Don’t expect Army to solve HGV driver shortage – Yorkshire Post Letters

MORE crises in transportation and health, and yet more calls to “Bring in the Army to help”. Understandable though such demands are, have people actually thought about what it means?

Most Army HGV drivers are in the Royal Logistics Corps (RLC) and about 80 per cent of them are reservists. This means they are part-time soldiers whose full-time job is likely to be as drivers for transport companies, so they are already heavily involved in providing the solution.

It’s a similar story in the Army’s medical services as the majority of Army medics are also reservists and already work in the NHS.

And the Army isn’t a bottomless pit of people.

Fully recruited, its strength would be just over 100,000 – all ranks – and including both regular soldiers and reservists. This is the same as the size of army permitted to a defeated Germany by the 1919 Versailles Treaty. But the Army is less than 70 per cent recruited; a situation likely to worsen as the nation nears full employment.

The British soldier’s unofficial motto has always been “We have always had to do so much with so little, we can now achieve miracles with sod all”.

But even our brilliant soldiery can’t be in two places at once.

From: Terry Palmer. Hoyland, Barnsley.

WE are being brainwashed into thinking (The Yorkshire Post, September 25) that we have a shortage of HGV drivers all of a sudden. Really?

Has anybody noticed a reduction of these vehicles on our roads? Of course not. Get the military in if drivers are needed because I am sure, as an ex-military driver, they would do a good job in moving fuel and goods around the country.

Better still, get goods back on the railway and then move the goods with smaller vehicles to local stores. I suspect there is more to this ‘so-called’ problem than those in charge are telling us.

You can bet your life money is involved somewhere along the line.

From: Paul Morley, Ribblesdale Estate, Long Preston, Skipton.

JUST a thought. A Formula One race probably creates more pollution in a few hours than I do in five years of my quiet humble life.

Have the M25 protesters thought of glueing themselves to the track at Silverstone or Brands Hatch? Should make for a far more interesting race!

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