Panic and Politics – VG

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Boris Johnson will never admit that Brexit has anything to do with the ongoing crisis: Don’t panic! Closed gas stations are the business community’s response to this long illness. There are late effects of the pandemic, you should know.

That is why he did not listen to the warnings of organizations and industries that have warned since Brexit that a development in the labor market could lead to the current situation.

Both in 2019, 2020 and even later In June 2021Johnson learned that every year there were fewer hands in important businesses – in part because of the uncertainty around foreign labor after Brexit.

But even expectations from the prime minister’s finance ministry did not make him plan any employment crisis.

On the contrary, Boris Johnson, who had long loaned his chief of staff and closest adviser Dominic Cummings, made the independent point that such inputs were intended only to undermine the fundamental project of government: the liberation of Britain.

Or England, to be more precise.

As is often the case before, Johnson’s approach to dealing with complex problems is that they can be removed. It is easier than finding a solution.

Why not start by eliminating the crisis of understanding itself.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps can reassure the British: “There is more than enough fuel.” Gasoline hoarding one “Built Status”It was allegedly developed by the trucking industry and the British Transport Workers’ Union.

While he was the Minister of Environment George Eustis On Monday, the imaginary crisis was explained as follows: “People who don’t need gasoline are still buying gasoline.”

The next day, Downing Street had to stress that the government had not blamed most people at all, and that ministers “fully understood the frustration of the citizens”. Not only this; In fact, they were “terribly upset” on behalf of the people.

It is a disgrace to the government.

To somehow confirm that there is no crisis, the new country took over Culture Minister Nadine Doris on Twitter He declared: “There is no shortage of fuel. I repeat, there is no shortage of fuel!! »

As commentator Hugo Rifkind wrote in the conservative newspaper The Times afterwards: If the CAPSLOCK (capitalization) and double exclamation points from the minister don’t subside, what happens next?

Rifkind points out that standing there with an empty jar and being told there is “more than enough fuel,” is like hearing there’s enough food, just in the stomachs of people who aren’t you.

Regardless of the fact that most of Britain’s 8,000 gas stations are now closed, milk, animals for slaughter and agricultural products are not collected on British farms, fish are thrown back into the sea, pubs are running out of beer, or chain stores Super Market Sainsbury’s It has neither fresh food nor anything in the fridge to offer, so there is still one common denominator:

shortage, scarcity, lack drivers.

A qualified workforce that can drive trucks, tankers, and lorries that connect producers, processing firms, warehouses, stores and service providers to their audience. consumers. Also known as most people.

Currently standing 100,000 empty driver seats. Many quit after reaching the minimum age. During the pandemic, some have found jobs with better wages and consistent working hours.

However, the vast majority of those who excel in their absence are from Eastern Europe. Like those who washed and made beds or handled waste, truck drivers also began returning to Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Romania after the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Soon they were joined by nurses and hospital doctors. Then the epidemic came, and more of them returned home. To never return to the archipelago.

Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t. Brexit was to “take back control”, particularly across the border, so that fortune hunters from the EU would not take jobs from British labour.

If the British don’t want jobs, it will show. or can not take.

Heavy transport drivers are not trained overnight. Actual training takes three to six months, depending on the vehicle’s size and complexity. A trailer card costs about 60,000 kroner, and what I trained in was a small, low-paid family-friendly occupation with long working days, heavy lifting and a high level of stress.

The industry has long tried to tell Boris Johnson that hiring is less than dropping out.

This weekend, the government had to grant 5,000 temporary entry visas to the European Union for large motorists and 5,500 seasonal workers in the poultry industry to solve an acute logistics crisis…sorry, challenge. Seasonal workers will first and foremost make sure Brits have a Christmas turkey at home.

Who wants a work and entry visa that expires on Christmas Eve, you say?

One who will not apply is Polish trailer driver Tomasz Orensky, who says the following financial times:

“Why would anyone go to Britain, go through fire and water just to expose themselves to all the mistreatment, when traveling to Ireland or Holland and earning more, respect, driving on better motorways with nice hotels – and being a free European,” not a second-class citizen? “

This is a question that Boris should find a good answer to soon. If nothing else on their part.

Many European countries are experiencing labor shortages and logistical problems after the pandemic. But no one closed the gas stations. Nobody has empty storage shelves or dry beer taps.

For a prime minister elected to “take back control”, this is a crisis – no matter what.