Yep, it's frustrating having to constantly protest your innocence in the whole shit show. A minority of Brits brought this on the rest of us.
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Totally. It's like constantly having to apologize for a drunk uncle in a restaurant who keeps trying to pinch the waitress' arse and demanding more beer really loudly.
Great analogy!
My grandparents voted for Brexit, "because of the Poles coming over here and taking all our jobs". I said "Gran, you haven't worked since 1996. They aren't taking your jobs". Apparently denying their grandkids and great grandkids the ability to freely travel, live and work around Europe was a price worth paying for that.
Oh good, papers must be lying
Which paper? Which paper told you that local drivers shortages weren't filled by foreign drivers? You do realize that this shortage of local drivers is a decade old, why do you think it hasn't been a visible issue?
And why would that surprise you?
Yeah I haven’t seen any of those things either. Literally not experienced it once. Anecdotal evidence compared against headline-driven media isn’t a good way to evaluate two contrasting realities across an entire country.
Like I said it’s obvious that Brexit makes this issue worse. It was just a lazy piece of journalism to imply one led to the other. It didn’t. The pandemic didn’t create this problem. Brexit didn’t create this problem. Long-term underinvestment and mismanagement of that sector led to this problem. They just made it worse. Let’s stop giving people easy excuses for hard problems.
If we were serious about holding Brexiteers to account for making lazy links and relying on half truths leading to serious problems further down the line, we would apply the same standards to people who offer a convenient political narrative for us too.
Not here, not since law was introduced saying you cant pay slave wages anymore you have to pay local wage which haulers dont want to do
If you think that the ports of Amsterdam and Rotterdam are only served by dutch drivers and dutch hauling companies and if you think that these trucks cross the Netherlands empty then I know that you have no clue.
Also don't mix being a foreigner and being poor or leaving in difficult conditions, that's a very suspect idea. The largest hauling company in Europe is Danish and the largest markets to provision are french and german.
Do you think this isn't really a big issue in the UK and that it's a similar issue in European countries such as Germany? How does the fact that Britain has to use its army to maintain petrol supply and others don't, fit into "anecdotal evidence compared against headline-driven media"?
Germany has a driver shortage, too. But tens of thousands of Eastern European drivers are propping up the system to a manageable status. The point of the commentary wasn't that Brexit is the absolute cause for the shortage, it even mentioned that the pandemic also played a role in exacerbating it. The point is that by ending freedom of movement the Brits blew up a manageable problem into a crisis.
If your position is that you can't criticize Brexit for a problem unless its is the absolute root cause of the issue in general, then you will be hard pressed to point out any faults at all.
My commentary was on the piece of journalism not the wider debate. I’m not saying we can only discuss things exclusively caused by Brexit because few things will be, most problems are multi faceted. But the way the reporter framed it completely ignored any of the historical background and the way she flowed from one idea to another was designed to create that implicit association: Brexit = lorry trouble. It wasn’t good reporting. It was designed to allow people to believe the easy answer to this big problem is the political bunching bag her audience wanted it to be. Which is exactly the kind of tactics that led to all of the Brexiteering misinformation and scapegoating working in the first place.
Except it's also an issue in Germany and I'm sure they have reported it in the past. So Brexit not being the sole cause was a given. It was also not intended as a news report, to comprehensively portrait an issue, but an opinion piece: you can see the "Meinung" (=opinion) watermark in the top left. It's a "told you so" commentary about how the Brits didn't value the support that freedom of movement, with its cheap Eastern European workers, gave to their economy and how they now have to call in the army to help, usually the mark of a state of emergency or failing state.
I did explain it a few days ago. The difference now that the Uk has left the EU is not only the shortage of drivers, which as you say also exists in other countries, but also cabotage which is collection of loads and dropping off by lorries from all EU/EEA countries plus the customs barrier (i.e.delays) crossing from one non-EUCU country (GB) into the EUCU plus next year when it will get even worse when the UK start checking goods on trucks from the EU which they haven't even done yet.
To be fair, no-one mentions this in the reporting of the problems.
This is why the UK has problems and EU countries don't and next year they will get worse, it's just inevitable and all this has been pointed out long ago.
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Yep opinion pieces are an opportunity for lazy misinformation. That’s one of them.
Desperation...
Germans with no HGV experience asked to drive lorries amid UK fuel crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/busines...rged-to-drive-lorries-to-ease-our-fuel-crisis
Germans with no HGV experience asked to drive lorries amid UK fuel crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/busines...rged-to-drive-lorries-to-ease-our-fuel-crisis
You've completely missed the point and that's OK, carry on
What was your point? Are you saying that Netherlands don't have foreign drivers and hauling companies on their roads, feeling international and internal contracts? Also do you think that foreign drivers are synonym for slave wages?
[QUOTE="JPRouve, post: 27866382, member: Also do you think that foreign drivers are synonym for slave wages?
[/QUOTE]
Yes
[/QUOTE]
Yes
So when a dutch truck driver is on dutch roads he has a normal wage and when he crosses the border to pickup something in Antwerp his wage becomes a slave wage despite the fact that the way he is paid is the same?
Before someone else writes it: everywhere the same around Europe. Here in Germany people from Thailand and Vietnam were asked to start driving tuctucs.
Dude you so miss the point and are out of touch with the real world. Last week we had kpn laying fibre glass Internet cables in the street, the spoken language of the team was Arabic I'm guessing, apart from the team lead no-one spoke Dutch or English, the project lead was from Eastern Europe. Why do you think these non European workers were doing the job? How do you think they get permits?
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But they can only start driving articulated "dangerous and inflammable goods" fuel tankers after they pass the now easier UK test - previously known as the Cycling Proficiency Test.
What is the link with truck drivers and cabotage? I seemingly understood your point, you think that we are talking about Eastern European drivers which is a mistake, what I'm talking about applies to all long haul drivers and in particular to drivers from countries next to you, in this case Belgium, Germany, Denmark or France. That's how you compensate for shortages by sharing a larger pool of drivers.
Very good.
Even if the economy falls off a cliff, I still predict Brexit to be popular.
Radical positions never get less popular when things get bad. If Brexit really fecks up the economy, even more than predicted, then I suspect nationalism is going to rise to new heights in the UK. They'll blame the EU, immigrants, etc.
Yep. If they can successfully blame a financial crash caused by banks and regulators lying about the quality of mortgages they were selling on immigrants and poor people then they can do anything.
They can do anything except improve the lives of those who need it the most.
Ah the mighty economic percentages, when we forget from the shitty place we are coming...
Further concessions being given by the day. If only we were in a trade union where this would happen naturally.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58766648
I dont see many EU based drivers taking up this offer.
Wow… is that graph legit?Ah the mighty economic percentages, when we forget from the shitty place we are coming...
They've moved the poultry workers visas from 24th December to 31st December if I'm reading it right. "Miss Christmas with your family and be back just after so you can spend a few extra days killing turkeys"
You couldnt make it up honestly!
The government are making a great job of fkn everything up.
Brexit wouldve been classed a disaster if not for the covid pandemic rescuing them by diverting eyes away from the shit storm they happily created!
Source OECD and published by BBC. As reliable as it gets
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Just unbelievable. I hope all those UK farmers voted Brexit otherwise it’s just cruel.