I guess I must be missing something. If we know a viral research lab was actively researching novel coronaviruses, and was looking for more funding to create genetically enhanced novel coronaviruses so they can release it in a bat cave, and they were promoting their request for funding on the basis that they'd already made significant progress on genetic enhancement, and then 18 months later, in the same city the lab was located in, a mysterious novel coronavirus breaks out, and the lab says it has nothing to do with them and the virus probably came from a bat cave - perhaps the balance of probability is that it has something to do with the lab?
I mean, I'm sure they didn't do it deliberately, but surely it can't be scientific to ignore these facts and insist it has nothing to do with the novel coronavirus lab?
You are missing that the bat cave is real and was the original source of the virus for the lab work. There are two possible sources, or more if you sub-divide them so let's not do that. The pandemic could have started with a human getting it from the bats, or it could have come from the lab.
I'm not saying the bat cave isn't real, what I don't get is how anyone can look at the facts as reported and conclude that it's more probable for the virus to have come from a cave and the pandemic emerge several hundred miles away in Wuhan, instead of the lab in Wuhan that we know was actively researching novel coronaviruses and seeking funding to genetically engineer the virus releasing it accidentally via human error.
The dual facts that the lab where bat viruses were researched was in Wuhan, and the initial outbreak was in Wuhan, are together extremely strong circumstantial evidence for a lab leak. (Or indeed, some variation on lab leak, because even the words 'lab leak' describe about a dozen different scenarios.)
It is the two leaps that come from there that I have greater issues with.
Firstly, yes, the Wuhan lab either had - or was - engaged in Gain of Function research. Here's the thing. CV19 is an odd virus to come of GoF research. Normally, you see, you're trying to discover what it is that causes a virus to be virulent. But CV19 isn't particularly virulent. It's feature that's unique (and somewhat similar to HIV/AIDS) is a long incubation period during which the virus is undetectable. It is unclear to me how such a characteristic could have been bred in Gain of Function research, and a lot of scientists who are generally lab leak believers think similarly.
Secondly, the evidence that CV19 can infect over 200 mammalian species doesn't speak to whether it is lab leaked or not. But it does suggest that it is highly unlikely that it was developed as some kind of weapon. Pretty much every biological weapon* ever even considered for use has been single species, for fairly obvious reasons.
Of course, these considerations don't mean CV19 wasn't a GoF creation (or even a biological weapon). Or, indeed, that it wasn't the consequence of something natural (like Ebola, HIV/AIDS, SARS and MERS).
The reality is that without a confession (or probably multiple confessions), we won't know for sure. And absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
We therefore have to rely on the balance of probabilities.
But this somewhat misses the point. Whether it was entirely zoonotic in origin, whether it was caused by a bat collector getting bitten, by a vial being broken, or even GoF research, the Chinese government had the opportunity to tell the world of the dangers of CV19, and chose not to.
They could have followed the Gorbachev Chernobyl response and opened the kimono. They chose not to. They chose to "save face" and in doing so, international travel stayed open both from China, and more generally, for weeks longer than should have been the case. If two doublings had been avoided, the world's death toll from CV19 would have been reduced by 75%. And Delta may not have happened.
That explicit decision not to open up to the world about what China was seeing with CV19 was a crime, and one that is vastly more serious than whether or not CV19 was a product of GoF research.
* With the exception of anthrax, which is a bacterial infection.
All fair, but answering points nobody is making. The guys weren't making bioweapons, they were being twats because scientists will be twats as soon as someone sponsors them to be. There doesn't seem to be much effort put into justifying GoF research, it's just jolly inneressing if that's the sort of thing that interests you.
That is simply bollocks. There are plenty of valid justifications for doing Gain of Function research - understanding disease being the principle one. Predicting emerging diseases and forward planning of vaccines are others. And through the former, developing in silico models of pathogens' interactions with the body to help design prophylaxes and treatments.
Personally, I have my doubts about the cost/benefit of virus hunting; not so for gain of function research as a whole. Unless we can understand transmissibility and pathogenicity at a molecular and biophysical level, we will not be able to develop the best ways to protect ourselves against and treat infectious diseases.
No it isn't. I didn't say no effort, I said low effort - precisely the sort of going throgh the motions arguments in your first para. And I think we can all agree that it is now clear - even if this wasn't a GoF escape - that the drawbacks outweigh the benefits a billionfold anyway.
When did China know they had an outbreak of a serious human-human airborne virus? Was this a) before, or b) after they exerted diplomatic pressure to keep international air routes open not just from China but Wuhan(!) during 2020 Golden Week?
We know the answer is b).
Further, did they continue telling the world that the outbreak was an animal to human one long after they knew otherwise? Several months even? Looks likely.
As far as I’m concerned, China committed an act of biological warfare on the world. These actions indicate the purposeful spread internationally of a pathogen. Doesn’t matter if it originated from a bat or a lab or some combination thereof.
Imagine if this chain of events had happened not in Wuhan but Pyongyang? The only reason people deny this is an act of biological warfare is because they are scared of China and what it might mean for them personally if the global economic order is upturned.
I think "biological warfare" would imply that they spread the virus on purpose, which they obviously didn't since all the lying and covering-up screwed them before it screwed the rest of the world. People might be saying that about NK if it had happened in NK but they'd still be wrong. China is an authoritarian state. Even non-authoritarian states lie a lot, and authoritarian states lie all the time.
If it turned out they created the virus on purpose to use as a weapon then that would be biological warfare, but that seems to be less credible than the competing lab leak theories.
You miss my point utterly. I am saying that they very evidently did spread the virus on purpose. Long after they knew they had a problem, in Jan 2020 the informed parts of the world were saying “errr should we shut flights from China?”. And the Chinese bullied away those voices, guaranteeing that the millions of golden week international tourists would spread it around the globe. Before announcing a couple of days before Chinese New Year itself that they were having a national lockdown.
Once they knew they had a problem, they needed to ensure it became everyone’s problem. Surprised someone who’s spent so long in Asia doesn’t realise this.
And as I said it crowded Hong Kong etc off the news.
I don't think they leaked it from the lab on purpose, they did let it leak from China on purpose though.
They were certainly not stopping it leaving China, and the CCP were likely joining the Russians in the disinformation campaign that was calling Western leaders racist, for suggesting that flights from China might be curtailed.
What's your theory for why the *Russians* wanted it to get out of China?
Putin is Michael Caine’s “some men just want to burn the world”.
More of a Littlefinger 'Chaos is a ladder' situation.
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 the people on here understood that the reason why most Eastern Europeans came to the UK was because they could speak 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.
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 the people on here understood that the reason why most Eastern Europeans came to the UK was because they could speak English and we couldn't create a (fake) barriers via language proficiency other EU countries used.
Tbf we could have insisted that all employers ask for C2 level English. We chose not to.
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.
That's just old lorry drivers doing new routes that they don't 100% know.
Wait 6 months for the new intake to start driving and I suspect today's mistakes will look minor in comparison.
"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?
Maybe we should be encouraging fewer teenagers to get themselves £50k in debt earning a pointless degree from a third-rate college, and more teenagers to learn trades which pay well.
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 the people on here understood that the reason why most Eastern Europeans came to the UK was because they could speak English and we couldn't create a (fake) barriers via language proficiency other EU countries used.
Tbf we could have insisted that all employers ask for C2 level English. We chose not to.
The Government could have asked for a lot of things but that would have stopped the free flow of cheap workers.
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.
I would only add that when I wrote this - https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2021/03/14/one-womans-perspective/ - in the wake of the Sarah Everard murder - the comments under it descended into some posters boasting about how many times a night their friends had sex with prostitutes and why incels felt aggrieved that women wouldn't have sex with them, with others outraged at the idea that male behaviour might need to be curbed in some way.
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.
No but it's avoided very high volumes of minimum wage immigration.
Immigration isn't a bad thing, it can generally be a very good thing.
Immigration to deliberately undercut wages and creating minimum wage jobs that didn't need to be done and can only be filled because the recipients are receiving housing allowances paid for by taxpayers is a terrible idea.
Nobody in this country wanted to fix the welfare state though
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.
It not only *might*, it *did*.
And no, the price of labour did not “stabilise at the minimum wage”. Just 6% of the U.K. workforce were on the minimum wage at last reckoning.
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 pretty much agree with that. On education though, I think schools/colleges are doing their absolute best to challenge the sexist/misogynistic culture, and have made progress. But they are fighting a losing battle against the pervasive influence of porn, as you say, and other forms of social media.
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?
Again rofl. "they were full when I walked in there earlier this week".
Look up what "uncontrolled shortages" means. One store being full does not negate a neighbouring store having issues. That I have full petrol filling stations does not mean that there are no shortages as reported by @moonshine in Kent.
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.
Yes and no. Both of them have fixed permanent ranges and special buy products which refresh twice a week. Fixed ranged stuff won't just get swapped over for something else.
"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?
1) To start work today - I very much doubt it.
2) over the past 20 years the low profit margins within the industry has resulted in an awful lot of optimisation. There aren't many unproductive, inefficient journeys because to cover costs empty space is sold via the pallet networks for both legs (another reason why it's going to be the chilled logistics going down first as their journeys are always 1 way due storage methods).
once again you are looking at a short term problem believing it can be fixed immediately. And it simply can't be done. Remember agency wages are up 40-50% and that has tempted people back.
"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).
That's your choice but if you want inflexibility then you'll have to pay more for it. And the companies concerned can pass some of that on to drivers.
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.
I'd not heard of it until yesterday. It's been a trope in fiction for decades that ethnicity of victim is key to media attention. So its known or suspected as an issue, displayed seriously and comedically, but nothing changes 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.
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?
If my career goes pop, have decided I'll either be an HGV driver or Maths teacher.
"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.
That's Tories for you , fill their chums pockets at the expense of the plebs.
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”.
Sometimes remainers are vulnerable to the lump of labour fallacy too — or its dual. The idea that the mere existence of a large number of immigrants is conclusive evidence that they must have been needed and that we could not have coped without them is also an example of this fallacy.
"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?
1) To start work today - I very much doubt it.
once again you are looking at a short term problem believing it can be fixed immediately. And it simply can't be done. Remember agency wages are up 40-50% and that has tempted people back.
That has or it hasn't? If it has that's good isn't it?
If 40% isn't enough try more. I honestly don't care if the price for drivers ends up 100% if that's the fair market rate then so be 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.
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).
Nothing to do with shortages but everything to do with the Aldi mentality. Their head office was built in the 80s and has a very specific pattern of differently coloured bricks. So when they doubled the size of the building a few years back, it was of course critical that the extension use the exact same bricks in the exact same pattern so that the new part is identical to the old part.
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.
What would you do?
I'd prioritise the distribution of essentials. Not plastic tat for the middle aisle at Aldi. Or wine.
And of course as a national public sector organisation focused on the strategic needs of the country we'd have a long term strategy of recruiting and training drivers. So we wouldn't have got into such a pickle in the first place.
Same with rail.
Indeed, I'd have the two integrated so that the best option is selected for moving freight.
Morning all. So, first thing I hear today on the radio, as I'm still in semi-slumber, is that Boris Johnson, the Boris Johnson, our one, has told the world to "grow up". What? I'm prone to thinking, sometimes, that life is one big troll by the Almighty, and this sort of thing doesn't help me fight it off. Anyway, can't stop, I have an essay to read. It's quite a long one.
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.
No but it's avoided very high volumes of minimum wage immigration.
Immigration isn't a bad thing, it can generally be a very good thing.
Immigration to deliberately undercut wages and creating minimum wage jobs that didn't need to be done and can only be filled because the recipients are receiving housing allowances paid for by taxpayers is a terrible idea.
Nobody in this country wanted to fix the welfare state though
To which should be added the following -
Because China and India are transitioning to service economies (to name the two biggest), there is a profound shortage of highly trained professionals, worldwide. This is because the rate at which universities are producing doctors (say) worldwide is far less than the demand for them.
This is despite vast university expansion world wide.
What this means is a dissonance in the experience between the credentialed classes and the non-credentialed (or lower credentialed).
To the credentialed, open borders means that the cost of living goes down. At work they get to feel very international and egalitarian working with people round the world. Their rates of pay are not hit noticeably by immigration, because there is a shortage of people everywhere. It's all awesome for them.
Further down the economic scale, this is not what happens.
Morning all. So, first thing I hear today on the radio, as I'm still in semi-slumber, is that Boris Johnson, the Boris Johnson, our one, has told the world to "grow up". What? I'm prone to thinking, sometimes, that life is one big troll by the Almighty, and this sort of thing doesn't help me fight it off.
Anyway, can't stop, I have an essay to read. It's quite a long one.
Please let us know if you find anything interesting in the essay.
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.
I would only add that when I wrote this - https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2021/03/14/one-womans-perspective/ - in the wake of the Sarah Everard murder - the comments under it descended into some posters boasting about how many times a night their friends had sex with prostitutes and why incels felt aggrieved that women wouldn't have sex with them, with others outraged at the idea that male behaviour might need to be curbed in some way.
The irony was not lost on me.
You missed a good conversation the other day about young ladies spending their summer “yachting” in the Med, and what’s become the normalisation, via social media, of the world’s oldest profession allowing instant and unattainable lifestyles.
Social media, and the ubiquity of quite disturbing and misogynistic online porn, have a lot to answer for.
"We need to fish from a bigger pond", says Iceland boss Richard Walker, as he implores the Government to add HGV drivers to the skilled workers list to help elevated the crisis.
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?
1) To start work today - I very much doubt it.
once again you are looking at a short term problem believing it can be fixed immediately. And it simply can't be done. Remember agency wages are up 40-50% and that has tempted people back.
That has or it hasn't? If it has that's good isn't it?
If 40% isn't enough try more. I honestly don't care if the price for drivers ends up 100% if that's the fair market rate then so be it.
Once again for the nth time.
No amount of money is going to fix the issue - the people you claim to exist (retired drivers able to start work tomorrow) don't exist.
"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?
I believe its about 300,000. As (a) recruiting them to rejoin the industry and (b) retraining them so that their expired licenses are renewed is so obvious and so quick, you have to ask why this hasn't just happened. Just pay them more and the crisis disappears in a puff of remoaner smoke!
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”.
Sometimes remainers are vulnerable to the lump of labour fallacy too — or its dual. The idea that the mere existence of a large number of immigrants is conclusive evidence that they must have been needed and that we could not have coped without them is also an example of this fallacy.
We could have coped without them, but productivity growth, GDP, and GDP per capita would have been lower.
"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?
Getting skilled tradespeople is absolute hell at the moment. And to answer your last question, no. A combination of Tony Blair and Simon Cowell have educated a whole generation that all these jobs are beneath them.
"You don't want a job fitting carpets, you want a degree and a shot at winning Britain's got Talent. Only losers and failures do actual work."
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.
It not only *might*, it *did*.
And no, the price of labour did not “stabilise at the minimum wage”. Just 6% of the U.K. workforce were on the minimum wage at last reckoning.
Hence "cost of living" - minimum wage is not enough to live on in much of the South East, for example.
Even foreigners have the strange habits of wanting to eat and preferring not to sleep on park benches.
"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).
Nothing to do with shortages but everything to do with the Aldi mentality. Their head office was built in the 80s and has a very specific pattern of differently coloured bricks. So when they doubled the size of the building a few years back, it was of course critical that the extension use the exact same bricks in the exact same pattern so that the new part is identical to the old part.
That sounds like Ron Dennis at McLaren, who had the architects of their factory change the size of every room in the building, half way through construction, so that they only contained complete floor tiles.
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”.
Sometimes remainers are vulnerable to the lump of labour fallacy too — or its dual. The idea that the mere existence of a large number of immigrants is conclusive evidence that they must have been needed and that we could not have coped without them is also an example of this fallacy.
We could have coped without them, but productivity growth, GDP, and GDP per capita would have been lower.
That's a very high degree of certainty over a road not taken. I really don't know how anyone could be so sure about something so variable.
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.
It not only *might*, it *did*.
And no, the price of labour did not “stabilise at the minimum wage”. Just 6% of the U.K. workforce were on the minimum wage at last reckoning.
Hence "cost of living" - minimum wage is not enough to live on in much of the South East, for example.
Even foreigners have the strange habits of wanting to eat and preferring not to sleep on park benches.
Not according to various posters who gripe about Kosovan beggars and 10-to-room HMOs in Newham.
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”.
Sometimes remainers are vulnerable to the lump of labour fallacy too — or its dual. The idea that the mere existence of a large number of immigrants is conclusive evidence that they must have been needed and that we could not have coped without them is also an example of this fallacy.
We could have coped without them, but productivity growth, GDP, and GDP per capita would have been lower.
That's a very high degree of certainty over a road not taken. I really don't know how anyone could be so sure about something so variable.
GDP would have been lower, I don't see how you can talk about GDP per capita as we wouldn't know the population figure.
It's possible (very likely given industries use of cheap labour as a substitute for productivity investments) that population growth lead to GDP per capita dropping overall..
"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?
Getting skilled tradespeople is absolute hell at the moment. And to answer your last question, no. A combination of Tony Blair and Simon Cowell have educated a whole generation that all these jobs are beneath them.
"You don't want a job fitting carpets, you want a degree and a shot at winning Britain's got Talent. Only losers and failures do actual work."
We currently have a good (and cheapish) builder. The quid pro quo for that is that our jobs are done when he has time which means the next bit of work will be a random time and a random day sometime in the next fortnight.
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.
I would only add that when I wrote this - https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2021/03/14/one-womans-perspective/ - in the wake of the Sarah Everard murder - the comments under it descended into some posters boasting about how many times a night their friends had sex with prostitutes and why incels felt aggrieved that women wouldn't have sex with them, with others outraged at the idea that male behaviour might need to be curbed in some way.
The irony was not lost on me.
You missed a good conversation the other day about young ladies spending their summer “yachting” in the Med, and what’s become the normalisation, via social media, of the world’s oldest profession allowing instant and unattainable lifestyles.
Social media, and the ubiquity of quite disturbing and misogynistic online porn, have a lot to answer for.
Pornography is likely far less misogynistic than it was with the rise of smart phones that are able to film in very high quality, webcams and cheapish PCs. The costs & barriers to/of entry are very very low these days so I'd say women (And couples) have taken control of the product (Onlyfans, p***hub "community" etc) rather than being at the whim of {mostly male} directors and producers. Sure there' the preposterous scenario stuff still about, but we're not in the Ron Jeremy era any more.
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”.
Sometimes remainers are vulnerable to the lump of labour fallacy too — or its dual. The idea that the mere existence of a large number of immigrants is conclusive evidence that they must have been needed and that we could not have coped without them is also an example of this fallacy.
We could have coped without them, but productivity growth, GDP, and GDP per capita would have been lower.
That's a very high degree of certainty over a road not taken. I really don't know how anyone could be so sure about something so variable.
GDP would have been lower, I don't see how you can talk about GDP per capita as we wouldn't know the population figure.
It's possible (very likely given industries use of cheap labour as a substitute for productivity investments) that population growth lead to GDP per capita dropping overall..
Yup, some of the stuff on increasing load sizes in haulage would have been brought in much earlier, for example. The proposed changes increase output per worker by 30% but there's been no pressure to make the investment on new trucks/trailers when it was cheaper to get a low wage worker from Eastern Europe.
"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?
1) To start work today - I very much doubt it.
once again you are looking at a short term problem believing it can be fixed immediately. And it simply can't be done. Remember agency wages are up 40-50% and that has tempted people back.
That has or it hasn't? If it has that's good isn't it?
If 40% isn't enough try more. I honestly don't care if the price for drivers ends up 100% if that's the fair market rate then so be it.
Once again for the nth time.
No amount of money is going to fix the issue - the people you claim to exist (retired drivers able to start work tomorrow) don't exist.
In which case the pay goes up dramatically, the least productive businesses stop demanding drivers, and new people are attracted to the sector.
"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?
Getting skilled tradespeople is absolute hell at the moment. And to answer your last question, no. A combination of Tony Blair and Simon Cowell have educated a whole generation that all these jobs are beneath them.
"You don't want a job fitting carpets, you want a degree and a shot at winning Britain's got Talent. Only losers and failures do actual work."
This is one thing that blows me away about (small town) Japan. My bathroom windows got blown out in a typhoon, a few panes of glass were smashed but also the wooden frame was snapped. My guy waits for a sunny day, shows up in his little k-truck, takes the window back to his workshop down the lane, brings it back with the wood fixed and new panes of glass and slots it back in... £13.50.
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”.
Sometimes remainers are vulnerable to the lump of labour fallacy too — or its dual. The idea that the mere existence of a large number of immigrants is conclusive evidence that they must have been needed and that we could not have coped without them is also an example of this fallacy.
We could have coped without them, but productivity growth, GDP, and GDP per capita would have been lower.
That's a very high degree of certainty over a road not taken. I really don't know how anyone could be so sure about something so variable.
GDP would have been lower, I don't see how you can talk about GDP per capita as we wouldn't know the population figure.
It's possible (very likely given industries use of cheap labour as a substitute for productivity investments) that population growth lead to GDP per capita dropping overall..
Partly the problem is that GDP (not GDP per capita or productivity) is the headline figure. If Blair had been worried about newspaper headlines about GDP per capita rather than GDP, would he have been so open to low-skilled immigration?
When I left school in the early 80's there were no jobs. Now the discussion on this site is the fact that there are too many jobs. How the world has changed
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.
I would only add that when I wrote this - https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2021/03/14/one-womans-perspective/ - in the wake of the Sarah Everard murder - the comments under it descended into some posters boasting about how many times a night their friends had sex with prostitutes and why incels felt aggrieved that women wouldn't have sex with them, with others outraged at the idea that male behaviour might need to be curbed in some way.
The irony was not lost on me.
You missed a good conversation the other day about young ladies spending their summer “yachting” in the Med, and what’s become the normalisation, via social media, of the world’s oldest profession allowing instant and unattainable lifestyles.
Social media, and the ubiquity of quite disturbing and misogynistic online porn, have a lot to answer for.
Pornography is likely far less misogynistic than it was with the rise of smart phones that are able to film in very high quality, webcams and cheapish PCs. The costs & barriers to/of entry are very very low these days so I'd say women (And couples) have taken control of the product (Onlyfans, p***hub "community" etc) rather than being at the whim of {mostly male} directors and producers. Sure there' the preposterous scenario stuff still about, but we're not in the Ron Jeremy era any more.
Yes, the social porn stuff has, combined with the pandemic, led to a lot more self-made adult material, and the money going to those actually involved, rather than a production company. There’s also an awful lot more people now appearing naked for a living, and many of them are selling themselves for not much money, often using their actual name, while forgetting that the internet doesn’t have a delete button.
See “Abella’s Law”, that says something like 99% of OnlyFans producers make less than $1k a month. There’s a few hundred people making $10k+ a month though, and a few dozen making $100k a month.
When I was a teenager a quarter of a century ago, getting the shocking porn meant finding a copy of Private magazine, which was somewhat more difficult than pointing your phone’s browser at any one of a hundred free websites.
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.
It not only *might*, it *did*.
And no, the price of labour did not “stabilise at the minimum wage”. Just 6% of the U.K. workforce were on the minimum wage at last reckoning.
Hence "cost of living" - minimum wage is not enough to live on in much of the South East, for example.
Even foreigners have the strange habits of wanting to eat and preferring not to sleep on park benches.
Not according to various posters who gripe about Kosovan beggars and 10-to-room HMOs in Newham.
I have personally seen the conditions in the HMO ( Houses in Multiple Occupation ) world.
Through a relative, I have an involvement in the building industry. Living 1 person to every room in a property is quite standard - and that is for a company that pays better than most.
I have seen, in addition, in the leafy parts of West London, the shitty end. Where there are multiple adults per room.
Not sure why people want to deny this is happening.
"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?
I believe its about 300,000. As (a) recruiting them to rejoin the industry and (b) retraining them so that their expired licenses are renewed is so obvious and so quick, you have to ask why this hasn't just happened. Just pay them more and the crisis disappears in a puff of remoaner smoke!
Meanwhile, in the real world...
In the real world companies that are prepared to pay what needs to be paid are getting stock moved.
Again do you have anything by anyone without a vested interest where Mandy Rice Davies applies saying there's an issue?
When I left school in the early 80's there were no jobs. Now the discussion on this site is the fact that there are too many jobs. How the world has changed
If you are a school leaver it's often the case that there are still no jobs.
Remember Philip is talking about a need for skilled, experienced HGV drivers. You don't leave school with experience.
"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?
I believe its about 300,000. As (a) recruiting them to rejoin the industry and (b) retraining them so that their expired licenses are renewed is so obvious and so quick, you have to ask why this hasn't just happened. Just pay them more and the crisis disappears in a puff of remoaner smoke!
Meanwhile, in the real world...
In the real world companies that are prepared to pay what needs to be paid are getting stock moved.
Again do you have anything by anyone without a vested interest where Mandy Rice Davies applies saying there's an issue?
Can I correct a comment from earlier today.
Philip's inability to understand what is being explained to him means I now suspect he's not just a Tory MP but a member of the current cabinet..
"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?
Getting skilled tradespeople is absolute hell at the moment. And to answer your last question, no. A combination of Tony Blair and Simon Cowell have educated a whole generation that all these jobs are beneath them.
"You don't want a job fitting carpets, you want a degree and a shot at winning Britain's got Talent. Only losers and failures do actual work."
This is one thing that blows me away about (small town) Japan. My bathroom windows got blown out in a typhoon, a few panes of glass were smashed but also the wooden frame was snapped. My guy waits for a sunny day, shows up in his little k-truck, takes the window back to his workshop down the lane, brings it back with the wood fixed and new panes of glass and slots it back in... £13.50.
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 pretty much agree with that. On education though, I think schools/colleges are doing their absolute best to challenge the sexist/misogynistic culture, and have made progress. But they are fighting a losing battle against the pervasive influence of porn, as you say, and other forms of social media.
I find it interesting that porn hasn't been cancelled. How does it keep on surviving, thriving even; in this increasingly puritannical woke era? To me it seems to say something quite profound about the fallibility and contradictions of human nature.
"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?
I believe its about 300,000. As (a) recruiting them to rejoin the industry and (b) retraining them so that their expired licenses are renewed is so obvious and so quick, you have to ask why this hasn't just happened. Just pay them more and the crisis disappears in a puff of remoaner smoke!
Meanwhile, in the real world...
In the real world companies that are prepared to pay what needs to be paid are getting stock moved.
Again do you have anything by anyone without a vested interest where Mandy Rice Davies applies saying there's an issue?
Can I correct a comment from earlier today.
Philip's inability to understand what is being explained to him means I now suspect he's not just a Tory MP but a member of the current cabinet..
So nobody without a vested interest thinks there's an issue? Good.
"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?
I believe its about 300,000. As (a) recruiting them to rejoin the industry and (b) retraining them so that their expired licenses are renewed is so obvious and so quick, you have to ask why this hasn't just happened. Just pay them more and the crisis disappears in a puff of remoaner smoke!
Meanwhile, in the real world...
In the real world companies that are prepared to pay what needs to be paid are getting stock moved.
Again do you have anything by anyone without a vested interest where Mandy Rice Davies applies saying there's an issue?
Can I correct a comment from earlier today.
Philip's inability to understand what is being explained to him means I now suspect he's not just a Tory MP but a member of the current cabinet..
So nobody without a vested interest thinks there's an issue? Good.
For any Remoaners or bosses MRDA explains it all.
If there wasn't an issue why is supply issue and a lack of lorry drivers on the news every day?
Considering there's this major mythical shortage that certain people here have been banging on about for months ... I can still buy absolutely anything I can think of next day delivery direct to my house.
And I can still go into supermarkets and the shelves are full.
After months of so called crisis. I'm content to live with that. Anyone who needs a driver can pay market rates for it because there's no issues I can see. Not in the real world.
When I left school in the early 80's there were no jobs. Now the discussion on this site is the fact that there are too many jobs. How the world has changed
If you are a school leaver it's often the case that there are still no jobs.
Remember Philip is talking about a need for skilled, experienced HGV drivers. You don't leave school with experience.
And that is true of an awful lot of places.
I can can talk about School leaver Apprentices, this summer they were massively in demand, we had a total of 6 applications, and the first 2 we offered positions too turned down the offer as they had already taken another job.
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”.
Sometimes remainers are vulnerable to the lump of labour fallacy too — or its dual. The idea that the mere existence of a large number of immigrants is conclusive evidence that they must have been needed and that we could not have coped without them is also an example of this fallacy.
We could have coped without them, but productivity growth, GDP, and GDP per capita would have been lower.
That's a very high degree of certainty over a road not taken. I really don't know how anyone could be so sure about something so variable.
GDP would have been lower, I don't see how you can talk about GDP per capita as we wouldn't know the population figure.
It's possible (very likely given industries use of cheap labour as a substitute for productivity investments) that population growth lead to GDP per capita dropping overall..
Partly the problem is that GDP (not GDP per capita or productivity) is the headline figure. If Blair had been worried about newspaper headlines about GDP per capita rather than GDP, would he have been so open to low-skilled immigration?
Yes, the Per Capita and productivity number are the ones to watch, rather than the headline GDP. Need to get an accurate population figure though, there’s been a lot of moving around in the last 18 months.
"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?
I believe its about 300,000. As (a) recruiting them to rejoin the industry and (b) retraining them so that their expired licenses are renewed is so obvious and so quick, you have to ask why this hasn't just happened. Just pay them more and the crisis disappears in a puff of remoaner smoke!
Meanwhile, in the real world...
In the real world companies that are prepared to pay what needs to be paid are getting stock moved.
Again do you have anything by anyone without a vested interest where Mandy Rice Davies applies saying there's an issue?
Can I correct a comment from earlier today.
Philip's inability to understand what is being explained to him means I now suspect he's not just a Tory MP but a member of the current cabinet..
So nobody without a vested interest thinks there's an issue? Good.
For any Remoaners or bosses MRDA explains it all.
If there wasn't an issue why is supply issue and a lack of lorry drivers on the news every day?
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 pretty much agree with that. On education though, I think schools/colleges are doing their absolute best to challenge the sexist/misogynistic culture, and have made progress. But they are fighting a losing battle against the pervasive influence of porn, as you say, and other forms of social media.
I find it interesting that porn hasn't been cancelled. How does it keep on surviving, thriving even; in this increasingly puritannical woke era? To me it seems to say something quite profound about the fallibility and contradictions of human nature.
Will I be cancelled for saying that it suits men for porn not to be cancelled?
And now I need to prepare for a work call and then a drive home.
"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?
Maybe we should be encouraging fewer teenagers to get themselves £50k in debt earning a pointless degree from a third-rate college, and more teenagers to learn trades which pay well.
My dad (who was much involved in that sort of thing) was seriously shocked when a previous Tory administration ran down trades apprenticeships - I think it was Mrs Thatcher's one, but cannot now be sure at this distance.
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 pretty much agree with that. On education though, I think schools/colleges are doing their absolute best to challenge the sexist/misogynistic culture, and have made progress. But they are fighting a losing battle against the pervasive influence of porn, as you say, and other forms of social media.
I find it interesting that porn hasn't been cancelled. How does it keep on surviving, thriving even; in this increasingly puritannical woke era? To me it seems to say something quite profound about the fallibility and contradictions of human nature.
I don't understand why people watch porn, I've never seen any and have no interest in it whatsoever.
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”.
Sometimes remainers are vulnerable to the lump of labour fallacy too — or its dual. The idea that the mere existence of a large number of immigrants is conclusive evidence that they must have been needed and that we could not have coped without them is also an example of this fallacy.
We could have coped without them, but productivity growth, GDP, and GDP per capita would have been lower.
That's a very high degree of certainty over a road not taken. I really don't know how anyone could be so sure about something so variable.
GDP would have been lower, I don't see how you can talk about GDP per capita as we wouldn't know the population figure.
It's possible (very likely given industries use of cheap labour as a substitute for productivity investments) that population growth lead to GDP per capita dropping overall..
Partly the problem is that GDP (not GDP per capita or productivity) is the headline figure. If Blair had been worried about newspaper headlines about GDP per capita rather than GDP, would he have been so open to low-skilled immigration?
Yes, the Per Capita and productivity number are the ones to watch, rather than the headline GDP. Need to get an accurate population figure though, there’s been a lot of moving around in the last 18 months.
Probably get that around March/April time from this year's census and then some modified estimates for the past ten years (although they might always be quite uncertain as the 2011 and 2021 samples may have missed a biggish bump in population in the intervening years).
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 pretty much agree with that. On education though, I think schools/colleges are doing their absolute best to challenge the sexist/misogynistic culture, and have made progress. But they are fighting a losing battle against the pervasive influence of porn, as you say, and other forms of social media.
I find it interesting that porn hasn't been cancelled. How does it keep on surviving, thriving even; in this increasingly puritannical woke era? To me it seems to say something quite profound about the fallibility and contradictions of human nature.
Will I be cancelled for saying that it suits men for porn not to be cancelled?
And now I need to prepare for a work call and then a drive home.
Sayonara!
So long as it's consensual it suits the women too.
Considering there's this major mythical shortage that certain people here have been banging on about for months ... I can still buy absolutely anything I can think of next day delivery direct to my house.
And I can still go into supermarkets and the shelves are full.
After months of so called crisis. I'm content to live with that. Anyone who needs a driver can pay market rates for it because there's no issues I can see. Not in the real world.
Oh, in that case why was the last lot of timber I got for DIY of abominable quality, because that was all they had left? I had to get a refund from the very apologetic manager who explained that they were short of decent timber.
It was bog standard softwood conifer stuff too - not tropical hardwood.
Considering there's this major mythical shortage that certain people here have been banging on about for months ... I can still buy absolutely anything I can think of next day delivery direct to my house.
And I can still go into supermarkets and the shelves are full.
After months of so called crisis. I'm content to live with that. Anyone who needs a driver can pay market rates for it because there's no issues I can see. Not in the real world.
Oh, in that case why was the last lot of timber I got for DIY of abominable quality, because that was all they had left? I had to get a refund from the very apologetic manager who explained that they were short of decent timber.
It was bog standard softwood conifer stuff too - not tropical hardwood.
I don't know. Maybe your supplier isn't very good? Or maybe there's an issue with timber being in high demand?
When I left school in the early 80's there were no jobs. Now the discussion on this site is the fact that there are too many jobs. How the world has changed
If you are a school leaver it's often the case that there are still no jobs.
Remember Philip is talking about a need for skilled, experienced HGV drivers. You don't leave school with experience.
And that is true of an awful lot of places.
I can can talk about School leaver Apprentices, this summer they were massively in demand, we had a total of 6 applications, and the first 2 we offered positions too turned down the offer as they had already taken another job.
It depends. I know that the VOA currently have a number of degree apprenticeship vacancies to start in January because they screwed up and took 2 months to select candidates, telling them 3 days after the candidates accepted their university places.
Considering there's this major mythical shortage that certain people here have been banging on about for months ... I can still buy absolutely anything I can think of next day delivery direct to my house.
And I can still go into supermarkets and the shelves are full.
After months of so called crisis. I'm content to live with that. Anyone who needs a driver can pay market rates for it because there's no issues I can see. Not in the real world.
Oh, in that case why was the last lot of timber I got for DIY of abominable quality, because that was all they had left? I had to get a refund from the very apologetic manager who explained that they were short of decent timber.
It was bog standard softwood conifer stuff too - not tropical hardwood.
I don't know. Maybe your supplier isn't very good? Or maybe there's an issue with timber being in high demand?
That sort of stuff? In that quantity? It's like saying that there are shortages in the supermarkets because there is high demand for bog rolls.
Say what you like about Johnson, the guy's a genius communicator. He knows his fans will absolutely lap this franglais up and his haters will make sure his fans will hear all about it if they haven't already.
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 pretty much agree with that. On education though, I think schools/colleges are doing their absolute best to challenge the sexist/misogynistic culture, and have made progress. But they are fighting a losing battle against the pervasive influence of porn, as you say, and other forms of social media.
I find it interesting that porn hasn't been cancelled. How does it keep on surviving, thriving even; in this increasingly puritannical woke era? To me it seems to say something quite profound about the fallibility and contradictions of human nature.
Will I be cancelled for saying that it suits men for porn not to be cancelled?
And now I need to prepare for a work call and then a drive home.
Sayonara!
As a dinosaur (albeit a somewhat young one) who believes in classical liberal ideas about free speech, I am not going to cancel you for saying that.
You are undoubtedly correct, but I think that there is a lot more to it than that.
"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).
Pre-pandemic i would love shopping at Lidl. There wasn't so much choice that I had to make too many decisions. The quality was generally high. They had time-limited variety which introduced a bit of interest without an overwhelming degree of choice. And the price - after decades using the bigger supermarkets I'll often get to the checkout and be astonished that I'm not being asked for £20-30 more. I've said, "are you sure?" more than once.
And I accepted that I would have to go elsewhere to fill in the gaps - which is why I stayed away during the pandemic. Didn't want to make multiple trips.
When I left school in the early 80's there were no jobs. Now the discussion on this site is the fact that there are too many jobs. How the world has changed
If you are a school leaver it's often the case that there are still no jobs.
Remember Philip is talking about a need for skilled, experienced HGV drivers. You don't leave school with experience.
And that is true of an awful lot of places.
I can can talk about School leaver Apprentices, this summer they were massively in demand, we had a total of 6 applications, and the first 2 we offered positions too turned down the offer as they had already taken another job.
It depends. I know that the VOA currently have a number of degree apprenticeship vacancies to start in January because they screwed up and took 2 months to select candidates, telling them 3 days after the candidates accepted their university places.
10 years ago we would get 100+ applications, now it is just a trickle
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
That's not how supply and demand works.
If you paid every driver £1m then you'd have record amounts of drivers joining the market (or rejoining it) so supply of drivers would go up.
Plus if every driver cost £1m then many companies would find its no longer profitable to pay for a driver afterall since they weren't going to make £1m of marginal profit on the journey, so demand would drop.
I'm not sure where the equilibrium point is but pretty sure it'd be well below £1m.
No money fixes the problem today.
It may fix it a year down the line but qualified lorry drivers with 6 months experience (the point at which insurance isn't utterly insane) don't appear from thin air.
Yes you can start recruiting them today but it will still be 9-12 months before they meet the criteria above.
I'd say - given that the furious shouting and the 2 year claim from the Freight Transport Association (?) that we will see serious easing within a small number of months.
We all know about the Food Trade Federation claims from a couple of weeks ago, debunked here.
The Director - a former spin Doctor for Nick Clegg - was using the fall in food trade from Q1 to pretend that his 'disaster' still existed in Q2, when the real levels were back to as near as dammit normal in June. But he forgot to mention that.
We also know how massively over-exaggerated the "food shortages" and "panic buying" were in March 2020.
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.
There is a dilemma about natural monopolies. If they operate as monopolies they, as older PBers will wistfully recall, treat customers as a problem to be avoided at all costs, and act with absolute contempt for the individual.
I compare how I am treated as a customer by my dental service (private) and the NHS. In the first I am the priority, and my custom is welcomed because without it they go broke.
Whereas the NHS......Enough said.
Competition in monopolies is annoying because they are all selling a distinction without a difference; but I think it may be marginally better than the soviet style of monopolies.
When I left school in the early 80's there were no jobs. Now the discussion on this site is the fact that there are too many jobs. How the world has changed
If you are a school leaver it's often the case that there are still no jobs.
Remember Philip is talking about a need for skilled, experienced HGV drivers. You don't leave school with experience.
And that is true of an awful lot of places.
I can can talk about School leaver Apprentices, this summer they were massively in demand, we had a total of 6 applications, and the first 2 we offered positions too turned down the offer as they had already taken another job.
It depends. I know that the VOA currently have a number of degree apprenticeship vacancies to start in January because they screwed up and took 2 months to select candidates, telling them 3 days after the candidates accepted their university places.
10 years ago we would get 100+ applications, now it is just a trickle
In that case, you really do need to speak to the local schools and find out why.
I suspect a lot of it will be because children just want to go to uni but that drop in applications needs to be investigated and fixed.
Considering there's this major mythical shortage that certain people here have been banging on about for months ... I can still buy absolutely anything I can think of next day delivery direct to my house.
And I can still go into supermarkets and the shelves are full.
After months of so called crisis. I'm content to live with that. Anyone who needs a driver can pay market rates for it because there's no issues I can see. Not in the real world.
Oh, in that case why was the last lot of timber I got for DIY of abominable quality, because that was all they had left? I had to get a refund from the very apologetic manager who explained that they were short of decent timber.
It was bog standard softwood conifer stuff too - not tropical hardwood.
I don't know. Maybe your supplier isn't very good? Or maybe there's an issue with timber being in high demand?
That sort of stuff? In that quantity? It's like saying that there are shortages in the supermarkets because there is high demand for bog rolls.
Except that we did have a shortage of bog rolls in the supermarkets due to high demand.
Isn't DIY and construction booming right now? Maybe timber is going first to people prepared to pay more for it?
Keir Starmer and his team, in just basic poltics are not doing it very well, they have not prepared the ground for this document, they have not prepared the ground for the rule changes, they are not on the television explaining what they want to do, it is puzzling
Sam Coates in the same discussion commented they are exempting themselves from the field so often, and until this morning, labour spokesmen are not punching their weight on the energy bill, explaining Starmer's case and they are leaving it to Jeremy Corbyn acolytes to go on the airwaves, they do not give the impression they are upto the the political fight
And I was critical for asking where is Starmer but for a broadcaster to be so frank must be very rare
Good luck to anyone embarking on building work or renovations. The availability of materials is bad, the prices keep going up. Decent tradesmen are booked out for 4 months plus. Quotes for skilled jobs coming back 2x over what you should be paying. I've been told the best option is to post jobs on mybuilder and try and find someone semi retired to take on the work, will find out shortly whether this is good advice!
"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?
I believe its about 300,000. As (a) recruiting them to rejoin the industry and (b) retraining them so that their expired licenses are renewed is so obvious and so quick, you have to ask why this hasn't just happened. Just pay them more and the crisis disappears in a puff of remoaner smoke!
Meanwhile, in the real world...
In the real world companies that are prepared to pay what needs to be paid are getting stock moved.
Again do you have anything by anyone without a vested interest where Mandy Rice Davies applies saying there's an issue?
Can I correct a comment from earlier today.
Philip's inability to understand what is being explained to him means I now suspect he's not just a Tory MP but a member of the current cabinet..
So nobody without a vested interest thinks there's an issue? Good.
For any Remoaners or bosses MRDA explains it all.
I think Philip is a Tory troll on the paylist of cchq, who's only function in life is to argue black is white irrespective of any real evidence. He is only saying these things to wind people up. We must stop feeding him.
Say what you like about Johnson, the guy's a genius communicator. He knows his fans will absolutely lap this franglais up and his haters will make sure his fans will hear all about it if they haven't already.
Meanwhile at the first meeting of the new government Food and Drink taskforce:
Tesco warns that Christmas panic-buying will out-strip the start of the pandemic "Just pay more" has not fixed the logistics crisis Let us recruit externally to make it through the winter
This is the point where the ministers say "our supply chain is fine" despite having been told by the supply chain it is not.
Nobody actively wants an energy crisis and a food crisis. I'm not posting this for kicks. We have a government who just brushes away problems with platitudes and refuses to act until the absolute last second. If we repeat this pattern of behaviour the threat is a cold hungry Christmas.
What I don't understand is the "what crisis" messaging. On energy they can bloame decades of inaction and spin direct intervention as something for COP26, "cutting our reliance on foreign dirty energy" or something. On food they can blame the EU and have a "patriotic call for British drivers and British workers" with an incentive payment to bring people in.
Instead, nothing. With boulder sized lumps of shit to rain down on them if they let this happen.
Vested interests still pushing the line that paying people more isn't the solution.
I've got an idea. How about ... Pay people more?
If employers want an incentive payment to bring people in, they can do that. The state doesn't need to get involved.
They are paying more. It isn't fixing the problem. For drivers it can't fix the problem because there is a shortage of drivers. A few months into this wages have gone up as much as 40% in some cases and firms still have a shortage of drivers because there is a shortage of drivers.
The state intervenes when the market fails. Energy companies have folded, the state has a provider of last resort mechanism. It wasn't economical to make fertiliser and thus CO2, the state gave the company a large wodge of cash.
So the state can intervene and has for other things. They won't here because Brexit can't be seen as having any downsides.
If they've increased pay and still have vacancies then its time to increase pay higher. Stop whinging and get on with it you have no divine right for cheap serfs.
The problem is that you can't pay more.
Say we need 400,000 drivers and only have 300,000. You can pay £1m a driver but it won't solve the shortfall as it requires training and time to fix that.
That's not how supply and demand works.
If you paid every driver £1m then you'd have record amounts of drivers joining the market (or rejoining it) so supply of drivers would go up.
Plus if every driver cost £1m then many companies would find its no longer profitable to pay for a driver afterall since they weren't going to make £1m of marginal profit on the journey, so demand would drop.
I'm not sure where the equilibrium point is but pretty sure it'd be well below £1m.
No money fixes the problem today.
It may fix it a year down the line but qualified lorry drivers with 6 months experience (the point at which insurance isn't utterly insane) don't appear from thin air.
Yes you can start recruiting them today but it will still be 9-12 months before they meet the criteria above.
I'd say - given that the furious shouting and the 2 year claim from the Freight Transport Association (?) that we will see serious easing within a small number of months.
We all know about the Food Trade Federation claims from a couple of weeks ago, debunked here.
The Director - a former spin Doctor for Nick Clegg - was using the fall in food trade from Q1 to pretend that his 'disaster' still existed in Q2, when the real levels were back to as near as dammit normal in June. But he forgot to mention that.
We also know how massively over-exaggerated the "food shortages" and "panic buying" were in March 2020.
Industry lobbyists speak with forked tongue.
Exactly. Very well said.
Certain people here want to abolish all critical thinking and simply take what an "expert" in the industry has to say as the gospel truth - instead of stopping and thinking "what is this person's agenda".
If the only people pushing a narrative are those with an agenda to sell, then that speaks volumes.
Say what you like about Johnson, the guy's a genius communicator. He knows his fans will absolutely lap this franglais up and his haters will make sure his fans will hear all about it if they haven't already.
I definitely remember very similar observations being made about another populist with a complicated relationship with the truth. Fans of genius communicator Johnson never seem very keen on that comparison though.
I've just come in late to the discussions on the shortage of HGVs so apologies if I repeat anything said earlier as I haven't read everything from earlier. I am interested in this as I worked in the industry but it was so long ago I can't offer any more expertise than an interested observer. A few observations
1. Anecdote. I was walking the dog in the park this morning and I got chatting to a recently retired HGV driver. I asked him whether the increased pay could tempt him back - his response was "not a chance, they treat you like shit". So increasing pay isn't enough necessarily to overcome the rubbish conditions for those who have retired and can live comfortably enough.
2. Supply side - Philip Thompson keeps arguing that pay more and the market will sort it out. But the trouble is that there isn't a truly free market. The supply is artificially constrained by the need to get an HGV licence, the numbers of which are restricted by the state's capacity to hold tests. The solution is surely to allow anyone to drive an HGV. So I could just pitch up at a haulier, the boss could spend a day or so teaching me how to drive an artic and off I go! Problem solved! I guess this is what actually happens in some countries. I wouldn't personally wish to go anywhere near a main road in those circumstances and it of course illustrates why a truly free market ends up being a race to the bottom.
3. Brexit. This illustrates again that the proponents of Brexit all had no clue. To be a success, Brexit needed a clear vision and a thought through 10 year plan. In this case, the capacity of the UK workforce needed to be increased. Nobody in charge of Brexit thought about this. Instead we got flag waving and glib statements that it'll all be fine. You can repeat this observation about nearly everything.
4. I'd forgotten that I could drive a 7.5 tonner on my normal licence. When the market rate rises so that the hourly rate is £90 let me know and I'll take a 3 or 6 month sabbatical!
The “what happens if the wind doesn’t blow” question will at least partly be addressed in due course with battery storage, but we sometimes miss the big picture on renewables.
The reason we only have 1-2gw of wind power in calm anti cyclonic conditions is because we only have about 18gw of peak capacity. Build 10x as much, plus more solar (which often generates well during times there is little wind) and even in calm periods we have 10-20gw being generated. We have massive latency in traditional generation capacity. We need to get used to latency in renewables too. It’s already happening in parts of the US and China with solar. The infrastructure is cheap enough that it’s viable simply to build much more than you need and switch it off when there’s too much sun. (Or use the excess to smelt aluminium / make carbon fibre / isolate hydrogen).
We are now into autumn winds. In Sky Blue. Wind running at 10+GW now.
Plus (I think - this needs translating https://www.nationalgrid.com/incidents) the burnt down interconnector is about to come back on with 1GW capacity. And the Norway Interconnector comes on stream in the next month at 1.4GW.
TBH I think the supply issue is very close to fixed. I think it will all be very different in just a month or so.
Effectively artificially low prices have been subsidised or years by the capital of people who invested in companies with unsustainable business models. Who are now falling out.
Personally I hope that we stick with somewhat higher prices, and the current 'crisis' will persuade some people to improve the Energy Efficiency of their homes.
Unusual set of local by-elections today. There are 3 Lib Dem defences in East Cambridgeshire, East Devon, and South Lakeland; a Labour defence in Hammersmith and Fulham; and a Resident defence in Epsom and Ewell. No Con defences at all.
"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).
Pre-pandemic i would love shopping at Lidl. There wasn't so much choice that I had to make too many decisions. The quality was generally high. They had time-limited variety which introduced a bit of interest without an overwhelming degree of choice. And the price - after decades using the bigger supermarkets I'll often get to the checkout and be astonished that I'm not being asked for £20-30 more. I've said, "are you sure?" more than once.
And I accepted that I would have to go elsewhere to fill in the gaps - which is why I stayed away during the pandemic. Didn't want to make multiple trips.
Quite. We don't have a car so multiple trips are completely out for us. And the quality was sometimes very poor. Not all by any means but one never knew what one was getting.
"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?
I believe its about 300,000. As (a) recruiting them to rejoin the industry and (b) retraining them so that their expired licenses are renewed is so obvious and so quick, you have to ask why this hasn't just happened. Just pay them more and the crisis disappears in a puff of remoaner smoke!
Meanwhile, in the real world...
In the real world companies that are prepared to pay what needs to be paid are getting stock moved.
Again do you have anything by anyone without a vested interest where Mandy Rice Davies applies saying there's an issue?
Can I correct a comment from earlier today.
Philip's inability to understand what is being explained to him means I now suspect he's not just a Tory MP but a member of the current cabinet..
So nobody without a vested interest thinks there's an issue? Good.
For any Remoaners or bosses MRDA explains it all.
I think Philip is a Tory troll on the paylist of cchq, who's only function in life is to argue black is white irrespective of any real evidence. He is only saying these things to wind people up. We must stop feeding him.
He has his views as you have yours and there is a clash between those who support leaving the EU and those who do not
In @Philip_Thompson and @RochdalePioneers you have examples of both fighting their cause but it does not serve the debate to suggest either are trolls
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”.
Sometimes remainers are vulnerable to the lump of labour fallacy too — or its dual. The idea that the mere existence of a large number of immigrants is conclusive evidence that they must have been needed and that we could not have coped without them is also an example of this fallacy.
Gardenwalker's suggestion that the lump of labour fallacy is a complete answer to anyone who thinks that FOM, or anything else, is a problem for wage levels is misguided.
Of course the lump of labour fallacy is a fallacy - it it were not we would still require the labour force of a planet of human hunter gatherers.
But it is not the only law in economics. There are also economic laws which see a link between supply, demand and price, including the cost of wages.
Considering there's this major mythical shortage that certain people here have been banging on about for months ... I can still buy absolutely anything I can think of next day delivery direct to my house.
And I can still go into supermarkets and the shelves are full.
After months of so called crisis. I'm content to live with that. Anyone who needs a driver can pay market rates for it because there's no issues I can see. Not in the real world.
Oh, in that case why was the last lot of timber I got for DIY of abominable quality, because that was all they had left? I had to get a refund from the very apologetic manager who explained that they were short of decent timber.
It was bog standard softwood conifer stuff too - not tropical hardwood.
I don't know. Maybe your supplier isn't very good? Or maybe there's an issue with timber being in high demand?
That sort of stuff? In that quantity? It's like saying that there are shortages in the supermarkets because there is high demand for bog rolls.
Except that we did have a shortage of bog rolls in the supermarkets due to high demand.
Isn't DIY and construction booming right now? Maybe timber is going first to people prepared to pay more for it?
The point I was making was that the timber was the simplest stuff - megatonnes of it [edit: as trees] out back here in Scotland, for a start. If they are short of two by ones then there is somethiong very wrong, especially as we've had the high demand for well over a year 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.
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.
The last number for Irish "land bridge UK" LGV traffic I saw was "down 50% on pre-Brexit" (which is great - fewer emissions and pounding of roads), which was something like a 3-4% overall fall in Dover traffic. Probably noticeable at Holyhead, perhaps not at Dover unless you are counting.
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.
Mostly.
There is (was?) some scope for innovation in e.g. online account management, self-report meter readings (or smart meters). Smart metering could open the scope for more creative charging plans - was it Octopus who introduced a tariff where prices could change greatly through the day?
Competition on customer service (in theory, at least).
The potential for competition/innovation on managing future price changes - e.g. correctly pricing fixed rate tariffs and hedging appropriately.
I do remember when some operators' websites were much better than others, although there's probably much similarity now - some of the old big six would barely give you any info online, others you could change everything, see monthly reports on energy usage compared to last year etc, how what you were paying matched up with your expected costs based on usage.
There were customer-facing differences other than price, but the downside was that those not very active about switching and on SVTs got shafted (the elderly, without internet access, the poorest, perhaps).
"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?
I believe its about 300,000. As (a) recruiting them to rejoin the industry and (b) retraining them so that their expired licenses are renewed is so obvious and so quick, you have to ask why this hasn't just happened. Just pay them more and the crisis disappears in a puff of remoaner smoke!
Meanwhile, in the real world...
In the real world companies that are prepared to pay what needs to be paid are getting stock moved.
Again do you have anything by anyone without a vested interest where Mandy Rice Davies applies saying there's an issue?
Can I correct a comment from earlier today.
Philip's inability to understand what is being explained to him means I now suspect he's not just a Tory MP but a member of the current cabinet..
So nobody without a vested interest thinks there's an issue? Good.
For any Remoaners or bosses MRDA explains it all.
I think Philip is a Tory troll on the paylist of cchq, who's only function in life is to argue black is white irrespective of any real evidence. He is only saying these things to wind people up. We must stop feeding him.
He has his views as you have yours and there is a clash between those who support leaving the EU and those who do not
In @Philip_Thompson and @RochdalePioneers you have examples of both fighting their cause but it does not serve the debate to suggest either are trolls
It's not a debate though is it? I am quite happy to modify my views when persuaded. I often apologise or agree with others, but it does seem on one side only.
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 pretty much agree with that. On education though, I think schools/colleges are doing their absolute best to challenge the sexist/misogynistic culture, and have made progress. But they are fighting a losing battle against the pervasive influence of porn, as you say, and other forms of social media.
I find it interesting that porn hasn't been cancelled. How does it keep on surviving, thriving even; in this increasingly puritannical woke era? To me it seems to say something quite profound about the fallibility and contradictions of human nature.
It's a cliche, but the most puritanical may also be the most ardent users of the product. More prudish societies than ours have used porn of the era.
@Philip_Thompson if these shortages and upwards price pressures are a myth, HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN AWAY THE INCREASE IN THE PRICE OF ALDI CHAMPAGNE.
Eh?
(I may have mentioned this previously.)
On a slightly less serious note, the key is inflation. What was that about going bust - slowly then all at once? Same with inflation. Pay drivers more here, pay more for inputs there and pretty soon you are in an inflationary environment. Which beast is very difficult to re-box. No grown up government can rejoice in the PB "just pay everyone more" jamboree.
"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?
I believe its about 300,000. As (a) recruiting them to rejoin the industry and (b) retraining them so that their expired licenses are renewed is so obvious and so quick, you have to ask why this hasn't just happened. Just pay them more and the crisis disappears in a puff of remoaner smoke!
Meanwhile, in the real world...
In the real world companies that are prepared to pay what needs to be paid are getting stock moved.
Again do you have anything by anyone without a vested interest where Mandy Rice Davies applies saying there's an issue?
Can I correct a comment from earlier today.
Philip's inability to understand what is being explained to him means I now suspect he's not just a Tory MP but a member of the current cabinet..
So nobody without a vested interest thinks there's an issue? Good.
For any Remoaners or bosses MRDA explains it all.
I think Philip is a Tory troll on the paylist of cchq, who's only function in life is to argue black is white irrespective of any real evidence. He is only saying these things to wind people up. We must stop feeding him.
I think Phil is actually Boris. Yes, he went off-piste with the NI hike, but the main effect of that was to scupper the reputation of rival Rishi. Everything about Phil falls into place when you embrace this notion!
Say what you like about Johnson, the guy's a genius communicator. He knows his fans will absolutely lap this franglais up and his haters will make sure his fans will hear all about it if they haven't already.
I definitely remember very similar observations being made about another populist with a complicated relationship with the truth. Fans of genius communicator Johnson never seem very keen on that comparison though.
There are similarities. The issue is overdoing it and missing the differences and getting screwed over as a result of a rather petty desire to lump all those we dislike together as if identical.
"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?
I believe its about 300,000. As (a) recruiting them to rejoin the industry and (b) retraining them so that their expired licenses are renewed is so obvious and so quick, you have to ask why this hasn't just happened. Just pay them more and the crisis disappears in a puff of remoaner smoke!
Meanwhile, in the real world...
In the real world companies that are prepared to pay what needs to be paid are getting stock moved.
Again do you have anything by anyone without a vested interest where Mandy Rice Davies applies saying there's an issue?
Can I correct a comment from earlier today.
Philip's inability to understand what is being explained to him means I now suspect he's not just a Tory MP but a member of the current cabinet..
So nobody without a vested interest thinks there's an issue? Good.
For any Remoaners or bosses MRDA explains it all.
I think Philip is a Tory troll on the paylist of cchq, who's only function in life is to argue black is white irrespective of any real evidence. He is only saying these things to wind people up. We must stop feeding him.
He has his views as you have yours and there is a clash between those who support leaving the EU and those who do not
In @Philip_Thompson and @RochdalePioneers you have examples of both fighting their cause but it does not serve the debate to suggest either are trolls
It's not a debate though is it? I am quite happy to modify my views when persuaded. I often apologise or agree with others, but it does seem on one side only.
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 pretty much agree with that. On education though, I think schools/colleges are doing their absolute best to challenge the sexist/misogynistic culture, and have made progress. But they are fighting a losing battle against the pervasive influence of porn, as you say, and other forms of social media.
I find it interesting that porn hasn't been cancelled. How does it keep on surviving, thriving even; in this increasingly puritannical woke era? To me it seems to say something quite profound about the fallibility and contradictions of human nature.
It's a cliche, but the most puritanical may also be the most ardent users of the product. More prudish societies than ours have used porn of the era.
So warning for anyone travelling to the States in the next few weeks before the ban lifts if they are with a US spouse.
First of all, bring your marriage certificate. They don’t explicitly tell you that on the U.K. Govt website and it’s not clear on BA but it’s vital, especially given the below.
Second of all, leave plenty of time. We were stuck at the check in desk for 30 minutes while they chased down the Homeland Security Rep. There is one Homeland Rep at T5 for BA to contact and (s)he wasn’t picking up the phone nor could they be found when the BA staff went looking for them.
Luckily enough, the person who helped us overrode the system to get us on the flight but said there might be an issue at the Gate. There wasn’t and we are on the plane but we were ultra prepared and it was still a nightmare.
The “what happens if the wind doesn’t blow” question will at least partly be addressed in due course with battery storage, but we sometimes miss the big picture on renewables.
The reason we only have 1-2gw of wind power in calm anti cyclonic conditions is because we only have about 18gw of peak capacity. Build 10x as much, plus more solar (which often generates well during times there is little wind) and even in calm periods we have 10-20gw being generated. We have massive latency in traditional generation capacity. We need to get used to latency in renewables too. It’s already happening in parts of the US and China with solar. The infrastructure is cheap enough that it’s viable simply to build much more than you need and switch it off when there’s too much sun. (Or use the excess to smelt aluminium / make carbon fibre / isolate hydrogen).
If the plan is to switch everyone over to electric heating and electric cars we'll need plenty more capacity over and above our usual national 30 GW anyway. Overbuilding wind looks by far the best solution to me. Gas storage for winter highs needs to be part of the solution too, mind. But yes on a windy day no reason we shouldn't be generating 100+ GW of wind.
"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?
I believe its about 300,000. As (a) recruiting them to rejoin the industry and (b) retraining them so that their expired licenses are renewed is so obvious and so quick, you have to ask why this hasn't just happened. Just pay them more and the crisis disappears in a puff of remoaner smoke!
Meanwhile, in the real world...
In the real world companies that are prepared to pay what needs to be paid are getting stock moved.
Again do you have anything by anyone without a vested interest where Mandy Rice Davies applies saying there's an issue?
Can I correct a comment from earlier today.
Philip's inability to understand what is being explained to him means I now suspect he's not just a Tory MP but a member of the current cabinet..
So nobody without a vested interest thinks there's an issue? Good.
For any Remoaners or bosses MRDA explains it all.
I think Philip is a Tory troll on the paylist of cchq, who's only function in life is to argue black is white irrespective of any real evidence. He is only saying these things to wind people up. We must stop feeding him.
I think Phil is actually Boris. Yes, he went off-piste with the NI hike, but the main effect of that was to scupper the reputation of rival Rishi. Everything about Phil falls into place when you embrace this notion!
Definitely not the case. Philip apologised to me once, I don't think that the PM has ever done that in his life.
@Philip_Thompson if these shortages and upwards price pressures are a myth, HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN AWAY THE INCREASE IN THE PRICE OF ALDI CHAMPAGNE.
Eh?
(I may have mentioned this previously.)
On a slightly less serious note, the key is inflation. What was that about going bust - slowly then all at once? Same with inflation. Pay drivers more here, pay more for inputs there and pretty soon you are in an inflationary environment. Which beast is very difficult to re-box. No grown up government can rejoice in the PB "just pay everyone more" jamboree.
Considering my position all along is that companies should pay the market rates and if that means prices go up, then prices go up . . . then I'm not sure how you think that the price on your favourite Champagne going marginally up but being in stock is a counter to that?
I never said that there's no upwards price pressures. I've said the upwards prices should be paid and least productive trade will fall away.
Anyway, as for inflation - I have said for a while some inflation would be a very good thing. For too many years we had a perverted worldview being propagated that wages going up is dangerous inflation, but prices going up (houses) is "prosperity".
Actually wages going up is prosperity and prices going up is inflation. If the wages are going up because the market calls for it then that's a thing to be celebrated and hopefully that will deflate the cost-to-wage ratio of certain products like houses.
Considering there's this major mythical shortage that certain people here have been banging on about for months ... I can still buy absolutely anything I can think of next day delivery direct to my house.
And I can still go into supermarkets and the shelves are full.
After months of so called crisis. I'm content to live with that. Anyone who needs a driver can pay market rates for it because there's no issues I can see. Not in the real world.
Oh, in that case why was the last lot of timber I got for DIY of abominable quality, because that was all they had left? I had to get a refund from the very apologetic manager who explained that they were short of decent timber.
It was bog standard softwood conifer stuff too - not tropical hardwood.
I don't know. Maybe your supplier isn't very good? Or maybe there's an issue with timber being in high demand?
That sort of stuff? In that quantity? It's like saying that there are shortages in the supermarkets because there is high demand for bog rolls.
Except that we did have a shortage of bog rolls in the supermarkets due to high demand.
Isn't DIY and construction booming right now? Maybe timber is going first to people prepared to pay more for it?
The point I was making was that the timber was the simplest stuff - megatonnes of it [edit: as trees] out back here in Scotland, for a start. If they are short of two by ones then there is somethiong very wrong, especially as we've had the high demand for well over a year now.
Timber shortage is genuinely cross-Europe / global.
eg There was a piece on France24 last night about a French joiner who has had a house cladding delayed by months as he could not get the timber. Complaining perticularly about N American demand and willingness to pay high prices.
Scotland can't really fix the UK as 2/3 of UK used timber is imported. In the scheme of things the Scottish timber industry is small.
Plus to increase timber supply takes decades, or if you take it early then you just delay the squeeze.
Comments
Wait 6 months for the new intake to start driving and I suspect today's mistakes will look minor in comparison.
The irony was not lost on me.
Immigration isn't a bad thing, it can generally be a very good thing.
Immigration to deliberately undercut wages and creating minimum wage jobs that didn't need to be done and can only be filled because the recipients are receiving housing allowances paid for by taxpayers is a terrible idea.
Nobody in this country wanted to fix the welfare state though
And no, the price of labour did not “stabilise at the minimum wage”. Just 6% of the U.K. workforce were on the minimum wage at last reckoning.
Look up what "uncontrolled shortages" means. One store being full does not negate a neighbouring store having issues. That I have full petrol filling stations does not mean that there are no shortages as reported by @moonshine in Kent. Yes and no. Both of them have fixed permanent ranges and special buy products which refresh twice a week. Fixed ranged stuff won't just get swapped over for something else.
2) over the past 20 years the low profit margins within the industry has resulted in an awful lot of optimisation. There aren't many unproductive, inefficient journeys because to cover costs empty space is sold via the pallet networks for both legs (another reason why it's going to be the chilled logistics going down first as their journeys are always 1 way due storage methods).
once again you are looking at a short term problem believing it can be fixed immediately. And it simply can't be done. Remember agency wages are up 40-50% and that has tempted people back.
If 40% isn't enough try more. I honestly don't care if the price for drivers ends up 100% if that's the fair market rate then so be it.
And of course as a national public sector organisation focused on the strategic needs of the country we'd have a long term strategy of recruiting and training drivers. So we wouldn't have got into such a pickle in the first place.
Same with rail.
Indeed, I'd have the two integrated so that the best option is selected for moving freight.
Because China and India are transitioning to service economies (to name the two biggest), there is a profound shortage of highly trained professionals, worldwide. This is because the rate at which universities are producing doctors (say) worldwide is far less than the demand for them.
This is despite vast university expansion world wide.
What this means is a dissonance in the experience between the credentialed classes and the non-credentialed (or lower credentialed).
To the credentialed, open borders means that the cost of living goes down. At work they get to feel very international and egalitarian working with people round the world. Their rates of pay are not hit noticeably by immigration, because there is a shortage of people everywhere. It's all awesome for them.
Further down the economic scale, this is not what happens.
Social media, and the ubiquity of quite disturbing and misogynistic online porn, have a lot to answer for.
No amount of money is going to fix the issue - the people you claim to exist (retired drivers able to start work tomorrow) don't exist.
Meanwhile, in the real world...
"You don't want a job fitting carpets, you want a degree and a shot at winning Britain's got Talent. Only losers and failures do actual work."
Even foreigners have the strange habits of wanting to eat and preferring not to sleep on park benches.
It's possible (very likely given industries use of cheap labour as a substitute for productivity investments) that population growth lead to GDP per capita dropping overall..
The costs & barriers to/of entry are very very low these days so I'd say women (And couples) have taken control of the product (Onlyfans, p***hub "community" etc) rather than being at the whim of {mostly male} directors and producers.
Sure there' the preposterous scenario stuff still about, but we're not in the Ron Jeremy era any more.
Now the discussion on this site is the fact that there are too many jobs.
How the world has changed
See “Abella’s Law”, that says something like 99% of OnlyFans producers make less than $1k a month. There’s a few hundred people making $10k+ a month though, and a few dozen making $100k a month.
When I was a teenager a quarter of a century ago, getting the shocking porn meant finding a copy of Private magazine, which was somewhat more difficult than pointing your phone’s browser at any one of a hundred free websites.
Through a relative, I have an involvement in the building industry. Living 1 person to every room in a property is quite standard - and that is for a company that pays better than most.
I have seen, in addition, in the leafy parts of West London, the shitty end. Where there are multiple adults per room.
Not sure why people want to deny this is happening.
Again do you have anything by anyone without a vested interest where Mandy Rice Davies applies saying there's an issue?
Remember Philip is talking about a need for skilled, experienced HGV drivers. You don't leave school with experience.
And that is true of an awful lot of places.
Philip's inability to understand what is being explained to him means I now suspect he's not just a Tory MP but a member of the current cabinet..
For any Remoaners or bosses MRDA explains it all.
And I can still go into supermarkets and the shelves are full.
After months of so called crisis. I'm content to live with that. Anyone who needs a driver can pay market rates for it because there's no issues I can see. Not in the real world.
And now I need to prepare for a work call and then a drive home.
Sayonara!
It was bog standard softwood conifer stuff too - not tropical hardwood.
https://twitter.com/ProfTimBale/status/1440765148365393926?s=20
You are undoubtedly correct, but I think that there is a lot more to it than that.
And I accepted that I would have to go elsewhere to fill in the gaps - which is why I stayed away during the pandemic. Didn't want to make multiple trips.
We all know about the Food Trade Federation claims from a couple of weeks ago, debunked here.
The Director - a former spin Doctor for Nick Clegg - was using the fall in food trade from Q1 to pretend that his 'disaster' still existed in Q2, when the real levels were back to as near as dammit normal in June. But he forgot to mention that.
We also know how massively over-exaggerated the "food shortages" and "panic buying" were in March 2020.
Industry lobbyists speak with forked tongue.
I compare how I am treated as a customer by my dental service (private) and the NHS. In the first I am the priority, and my custom is welcomed because without it they go broke.
Whereas the NHS......Enough said.
Competition in monopolies is annoying because they are all selling a distinction without a difference; but I think it may be marginally better than the soviet style of monopolies.
I suspect a lot of it will be because children just want to go to uni but that drop in applications needs to be investigated and fixed.
Isn't DIY and construction booming right now? Maybe timber is going first to people prepared to pay more for it?
https://www.axios.com/stacey-abrams-national-tour-fc8b07ac-a5c0-4f91-a60e-24c14fb3533e.html
One of the few people who could beat Kamala in a primary, IMHO
Keir Starmer and his team, in just basic poltics are not doing it very well, they have not prepared the ground for this document, they have not prepared the ground for the rule changes, they are not on the television explaining what they want to do, it is puzzling
Sam Coates in the same discussion commented they are exempting themselves from the field so often, and until this morning, labour spokesmen are not punching their weight on the energy bill, explaining Starmer's case and they are leaving it to Jeremy Corbyn acolytes to go on the airwaves, they do not give the impression they are upto the the political fight
And I was critical for asking where is Starmer but for a broadcaster to be so frank must be very rare
I think Philip is a Tory troll on the paylist of cchq, who's only function in life is to argue black is white irrespective of any real evidence. He is only saying these things to wind people up. We must stop feeding him.
Certain people here want to abolish all critical thinking and simply take what an "expert" in the industry has to say as the gospel truth - instead of stopping and thinking "what is this person's agenda".
If the only people pushing a narrative are those with an agenda to sell, then that speaks volumes.
1. Anecdote. I was walking the dog in the park this morning and I got chatting to a recently retired HGV driver. I asked him whether the increased pay could tempt him back - his response was "not a chance, they treat you like shit". So increasing pay isn't enough necessarily to overcome the rubbish conditions for those who have retired and can live comfortably enough.
2. Supply side - Philip Thompson keeps arguing that pay more and the market will sort it out. But the trouble is that there isn't a truly free market. The supply is artificially constrained by the need to get an HGV licence, the numbers of which are restricted by the state's capacity to hold tests. The solution is surely to allow anyone to drive an HGV. So I could just pitch up at a haulier, the boss could spend a day or so teaching me how to drive an artic and off I go! Problem solved! I guess this is what actually happens in some countries. I wouldn't personally wish to go anywhere near a main road in those circumstances and it of course illustrates why a truly free market ends up being a race to the bottom.
3. Brexit. This illustrates again that the proponents of Brexit all had no clue. To be a success, Brexit needed a clear vision and a thought through 10 year plan. In this case, the capacity of the UK workforce needed to be increased. Nobody in charge of Brexit thought about this. Instead we got flag waving and glib statements that it'll all be fine. You can repeat this observation about nearly everything.
4. I'd forgotten that I could drive a 7.5 tonner on my normal licence. When the market rate rises so that the hourly rate is £90 let me know and I'll take a 3 or 6 month sabbatical!
Plus (I think - this needs translating https://www.nationalgrid.com/incidents) the burnt down interconnector is about to come back on with 1GW capacity. And the Norway Interconnector comes on stream in the next month at 1.4GW.
TBH I think the supply issue is very close to fixed. I think it will all be very different in just a month or so.
Effectively artificially low prices have been subsidised or years by the capital of people who invested in companies with unsustainable business models. Who are now falling out.
Personally I hope that we stick with somewhat higher prices, and the current 'crisis' will persuade some people to improve the Energy Efficiency of their homes.
In @Philip_Thompson and @RochdalePioneers you have examples of both fighting their cause but it does not serve the debate to suggest either are trolls
Of course the lump of labour fallacy is a fallacy - it it were not we would still require the labour force of a planet of human hunter gatherers.
But it is not the only law in economics. There are also economic laws which see a link between supply, demand and price, including the cost of wages.
There is (was?) some scope for innovation in e.g. online account management, self-report meter readings (or smart meters). Smart metering could open the scope for more creative charging plans - was it Octopus who introduced a tariff where prices could change greatly through the day?
Competition on customer service (in theory, at least).
The potential for competition/innovation on managing future price changes - e.g. correctly pricing fixed rate tariffs and hedging appropriately.
I do remember when some operators' websites were much better than others, although there's probably much similarity now - some of the old big six would barely give you any info online, others you could change everything, see monthly reports on energy usage compared to last year etc, how what you were paying matched up with your expected costs based on usage.
There were customer-facing differences other than price, but the downside was that those not very active about switching and on SVTs got shafted (the elderly, without internet access, the poorest, perhaps).
Eh?
(I may have mentioned this previously.)
On a slightly less serious note, the key is inflation. What was that about going bust - slowly then all at once? Same with inflation. Pay drivers more here, pay more for inputs there and pretty soon you are in an inflationary environment. Which beast is very difficult to re-box. No grown up government can rejoice in the PB "just pay everyone more" jamboree.
First of all, bring your marriage certificate. They don’t explicitly tell you that on the U.K. Govt website and it’s not clear on BA but it’s vital, especially given the below.
Second of all, leave plenty of time. We were stuck at the check in desk for 30 minutes while they chased down the Homeland Security Rep. There is one Homeland Rep at T5 for BA to contact and (s)he wasn’t picking up the phone nor could they be found when the BA staff went looking for them.
Luckily enough, the person who helped us overrode the system to get us on the flight but said there might be an issue at the Gate. There wasn’t and we are on the plane but we were ultra prepared and it was still a nightmare.
Now enjoying a nice glass of champagne
Gas storage for winter highs needs to be part of the solution too, mind. But yes on a windy day no reason we shouldn't be generating 100+ GW of wind.
I never said that there's no upwards price pressures. I've said the upwards prices should be paid and least productive trade will fall away.
Anyway, as for inflation - I have said for a while some inflation would be a very good thing. For too many years we had a perverted worldview being propagated that wages going up is dangerous inflation, but prices going up (houses) is "prosperity".
Actually wages going up is prosperity and prices going up is inflation. If the wages are going up because the market calls for it then that's a thing to be celebrated and hopefully that will deflate the cost-to-wage ratio of certain products like houses.
eg There was a piece on France24 last night about a French joiner who has had a house cladding delayed by months as he could not get the timber. Complaining perticularly about N American demand and willingness to pay high prices.
Scotland can't really fix the UK as 2/3 of UK used timber is imported. In the scheme of things the Scottish timber industry is small.
Plus to increase timber supply takes decades, or if you take it early then you just delay the squeeze.
https://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/tools-and-resources/statistics/statistics-by-topic/timber-statistics/uk-wood-production-and-trade-provisional-figures/
(Used to work in the industry.)
People who are pining (sorry) for bog rolls should get hygienic and fit a Shataff. (aka Sh*t-off)