Quote:
Originally Posted by Catfish
Seems there is a general shortage of workers, lots of news in the german tv channels yesterday.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-...shire-58410363
This was also in the news yesterday, water purification in England cut to make up for lack of disinfectants, supply chain failure
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...mical-shortage
https://www.thenational.scot/news/19...ical-shortage/
And empty shelves..
https://metro.co.uk/2021/09/03/food-...sues-15202901/
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-...ec-2021-09-09/
Not good news. I take it, while it is not the only reason, brexit does have an impact.
EU workers are still denied to work in the UK. Some will not even want to come back after brexit and this special experience, especially when loans are so low, and while they have to apply for a visum now. And to be honest England is not exactly making it easy getting working visa even now, certainly due to brexit and national politics behind it.
So train UK citizens to make up for losses of whatever cause of course, but 1. takes a lot of time and 2. some will not want to do the work foreigners did before.
Same here of course. I take it the EU can compensate and balance for a while, but in the end brexit and driver shortage will also have an impact here.
Now what could be done against this in a short time.. |
I do agree we need to do something in the short term, back in the 1980's the government used to fund class 1 licenses and that overcame a lot of issues in the transport industry back then, something similar could be applied again.
That funding proved its weight in gold because many who gained their class 1 on that scheme still drive today and haven't been out of work since thus a net contribution based from government subsidy.
Right now we have a 5.6% unemployment rate, if there's so many jobs why is the unemployment rate so high? well yes many people don't want to do the jobs migrants have done, but you know what why should I or You the tax payer subsidize them because they don't want to work?
If there are jobs out there even as a stop gap they should be applying oddly its a condition on their unemployment benefit so I'm told, yes its harsh and yes its unpopular but I do think its high time to get the ones who are freeloading off the system into the work place.
As Humphry Appleby said oddly I find him quite correct on how to deal with unemployment
Brexit has had an impact I don't deny that, but again a lot of our food comes in via container (even from the EU), either deep sea or short sea.
With a massive global log jam of containers and ships being out of position it has created havoc in the just in time method not just in the UK as noted earlier its here in Canada and the USA as well, I also have colleges in Denmark, Germany, Turkey, Poland, Estonia all reporting shortages of food and drivers so yes its affecting the EU as well as the UK.
A lot of our issues and just like the EU have done, we downsized our warehousing in the 1990's thus were unable to stockpile because we became so heavily reliant on the just in time method, most goods spend just hours in a warehouse not days or weeks like they did back in the 1990's.
Warehousing is a severe problem note the lack of not just in the UK but many other countries using the JIT method.
The UK is also not big on rail freight and for good reason, we don't have the capacity on the rail network to ship in the volumes other EU countries do, our network is set up for passenger transport not goods, in fact rail accounts for only 8% of goods moved in the UK, on comparison Germany and France do much better in this field than us.
The chemical (Liquid Naphthalene UN1993) they use in water purification comes in to Fawley Southampton at Nalco via ocean going tanker (post panamax and VLCC) This product doesn't come from the EU it comes from Canada, it is railed around the country and taken by road or onwards by sea in coasters, so not a brexit issue here more of a tanker problem caused by covid, don't forget a lot of crews were trapped onboard their ships during 2020 some still are!
In the short to medium term we should open up a points bases immigration system like Canada USA Australia uses and allow people based on what we need to come to work in the UK, and we should offer a permanent resident system so after 2 years you can claim permanent resident status giving them leave to remain indefinitely (those who already have more than 2 years and can prove it should get it automatically without doing another 2 years).
To get a visa to go to Canada while we were in the EU was challenging for normal people, same with the USA and Australia, a lot of younger people have now seen that because were out of the EU it has become easier.
The biggest concern for the USA was anyone and everyone could go to the UK change passports and get into the USA which is why they had so many restrictions even though the UK was on the visa wavier program.
Even I had nightmares getting the green card having to prove I was born in the UK while many who held a UK passport born outside the UK were denied, so in one respect it has freed up travel to these countries (not that it was too difficult in the first place mind).
Overall we do need to sort out the unemployed in the UK at 5.6% according to the figures well there shouldn't be a shortage in a lot of industries.
I had to do jobs i hated why should the people who don't want to work be any different.
Unfortunately the welfare culture in the UK has got to the point of if i go to work I get less money I'm better off on state handouts.
Naturally there are genuine people out there who cannot work for various reasons and its those I feel sorry for, because its those who actually need the help and unfortunately its those who want to simply sit and sponge of the state that really screw it up for the genuine ones.