Yes, no problems at all in Italy, even out in the sticks where we live.
Brexited | the worst threads live the longest
- Thread starter Silva
- Start date
On the point of movement of labour from the EU - Brexit doesn't preclude it, that was a political choice by the Tories which they've now reneged on it seems. Although it's fair to say that it does add some friction. A quick fix may not be possible that is true but I was more interested in the medium term outlook than the short term one. The short term could be bad, at least in relative terms.
Another interesting point, to me at least, is that the Tories line on this is more reminiscent of what in times gone past you would've more expected to hear from the left. They're telling the big companies to invest in the domestic workforce and bring the pay and working conditions up to acceptable standards rather than relying on cheap labour from abroad. The cynic in me thinks the whole fuel thing yesterday was a powerplay from the big fuel companies to force the government into opening up foreign labour markets to them again. After all improving standards, improving pay, investing in training along with the impact of these issues on business generally affects the only important thing to them - the bottom line.
But my post was addressed to Stanley, not you. Stanley wanted a short term solution. Also:
OK fair enough.
There are supposedly a million vacancies in the UK for low paid unskilled jobs, you can see the hordes of unemployed Brits rushing for an interview.
The turkey supplier on the tv advertised for vacancies, one applicant turned up, one refused the job out of ten vacancies.
Put the minimum wage to £50/h , still no-one would turn up.
Amazing thing in the UK people still believe what the government tell them, despite a continuous stream of lies.
The turkey supplier on the tv advertised for vacancies, one applicant turned up, one refused the job out of ten vacancies.
Put the minimum wage to £50/h , still no-one would turn up.
Amazing thing in the UK people still believe what the government tell them, despite a continuous stream of lies.
Our business upped our salaries for unskilled labourers and we now have no problems getting staff.
Does this affect your profits and why didn't you do that before?
It doesn't affect our profits because we now charge more for our products. We're able to charge more for our products because our competitors are either paying peanuts and struggling to manufacture products or they're doing the same as us and paying more and charging more.
If we did it before we would lose sales because our competitors would undercut us.
But you or them could have done this before. And when the dust settles the cleaner is still going to earn less than the sales manager and the sales manager is still going to earn less than the director and so on and in the meantime the price of the goods has gone up so with inflation you're back to where you started.
They haven't tried putting the salaries up and seeing what the response is, you're just guessing. Higher salaries is the reason my company is 90% full of non eu nationals
My point is that if you put the salaries up for one, you have to put them up for all. If the cleaner was earning £10/h and is now earning £20/h , the girl typing the invoices was on £15/h and therefore now wants £30/h and so on up the chain. I've no objection to people being paid better, just they are aware of the consequences.
This is what it's about, actions and consequences; that's what this thread is about.
We couldn't have done it before unless every single manufacturer of our product sat around a table and agreed to up their prices and pay staff more. Even if this did happen we would then have to trust that they'd actually increased their prices and not used said meeting as a tactic to continue charging the same price and undercut everyone else.
Fundamentally it's the market that decides what an unskilled labourer is worth. If there's far more jobs than labourers the wage increases, if the opposite is true wages decrease.
The market in the UK has changed from the latter scenario to the former. In terms of inflation cancelling out wage increases I don't think that's completely true. Of course prices will go up but wages will increase faster if there are more jobs than workers.
It also isn't happening across the board as skilled office worker salaries haven't changed as there aren't more jobs than people in this area (in my business anyway).
I don't disagree with most of what you say, but it's equally true here, there are shortages of workers but it hasn't come to the point where services are disrupted.
I'm guessing you're referring to lorry drivers? I'd be interested to know the backlog of driver tests in other countries. It seems in the UK they basically haven't been testing drivers for 18 months meaning there is a backlog of several dozen thousand (I was told the backlog of tests was 15 times greater than the volume of drivers that left the UK).
A simple solution would be to allow someone with a normal driver's licence to be able to drive 7.5 & 10T vehicles (as they used to be able to). Also ideally cancel the CPC requirement.
The real problem is where were these young up and coming British workers that would fill these gaps, same goes for the construction industry.
Not just the lorry drivers, from the start of the food process right through the chain.
Why would there be delays in the UK and not any other country.
Regardng lorries /licences the Uk can do what they like except those licences wouldn't be acceptable outside the UK.
Why did all these people leave the Uk? There are no problems with HGV deliveries or light van deliveries here despite having similar shortages to the UK pre-Brexit. You can see all EU nations' lorries on the roads except one ex-member who you used to see all the time, not now.
As I said I'm unsure what other countries have done from a testing point of view. If EU countries were smart and continued testing then I'd imagine they wouldn't have the same problem.
We have several staff who want to become lorry drivers (not surprising given the £6k salary bump they would get) but we simply can't get them tested.
I'm guessing a key reason people left the UK was they didn't want to be stuck in a foreign country unable to see loved ones due to various lockdowns and travel bans. As I said though I believe those that left only account for a tiny fraction compared with those waiting to be tested.
But if they were international lorry drivers the trade hardly stopped and those who left are no doubt filling vacancies in the EU driving lorries all round the EU.
The people driving big artics, tankers or dangerous goods are not going to be people who have just passed their test either, nevermind getting insurance.
Yes we are talking about the crap jobs but I was talking about immigration as a whole for the English point. I didn't 'go on' about speaking English, I mentioned it in passing about general immigration to the UK. Clearly language doesn't matter if we're talking solely about truck drivers or fruit pickers.
You are in a huff. With respect, you have more than double the posts on this particular thread than anyone else and it accounts for about half your total posts. A significant portion of that seems to be spent arguing with people who voted remain but don't agree with every single little thing you say or getting into a huff again about how apparently everyone, including remainers, are constantly changing the parameters.
If it will make you feel better, yes brexit is clearly a cluster feck and yes it's clearly having a massive impact on trucking and haulage into the UK.
As classical mechanic said, it looks like the government will probably change the rules soon so we'll see. I agree with jprouve that many still won't want to take it up because of the faff in the whole process of crossing the border now.
I won't do it to myself because I'm sure it will boil my blood but would be interested to see what the opinions are like on the spurs forum I used to post on.
Full of Southern Tories, many of whom voted for brexit and were ideologically inclined towards it, rather than just a passing vote. I wonder what they're saying now. Probably somehow blaming Brussels for it all.
Full of Southern Tories, many of whom voted for brexit and were ideologically inclined towards it, rather than just a passing vote. I wonder what they're saying now. Probably somehow blaming Brussels for it all.
Am I upsetting you or something? No I'm not in a huff, I should be in camera with a big smile on my face. Do you determine which threads I post in, I post in threads where the subject interests me - why shouldn't I disagree with remainers, they can talk nonsense too. I can disagree with Labour and Tories as I don't support either. Labour thinking they can rejoin and pretending Corbyn and Starmer didn't want Brexit is also delusional.
At this particular time we are not talking about general immigration, and no-one mentioned speaking English apart from you.
Anyway as some stupid group is playing at Lancashire Cricket Ground meaning the United match has moved and can't watch it on TV I'll be absent from half past until tomorrow night because I don't want to find out the result before I watch it.
You could not make that up. And they knew the situation, but continued the xenophobia.
The people who have just passed tend to drive the 7.5 and 10T vehicles. Those drivers then get "promoted" into the 18T vehicles and those drivers move into the artics is how it tends to work from my experience. So if 70,000 drivers passed the test tomorrow you'd see 70,000 more experienced drivers currently in smaller vehicles moving into larger ones.
After what happened at Christmas where many lorry drivers didn't get back to their families due to the border restrictions I certainly wouldn't want to cross borders as a driver at the moment. Not when there are plenty of vacancies domestically across Europe.
In fairness this applies to British drivers as well. We are able to find HGV drivers for £13 per hour because they leave at 6am and return back at 2-3pm every day; they're delivering within England only and the loads are relatively simple with repeat customers who are happy to put the kettle on etc when they are being offloaded.
Compare this to drivers who go overseas, sleep in the cab and only get back to their families sporadically and the salary at the moment is near twice what we pay.
Interesting reading this thread, I don't tend to comment in them as it'd just a bickering competition.
But the bit in bold made chuckle, have you used public transport in the UK? It's not THAT bad if you live in a major city, but for instance last night, my girlfriend finished work in Cardiff (capital of Wales) and tried to get a train home to Bridgend at 11:30, they unexpectedly cancelled a train and she'd have to catch one at 12:50am.
Now, me being the boyfriend, not wanting her to stay on her own on a Friday night full of drunkards and god knows who/what else, decided to make an hour round trip to pick her up.
If the UK had any sort of reliable public transport I'm sure a lot more people would use it.
Yet another climb down by the government. Can't call it embarrassing because they are too thick to be embarrassed.
I really do hope that none of the 5,000 truck drivers that they are trying to entice take up the offer of a temporary visa to come here and work.
I really do hope that none of the 5,000 truck drivers that they are trying to entice take up the offer of a temporary visa to come here and work.
Good or bad it's still an alternative, what will you achieve by queueing for hours only to find out next week there is no petrol? The prblem with this thread is people are bringing problems without solutions, what also narks me is that ONLY the UK has shortages of personell. the article above about shortage of nurses, it's impossible to hire nurses in NL the pandemic has put an end to the attraction of becoming a nurse. It's not a UK only disease, there are shortages everywhere with all sorts of things.
We get it, you have a girlfriend.
@Stanley Road I agree about people being idiots for panick buying, but public transport in the UK should improve vastly before we start saying that more people should use it, though I do agree that more people should use public transport in general, but the cost of it and the unreliability of it in the UK makes it necessary to have a car, and once you have a car, it's hard to go back to waiting hours for a train, having to adjust your schedule to fit an unreliable network of trains and busses.
Also, priced up a train ticket to London the other day - £65 for a return, again, I have a girlfriend @JPRouve so that's £130, instantly makes it cheaper and more convenient to drive.
Not sure on the point I'm trying to make to be honest, so you may go about your day without replying if you want.
I agree public transport in the UK is shit and way overpriced, ours is amazing except for last week. All trains in Holland cancelled for tech reasons, tram and bus home. The benefit here is most or all companies pay for your travel. It was a scheme devised years ago by the government to get country bumkins back to work, most of the work is in the west of Holland.
Not sure that people actually believe what the government says. Especially the younger generation.
It is more like people take little or no notice of what they say and just believe what they want to believe.
And that is either the media or social media, or what their friends say.
Boris does not have the influence some think. It is just that he is there as the PM.
It doesn't even make sense "no petrol for my bike"
Brilliant just brilliant
You're right it should be "gas"It doesn't even make sense "no petrol for my bike"
White immigrants one assumes looking at the photos
You are a migrant worker
- There is a shortage on your position all across Europe
- Countries like Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Luxembourg have the same or higher wages than the UK
- Language is not a factor as is barely needed or even your mother tongue is closer to other countries (latin, germanic, nordic languages)
- You are a EU citizen:
*Your condition is more stable on this countries as you are free to work with whoever you want without depending on a special visa (probably temporarily and tied to a company)
*As a EU citizen you have an assured safety net in case of unemployment and health care if you don't have a work.
*More likely you will not get kicked out of the country if you remain more than 3 month unemployed (though it could happen)
* risk to get chucked out if you are not needed any more
* racism picker up during the brexit debate
Why the feck you would decide to go to the UK? it doesn't make any sense.
- There is a shortage on your position all across Europe
- Countries like Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Luxembourg have the same or higher wages than the UK
- Language is not a factor as is barely needed or even your mother tongue is closer to other countries (latin, germanic, nordic languages)
- You are a EU citizen:
*Your condition is more stable on this countries as you are free to work with whoever you want without depending on a special visa (probably temporarily and tied to a company)
*As a EU citizen you have an assured safety net in case of unemployment and health care if you don't have a work.
*More likely you will not get kicked out of the country if you remain more than 3 month unemployed (though it could happen)
* risk to get chucked out if you are not needed any more
* racism picker up during the brexit debate
Why the feck you would decide to go to the UK? it doesn't make any sense.
For once, the new UK anglo-centric alliance with the United States and Australia is a step ahead for geopolitics clarity (the European Union really needs to integrate more as a block now, with a budget for common defense at least, and take care of its own security issues) and for a more coherent perspective with shared historical and present issues (trade, cold war, racism, etc.). On the other hand, too more clarity is also a step ahead towards more active confrontation among the blocks and the associated spheres of influence, so let’s fasten our belts…