It never rains but etc. etc. etc.
And that is just BP playing politics. Because they know what the media will do, and thus what the population will do as a result, therefore forcing the government into action. Forcing the government into this visa scheme rather than just giving HGV drivers better pay and conditions, because that would cost them a bit of their profits.
Except that’s just not true, is it.
There’s a shortage of 100,000 drivers partially caused by Brexit and partially caused by the pandemic.
You aren’t going to have 100,000 drivers suddenly fill the jobs overnight if you improve their pay and conditions because you can’t pass your test in a day, and you can’t just become a tanker driver. You have to have previous HGV experience and special training.
The sensible thing to do is to allow some people to come into the UK on a temporary work visas to allow them to begin to fill the positions.
However I just can’t see 100,000 people in the UK willing to become HGV drivers, no matter how much they relax the rules or improve their pay and conditions. It’s a hard job, it requires you to be away from home a lot, it’s exhausting as anybody who drives large vehicles for a living will tell you.
And of course this idea of improving pay and conditions sounds like a good one - but who pays for it? We do!
Take Lidl as an example - they subcontract their delivery network out. At Lidl drivers have to tip their own wagons both at the RDC when loading up and when unloading at the store. They pay a premium to their contractors but it’s up to them if they pass it on to drivers. Drivers don’t like doing Lidl contracts because they have to tip their own loads.
Improving their pay and conditions would mean no longer tipping their own wagons. That would mean employing people at both the RDCs and in store to do this, and that will cost money (substantially higher than the premium they currently pay). That leads to increased prices in the shop and ultimately costs us more money.
It’s also worth noting that there’s also a shortage of drivers in Europe, despite them having better pay and conditions and there being significant investment of EU funds in parking areas, support for companies to provide higher wages and none of the customs/border checks that people coming into the UK would face: Emergency visas won’t tempt European lorry drivers to UK, say haulage chiefs | Supply chain crisis | The Guardian
So there’s doubt about even being able to recruit from within the EU - we’ll have to look even further afield.
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There are already thousands (edit: Grant Schapps has quoted a figure of around a million…) of trained drivers in the UK who left the industry in the past to do something else. The underlying problem was always retention
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There’s also this:
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There is also this which few people seem to mention. This action has resulted in significant backlogs in application processing which in turn has delayed urgently needed drivers from receiving their medical clearances and licences.
www.pcs.org.uk/news-events/news/latest-dvla-action-going-strong-fourth-week
Drove around at 0500 this morning and managed to fill up at a Shell after a 30 min wait.
We’ve got a 200 mile trip next weekend which we were worried we’d have to miss.
Three big petrol stations next to us all closed.
There’s absolutely no issue here in Italy, but we’re finding ourselves worried about how much petrol is left in the car at Manchester Airport!
It’s looking like it has calmed down here and all the “crazies” have been and gone, leaving normal people to use them as and when they need to.
Some garages have a sign outside that says ‘no fuel’ but the others now seem nice and calm, with the usual amount of cars filling up. So I imagine come the next delivery for those that have ran out, things will hopefully be back to normal.
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I don’t think there are any words for those people apart from absolute idiots.
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Or maybe they’re people who have no fuel left and need to get to work tomorrow. No need to always see the bad in people.
All of them? Really? Come on now.
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Just had the email
I think octopus was a good choice.
It’s nice to see the incumbents losing out to the agile tech focused companies with better values.
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Looking at their website, my DD is going to almost double, and my mother’s will be double.
I’ll take another look at what’s around once the change has taken place.
Ignore the fact that this is a Sun article…
A list of petrol stations that have imposed a £30 limit to make it fairer for everyone 
It should also stop some of the conspiracy theories that this is all connected to the big “COVID plan” 
Good luck, pretty much all the suppliers are in the same ball park figure, probably be looking at a few £ difference if that between them all.
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I stupidly got in to a Facebook row yesterday with someone who thought the government had deliberately caused the petrol crisis (though they couldn’t explain what the good outcome for them would be).
Has the world always had so many wannabe critical thinkers aka conspiracy theorists? Or am I extra sensitive to it now? 
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