Comments by "Dale Crocker" (@dalecrocker3213) on "" video.

It's Sky News and the BBC's fault as much as anything.
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They don't think foreign drivers are the answer. The answer is improving pay and conditions to encourage the literally hundreds of thousands of HGV licence holders currently not driving lorries to do so, as well as clearing the decks to swiftly process the 40,000 or so currently waiting to take the tests.
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@ad9898 I'm not defending the government by any means - it's just that the sudden exodus of EU drivers may well force the employers' and the agencies' hands. A rather unexpected Brexit benefit perhaps?
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The definition of "shortage" is interesting in this context. There is no shortage of petrol in refineries and storage facilities. Transport difficulties and media-induced panic buying have created what is an entirely artificial crisis, capable of swift resolution. The biggest shortage is a shortage of common sense, as usual.
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@frankkobold I'm no fan of Boris Johnson, but the Tory ethos that things will find their natural level could well apply here. Money could be the simple answer. Rather than go bust or face vastly reduced profits employers will just have to up the ante enough to bring drivers back. £70,000 a year ought to do it - and the government could help by offering one-off cash inducements.
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@rtjames Whatever they're doing, it can't be as important as trucking in the present circumstances. And of course they are widely dispersed, so no one industry will suffer.
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Totally agree!
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The greedy bastids, to be fair, are calling upon employers and agencies to raise wages as a matter of urgency.
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@rocketscience4516 All are opinions which have the advantage of being the result of rational consideration, rather than knee-jerk reactions to globalist propaganda.
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@tommohawksaxe2609 Panic-buying certainly has been widespread, but I wouldn't disagree with you about the fragility of our supply chain. It has to be strengthened, and paying more money to the people employed in it will be the only answer.
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@tommohawksaxe2609 I agree that capitalism is in a crisis to a great extent, largely due to globalist interventionism. Having said that the immutable laws still apply: if there is a need it will be met, insofar as it is possible to do so. In this instance HGV driving has fallen way, way behind in terms of wages, conditions and even respect. People in absurd and pointless jobs get paid far too much and there are many jobs which if they disappeared entirely would have no effect. This doesn't apply to lorry-driving, and so pressure of demand for services ought to result in an increased value placed upon those services. Pay up, or do without - but we simply can't do without.
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@rocketscience4516 Science these days is a many-splendored thing which has replaced religion as a means of exercising political control. The science of greenhouses gasses is based on laboratory experiment conducted more than a century ago and takes no account whatsoever of continuing discoveries in cosmology which have shown that the sun is not a bunsen burner and the atmosphere is not a static entity trapped in a metal container. Your rationality is a delusion and your enthusiastic credulousness is a great asset to those who manipulate your every move.
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@rocketscience4516 If I must accept your taxonomy of scientific disciplines then let it be so. I was referring to recent developments in the understanding of the structure of the solar system, with especial regard to the behaviour of the sun. Obviously the dense atmosphere of Venus affects its surface temperature to a considerable extent, but comparisons with the recent increase in the earth's atmospheric carbon levels are a little far-fetched, surely? How, for example, do you react to the suggestion that the pattern of oscillation created by this increase merely redirects reflected heat, rather than invariably reflecting it directly downwards? And what proportion of reflected heat passes through this alleged "greenhouse" anyway? Isn't it more like a tattered net of gossamer which appears to have evolved to act as a sort of thermostat controlling heat in relation to atmospheric pressure and the proximity and position of the sun? I must admit that these and similar questions do occupy me somewhat in my solitary fastness, and if you could dredge through the memory of your scientific training to answer them I would be most grateful.
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@rocketscience4516 Well, that wasn't very helpful, I must say. I certainly don't pretend to understand the subject in anything like depth, but the questions raised by my ignorance seem to find few answers. The fact that the icecaps are not melting, sea levels are rising by a few millimetres a year, as normal, extreme weather events seem no more frequent nor more extreme than they ever have been and the gradual (and fluctuating) rise in temperatures seems entirely in accord with historical patterns over hundreds of thousands of years are all things which contribute to my scepticism. The apparent manipulation of data in the cause of "homogenization" adds greatly to my suspicions that what we have here is a political agenda to which "science" is but the handmaiden. As far as the sun is concerned, are its regular 11-year pulses of plasma followed by a further 11-year sequences after its poles reversed factored into climate change projections as far as you are aware?
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@rocketscience4516 You're such a busy person. I do hope your job doesn't involve mending windows, otherwise you might melt.
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@rocketscience4516 Don't worry. I was hesitant to draw your attention to it, however obliquely, since I am not infrequently guilty of such embarrassments myself!
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@rtjames You don't need an HGV licence to drive most farm machinery. In any case, ex-drivers are spread across a wide variety of occupations, although most are plant operators or employed in the building trade. I have this from an interesting article in Transport Operator magazine as long ago as 2016 which investigated the "ticking time-bomb" of driver shortages.
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@arturobianco848 Actually drivers' wages are only a very small proportion of food industry costs. Effectively doubling their wages will have little impact on food prices.
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@rtjames I'm afraid I don't know how many people are employed in driving heavy machinery on farms, but I cannot imagine it is anything like a high proportion of the estimated million or so HGV licence holders who currently are employed elsewhere. Even now, agricultural work tends to be highly localised and almost in a father-to-son type tradition. Agriculture is suffering greatly from a lack of seasonal workers -that is very true but I doubt very much that many HGV licence holders give up their jobs to help out at harvest time.
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@arturobianco848 In addition to my previous reply I have to point out that since many small haulage firms operate at very small profit margins, some of them will undoubtedly go under in what is likely to be a war for contracts - which will be rather a sad thing.
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@arturobianco848 The government threw literally billions at the hysterical and foolhardy furlough scheme as a response to the pandemic. I agree though it will probably be beyond them to throw a couple of hundred million to bribe drivers to get back behind the wheel. We must wait and see.
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@rtjames Sorry, but you are misinterpreting what I said. Machinery is required all year obviously, but there is no reason to suppose that many -if any - of the operators hold HGV licences. There are a million or so HGV licence holders working in other occupations it is thought. The government has sent letters to all of them asking them to consider getting back behind the wheel. How many do so will doubtless depend on what incentives are offered - but they will obviously have to be considerable. There are also around 40,000 people waiting for HGV licence tests and the government is seeking to streamline and speed up the process. The 2016 survey appears to have been very thorough, and more recent studies have confirmed its findings.
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@rtjames All you have to do is check the trade magazines. They all tell the same story. The 2016 article was based on official statistics from the ONS and other sources. In June this year UK Haulier predicted the current crisis very accurately. The government's mail drop is based on comparing DLVA info with employment records. There are around a million people registered as holding HGV licences who show up on tax and employment data as now working outside of the industry. There are a further 40,000 people waiting to take an HGV test.
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@rtjames We 're not talking a short timeframe here by any means. Obviously recruitment will be gradual and supply-chain problems will continue for many months. The current fuel crisis is just an example of what happens when people panic. We can thank the media (including social) for turning what would otherwise have been a relatively isolated series of inconveniences into yet another example of unseemly hysteria.
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@rtjames I suppose getting the 40,000 applicants through the test ASAP would be a good step. Presumably they actually WANT to be drivers. Personally I would offer job permits to foreign drivers on a year long contract at high wages. That ought to set the ball rolling.
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@dennisfraser6896 But supplies get through. In any case, drivers' wages only makeup a relatively small proportion of costs.
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@gurkslunga They will have to pay more. And the costs will indeed be passed on to the endbuyer. Goods will be slightly more expensive, but they will at least become available.
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