Clearly, we plebs must be kept in a state of permanent anxiety. With ‘covid fear’ now having been sucked dry, we were bombarded with other fear items these last days, such as gas shortages, a huge rise in energy costs, food shortages and ‘empty shelves at Christmas’, petrol shortages and tax rises. This morning we’re treated to a pernicious piece of fear porn, namely that one NHS Trust is rationing chemotherapy for cancer sufferers because of staff shortages (link).

We also learned that Johnson is now prepared to ‘relax visa rules’ to allow 5,000 EU HGV drivers to help ‘ease’ the threat of said shortages (paywalled link). And then we read that the EU Hauliers won’t come because of ‘working conditions’ here in the UK which Brussels graciously has been and will be ‘alleviating’ in the EU where they are also suffering from a shortage of HGV drivers (link).

Here and in the EU, across the board, industry bosses and trade federation representatives are blaming Covid and Brexit. ‘Brexit Blame’ is of course the most favoured argument here in the UK where the forces of Remain have been doing their utmost to get us back into Brussels’ clutches by any means, fair or foul.  Political means are out as long as Johnson is in No 10, so Remain is trying it through various back doors, such as the demand for easing the entry for EU HGV drivers. 

It’s working, isn’t it – Johnson is already crumbling. Just as the spectre of an ‘overwhelmed NHS’ was sufficient to get us lockdown after lockdown, the threat of a ’winter of discontent’ is sufficient to force Johnson to concede on this Remain issue. There is however something odd going on – odd because the numbers don’t’ stack up. Staying with the HGV drivers, see the following quotes which are taken from the same article – firstly this one:

“The Road Haulage Association (RHA) estimates there are 100,000 HGV vacancies, and blames the shortfall on a post-Brexit exodus of European drivers and a lack of driver training during the pandemic.” (link)

and then, separated by a chunk of text, this one:

“A spokeswoman for Logistics UK said: “It is hard to differentiate between how many EU drivers left the industry because of Covid or because of Brexit, or for other reasons. The Annual Population Survey statistics show that 19,000 EU drivers left the industry in the year to March 2021.” (link) 

Now then: there are 100,000 vacancies for HGV drivers – but only 19,000 EU drivers had left. So how can this shortfall be blamed on Brexit? Strange maths, that! One might suspect that UK Haulage bosses were trying to cloak their inadequacies which led to this shortage – from bad working conditions to salaries – with the cheap excuse of ‘Brexit!” and ‘Covid!’. That’s so much easier than acknowledging that they themselves are to blame and clearly must have been for some time.

But it’s not just the Haulage Industry. The DM has used the HGV driver shortage to take a closer look at ‘active job posts’ and came up with some astonishing numbers. While there are 7,500 ‘open jobs’ for those drivers, there are also open jobs advertised for:

“Care workers: 55,019 – Chefs: 36,471 – Primary school teachers: 32,942 – Metal workers: 22,956 – Cleaners: 28,220 – HGV drivers: 7,513 – Bar staff: 6,557 – Sales assistants: 32,615 – School secretaries: 2,678 – Lollipop men and women: 2,478 – Postal workers: 2,251 – The figures are for jobs posted between September 13 – September 19. In total there are more than 1.9million active job adverts” (link).

Is this all because of Brexit? Did we really ‘import’ that many workers from EU countries? I am especially intrigued by the number of vacancies for primary school teachers – surely these posts cannot have been filled by our friendly EU citizens from Romania or Bulgaria, can they? Perhaps our primary schools were already teaching our little kids French and Italian? Perhaps though most of those workers now missing have been let go during lockdowns, thus making Covid and lockdowns the culprit.

But what about the rationing of cancer treatment in that NHS Trust (Nottingham, since you ask)? We’re informed that a blatant form of triage is taking place, where patients 

 “[…] with advanced forms of the disease are being denied the treatment so scarce resources can be directed towards those with a chance of survival” (paywalled link)

The reason? Staff shortages! Nottingham NHS trust mentions ‘vacancies’ and ‘long-term staff sickness’ as reasons (paywalled link). I would think that this applies to other NHS trusts as well – only those haven’t ‘gone public’ as of yet. Before the usual Remain suspects cry that it’s all because of Brexit, the main reason, at first glance, seems to be Covid:

“Last March, The Telegraph revealed that NHS England had authorised hospitals to ration cancer services to patients with the greatest chance of survival if the system became overwhelmed due to Covid.” (paywalled link)

‘Last March’, according to my calculations, was 18 months ago. When that ‘2nd wave’ struck a year ago we wondered why yon Sacred Cow had apparently done nothing to alleviate the problems of staff shortages and bed shortages during the covid-free summer months. Clearly, they still have done nothing much if cancer chemotherapy now, 18 months later, has to be rationed. Who knows which other treatments in NHS hospitals have been rationed because of ‘staff shortages’!

Far be it from me to blame the innocent NHS admin staff who WFH  – they only did what all the other admin staff in other industries and indeed Whitehall did. It would clearly be horrible to allege that this might be the cause for a systemic failure across businesses and industries, never mind the NHS, to foresee all those staff and supply shortages and prepare for them. No – it simply has to be because of Brexit and Covid.

But wait – haven’t we seen a huge increase in people of working age coming to our country during the past 18 months? Why should they not be made to work? Perhaps not as HGV drivers or specialist nurses and primary school teachers – but working as cleaners or sales assistants should not be beyond their capabilities? Getting them to work would relieve the social support budget and even garner some tax income which would please Sunak. Getting them to work would empty those hotel accommodations which would please Priti. 

Ah – sorry, I forgot: this proposal is of course awfully racist! We’d better get used to food shortages and higher energy bills while shielding all those migrants from such indignities in their hotel accommodations. Meanwhile, it seems that there’s nobody in this government or Whitehall capable of connection even those few dots. As for our MSM doing so: I’ve given up. We cannot possibly expect those dearies to do more than copy & paste PR releases …

 

KBO

 

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