Now that choice is becoming a reality, as the options of what to buy decrease due to shortages of everything from shipping containers to HGV drivers and the people who kill pigs and now actual fuel required to move around.

I think we may have a problem in the logistics sector. Asking why brings forth a complicated answer, although people seem to want a single culprit to blame, as if life, and business, is ever that simple.

It looks more like this, from what I can glean: The HGV driver sector has been in decline for years, in terms of people entering the profession, and the perceived value of that profession.

The army has had to be drafted in for some areas.

HGV drivers in the UK generally have it worse than in mainland EU in terms of facilities, respect, wages, and every other factor.

So the industry was not in great shape to begin with.

Then Brexit lost us around 20,000 drivers from the EU. And that’s a very big factor. And the lockdowns prevented tens of thousands of people training to be HGV drivers.

So supply of drivers reduced, drastically, and demand is now increasing, drastically, across the entire EU as well as the UK as the economies get moving again.

The fuel crisis may be abetting but the shortage of consumer goods persists.

The five-month visa won’t work. The drivers in the EU have been badly treated by the UK so why would they want to come back for a few months to bail us out before being ejected again.

Literally used then discarded? Do you think that’s enticing for them? We need them, they do not need us. They know it, even if we are only slowly seeing it. There’s additional contributory factors, some large, some small, some immediate, some long in the making.

Which is why demanding an immediate and effective solution is unrealistic. Unless it’s having the Armed Services step in, which the Government only considers a last resort because it ‘looks bad’. Very. On them. So in reality, there just isn’t a short-term solution, it’s for ‘the market’ to sort it out.

And the Government has seriously disrupted the market, by preventing the labour market to include the EU. The shortage of HGV drivers was totally predictable. Inevitable in fact.

I suspect the Government just didn’t want to look at any of the downsides of Brexit and prepare for them, because it didn’t fit their narrative.

By negligently ignoring the inevitable impacts they have, by inaction, created this situation. But that’s on them. For pretty much all of us, we can’t solve the HGV crisis, or the fuel crisis, any more than we can solve global warming or child poverty.

Shame on those who can and don’t, but we are not them.

So what can we do? I suggest we happily adapt to the situation. Use the car less for the next week or so. Work from home, we’ve been schooled in that.

And in terms of the HGV crisis, stop buying things we don’t need.

Every plastic spider for Halloween, every unnecessary purchase, every bit of tat, just don’t buy it. Reduce the demand for these pointless and harmful items and they’ll disappear from the shelves and the roads.

Do we need to be importing plastic cobwebs from 5,000 miles away? On the contrary, we need not to. Stop now, and never again buy this wasteful stuff, and you’ll be freeing up drivers for actual necessities and items of value. Every HGV moving pointless plastic tat is a waste of resources, labour, fuel, and everything else.

Spend less, buy less, drive less. You’ll have more money spare and you’ll be doing your bit for the environment and the various supply chain problems.

Forget trying to blame someone for it. Just roll with it. For good.

How do we solve the HGV crisis? Let's start with stopping buying tat - Bird Lovegod