HGV driver crisis is legacy of Brexit botch – Yorkshire Post Letters

From: Tony McCobb, Kirk Ella.

SO our esteemed Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, claims that Brexit is not to blame for the food and fuel crisis caused by the country’s shortage of HGV drivers. This is a lie to hide the Government’s botched Brexit.

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What lunatic makes the UK suddenly, in less than a year, lose 100,000 truckers? There may be a shortage of truckers in other countries, but nowhere near as bad as in the UK. In France there are thousands of Eastern European truckers looking for work – they’ve been expelled from the UK.

Is the Government doing enough to tackle the fuel distribution crisis?Is the Government doing enough to tackle the fuel distribution crisis?
Is the Government doing enough to tackle the fuel distribution crisis?

New bone-headed Home Office rules wouldn’t let them work here because government does not classify lorry-driving as ‘high skill work’. (People might say that most lorry drivers are more highly skilled than the politicians who are now destroying our economy).

Ministers say we should train British people, but it is too late to train 100,000 truckers before food and petrol shortages take their toll. Trucking is a hard life, with relatively poor pay and conditions, and a lot of responsibility. Most people just don’t want that kind of work with such anti-social hours and conditions.

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Ministers have now decided to make the already hard lives of truckers on our roads more dangerous by allowing drivers to drive an extra hour per day, and to reduce their training. This will be great for everyone’s road safety. Shapps claims that this relaxation of the rules is a benefit of Brexit, but those rules were not governed by the EU.

Is the Government doing enough to tackle the fuel distribution crisis?Is the Government doing enough to tackle the fuel distribution crisis?
Is the Government doing enough to tackle the fuel distribution crisis?

Now, the Government has been forced to call in ‘foreign’ truckers to help with the crisis. By ‘foreign’ they really mean ‘EU’ drivers. Oh, the irony!

From: Dr John Cameron, Howard Place, St Andrews.

IF I had slept through the pandemic and woken up this past week, my first impression would have been that Jeremy Corbyn won in the last election. We have historic levels of borrowing and spending.

Covid caused a vast expansion of the state, one that challenges any possibility of judicious budgeting, while Brexit contributes crippling supply chain problems and worker shortages. Finally a shambolic energy policy has led to the 
near certainty of winter black-outs.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps.
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I’m old enough to remember the later 1940s, these dreadful post-war years when everything went wrong. For all the hysteria emanating from Extinction Rebellion, St Greta and the Green radicals, I wonder if we’re in for a 75th anniversary of the ‘1947’ winter.

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