder to start it moving than you do to keep it moving.
By all means move to a situation where only UK citizens are doing UK driving, if that's what the UK wants. (Though maybe we should work through all of the consequences to be sure that is what the UK wants.) But creating a shock change that doesn't work with the various degrees of stickyness in the system is asking for trouble.
(And remember that something with lots of interacting parts like an economy will have lots of equilibrium points. And some of them will be a bit rubbish and progress towards any of them might be incredibly slow. The atoms in diamonds aren't in their optimal state, and they last basically forever.)
So there's some trouble, its not the end of the world.
Companies that really, really need the stock moving will pay whatever they have to in order to get the stock moved. Hence why businesses like Aldi can keep their shelves full.
Companies that don't really need the stock moving won't.
Demand falls, supply rises, problem resolved.
Or we can do what Rochdale and the bosses of the companies petrified of paying a market wage want and get the state to meddle with the market - which will never be undone since this issue will arise any time you cease to meddle.
Um that isn't what Rochdale wants - all we are doing is pointing out
300,000 drivers working at legal limits cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers.
Getting to 400,000 drivers has a lead time of 2-3 years.
So we either need to get used to shortages or we need to import drivers on a time limited basis until enough GB drivers are trained up...
300,000 drivers can't do the work of 400,000 drivers.
But 350,000 drivers can do the work of 350,000 drivers.
Pay rates go up, more people are attracted into the industry - some clients decide its not worth demanding from the industry.
Yes it means some journeys that happen now won't happen in the future. Those should be the least productive, least economic ones that can't afford the pay rise and they go off the road. That's not a bad thing.
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.
There is also, IIRC, the fact that in the Everard case the police officer was fingered fairly quickly as a person of interest, which made it obviously an even bigger story.
The missing for a few days thing is also relevant - the days when someone is missing are big news. Maybe it's media bias, but the first I heard of this was when a body was found.
I don't in any way rule out that the differences are also due to ethnic group, but there are some other relevant differences.
(Disclosure: Sarah Everard's father is of my acquaintance - as in I have met him a few times, all before her murder. Indeed, I did not know him well enough to know he had a daughter before then and I did not make the connection until someone told me after her death was reported. So I don't think that biases my view, but thought I should mention it.)
Yes, it was a story that ran over more than a week, and involved the police officer which was an added dimension.
Many young female journalists and columnists walked through the same park on the same night, and the following night saw the park covered in misper posters. A missing person is a bugger story than a dead person, as there is an uncertainty and appeals to the public for information, that might result in a good outcome.
This story seems to be that a body was found in an East London park one morning, with no more detail at this point.
Many women who are killed are killed by partners or men known to them. What made the Everard case different was that she was murdered by a stranger. The Sabine Nessa case does not appear to be a domestic violence case so, on the face of it, a murder by a stranger.
In a park in a nice part of London on her way home from work.
It ought to be a much bigger story. Unless we are simply going to shrug our shoulders at bodies being found in parks. And the fact that she is not white should absolutely not be an excuse to ignore this. All women in the area will now be a little bit more fearful, which is why Greenwich council is giving out alarms.
This is just not acceptable.
It isn't, and it highlights the problem with the endless frothing about the trans issue. The threat to women isn't from a predatory man pretending to be a woman to access a changing room. Predatory men have far easier prey than that.
We need to do more to educate boys about girls. They are your equal. They have the same rights as you. They are not sport for you to mess with. So many of us do bring up our kids to think straight. The minority are the problem and we really need to go after it hard. No more tolerance of "ladding about", make catcalls and comments and "its just a bit of fun" as socially unacceptable as we've managed to make drink driving.
"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.
You seem to be missing Rochdale Pioneers point.
Yes, wages have been increased but it's not solved any problems with the shortage of Lorry drivers as nothing could solve the supply side issue except for time.
All the higher wages has done is move the problems elsewhere and unsurprisingly the first casualty is seems to be a specialist (refrigeration) haulier. That's because they have an even smaller supply of drivers (it's harder work, requires additional training and less pleasant due to noise) and other agencies are stealing their drivers for easier (non refrigerated) work.
The issue once again is that 300,000 drivers cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers no matter how you try and change the rules.
And this is the bit that "the free market will just find a new equilibrium" misses.
Of course it will, over time. But what we're seeing now is a transient shock. It's a bit like the way that you have to push something harder to start it moving than you do to keep it moving.
By all means move to a situation where only UK citizens are doing UK driving, if that's what the UK wants. (Though maybe we should work through all of the consequences to be sure that is what the UK wants.) But creating a shock change that doesn't work with the various degrees of stickyness in the system is asking for trouble.
(And remember that something with lots of interacting parts like an economy will have lots of equilibrium points. And some of them will be a bit rubbish and progress towards any of them might be incredibly slow. The atoms in diamonds aren't in their optimal state, and they last basically forever.)
So there's some trouble, its not the end of the world.
Companies that really, really need the stock moving will pay whatever they have to in order to get the stock moved. Hence why businesses like Aldi can keep their shelves full.
Companies that don't really need the stock moving won't.
Demand falls, supply rises, problem resolved.
Or we can do what Rochdale and the bosses of the companies petrified of paying a market wage want and get the state to meddle with the market - which will never be undone since this issue will arise any time you cease to meddle.
Um that isn't what Rochdale wants - all we are doing is pointing out
300,000 drivers working at legal limits cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers.
Getting to 400,000 drivers has a lead time of 2-3 years.
So we either need to get used to shortages or we need to import drivers on a time limited basis until enough GB drivers are trained up...
This assumes that the increased rates of pay don't attract people back to HGV driving.
IIRC the true over in drivers per year was huge - the industry was one of those that is a conveyer belt of people quoting because they were fed up with conditions and new entrants coming in. Which is one of the reasons that cutting off the entrants has caused such an issue.
Do we have any numbers on how many ex-drivers are out there?
"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.
You seem to be missing Rochdale Pioneers point.
Yes, wages have been increased but it's not solved any problems with the shortage of Lorry drivers as nothing could solve the supply side issue except for time.
All the higher wages has done is move the problems elsewhere and unsurprisingly the first casualty is seems to be a specialist (refrigeration) haulier. That's because they have an even smaller supply of drivers (it's harder work, requires additional training and less pleasant due to noise) and other agencies are stealing their drivers for easier (non refrigerated) work.
The issue once again is that 300,000 drivers cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers no matter how you try and change the rules.
And this is the bit that "the free market will just find a new equilibrium" misses.
Of course it will, over time. But what we're seeing now is a transient shock. It's a bit like the way that you have to push something harder to start it moving than you do to keep it moving.
By all means move to a situation where only UK citizens are doing UK driving, if that's what the UK wants. (Though maybe we should work through all of the consequences to be sure that is what the UK wants.) But creating a shock change that doesn't work with the various degrees of stickyness in the system is asking for trouble.
(And remember that something with lots of interacting parts like an economy will have lots of equilibrium points. And some of them will be a bit rubbish and progress towards any of them might be incredibly slow. The atoms in diamonds aren't in their optimal state, and they last basically forever.)
So there's some trouble, its not the end of the world.
Companies that really, really need the stock moving will pay whatever they have to in order to get the stock moved. Hence why businesses like Aldi can keep their shelves full.
Companies that don't really need the stock moving won't.
Demand falls, supply rises, problem resolved.
Or we can do what Rochdale and the bosses of the companies petrified of paying a market wage want and get the state to meddle with the market - which will never be undone since this issue will arise any time you cease to meddle.
Not sure why you keep saying "Aldi can keep their shelves full". No, they can't. Are Aldi somehow immune to a crisis being caused by drivers they do not pay driving trucks they do not own delivering food they haven't yet bought into their depots?
Even if Aldi manage to insulate their own drivers of their own trucks from being poached, stuff has to be delivered by someone else into their DCs before being put on an Aldi truck to go to a store.
I see the Leave brigade continue to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.
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 !
Getting the worst of what ? Rising pay ? Full employment ?
Indeed the only people complaining seem to be Remoaners (including zeal-of-the-convert Rochdale) and companies who are horrified at seeing pay rise and have a vested interest in seeing that come to a stop.
Who without a vested interest is saying there's an issue?
Since the Referendum they've been expecting economic collapse and mass unemployment.
Now they see record vacancies and rising wages.
And what's worse for them is that the people who are benefitting are often the 'wrong sort of people' - the low paid, people who didn't go to university, people in places they couldn't find on a map, people who voted Leave, people who voted Conservative.
But Brexit is not finished. The full inward customs controls have not been activated.
Also, the only prediction of “economic collapse” was the recession predicted by the Treasury and seemingly predicated on the immediate exercise of Article 50.
In the event, we did not do that (despite Corbyn calling for it!) and the currency took the strain, making us all poorer but avoiding at least a recession.
No, Brexit is the slow accretion of rust. Eventually bits fall off, but it takes some time for it to be obvious.
Interesting comment by Stephen Bush of the Staggers in his morning email, anent SKS's Essay:
"But one thing that is missing from the pamphlet is a sense of what this society’s enemies are. We don’t, as far as Starmer is concerned, live in a contribution society in 2021. Are its opponents solely the Conservatives and austerity, or do they also reside elsewhere, whether in businesses or in households? Part of providing definition to a political project is describing what it’s for, and you can see how Starmer’s ‘contribution society’ can provide Labour with that. And with what’s happening in the British energy and labour markets at the moment, you can see how this stuff about work not rewarding people and the cost-of-living is going to get a fresh boost by events in the coming weeks and months. But the other part of describing a political project is setting out what it is against, who and what is out of that society’s bounds and who stands in the way of its creation: and that will have to form part of Starmer’s conference speech just as surely as further policy detail will, too."
Mr. Sandpit, right now, Mazepin is the best argument against pay drivers. If the man paying is the driver's dad, and the driver is a colossal dick, then that puts the team and (even more so) his team mate in a difficult position.
"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.
You seem to be missing Rochdale Pioneers point.
Yes, wages have been increased but it's not solved any problems with the shortage of Lorry drivers as nothing could solve the supply side issue except for time.
All the higher wages has done is move the problems elsewhere and unsurprisingly the first casualty is seems to be a specialist (refrigeration) haulier. That's because they have an even smaller supply of drivers (it's harder work, requires additional training and less pleasant due to noise) and other agencies are stealing their drivers for easier (non refrigerated) work.
The issue once again is that 300,000 drivers cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers no matter how you try and change the rules.
And this is the bit that "the free market will just find a new equilibrium" misses.
Of course it will, over time. But what we're seeing now is a transient shock. It's a bit like the way that you have to push something harder to start it moving than you do to keep it moving.
By all means move to a situation where only UK citizens are doing UK driving, if that's what the UK wants. (Though maybe we should work through all of the consequences to be sure that is what the UK wants.) But creating a shock change that doesn't work with the various degrees of stickyness in the system is asking for trouble.
(And remember that something with lots of interacting parts like an economy will have lots of equilibrium points. And some of them will be a bit rubbish and progress towards any of them might be incredibly slow. The atoms in diamonds aren't in their optimal state, and they last basically forever.)
So there's some trouble, its not the end of the world.
Companies that really, really need the stock moving will pay whatever they have to in order to get the stock moved. Hence why businesses like Aldi can keep their shelves full.
Companies that don't really need the stock moving won't.
Demand falls, supply rises, problem resolved.
Or we can do what Rochdale and the bosses of the companies petrified of paying a market wage want and get the state to meddle with the market - which will never be undone since this issue will arise any time you cease to meddle.
Um that isn't what Rochdale wants - all we are doing is pointing out
300,000 drivers working at legal limits cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers.
Getting to 400,000 drivers has a lead time of 2-3 years.
So we either need to get used to shortages or we need to import drivers on a time limited basis until enough GB drivers are trained up...
300,000 drivers can't do the work of 400,000 drivers.
But 350,000 drivers can do the work of 350,000 drivers.
Pay rates go up, more people are attracted into the industry - some clients are decide its not worth demanding from the industry.
Yes it means some journeys that happen now won't happen in the future. Those should be the least productive, least economic ones that can't afford the pay rise and they go off the road. That's not a bad thing.
1) We don't have 350,000 drivers 2) All goods and a lot of services requires items to be delivered. Moving from 400,000 drivers down to 350,000 drivers will have serious impacts on other parts of economy. The demand for logistics is very inelastic, it will never be 350,000 drivers unless our economy shrank 5%.
1. The collapse of energy suppliers. So what? That’s capitalism, and regulation has done a good job of moving customers smoothly onto remaining suppliers.
2. Soaring energy prices. Seems to be caused by bad planning and bad luck.
I haven’t seen a slam dunk explanation for why Brexit can be blamed for (2) although it’s very fishy that analysts warned that coming out of the single european energy market would increase the risk of what seems to have come about.
On point 2 - most of the EU has the same issue other than those few countries that invested in gas storage and according to my single serving friend for the evening last night those nations which invested in non-fertiliser sources of CO2 are also faring pretty well on CO2 for food preparation. It's not necessarily an EU/non-EU thing either, just which countries have done better doomsday planning and which haven't. Unsurprisingly we decided to cut all of our spending on economic resilience to pay for things like the triple lock and other old people sweeties in the last 20 years. That debt is now being repaid. Along with poor energy policy catching up with us we're in a bit of a bind along with quite a few other countries that haven't invested well in energy and economic resilience.
I am confused by this narrative that freedom of movement of Labour is suggested to be so strongly linked to holding back the pay of the lower paid.
The Swiss have freedom of movement of Labour, they have 3 or 4 times the number of immigrants compared to the UK, yet the issues described about low wages being supressed, there being no career path etc. is not seemingly affecting the Swiss (and I would suggest many other EU countries).
What are the Swiss doing in their Labour market to mean that they are able to gain from the EU trading relationships yet are not hampered by the supposed negative impact of freedom of movement ?
"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.
You seem to be missing Rochdale Pioneers point.
Yes, wages have been increased but it's not solved any problems with the shortage of Lorry drivers as nothing could solve the supply side issue except for time.
All the higher wages has done is move the problems elsewhere and unsurprisingly the first casualty is seems to be a specialist (refrigeration) haulier. That's because they have an even smaller supply of drivers (it's harder work, requires additional training and less pleasant due to noise) and other agencies are stealing their drivers for easier (non refrigerated) work.
The issue once again is that 300,000 drivers cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers no matter how you try and change the rules.
And this is the bit that "the free market will just find a new equilibrium" misses.
Of course it will, over time. But what we're seeing now is a transient shock. It's a bit like the way that you have to push something harder to start it moving than you do to keep it moving.
By all means move to a situation where only UK citizens are doing UK driving, if that's what the UK wants. (Though maybe we should work through all of the consequences to be sure that is what the UK wants.) But creating a shock change that doesn't work with the various degrees of stickyness in the system is asking for trouble.
(And remember that something with lots of interacting parts like an economy will have lots of equilibrium points. And some of them will be a bit rubbish and progress towards any of them might be incredibly slow. The atoms in diamonds aren't in their optimal state, and they last basically forever.)
So there's some trouble, its not the end of the world.
Companies that really, really need the stock moving will pay whatever they have to in order to get the stock moved. Hence why businesses like Aldi can keep their shelves full.
Companies that don't really need the stock moving won't.
Demand falls, supply rises, problem resolved.
Or we can do what Rochdale and the bosses of the companies petrified of paying a market wage want and get the state to meddle with the market - which will never be undone since this issue will arise any time you cease to meddle.
Not sure why you keep saying "Aldi can keep their shelves full". No, they can't. Are Aldi somehow immune to a crisis being caused by drivers they do not pay driving trucks they do not own delivering food they haven't yet bought into their depots?
Even if Aldi manage to insulate their own drivers of their own trucks from being poached, stuff has to be delivered by someone else into their DCs before being put on an Aldi truck to go to a store.
They can't? That's funny, they were full when I walked in there earlier this week.
Maybe they have magic elves working instead of drivers who are being paid enough to do the job? Perhaps Rishi Sunak might know some more, he's an elf isn't he?
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.
There is also, IIRC, the fact that in the Everard case the police officer was fingered fairly quickly as a person of interest, which made it obviously an even bigger story.
The missing for a few days thing is also relevant - the days when someone is missing are big news. Maybe it's media bias, but the first I heard of this was when a body was found.
I don't in any way rule out that the differences are also due to ethnic group, but there are some other relevant differences.
(Disclosure: Sarah Everard's father is of my acquaintance - as in I have met him a few times, all before her murder. Indeed, I did not know him well enough to know he had a daughter before then and I did not make the connection until someone told me after her death was reported. So I don't think that biases my view, but thought I should mention it.)
Yes, it was a story that ran over more than a week, and involved the police officer which was an added dimension.
Many young female journalists and columnists walked through the same park on the same night, and the following night saw the park covered in misper posters. A missing person is a bugger story than a dead person, as there is an uncertainty and appeals to the public for information, that might result in a good outcome.
This story seems to be that a body was found in an East London park one morning, with no more detail at this point.
Many women who are killed are killed by partners or men known to them. What made the Everard case different was that she was murdered by a stranger. The Sabine Nessa case does not appear to be a domestic violence case so, on the face of it, a murder by a stranger.
In a park in a nice part of London on her way home from work.
It ought to be a much bigger story. Unless we are simply going to shrug our shoulders at bodies being found in parks. And the fact that she is not white should absolutely not be an excuse to ignore this. All women in the area will now be a little bit more fearful, which is why Greenwich council is giving out alarms.
This is just not acceptable.
It isn't, and it highlights the problem with the endless frothing about the trans issue. The threat to women isn't from a predatory man pretending to be a woman to access a changing room. Predatory men have far easier prey than that.
We need to do more to educate boys about girls. They are your equal. They have the same rights as you. They are not sport for you to mess with. So many of us do bring up our kids to think straight. The minority are the problem and we really need to go after it hard. No more tolerance of "ladding about", make catcalls and comments and "its just a bit of fun" as socially unacceptable as we've managed to make drink driving.
When was the last time you witnessed catcalling? Not that I approve of such behaviour, but I don't think it has any baring on the prevalence of women being murdered by strange men.
"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.
You seem to be missing Rochdale Pioneers point.
Yes, wages have been increased but it's not solved any problems with the shortage of Lorry drivers as nothing could solve the supply side issue except for time.
All the higher wages has done is move the problems elsewhere and unsurprisingly the first casualty is seems to be a specialist (refrigeration) haulier. That's because they have an even smaller supply of drivers (it's harder work, requires additional training and less pleasant due to noise) and other agencies are stealing their drivers for easier (non refrigerated) work.
The issue once again is that 300,000 drivers cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers no matter how you try and change the rules.
And this is the bit that "the free market will just find a new equilibrium" misses.
Of course it will, over time. But what we're seeing now is a transient shock. It's a bit like the way that you have to push something harder to start it moving than you do to keep it moving.
By all means move to a situation where only UK citizens are doing UK driving, if that's what the UK wants. (Though maybe we should work through all of the consequences to be sure that is what the UK wants.) But creating a shock change that doesn't work with the various degrees of stickyness in the system is asking for trouble.
(And remember that something with lots of interacting parts like an economy will have lots of equilibrium points. And some of them will be a bit rubbish and progress towards any of them might be incredibly slow. The atoms in diamonds aren't in their optimal state, and they last basically forever.)
So there's some trouble, its not the end of the world.
Companies that really, really need the stock moving will pay whatever they have to in order to get the stock moved. Hence why businesses like Aldi can keep their shelves full.
Companies that don't really need the stock moving won't.
Demand falls, supply rises, problem resolved.
Or we can do what Rochdale and the bosses of the companies petrified of paying a market wage want and get the state to meddle with the market - which will never be undone since this issue will arise any time you cease to meddle.
Not sure why you keep saying "Aldi can keep their shelves full". No, they can't. Are Aldi somehow immune to a crisis being caused by drivers they do not pay driving trucks they do not own delivering food they haven't yet bought into their depots?
Even if Aldi manage to insulate their own drivers of their own trucks from being poached, stuff has to be delivered by someone else into their DCs before being put on an Aldi truck to go to a store.
Inj any case, don't Aldi and Lidl have a much more, erm, flexible attitude to stock selection and control? So it's not obvious if the lack of Continental frankfurters (for instance) is a true shortage or simply them changing over to, say, burgers this week. The likes of M&S and Sainsbury are much more fixed from week to week.
1. The collapse of energy suppliers. So what? That’s capitalism, and regulation has done a good job of moving customers smoothly onto remaining suppliers.
2. Soaring energy prices. Seems to be caused by bad planning and bad luck.
I haven’t seen a slam dunk explanation for why Brexit can be blamed for (2) although it’s very fishy that analysts warned that coming out of the single european energy market would increase the risk of what seems to have come about.
On the energy markets, as I understand it (and may have got the wrong end of the stick), the EU energy market regulated prices. Flattened spikes. So even if there was a run on gas wholesale prices you had protection.
We also had gas storage. You can buy gas when cheap and hold it as a buffer. When the government did post-referendum Brexit planning they were advised that if they left the energy market we would be at risk of having to pay spot prices, mitigated in part by our storage capacity.
So what seems to have happened is the government regulator allowed Centrica to close the storage and it chose to leave the regulated market. So we're now liable to pay the spot prices because its no longer regulated and we have next to no storage capacity.
That isn't directly a result of Brexit, its a choice this government have made about what we do after Brexit. If we'd made no changes at all, or stayed in the market but shut the storage facility, or left the market and kept the storage facility we wouldn't be in this mess. Instead we did the thing the energy experts advised them not to do.
Thanks yes.
Brexit made us vulnerable (to energy spikes), but we could have mitigated that vulnerability.
The government decided not to.
Regardless of Brexit we were vulnerable to energy spikes - this issue has nothing to do with Brexit but once again Brexit is being used to justify / hide behind bad decisions that had nothing to do with Brexit.
I am confused by this narrative that freedom of movement of Labour is suggested to be so strongly linked to holding back the pay of the lower paid.
The Swiss have freedom of movement of Labour, they have 3 or 4 times the number of immigrants compared to the UK, yet the issues described about low wages being supressed, there being no career path etc. is not seemingly affecting the Swiss (and I would suggest many other EU countries).
What are the Swiss doing in their Labour market to mean that they are able to gain from the EU trading relationships yet are not hampered by the supposed negative impact of freedom of movement ?
Something does not seem right in this logic.
I don't think they have the UKs welfare state.
The UKs welfare state meant people could come to the UK and get a minimum wage job, then get housing allowance, tax credits or universal credit etc
If you want to abolish welfare then the people who come here would be high skilled high wage individuals instead like on Switzerland.
I am confused by this narrative that freedom of movement of Labour is suggested to be so strongly linked to holding back the pay of the lower paid.
The Swiss have freedom of movement of Labour, they have 3 or 4 times the number of immigrants compared to the UK, yet the issues described about low wages being supressed, there being no career path etc. is not seemingly affecting the Swiss (and I would suggest many other EU countries).
What are the Swiss doing in their Labour market to mean that they are able to gain from the EU trading relationships yet are not hampered by the supposed negative impact of freedom of movement ?
Something does not seem right in this logic.
I believe RCS provided some detail on this a while back.
From memory - the Swiss put very high barriers to working in Switzerland. So you can go there, but getting a job requires training to Swiss qualifications etc. IIRC this was especially so for non-degree jobs...
I am confused by this narrative that freedom of movement of Labour is suggested to be so strongly linked to holding back the pay of the lower paid.
The Swiss have freedom of movement of Labour, they have 3 or 4 times the number of immigrants compared to the UK, yet the issues described about low wages being supressed, there being no career path etc. is not seemingly affecting the Swiss (and I would suggest many other EU countries).
What are the Swiss doing in their Labour market to mean that they are able to gain from the EU trading relationships yet are not hampered by the supposed negative impact of freedom of movement ?
Something does not seem right in this logic.
That’s because the logic is bolleaux. Essentially the “lump of labour” fallacy.
I keep pointing out that academic research shows very little evidence of wage suppression, and quite a bit for wage growth, but each time I do I get shouted down by some old white man who hasn’t worked since 1987 due to alcohol problems and blames the “eye-ties”.
I am confused by this narrative that freedom of movement of Labour is suggested to be so strongly linked to holding back the pay of the lower paid.
The Swiss have freedom of movement of Labour, they have 3 or 4 times the number of immigrants compared to the UK, yet the issues described about low wages being supressed, there being no career path etc. is not seemingly affecting the Swiss (and I would suggest many other EU countries).
What are the Swiss doing in their Labour market to mean that they are able to gain from the EU trading relationships yet are not hampered by the supposed negative impact of freedom of movement ?
Something does not seem right in this logic.
There are an awful lot of barriers to work in Switzerland, working against what is theoretically freedom of movement.
To work in McDonalds, you’ll be needing fluency in at least two Swiss languages, preferably three, and a diploma in food service from a Swiss college which takes two years, unless you’re a Swiss national. Which is why a Big Mac costs £12 in Geneva.
I see the Leave brigade continue to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.
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 !
Getting the worst of what ? Rising pay ? Full employment ?
Indeed the only people complaining seem to be Remoaners (including zeal-of-the-convert Rochdale) and companies who are horrified at seeing pay rise and have a vested interest in seeing that come to a stop.
Who without a vested interest is saying there's an issue?
Since the Referendum they've been expecting economic collapse and mass unemployment.
Now they see record vacancies and rising wages.
And what's worse for them is that the people who are benefitting are often the 'wrong sort of people' - the low paid, people who didn't go to university, people in places they couldn't find on a map, people who voted Leave, people who voted Conservative.
The only "wrong kind of people" in my book are those who misattribute malign motivations to their political opponents because they can't engage in a substantive argument based on the facts. It's usually a massive exercise in projection, too.
I am confused by this narrative that freedom of movement of Labour is suggested to be so strongly linked to holding back the pay of the lower paid.
The Swiss have freedom of movement of Labour, they have 3 or 4 times the number of immigrants compared to the UK, yet the issues described about low wages being supressed, there being no career path etc. is not seemingly affecting the Swiss (and I would suggest many other EU countries).
What are the Swiss doing in their Labour market to mean that they are able to gain from the EU trading relationships yet are not hampered by the supposed negative impact of freedom of movement ?
Something does not seem right in this logic.
Switzerland has very, very high barriers for entry to their workforce for all but the lowest end jobs. Even becoming a shop assistant requires 2-3 years of apprentice school to get a recognised qualification.
Additionally, German and French being the main two languages is a huge block on immigration and Swiss people really, really don't like it when waiters or waitresses don't speak the local language properly.
"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.
You seem to be missing Rochdale Pioneers point.
Yes, wages have been increased but it's not solved any problems with the shortage of Lorry drivers as nothing could solve the supply side issue except for time.
All the higher wages has done is move the problems elsewhere and unsurprisingly the first casualty is seems to be a specialist (refrigeration) haulier. That's because they have an even smaller supply of drivers (it's harder work, requires additional training and less pleasant due to noise) and other agencies are stealing their drivers for easier (non refrigerated) work.
The issue once again is that 300,000 drivers cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers no matter how you try and change the rules.
And this is the bit that "the free market will just find a new equilibrium" misses.
Of course it will, over time. But what we're seeing now is a transient shock. It's a bit like the way that you have to push something harder to start it moving than you do to keep it moving.
By all means move to a situation where only UK citizens are doing UK driving, if that's what the UK wants. (Though maybe we should work through all of the consequences to be sure that is what the UK wants.) But creating a shock change that doesn't work with the various degrees of stickyness in the system is asking for trouble.
(And remember that something with lots of interacting parts like an economy will have lots of equilibrium points. And some of them will be a bit rubbish and progress towards any of them might be incredibly slow. The atoms in diamonds aren't in their optimal state, and they last basically forever.)
So there's some trouble, its not the end of the world.
Companies that really, really need the stock moving will pay whatever they have to in order to get the stock moved. Hence why businesses like Aldi can keep their shelves full.
Companies that don't really need the stock moving won't.
Demand falls, supply rises, problem resolved.
Or we can do what Rochdale and the bosses of the companies petrified of paying a market wage want and get the state to meddle with the market - which will never be undone since this issue will arise any time you cease to meddle.
Not sure why you keep saying "Aldi can keep their shelves full". No, they can't. Are Aldi somehow immune to a crisis being caused by drivers they do not pay driving trucks they do not own delivering food they haven't yet bought into their depots?
Even if Aldi manage to insulate their own drivers of their own trucks from being poached, stuff has to be delivered by someone else into their DCs before being put on an Aldi truck to go to a store.
Inj any case, don't Aldi and Lidl have a much more, erm, flexible attitude to stock selection and control? So it's not obvious if the lack of Continental frankfurters (for instance) is a true shortage or simply them changing over to, say, burgers this week. The likes of M&S and Sainsbury are much more fixed from week to week.
And flexibility is a good thing in a market yes.
If inflexibility is a flaw causing issues for companies then they could deal with fixing their inflexibility rather than getting the state to fix their problems for them.
I am confused by this narrative that freedom of movement of Labour is suggested to be so strongly linked to holding back the pay of the lower paid.
The Swiss have freedom of movement of Labour, they have 3 or 4 times the number of immigrants compared to the UK, yet the issues described about low wages being supressed, there being no career path etc. is not seemingly affecting the Swiss (and I would suggest many other EU countries).
What are the Swiss doing in their Labour market to mean that they are able to gain from the EU trading relationships yet are not hampered by the supposed negative impact of freedom of movement ?
Something does not seem right in this logic.
That’s because the logic is bolleaux. Essentially the “lump of labour” fallacy.
I keep pointing out that academic research shows very little evidence of wage suppression, and quite a bit for wage growth, but each time I do I get shouted down by some old white man who hasn’t worked since 1987 due to alcohol problems and blames the “eye-ties”.
No, it's because Switzerland has put up a lot, lot of NTBs on employment of migrants.
The competition between energy suppliers to provide household gas/electricity is just a huge con designed to line the pockets of those involved, isn't it?
I say this because the quality of my energy is fixed - it is what it is, I can't buy higher quality gas or electricity, or save money by getting lower quality. It's not like my choice of supermarket or car. I don't want choice. I just want gas/electricity to be provided efficiently (supply and cost) taking environmental stuff into account. So competition is utterly artificial.
It's a case of where capitalism is pointless as there's no difference in the product. So nationalise the lot, and ensure high quality regulation. Same with water, while we're at it. Stop profiteering from essential, and non-variable, resources.
"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.
You seem to be missing Rochdale Pioneers point.
Yes, wages have been increased but it's not solved any problems with the shortage of Lorry drivers as nothing could solve the supply side issue except for time.
All the higher wages has done is move the problems elsewhere and unsurprisingly the first casualty is seems to be a specialist (refrigeration) haulier. That's because they have an even smaller supply of drivers (it's harder work, requires additional training and less pleasant due to noise) and other agencies are stealing their drivers for easier (non refrigerated) work.
The issue once again is that 300,000 drivers cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers no matter how you try and change the rules.
And this is the bit that "the free market will just find a new equilibrium" misses.
Of course it will, over time. But what we're seeing now is a transient shock. It's a bit like the way that you have to push something harder to start it moving than you do to keep it moving.
By all means move to a situation where only UK citizens are doing UK driving, if that's what the UK wants. (Though maybe we should work through all of the consequences to be sure that is what the UK wants.) But creating a shock change that doesn't work with the various degrees of stickyness in the system is asking for trouble.
(And remember that something with lots of interacting parts like an economy will have lots of equilibrium points. And some of them will be a bit rubbish and progress towards any of them might be incredibly slow. The atoms in diamonds aren't in their optimal state, and they last basically forever.)
So there's some trouble, its not the end of the world.
Companies that really, really need the stock moving will pay whatever they have to in order to get the stock moved. Hence why businesses like Aldi can keep their shelves full.
Companies that don't really need the stock moving won't.
Demand falls, supply rises, problem resolved.
Or we can do what Rochdale and the bosses of the companies petrified of paying a market wage want and get the state to meddle with the market - which will never be undone since this issue will arise any time you cease to meddle.
Not sure why you keep saying "Aldi can keep their shelves full". No, they can't. Are Aldi somehow immune to a crisis being caused by drivers they do not pay driving trucks they do not own delivering food they haven't yet bought into their depots?
Even if Aldi manage to insulate their own drivers of their own trucks from being poached, stuff has to be delivered by someone else into their DCs before being put on an Aldi truck to go to a store.
My local Aldi is next to the regional head office and depot.
Guess what, it has random shortages of products - albeit not the items we buy there as our Aldi shopping is rather idiosyncratic (posh yogurts, wine, EU imported chocolate).
I am confused by this narrative that freedom of movement of Labour is suggested to be so strongly linked to holding back the pay of the lower paid.
The Swiss have freedom of movement of Labour, they have 3 or 4 times the number of immigrants compared to the UK, yet the issues described about low wages being supressed, there being no career path etc. is not seemingly affecting the Swiss (and I would suggest many other EU countries).
What are the Swiss doing in their Labour market to mean that they are able to gain from the EU trading relationships yet are not hampered by the supposed negative impact of freedom of movement ?
Something does not seem right in this logic.
That’s because the logic is bolleaux. Essentially the “lump of labour” fallacy.
I keep pointing out that academic research shows very little evidence of wage suppression, and quite a bit for wage growth, but each time I do I get shouted down by some old white man who hasn’t worked since 1987 due to alcohol problems and blames the “eye-ties”.
No, it's because Switzerland has put up a lot, lot of NTBs on employment of migrants.
NTBs which have not, as the original poster noted, avoided very high volumes of immigration.
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.
There is also, IIRC, the fact that in the Everard case the police officer was fingered fairly quickly as a person of interest, which made it obviously an even bigger story.
The missing for a few days thing is also relevant - the days when someone is missing are big news. Maybe it's media bias, but the first I heard of this was when a body was found.
I don't in any way rule out that the differences are also due to ethnic group, but there are some other relevant differences.
(Disclosure: Sarah Everard's father is of my acquaintance - as in I have met him a few times, all before her murder. Indeed, I did not know him well enough to know he had a daughter before then and I did not make the connection until someone told me after her death was reported. So I don't think that biases my view, but thought I should mention it.)
Yes, it was a story that ran over more than a week, and involved the police officer which was an added dimension.
Many young female journalists and columnists walked through the same park on the same night, and the following night saw the park covered in misper posters. A missing person is a bugger story than a dead person, as there is an uncertainty and appeals to the public for information, that might result in a good outcome.
This story seems to be that a body was found in an East London park one morning, with no more detail at this point.
Many women who are killed are killed by partners or men known to them. What made the Everard case different was that she was murdered by a stranger. The Sabine Nessa case does not appear to be a domestic violence case so, on the face of it, a murder by a stranger.
In a park in a nice part of London on her way home from work.
It ought to be a much bigger story. Unless we are simply going to shrug our shoulders at bodies being found in parks. And the fact that she is not white should absolutely not be an excuse to ignore this. All women in the area will now be a little bit more fearful, which is why Greenwich council is giving out alarms.
This is just not acceptable.
It isn't, and it highlights the problem with the endless frothing about the trans issue. The threat to women isn't from a predatory man pretending to be a woman to access a changing room. Predatory men have far easier prey than that.
We need to do more to educate boys about girls. They are your equal. They have the same rights as you. They are not sport for you to mess with. So many of us do bring up our kids to think straight. The minority are the problem and we really need to go after it hard. No more tolerance of "ladding about", make catcalls and comments and "its just a bit of fun" as socially unacceptable as we've managed to make drink driving.
Predatory men will use whatever means they can to attack women. Stupid to create more loopholes for them, which self-ID does.
These boys are being educated now. So that education - with all its focus on equal rights and diversity and respect - is clearly not working. I saw that on a previous thread some people saying that bullying about sexuality amongst the young wasn't happening. This is la la land. It may be better than it was. But the idea that bullying isn't happening is nonsense. And porn - with its utterly repellent images of women and what sex is - is not helping in educating young men and boys about how to treat and love and have sex with real women, real girls.
Too many men don't listen to women properly, which is the first thing you need to do if you really want to treat people with respect. Boys learn from that.
I am confused by this narrative that freedom of movement of Labour is suggested to be so strongly linked to holding back the pay of the lower paid.
The Swiss have freedom of movement of Labour, they have 3 or 4 times the number of immigrants compared to the UK, yet the issues described about low wages being supressed, there being no career path etc. is not seemingly affecting the Swiss (and I would suggest many other EU countries).
What are the Swiss doing in their Labour market to mean that they are able to gain from the EU trading relationships yet are not hampered by the supposed negative impact of freedom of movement ?
Something does not seem right in this logic.
That’s because the logic is bolleaux. Essentially the “lump of labour” fallacy.
I keep pointing out that academic research shows very little evidence of wage suppression, and quite a bit for wage growth, but each time I do I get shouted down by some old white man who hasn’t worked since 1987 due to alcohol problems and blames the “eye-ties”.
The Lump Of Labour Fallacy doesn't mean what you think it means.
Yes, increasing labour supply to the point that there is an excess *may* increase economic activity.
But if there is no shortage of labour, increasing economic activity/jobs, will simply pull in more. The price for labour will stabilise at the lowest value for clearing - minimum wage or the cost of living, in the UK case.
"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.
You seem to be missing Rochdale Pioneers point.
Yes, wages have been increased but it's not solved any problems with the shortage of Lorry drivers as nothing could solve the supply side issue except for time.
All the higher wages has done is move the problems elsewhere and unsurprisingly the first casualty is seems to be a specialist (refrigeration) haulier. That's because they have an even smaller supply of drivers (it's harder work, requires additional training and less pleasant due to noise) and other agencies are stealing their drivers for easier (non refrigerated) work.
The issue once again is that 300,000 drivers cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers no matter how you try and change the rules.
And this is the bit that "the free market will just find a new equilibrium" misses.
Of course it will, over time. But what we're seeing now is a transient shock. It's a bit like the way that you have to push something harder to start it moving than you do to keep it moving.
By all means move to a situation where only UK citizens are doing UK driving, if that's what the UK wants. (Though maybe we should work through all of the consequences to be sure that is what the UK wants.) But creating a shock change that doesn't work with the various degrees of stickyness in the system is asking for trouble.
(And remember that something with lots of interacting parts like an economy will have lots of equilibrium points. And some of them will be a bit rubbish and progress towards any of them might be incredibly slow. The atoms in diamonds aren't in their optimal state, and they last basically forever.)
So there's some trouble, its not the end of the world.
Companies that really, really need the stock moving will pay whatever they have to in order to get the stock moved. Hence why businesses like Aldi can keep their shelves full.
Companies that don't really need the stock moving won't.
Demand falls, supply rises, problem resolved.
Or we can do what Rochdale and the bosses of the companies petrified of paying a market wage want and get the state to meddle with the market - which will never be undone since this issue will arise any time you cease to meddle.
Not sure why you keep saying "Aldi can keep their shelves full". No, they can't. Are Aldi somehow immune to a crisis being caused by drivers they do not pay driving trucks they do not own delivering food they haven't yet bought into their depots?
Even if Aldi manage to insulate their own drivers of their own trucks from being poached, stuff has to be delivered by someone else into their DCs before being put on an Aldi truck to go to a store.
Inj any case, don't Aldi and Lidl have a much more, erm, flexible attitude to stock selection and control? So it's not obvious if the lack of Continental frankfurters (for instance) is a true shortage or simply them changing over to, say, burgers this week. The likes of M&S and Sainsbury are much more fixed from week to week.
And flexibility is a good thing in a market yes.
If inflexibility is a flaw causing issues for companies then they could deal with fixing their inflexibility rather than getting the state to fix their problems for them.
It also makes Aldi and Lidl shite as far as I am concerned. It is also key reason I never go there except for fruit and veg on occasion - I can't find the foods I am familiar with (brands, types, quality).
I see the Leave brigade continue to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.
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 !
Getting the worst of what ? Rising pay ? Full employment ?
Indeed the only people complaining seem to be Remoaners (including zeal-of-the-convert Rochdale) and companies who are horrified at seeing pay rise and have a vested interest in seeing that come to a stop.
Who without a vested interest is saying there's an issue?
Since the Referendum they've been expecting economic collapse and mass unemployment.
Now they see record vacancies and rising wages.
And what's worse for them is that the people who are benefitting are often the 'wrong sort of people' - the low paid, people who didn't go to university, people in places they couldn't find on a map, people who voted Leave, people who voted Conservative.
People who are again going to vote Conservative at the next election.
I am confused by this narrative that freedom of movement of Labour is suggested to be so strongly linked to holding back the pay of the lower paid.
The Swiss have freedom of movement of Labour, they have 3 or 4 times the number of immigrants compared to the UK, yet the issues described about low wages being supressed, there being no career path etc. is not seemingly affecting the Swiss (and I would suggest many other EU countries).
What are the Swiss doing in their Labour market to mean that they are able to gain from the EU trading relationships yet are not hampered by the supposed negative impact of freedom of movement ?
Something does not seem right in this logic.
That’s because the logic is bolleaux. Essentially the “lump of labour” fallacy.
I keep pointing out that academic research shows very little evidence of wage suppression, and quite a bit for wage growth, but each time I do I get shouted down by some old white man who hasn’t worked since 1987 due to alcohol problems and blames the “eye-ties”.
No, it's because Switzerland has put up a lot, lot of NTBs on employment of migrants.
NTBs which have not, as the original poster noted, avoided very high volumes of immigration.
Yes, the biggest moaners about immigration in Switzerland are high end workers. My wife's uncle was bitching about German doctors coming and working in Switzerland a couple of years ago. We wish we had that problem.
"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.
You seem to be missing Rochdale Pioneers point.
Yes, wages have been increased but it's not solved any problems with the shortage of Lorry drivers as nothing could solve the supply side issue except for time.
All the higher wages has done is move the problems elsewhere and unsurprisingly the first casualty is seems to be a specialist (refrigeration) haulier. That's because they have an even smaller supply of drivers (it's harder work, requires additional training and less pleasant due to noise) and other agencies are stealing their drivers for easier (non refrigerated) work.
The issue once again is that 300,000 drivers cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers no matter how you try and change the rules.
And this is the bit that "the free market will just find a new equilibrium" misses.
Of course it will, over time. But what we're seeing now is a transient shock. It's a bit like the way that you have to push something harder to start it moving than you do to keep it moving.
By all means move to a situation where only UK citizens are doing UK driving, if that's what the UK wants. (Though maybe we should work through all of the consequences to be sure that is what the UK wants.) But creating a shock change that doesn't work with the various degrees of stickyness in the system is asking for trouble.
(And remember that something with lots of interacting parts like an economy will have lots of equilibrium points. And some of them will be a bit rubbish and progress towards any of them might be incredibly slow. The atoms in diamonds aren't in their optimal state, and they last basically forever.)
So there's some trouble, its not the end of the world.
Companies that really, really need the stock moving will pay whatever they have to in order to get the stock moved. Hence why businesses like Aldi can keep their shelves full.
Companies that don't really need the stock moving won't.
Demand falls, supply rises, problem resolved.
Or we can do what Rochdale and the bosses of the companies petrified of paying a market wage want and get the state to meddle with the market - which will never be undone since this issue will arise any time you cease to meddle.
Um that isn't what Rochdale wants - all we are doing is pointing out
300,000 drivers working at legal limits cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers.
Getting to 400,000 drivers has a lead time of 2-3 years.
So we either need to get used to shortages or we need to import drivers on a time limited basis until enough GB drivers are trained up...
300,000 drivers can't do the work of 400,000 drivers.
But 350,000 drivers can do the work of 350,000 drivers.
Pay rates go up, more people are attracted into the industry - some clients are decide its not worth demanding from the industry.
Yes it means some journeys that happen now won't happen in the future. Those should be the least productive, least economic ones that can't afford the pay rise and they go off the road. That's not a bad thing.
1) We don't have 350,000 drivers 2) All goods and a lot of services requires items to be delivered. Moving from 400,000 drivers down to 350,000 drivers will have serious impacts on other parts of economy. The demand for logistics is very inelastic, it will never be 350,000 drivers unless our economy shrank 5%.
1) So are you telling me there aren't 50,000 potential or ex drivers who left the sector or can be trained up? That there has been absolutely zero turnover or people voluntarily leaving the sector due to poor pay and conditions that can't be tempted back by better pay and conditions?
2) Not necessarily at all since the journeys dropped would be the least productive, least efficient ones.
Does anyone have the figure for how many licenced ex drivers there are in this country?
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.
This might be happening. Someone remarked recently there is some shockingly bad lorry driving atm.
I am confused by this narrative that freedom of movement of Labour is suggested to be so strongly linked to holding back the pay of the lower paid.
The Swiss have freedom of movement of Labour, they have 3 or 4 times the number of immigrants compared to the UK, yet the issues described about low wages being supressed, there being no career path etc. is not seemingly affecting the Swiss (and I would suggest many other EU countries).
What are the Swiss doing in their Labour market to mean that they are able to gain from the EU trading relationships yet are not hampered by the supposed negative impact of freedom of movement ?
Something does not seem right in this logic.
There are an awful lot of barriers to work in Switzerland, working against what is theoretically freedom of movement.
To work in McDonalds, you’ll be needing fluency in at least two Swiss languages, preferably three, and a diploma in food service from a Swiss college which takes two years, unless you’re a Swiss national. Which is why a Big Mac costs £12 in Geneva.
I really do wish that more people on here understood that the reason why most Eastern Europeans came to the UK was because they already knew some English and we couldn't create a (fake) barriers via language proficiency other EU countries used.
I am confused by this narrative that freedom of movement of Labour is suggested to be so strongly linked to holding back the pay of the lower paid.
The Swiss have freedom of movement of Labour, they have 3 or 4 times the number of immigrants compared to the UK, yet the issues described about low wages being supressed, there being no career path etc. is not seemingly affecting the Swiss (and I would suggest many other EU countries).
What are the Swiss doing in their Labour market to mean that they are able to gain from the EU trading relationships yet are not hampered by the supposed negative impact of freedom of movement ?
Something does not seem right in this logic.
That’s because the logic is bolleaux. Essentially the “lump of labour” fallacy.
I keep pointing out that academic research shows very little evidence of wage suppression, and quite a bit for wage growth, but each time I do I get shouted down by some old white man who hasn’t worked since 1987 due to alcohol problems and blames the “eye-ties”.
No, it's because Switzerland has put up a lot, lot of NTBs on employment of migrants.
NTBs which have not, as the original poster noted, avoided very high volumes of immigration.
Because the migration is mostly of the high-skilled, in sectors like financial services rather than minimum-wage service jobs.
"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.
Part of the problem was ageing (50 something) drivers retiring during the pandemic, I actually had a carpet fitter round last week bemoaning that there are no kids ready to take over when his generation retire. Surely some have them have been tempted back by a big pay rise?
Comments
Which makes a big difference.
You really do belong on the Tory backbenches. One of those gobby ones with all the rhetoric and no clue what the real world actually is.
In fact, are we sure you aren't a Tory MP....?
Companies prepared to pay what they need to pay are getting stock moved. The shelves were all full when I went to my local supermarket earlier this week.
Companies not prepared to can go and whine in the media instead. But Mandy Rice Davies applies.
If it seems to be too good to be true then it is often too good to be true.
An expensive lesson for the govt and consumers and given no systemic risk I would say the energy-buying public is now the better off for it.
However it is misleading to suggest all the Irish/EU HGVs are now going by ferry direct to Europe
Oh and interesting that the free market principles cant keep 5-10 companies competing with each other in a homogenous market honest. If it doesnt even do that, perhaps your blind faith in the free market may need to be toned down a notch or seven.
I passed in 1997 and have been driving for 24 years now.
Yes, wages have been increased but it's not solved any problems with the shortage of Lorry drivers as nothing could solve the supply side issue except for time.
All the higher wages has done is move the problems elsewhere and unsurprisingly the first casualty is seems to be a specialist (refrigeration) haulier. That's because they have an even smaller supply of drivers (it's harder work, requires additional training and less pleasant due to noise) and other agencies are stealing their drivers for easier (non refrigerated) work.
The issue once again is that 300,000 drivers cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers no matter how you try and change the rules.
You hear the same badly hidden story all the time from employers. It is all dressed up, but what it means is :" We want cheap labour, a bad career structure, cheap training preferably at another country's expense, minimum wage and minimal prospects. Ah, Lithuania, Bulgaria, here we come searching"
This is a scandal, but bigger by far, and far reaching is that the NHS for decades has relied on the same model. One of the world's richest and best resourced countries in the world, the UK, has relied for decades on failing to train enough and more than enough of our own (so that we can help poorer countries) but instead taken thousands of highly skilled people from poorer countries, to their harm.
The missing for a few days thing is also relevant - the days when someone is missing are big news. Maybe it's media bias, but the first I heard of this was when a body was found.
I don't in any way rule out that the differences are also due to ethnic group, but there are some other relevant differences.
(Disclosure: Sarah Everard's father is of my acquaintance - as in I have met him a few times, all before her murder. Indeed, I did not know him well enough to know he had a daughter before then and I did not make the connection until someone told me after her death was reported. So I don't think that biases my view, but thought I should mention it.)
Who without a vested interest is saying there's an issue?
Male life expectancy at birth in 2018-2020 was estimated to be:
- 79.3 years in England
- 76.8 years in Scotland
- 78.3 years in Wales
- 78.7 years in Northern Ireland
https://twitter.com/ONS/status/1440959172749762561?s=20
1. There is no problem
2. There is a problem, but it’s not cos of Brexit
3. There is a problem, caused by Brexit, but it’s actually a good thing
4. Revert to (1)
Anyone who invested in these failed companies will have seen their capital wiped out, so its not like they've had no losses but that's how the market should work.
And ease of entry for new business is a good thing in a free market yes. The harder it is or the more regulated it is preventing new competition, the less free the market is - so I'm not sure why my belief in a free market should be tempered because of my belief that the market should be free?
It will be interesting to see what happens in a few years - due to the A level/university entrance thing, a number of student courses have been increased in size by 20%. Or more. Given that failing at university is now not allowed (pretty much) there is going to be a 20% increase in the number of people with the qualifications to become doctors and nurses rolling out the door on graduation day......
My MP is now the PPS for the Trade minister. I must go and ask him about some paperwork for some exports to NI given that he promised it would never be required.
There's no reason for either the 300,000 number or the 400,000 number to be static though.If pay rises go up enough the 300,000 number will go up as people who left the sector but still have a licence get tempted to rejoin it (or more people get attracted to do the training and get the licence) while the 400,000 number goes down.
I would argue that the media have a huge role to play in this.
I'd have a nationalised road haulage operator running all the HGVs.
Many young female journalists and columnists walked through the same park on the same night, and the following night saw the park covered in misper posters. A missing person is a bugger story than a dead person, as there is an uncertainty and appeals to the public for information, that might result in a good outcome.
This story seems to be that a body was found in an East London park one morning, with no more detail at this point.
This of course does not apply to truckers who are delivering on route into the UK
1. The collapse of energy suppliers.
So what? That’s capitalism, and regulation has done a good job of moving customers smoothly onto remaining suppliers.
2. Soaring energy prices.
Seems to be caused by bad planning and bad luck.
I haven’t seen a slam dunk explanation for why Brexit can be blamed for (2) although it’s very fishy that analysts warned that coming out of the single european energy market would increase the risk of what seems to have come about.
As a (centre) leftie I have not only no problem with better pay and conditions its something I've backed for years! Nationally we have treated service jobs and those people doing them as a lower-order occupation. That has to change so that people actually want to do them.
The issue is that the immediate <40% pay rises haven't fixed the problem and won't be sustained (as once we have enough drivers again market pressures will start eroding them) and the conditions bit will take time and investment.
The thing about about a structural labour shortage is that you can't fix it with more pay, not in the real world no matter what your Adam Smith book tells you about the theory. If we could then the <40% pay rises would have fixed this. They haven't. They have barely moved the needle on the dial. Perhaps the pay rise should have been <80%, or perhaps <150%?
Never mind asking if you are a Tory MP, I have to ask if you aren't the reincarnation of Red Robbo. Demanding vast pay rises that make things worse not better was his favourite thing. Perhaps as the magic wand hasn't improved working conditions the drivers should also go on strike...?
Of course it will, over time. But what we're seeing now is a transient shock. It's a bit like the way that you have to push something harder to start it moving than you do to keep it moving.
By all means move to a situation where only UK citizens are doing UK driving, if that's what the UK wants. (Though maybe we should work through all of the consequences to be sure that is what the UK wants.) But creating a shock change that doesn't work with the various degrees of stickyness in the system is asking for trouble.
(And remember that something with lots of interacting parts like an economy will have lots of equilibrium points. And some of them will be a bit rubbish and progress towards any of them might be incredibly slow. The atoms in diamonds aren't in their optimal state, and they last basically forever.)
Now they see record vacancies and rising wages.
And what's worse for them is that the people who are benefitting are often the 'wrong sort of people' - the low paid, people who didn't go to university, people in places they couldn't find on a map, people who voted Leave, people who voted Conservative.
It seems that Gazprom cannot produce the amount of gas required and is hitting capacity issues.
In the long run, of course, we’re all dead.
What would you do?
The fake one that Brexiters are now so desperately clinging to rather than recognise that they voted the country up the Swanee.
Five companies dominating the market because the regulator is shielding those companies from competition is not a free market. Its the opposite of a free market.
Take supermarkets for instance. Aldi is a big player now and they seem to be going from strength to strength - and interestingly seem to not be struggling to keep the shelves full either. But they weren't one of the big five. Thankfully we have a free market so there was no regulator saying they were unable to join the market and compete.
If companies like Aldi can thrive while older competitors like Iceland or A N Other Supermarket goes bust because they've got a bad business model and they can't keep the shelves full without minimum wage drivers then that's the market working as intended it isn't the market failing.
5. There is a problem, due to Brexit and it's a bad thing. But it's too late to do anything about it now.
Everything you need to know about politics is in Yes, (Prime) Minister.
In a park in a nice part of London on her way home from work.
It ought to be a much bigger story. Unless we are simply going to shrug our shoulders at bodies being found in parks. And the fact that she is not white should absolutely not be an excuse to ignore this. All women in the area will now be a little bit more fearful, which is why Greenwich council is giving out alarms.
This is just not acceptable.
I will update the matrix.
Yes if a less than 40% pay rise hasn't filled the vacancies then try more until you reach an equilibrium.
If you can't fill a vacancy for a shit wage, then there's no divine right to fill it for less than 140% of the shit wage either. Either keep increasing pay until you can't afford to (so demand falls, job done) or you fill the vacancy (so supply is met, job done).
Either way, its not the job of the state to get involved.
https://anthonybmasters.medium.com/vaccine-coverage-and-denominators-ii-9620edc7fb39
I have to say, Stroll is a much nicer billionaire's son. Better driver, too.
Companies that really, really need the stock moving will pay whatever they have to in order to get the stock moved. Hence why businesses like Aldi can keep their shelves full.
Companies that don't really need the stock moving won't.
Demand falls, supply rises, problem resolved.
Or we can do what Rochdale and the bosses of the companies petrified of paying a market wage want and get the state to meddle with the market - which will never be undone since this issue will arise any time you cease to meddle.
A missing person is someone who may still be found, a body is an end point that removes a lot of the human interest rescue elements.
Equally though I do wonder if the name has reduced the media's interest. Is it possible that older stories got my interest because the victim was obviously white British.
I had expected Ferrari to try and get him out of there, into the spare Sauber seat alongside Bottas, which would have been a much better environment and indicator of performance for MSC Jr.
We also had gas storage. You can buy gas when cheap and hold it as a buffer. When the government did post-referendum Brexit planning they were advised that if they left the energy market we would be at risk of having to pay spot prices, mitigated in part by our storage capacity.
So what seems to have happened is the government regulator allowed Centrica to close the storage and it chose to leave the regulated market. So we're now liable to pay the spot prices because its no longer regulated and we have next to no storage capacity.
That isn't directly a result of Brexit, its a choice this government have made about what we do after Brexit. If we'd made no changes at all, or stayed in the market but shut the storage facility, or left the market and kept the storage facility we wouldn't be in this mess. Instead we did the thing the energy experts advised them not to do.
300,000 drivers working at legal limits cannot do the work of 400,000 drivers.
Getting to 400,000 drivers has a lead time of 2-3 years.
So we either need to get used to shortages or we need to import drivers on a time limited basis until enough GB drivers are trained up...
Brexit made us vulnerable (to energy spikes), but we could have mitigated that vulnerability.
The government decided not to.
<and>will give you < and > without breaking the blockquotesI do suspect however that in a market where you are a monopoly supplier there is little harm in using "capacity issues" to justify higher prices. Especially if it allows you to bankrupt a neighbouring country reliant on your supplies.
But 350,000 drivers can do the work of 350,000 drivers.
Pay rates go up, more people are attracted into the industry - some clients decide its not worth demanding from the industry.
Yes it means some journeys that happen now won't happen in the future. Those should be the least productive, least economic ones that can't afford the pay rise and they go off the road. That's not a bad thing.
We need to do more to educate boys about girls. They are your equal. They have the same rights as you. They are not sport for you to mess with. So many of us do bring up our kids to think straight. The minority are the problem and we really need to go after it hard. No more tolerance of "ladding about", make catcalls and comments and "its just a bit of fun" as socially unacceptable as we've managed to make drink driving.
IIRC the true over in drivers per year was huge - the industry was one of those that is a conveyer belt of people quoting because they were fed up with conditions and new entrants coming in. Which is one of the reasons that cutting off the entrants has caused such an issue.
Do we have any numbers on how many ex-drivers are out there?
Even if Aldi manage to insulate their own drivers of their own trucks from being poached, stuff has to be delivered by someone else into their DCs before being put on an Aldi truck to go to a store.
In the event, we did not do that (despite Corbyn calling for it!) and the currency took the strain, making us all poorer but avoiding at least a recession.
No, Brexit is the slow accretion of rust. Eventually bits fall off, but it takes some time for it to be obvious.
Interesting comment by Stephen Bush of the Staggers in his morning email, anent SKS's Essay:
"But one thing that is missing from the pamphlet is a sense of what this society’s enemies are. We don’t, as far as Starmer is concerned, live in a contribution society in 2021. Are its opponents solely the Conservatives and austerity, or do they also reside elsewhere, whether in businesses or in households? Part of providing definition to a political project is describing what it’s for, and you can see how Starmer’s ‘contribution society’ can provide Labour with that. And with what’s happening in the British energy and labour markets at the moment, you can see how this stuff about work not rewarding people and the cost-of-living is going to get a fresh boost by events in the coming weeks and months. But the other part of describing a political project is setting out what it is against, who and what is out of that society’s bounds and who stands in the way of its creation: and that will have to form part of Starmer’s conference speech just as surely as further policy detail will, too."
2) All goods and a lot of services requires items to be delivered. Moving from 400,000 drivers down to 350,000 drivers will have serious impacts on other parts of economy. The demand for logistics is very inelastic, it will never be 350,000 drivers unless our economy shrank 5%.
The Swiss have freedom of movement of Labour, they have 3 or 4 times the number of immigrants compared to the UK, yet the issues described about low wages being supressed, there being no career path etc. is not seemingly affecting the Swiss (and I would suggest many other EU countries).
What are the Swiss doing in their Labour market to mean that they are able to gain from the EU trading relationships yet are not hampered by the supposed negative impact of freedom of movement ?
Something does not seem right in this logic.
Maybe they have magic elves working instead of drivers who are being paid enough to do the job? Perhaps Rishi Sunak might know some more, he's an elf isn't he?
The UKs welfare state meant people could come to the UK and get a minimum wage job, then get housing allowance, tax credits or universal credit etc
If you want to abolish welfare then the people who come here would be high skilled high wage individuals instead like on Switzerland.
From memory - the Swiss put very high barriers to working in Switzerland. So you can go there, but getting a job requires training to Swiss qualifications etc. IIRC this was especially so for non-degree jobs...
Essentially the “lump of labour” fallacy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
I keep pointing out that academic research shows very little evidence of wage suppression, and quite a bit for wage growth, but each time I do I get shouted down by some old white man who hasn’t worked since 1987 due to alcohol problems and blames the “eye-ties”.
To work in McDonalds, you’ll be needing fluency in at least two Swiss languages, preferably three, and a diploma in food service from a Swiss college which takes two years, unless you’re a Swiss national. Which is why a Big Mac costs £12 in Geneva.
Additionally, German and French being the main two languages is a huge block on immigration and Swiss people really, really don't like it when waiters or waitresses don't speak the local language properly.
If inflexibility is a flaw causing issues for companies then they could deal with fixing their inflexibility rather than getting the state to fix their problems for them.
I say this because the quality of my energy is fixed - it is what it is, I can't buy higher quality gas or electricity, or save money by getting lower quality. It's not like my choice of supermarket or car. I don't want choice. I just want gas/electricity to be provided efficiently (supply and cost) taking environmental stuff into account. So competition is utterly artificial.
It's a case of where capitalism is pointless as there's no difference in the product. So nationalise the lot, and ensure high quality regulation. Same with water, while we're at it. Stop profiteering from essential, and non-variable, resources.
Guess what, it has random shortages of products - albeit not the items we buy there as our Aldi shopping is rather idiosyncratic (posh yogurts, wine, EU imported chocolate).
On your main point, there was a recent Panorama programme on violence by teenage boys against girls - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000zgwk.
These boys are being educated now. So that education - with all its focus on equal rights and diversity and respect - is clearly not working. I saw that on a previous thread some people saying that bullying about sexuality amongst the young wasn't happening. This is la la land. It may be better than it was. But the idea that bullying isn't happening is nonsense. And porn - with its utterly repellent images of women and what sex is - is not helping in educating young men and boys about how to treat and love and have sex with real women, real girls.
Too many men don't listen to women properly, which is the first thing you need to do if you really want to treat people with respect. Boys learn from that.
Yes, increasing labour supply to the point that there is an excess *may* increase economic activity.
But if there is no shortage of labour, increasing economic activity/jobs, will simply pull in more. The price for labour will stabilise at the lowest value for clearing - minimum wage or the cost of living, in the UK case.
2) Not necessarily at all since the journeys dropped would be the least productive, least efficient ones.
Does anyone have the figure for how many licenced ex drivers there are in this country?