On the News they were saying that army drivers won't be available before Friday at the earliest. Although they are experienced HGV drivers they still need specialist training to drive and operate fuel tankers. Hopefully, by then, there won't be any need of them.
There was someone reporting [on the radio] that a well dressed woman in a Range Rover hurled abuse at a taxi driver in a petrol station forecourt, and spouted the classic line that he should ' go back to where he came from'. Says it all really.Â
She was only putting a few quid in her car. What a surprise.Â
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
I wonder what folk would say if the media DIDN'T report on fuel shortages? " this is state censorship! We should have been told about this" Some folk just love to winge and blame everyone else and never look at their own actions.
But its not a fuel shortage, but HGV driver shortage. The media don't even report the real story as that doesn't align with their Brexit mentality and the fact that tens of thousands of EU drivers left.
Not tens of thousands at all. According to the Road Haulage Association, of the approx 35000 EU HGV drivers previously legally working in the UK, around 12500 have left and 24500 are still here. Even if all 12500 returned it would go nowhere towards alleviating the current driver shortage which is entirely caused by the RHA led by the nose by the big supermarkets (the blue one) over the past 30 years.  OH surrendered his HGV licence in 2017 at 57, after 30 years as both a driver and a haulage company owner and back to a driver again for the last 10 years so has seen the industry from both sides. He was tired. Tired of working 60+ hours a week for not much more than minimum wage. HGV drivers only get reasonable wages if they are prepared to work at least 20 hours of overtime every week. Tired of worrying about running out of hours before he got to a decent truck stop (few and far between). Tired of starting work at 4am to try and avoid the traffic to get to his first drop in time and not finishing until 7pm so e days. Tired of being away from home all week. Tired of being treated like s**t and being refused use of a toilet or even to fill a flask with hot water - this was pre COVID so no reason for it. Why would anyone want to go into this industry and be treated like this?
In his last job, 6 of the 10 class 1 drivers were from the EU and he took one of them (P) under his wing. P told him he had a wife and a young family back home who could claim certain UK benefits. P had been able to buy 2 houses at home since he had been working in the UK that he rented out and that as long as he went home for 3 weeks each year could reclaim all the tax he paid on his earnings in the UK. He drove a taxi at weekends breaking the drivers hours rules and hot bedded when he wasn't in the truck so had minimal living expenses to find. When the UK drivers tried to negotiate a pay rise they got no support from the EU drivers. The introduction of the drivers CPC irritated the hell out of many, many seasoned drivers, not least because you could just sit the same module 6 times to pass yet some still had to pay £600 for the privilege and in many cases lose a day's pay each time. They had 5 years to take it but a vast number simply decided not to do it and gave up at the end of the 5 years. This is why there is an HGV driver shortage in the UK and very little to do with Brexit.
"Â According to the Road Haulage Association, of the approx 35000 EU HGV drivers previously legally working in the UK, around 12500 have left and 24500 are still here."
Could you point me to that information on the RHA website as I cant find it. It would be an interesting article to read.
Its also interesting that the RHA/Goverment are calling for EU drivers to be allowed back to fill the gap. Clearly BREXIT was a major factor in exasperating the existing shortage of drivers to suggest it had "little to do with Brexit" does not tally with the evidence
'The power of accurate observation .... is commonly called cynicism by those that have not got it.
Don't get your hopes up about HGV drivers coming back to the UK. There is a shortage on the continent too - 65,000 in Germany, 45,000 in France - and yet here the parking and service facilities are better for hauliers, the motorways are much clearer than in the UK and outside of hotspots like Paris, the E19 from Paris via Brussels to Amsterdam and the E40 in Belgium, traffic is less dense so driving is easier.
Clearly there is a problem with pay levels and hours away from home for the long haul stuff in other countries too.
Haulage companies and some of the big supermarkets need to do more to train and care for their staff to retain them and planners/governments need to make sure they include facilities for vital personnel such as HGV drivers when planning roads and motorways.
I received a letter today from my surgery about booking the flu jab. I decided a week or two back to have the jab at the local pharmacy. That involved filling out a form so they could contact the surgery to say I'd been jabbed. Something obviously didn't work - or there was a timing issue. The letter from the surgery said if you want to decline, either fill out the paper form and drop it into the surgery or go online and use an NHS web app. OK - web app. So I spend a few minutes navigating the link from my surgery to a page ('engage.gp') and fill out a few pages of stuff there. Grand. Then I hit the 'Send' button, and the 'Send' text turns to the spinning wheel of doom and back to 'Send'. Nothing seems to be flagged as an error and no error message - just 'Send' to spinning wheel and back. There's nothing on engage.gp to say how to contact support at all. No phone numbers, no email, nothing. I google 'engage.gp and NHS support' and get to a page that quotes a contact email - so I click that link, type the EMail and send. Bounces with unknown address. Grand. Googling more, I get another address at 'engagehealth.uk'. So I mail them. This time I get a reply from someone who seems to do support. Result. I explained in the mail that I use Firefox/Linux - so I get the typical 'can you use another browser'. I reply that I don't use multip0le browsers as if I did, I'd have to keep track of which browser works with which page(s) - and anyway, Firefox/Linux hasn't failed before. The nice man at the other end said they hadn't had the issue reported before - the conversation went:
Me: '...I have been trying to use engage.gp website to inform my surgery that I have already had a flu vaccination and am declining their offer. However, I can complete all the fields, but when I press the 'Send' button on what I assume is the final screen, the 'Send' text is temporarily replaced with a spinning wheel symbol and then just reverts to 'Send'. No errors appear to be flagged.I am running Firefox 92.0 on Fedora 34. Does your software work on that platform?...'
Him '...This isn't an error we've ever had reported before, so I can't say what's causing it. I just wondered if you could give it a try in another browser to see if it's a browser issue specifically or something more general....'
Me: '...Maybe you haven't had it reported before as the engage.gp page doesn't tell anyone how to contact support if something goes wrong? ....'
Him '...The reason it doesn't tell patients to contact us is that we don't support patients, we support the surgeries who use our services, we respond to patients out of curtesy to offer what advice we can, however we cannot account for every individual device and  combination of browsers and operating systems.
My advice would be to attempt to contact your surgery via another browser or failing that another device running Windows. If you have further feedback please contact your surgery who can pass it along to us.....'
Me: '...Fine - then who does the patient contact when the web pages don't act as expected? How does the team who supports engage.gp get to know of any bugs?...'
Nothing on the pages says '...In case of these pages not working as expected, contact your surgery...'. The nice support man doesn't have a clue why the page isn't working - he only uses the Firefox/Linux thing as I gave him the opt out in the first message.
Not once does he ask for evidence, no screen shot, no screencast ,to see what happens.
I'm now going to phone my surgery (what a waste of time) to say that I don't need the vaccine and that engage.gp doesn't appear to work. What response do you think I'll get about engage.gp - do you think anyone there even knows it exists?
I have my flu jabs at the local pharmacy who manage my repeat prescriptions …. the pharmacy then notifies my GP practice. All seems to work smoothly, has done for several years …Â
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Posts
Says it all really.Â
She was only putting a few quid in her car. What a surprise.Â
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
@Woodgreen
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
"Â According to the Road Haulage Association, of the approx 35000 EU HGV drivers previously legally working in the UK, around 12500 have left and 24500 are still here."
Could you point me to that information on the RHA website as I cant find it. It would be an interesting article to read.
Its also interesting that the RHA/Goverment are calling for EU drivers to be allowed back to fill the gap.
Clearly BREXIT was a major factor in exasperating the existing shortage of drivers to suggest it had "little to do with Brexit" does not tally with the evidence
'The power of accurate observation .... is commonly called cynicism by those that have not got it.
George Bernard Shaw'
Clearly there is a problem with pay levels and hours away from home for the long haul stuff in other countries too.
Haulage companies and some of the big supermarkets need to do more to train and care for their staff to retain them and planners/governments need to make sure they include facilities for vital personnel such as HGV drivers when planning roads and motorways.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.