Labour Shortage

We voted, by a narrow margin, to end Free Movement and, as a result, many Europeans left The UK. Now we have a shortage of people across the board, to our economic disadvantage. How do we solve that? 

If I were a European HGV driver and was offered a temporary visa (I reiterate the word temporary, meaning with fewer rights and protections than an unemployed British person - and liable to withdrawal at the whim of a government that has a habit of breaking promises), I wouldn't see that as a viable offer I'd be willing to accept. It's moot anyway, as the government has decided not to follow this route. That said, what our government says on a Monday morning can change to the complete opposite by Monday evening, as we have learned.

What about training our own? How, when it seems none of our own want to do the jobs and we're short of people across all segments? 

We had a system that worked, but we broke it because these workers weren't British. Their descendants would be British, however, within one generation, as I am. I'm indistinguishable from someone born here - except for Brexiteers of course, as I have the ability to join factual dots and reach inescapable conclusions, a trait which they singularly lack.

Joining dots seems to be a waning trait today and has poisoned the national bloodstream - like the bus driver on a radio phone-in show who suggested the lack of HGV drivers could be solved by allowing bus drivers to quickly pass HGV tests, without any consideration for the fact we'd then be left with a scarcity of bus drivers.

Like the Wetherspoons spokesperson who said its beer delivery problems had been caused by industrial action by Heineken drivers working for GXO Logistics, when the Unite union said this was not possible as no industrial action had taken place.

Like the Express readers who crow about the British economy having the fastest growth in the G7, according to the IMF, while simultaneously ignoring that you're bound to have very fast growth when you've taken the largest hit in the G7, and that we're still predicted - by the very same IMF - to be 4% less well off than had we remained in the EU. Then there's government debt having reached 98.8% of GDP in July, the most on record, which has to be paid back - by tax payers. That's going to work wonders on growth, especially when furlough ceases at the end of September.

Like the people who extol the many and magnificent trade deals we're signing (so magnificent that the much vaunted Australia deal would bring a paltry 0.02% to the economy over 15 years), totally unaware that it would take several hundred such miniscule deals to make up for the lost trade with the EU.

Like those who believe doing a trade deal with a trade bloc on the opposite side of the planet would replace the trade we did with our nextdoor neighbours, who don't have huge transportation costs. 

Like those who believe our universities indoctrinate students in liberal thinking, when it has been proven, in study after study, no matter the country, that it's education itself that makes people more receptive to liberal and progressive ideas.

Like those who believe documenting the factual history of National Trust properties is rewriting history.

Like those who believed the stories that, after Brexit, our food would be 20% cheaper (for which you can thank one Jacob Rees-Mogg, for whom food could quadruple in price and it not make a jot of difference). Supermarket bosses are already warning of huge price hikes, especially when HGV drivers are being offered 40% wage increases.

Like those who told you, in a fervour of nationalistic patriotism, that there would be no border in the Irish Sea.

Unquestioning belief makes fertile ground for charlatans purveying lies and misinformation by those in jobs not requiring an iota of expertise or qualification to perform their duties. Britain had spent the last six years destroying its relationship with Europe and has treated some of its closest allies like a foreign enemy. It placed itself in a self-imposed continental exile in which animosity, not cooperation, is the order of the day. 

There are three factors dogging the UK; the first is that the special relationship with the US is clearly a fiction; the second is that Brexit had burned bridges with the other Western powers to whom Britain might naturally turn; the third is that the Government is utterly incapable of demonstrating the level of competence any situation demands of them. 

Our politicians have been directed not by what was expedient for the state, but by reckless adventurism and personal ambition on the part of our leaders, which was ultimately destructive to the state.