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UK facing summer of food shortages due to lack of lorry drivers
Loss of 100,000 hauliers due to Covid and Brexit will cause food ‘rolling power cuts’, experts warn
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CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Do we need an EU referendum thread? (Brexit thread)
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Posted 3 years ago #
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The 2018 Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas, the former world road race champion Lizzie Deignan and the seven-time Grand Tour winner Chris Froome are among leading names in British cycling to have signed an open letter calling on the government to assist young British riders whose racing careers have been stalled by post-Brexit travel arrangements.
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Posted 3 years ago # -
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OpenStreetMap Foundation, which was formally registered in 2006, two years after the project began, is a limited company registered in England and Wales. Following Brexit, the organisation says the lack of agreement between the UK and EU could render its continued operation in Britain untenable.
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Posted 3 years ago # -
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Boris Johnson once said the EU “could go whistle” if they expected the UK to pay a divorce bill, but later accepted that the UK had to clear its debts in order to negotiate a trade deal.
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Posted 3 years ago # -
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There is an estimated 100,000 person shortfall in lorry drivers due to workers leaving the country following Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic. And The Road Haulage Association (RHA) welcomed the move to longer lorries, saying it would go some way in easing the jobs crisis.
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/extra-long-lorries-driver-shortage-b1908339.html
Posted 3 years ago # -
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The Government had initially planned to conduct a 15-year trial until 2027 into the proposed scheme. But wrapped up the project early after deciding that it had produced enough data, The Telegraph reported.
However not all responses to the consultation were positive. 57 per cent supported an early end to the trial but 43 per cent called for LSTs to be removed from the roads entirely, out of concern for vulnerable road users.
Green groups expressed their concerns about the plan, saying that the savings in terms of road miles and pollutants would not make up for the impact on pedestrians and cyclists. They also pointed to the likelihood that roads would need to be widened to accommodate the bigger lorries.
Chris Todd, the director of the campaign group Transport Action Network, labelled the project as “greenwashing in overdrive”. He added: “We know from the nature of the extra swing on the vehicle and the bigger blind spot that it’s going to likely have a more chilling effect on people walking and cycling.”
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Posted 3 years ago # -
Wonder why the Tories aren't making a fuss about this consultation being "undemocratic" - after all, there were only 46 responses. 26 from individuals and 20 from organisations. Only four respondents had been directly involved in the trial.
Even that might be an overstatement of the figures. The analysis of responses is so poorly written it is hard to work out what it is actually saying.
Posted 3 years ago # -
Middle class world problem?
Posted 3 years ago # -
Re-posting this from the SfP thread since it involves the difficulties created by Brexit, as well as Coronavirus:
“During lockdown, a lot of European staff went home and they couldn’t come back either because of Brexit because they didn’t have their visas or because the country was closed due to lockdown.
Mr Gassabi said even their suppliers, who he stressed he was fighting with to keep prices low, were facing similar staffing problems.
“Everything is also now more expensive such as supplies and wages as a result of Brexit and that’s going to transfer to the customers.”
And he's not the only one suffering: Fred Berkmiller, the chef patron of L'Escargot Bleu on Broughton Street blamed staffing issues amongst other things for having to give up the take away service that kept them going through lockdown, the limited opening hours in the re-opened Broughton Street restaurant, and fact that his L'Escargot Blanc restaurant on Queensferry Street is remaining closed for the foreseeable future. And one of his suppliers of organic veg is equally scathing about the difficulties it is creating in recruiting seasonal labour, and the costs it already adding to the importation of fresh foodstuffs even before the full gamut of border control measures are finally implemented (if they ever are).
Posted 3 years ago # -
Quote from the Phantassie Grower's blog...
What I really wanted to mention though was immigration, so often a dirty word in Leavers’ England but not so much here in Scotland. People coming, and people going in Scotland’s case, is an economic and cultural good and such migration is the lifeblood of the food and drink sector. Yes, we need seasonal harvesting labour and it coming from elsewhere is not new. Until approximately 50 years ago Irish families used to come every year to lift potatoes. The jobs are filled and the workers return home, just as I and countless others went to the Vendange in France (a long and nostalgic time ago). I am filled with memories of early morning girolles collected for breakfast (disgusting!), oursins (sea urchins) and cold mustard-coated thyme-scented wild rabbit legs for lunch. In our little microcosm we have welcomed folk from all over the world to work with us and enjoy Scotland. The local staff always look forward to their arrival. Rich contributions and rich rewards.
These people are not taking British jobs but they are enabling British businesses to produce for their home market rather than supermarkets buying more cheaply from abroad.
There is a bigger picture though. Whilst negotiating Edinburgh’s Leith Walk the other day I mentally counted up all the empires of the Fortes, the Continis, the Crollas and their Asian counterparts, the Siciian pastry shop, Spanish tapas bars, Swedish pubs, Mama Bross (ok she is from Montreal!) Turkish and Greek sandwich places, Asian and Chinese supermarkets, Polish and Romanian corner shops - all vibrant parts of the most cosmopolitan street in Scotland. When people arrive from elsewhere the thing they cling on to most is their food culture, then they want to share it with their new neighbours.
This is not anti-Southern, just acknowledging that we are not England and have always needed immigration to keep economy going. I fear that some people with decent pensions may think it's better to stay inside the UK model as they have enough reserves to weather the self inflicted wound of Bxt. Poorer sections of society need something new - I don't mean permanent SNP/Green government but something that allows Scotland to move forward and avoid further punishments for not being enthusiastically 'British enough'.
If we do nothing it will fester away anyway - pretty hacked off at the ineptness of having reams of red tape and waste paper being taped to boxes coming in from Amsterdam. No-one looks at these btw - they are printed off with 8 copies and just sealed on. Totally illogical waste of trees. Meanwhile stuff somes in from Tai Chung City with far less trouble.Yes I know we should grow bikes locally!
Posted 3 years ago # -
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it was the Brexit leaders who were “a privileged elite”
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Posted 3 years ago # -
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First, and most significant, is Brexit. EU HGV drivers are no longer able to obtain visas to work in the UK. The Road Haulage Association (RHA) estimates that nearly 20,000 European HGV drivers returned to EU countries in 2020.
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Posted 3 years ago # -
If only there was some other way for people to make short journeys which didn't require fossil fuels?
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BP and Tesco close pumps and ration fuel amid HGV driver shortage
https://news.stv.tv/world/bp-and-tesco-close-pumps-and-ration-fuel-amid-hgv-driver-shortage
Posted 3 years ago # -
Tesco credits use of rail freight for keeping shelves stocked in supply crisis.
Posted 3 years ago # -
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There are a few problems with Boris Johnson's big idea, namely that the sharp fall in the supply of unskilled and semi skilled workers in the UK - triggered by Brexit, reinforced by Covid - will automatically lead businesses to invest, such that the UK's long history of low productivity and low incomes will end on his watch.
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Posted 3 years ago # -
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The UK wants to rip up the existing Northern Ireland protocol and replace it with new Brexit arrangements, warning it would be a “historic misjudgment” if the EU did not consider such a change.
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Is that the one that was signed 9 months ago?
Posted 3 years ago # -
You would hope that this was the first stage in BoBo & Co executing a climbdown and taking us back into the single market proper, or at least an EFTA-equivalent level deal, while trying to save face. Sadly the reality is probably that they actually do believe they can just strut about like angry peacocks and Johnny Foreigner will realise that they can't keep good ol' Blighty down wot wot and do what they're told like the good old days.
Posted 3 years ago # -
The days of naval battles in the North Sea or Irish Sea are thankfully over. Why the British Empire expects anyone to pay a blind bit of notice to its petulant demands is anyone's guess.
Posted 3 years ago # -
UkGov is trying to provoke a reaction from EU.
Our contacts in EU aren't impressed with their lying and exceptionalism.
Upshot is we pay more and favours are harder to get. We need some 'adults in the room!'.Posted 3 years ago # -
The EU will offer to remove a majority of post-Brexit checks on British goods entering Northern Ireland as it seeks to turn the page on the rancorous relationship with Boris Johnson.
Up to 50% of customs checks on goods would be lifted and more than half the checks on meat and plants entering Northern Ireland would be abandoned under the bold offer from Brussels.
The olive branch will be extended on Wednesday in defiance of the French government, which internally raised concerns about the proposed move by Maroš Šefčovič, the EU’s Brexit commissioner.
It comes after David Frost, the UK’s Brexit minister, warned it would be a “historic misjudgment” if the EU did not consider scrapping and replacing the existing Northern Ireland protocol.
Another perspective:
https://davidallengreen.com/2021/10/the-brexit-policy-of-admiral-boom/
...we have the preposterous negotiation of Frost against Frost.
The Frost of 2020 who not only trumpeted the Brexit deal in general but that it ended the role of European Court of Justice in particular against the Frost of 2021 who now says the role of that court is fundamentally important.
Both were/are wrong.
The Frost of 2020 did not want to admit the small continuing role of the European Court of Justice.
The Frost of 2021 does not want to admit that the small continuing role of the European Court of Justice is of almost no practical importance.
The European Court of Justice is a sham issue – it is a contrived, bad faith attempt to find something – anything – to open up the protocol.
As an exercise in misdirection, it is up there with the http://www.naden.de/blog/bbvideo-bbpress-video-plugin -->
[+] Embed the video | Chewbacca defense./" target="_blank">Video Download Get the Video Player The current politics of the United Kingdom have a surreal quality – where things are better illustrated by references to Mary Poppins and South Park than by citing precedents from political history.
We have a Brexit agreement negotiated and celebrated as ‘excellent’ by the same minister who now says it is so flawed that it needs to be re-negotiated.
Like the (literally) ship-shape house introduced at the beginning of Mary Poppins, what should seem very odd has very soon become very normal.
Yet, as the attorney in South Park avers in another context, ‘it does not make sense.’
And the key to understanding so much of current law and policy of United Kingdom is that it does not make sense, but it is happening anyway.
Posted 3 years ago #
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