Brexit!! Yeah, it's a thing now..

"The transport secretary said he did not want to "undercut" British workers but could not stand by while queues formed.
But the British Chambers of Commerce said the measures were the equivalent of "throwing a thimble of water on a bonfire".
And the Road Haulage Association said the announcement "barely scratches the surface", adding that only offering visas until Christmas Eve "will not be enough for companies or the drivers themselves to be attractive".
 
"The transport secretary said he did not want to "undercut" British workers but could not stand by while queues formed.
But the British Chambers of Commerce said the measures were the equivalent of "throwing a thimble of water on a bonfire".
And the Road Haulage Association said the announcement "barely scratches the surface", adding that only offering visas until Christmas Eve "will not be enough for companies or the drivers themselves to be attractive".
The haulers will hire. The companies will pay. Hold the line. Make those jobs worth having again because they are clearly more important that the wages that were being paid would imply. Don't go back to the market distortions of importing cheap labour. People have to start seeing the work that needs to be done as a viable option for them again instead of taking out loans to learn about "Gender studies" or "Women's studies" or any of the panoply of degrees for the dim that exist to issue paper in exchange for money the fools cannot afford to be parted from.

I can see how the Conservative party is naturally for undercutting workers but that's the sort of thing a proper Labour Party would support - labour.
 
Hold the line.
And trust the plan! :banana:
I can see how the Conservative party is naturally for undercutting workers but that's the sort of thing a proper Labour Party would support - labour.
Labour still look years away from getting their act together. The UK is effectively a one party state for now.
 
And trust the plan! :banana:

Labour still look years away from getting their act together. The UK is effectively a one party state for now.
WRT to drivers the government's been dragging its feet a bit training and approving since the industry had the luxury (and motivation) to hire cheap foreign labour. There are jobs that need to be done and high labour costs are actually a good thing in terms of a) redistributing the wealth to the people that do the work and b) getting people back to doing useful things instead of getting useless degrees for positions that are over supplied with graduates just in the hope of getting a better income than regular workers. The major economies are extremely out of kilter having outsourced so much of their real work and importing cheap labour.
We have similar problems going on over here in Canada and we haven't brexited. It's getting harder to pay people nothing to do work. It's a painful adjustment but I'm pretty sure it's a good thing in the end.
 
We have similar problems going on over here in Canada and we haven't brexited.
There are similar problems in the EU too. However, the 3 month temporary visas as part of the proposed solution tells its own story, as do the excuses from PayPal, etc, for fee increases. Pretending all of this would still be happening without Brexit is as disingenuous as claiming none of it would.
 
There are similar problems in the EU too. However, the 3 month temporary visas as part of the proposed solution tells its own story, as do the excuses from PayPal, etc, for fee increases. Pretending all of this would still be happening without Brexit is as disingenuous as claiming none of it would.
There's an army. They've got loads of lorries and idle hands.
 
I'm seeing a lot of the same stuff in NA. Fuel is going up, transportation is going up, cold storage is going up, wages are going up. Fulfillment out of the UK has been patchy in areas but is still pretty reliable. OTOH, Ireland has always been more expensive and spottier for some reason. But I'm getting price increase notifications from everybody these days. My baker has done two 5% increases in the last four months. A meat product company I use back east (Ontario) is jacking up prices because of issues in New York where the manufacturing is and trucking product into Canada.
Once upon a time drivers would happily pick up used palettes but now they just pile up because more goods are arriving on skips than need used skids to be shipped back out on. I'm starting to think about ways I will have to change things to deal with inflation if it starts to get out of hand. There's already been a marked uptick in "shrink-flation" where products get smaller to maintain the same price but that can only go so far.
The world is having a bit of a rough time at the moment, but being brexitted is probably the best place for the UK to be right now. Oil and gas are mostly gone but they still have coal and they still have the Pound Sterling and the City of London. It's not Greece at least.
But things are getting a little wobbly out there.
 
Only Germany had privileged access to the EU. Most everyone else had keys to the clubroom but not the office. Now that Germany has suicided it's manufacturing base for US approval nuclear France may be able to make hay at their neighbour's expense. Mind you, with the Eurozone's eagerness to kill farming while swelling with imported population, one wonders how much longer the center can hold - and where will all the European refugees go?
 
Only Germany had privileged access to the EU.
The only country which has ever had the joint privilege the PM is boasting about is his own country, the UK. Sunak apparently thought having that "privileged access" to the EU was so bad that he helped to vote it away for the entire UK but is now crowing about the smallest part of the UK, NI, having it again. If you can't see any irony there, I don't know what else to tell you.

and where will all the European refugees go?
One of the main planks of the Leave campaign was stopping refugees (and not just European ones, they were happy to let the ignorant believe Brexit would stop all immigration). Even reducing European refugees has turned out to be pie in the sky, with some evidence Brexit actually made the situation "worse".
Outside EU, people can no longer be returned to other European countries under legislation known as Dublin regulation
--
.. the number crossing from France to the UK in small boats has risen sharply since the UK parted company from the EU.
Can that increase be attributed entirely to Brexit? Possibly not but it certainly hasn't been the panacea the gullible xenophobes and racists expected.

Slow hand claps all round.
 
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I just shipped a book to the UK and it cost $44 just for shipping! Is that a Brexit thing? I‘m happy to give away hardback books about Amiga history but the shipping kind of shocked me. I still have some free hardback books to give away by the way. If Wayne wants one for example. I won’t be sending anymore to the UK though, lol. The book is From Vultures to Vampires Vol 1 and it’s absolutely free from DiscreetFX as a Amiga gift. They are going fast since they are absolutely free including shipping. Anyone still want one? The offer is not only for Wayne.
 
Brexit might, as Albarn points out, be "sh1t" for musicians and anyone else from the UK who likes travelling Europe, but for a glorious few months it did give some racists and xenophobes the nirvana of believing the lie that it would reduce illegal immigration.
So there's always that.
 
Brexit might, as Albarn points out, be "sh1t" for musicians and anyone else from the UK who likes travelling Europe, but for a glorious few months it did give some racists and xenophobes the nirvana of believing the lie that it would reduce illegal immigration.
So there's always that.
One of the hopes was that it would give the British control over their own government. It seems that the UK government is a foreign power that resists the will of the locals quite strenuously. The last PM they voted for was Boris in 2019 and they've had two unelected PMs since then.
 
One of the hopes was that it would give the British control over their own government.
Taking back control!
That was as almost as nonsensical when people were "hoping" for it as it is now. The nasty EU was oppressing us poor downtrodden Brits and straightening the bends out of our proper British bananas, amongst other heinous funny-foreigner crimes. A lot of pro-brexit types still cling to such absurd bromides. Point out to anyone still in favour of it that none of their hilariously predicted benefits have come to fruition and there's always an "ah, but such and such that was supposed to happen didn't..." as though that makes the results of their idiotic stubbornness more palatable. "This isn't the Brexit we voted for!" is another one. Unfortunately it's exactly the Brexit they voted for and most were well aware of the warnings at the time. Trying to shift the blame now is pathetic and cowardly but, alas, also completely predictable. No one likes to admit they made an arse of it.
It seems that the UK government is a foreign power that resists the will of the locals quite strenuously. The last PM they voted for was Boris in 2019 and they've had two unelected PMs since then.
Nah, not really. We don't elect PMs, we elect MPs and the party in power selects the PM. Unless you're complaining about the unfairness of the first past the post electoral system, we've been served up exactly what "we" (not me) voted for. Brexit and multiple Tory governments is exactly the Christmas the good British turkeys keep voting for. Doesn't matter how many Conservative PMs have to step down after breaking the law or tanking the economy.
 
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