Respect to Emily Maitlis.
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‘Pingdemic’ sounds to me like the title of a B-Movie such as ‘Sharknado’.
On a serious note, if the claim is a shortage of 90.000 HGV drivers (in another article), forget Brexit that relates to ‘just’ 25.000 of them. Still 65.000 drivers short. There is a structural problem in the UK supply chain.
More accurater
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I’m afraid so, makes me sad.
This is what happens when your supply chain is pruned to the bare minimum both in quantity and ‘cost’ (ie, what you pay). Like everything else, there’s no slack for when things go wrong, let alone get totally fucked.
I’d also assume that the 40,000 drivers who didn’t quite as a result of Brexit probably didn’t all do it overnight, so this is probably a problem that those in the industry have known about for quite some time.
Does it not also suggest that under pre-pandemic circumstances the country couldn’t have actually coped if everyone stayed at home and rested whenever they had a 'regular ’ bug?
Thinking back to that Hancock stuff about changing the culture of people struggling into work when sick.
Too many big firms have sub contracted all the actual work to reduce costs. That means lots of their supply chain is provided by shit firms who use independent contractors to do the work or employ staff on zero hours and gig contracts - all of which means the individuals carry all the financial risk - no work, no pay. So they’ll work regardless of their health because they have to.
I can’t prove this but I was informed that one large defence firm outsourced their security because they couldn’t pay people such a low wage as it broke their own pay rules…. That sort of attitude doesn’t leave any fat in the system
I also remember a clip on I think reddit, with a pub owner stating he couldn’t get personnel for the minimum wage. He voted Brexit as a ‘businessman’.
The attitude to pay your personnel the bare munimum, be it a waiter, HGV driver or NHS nurse, is only a race to the bottom. Now I understand why the UK has the highest income inequality in North West Europe.
Whatever the job, it will always be: pay peanuts, get monkeys.
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Until some indeterminate point where you pay loads and still get monkeys
Not sure if it’s still the case, because it’s been a while since I worked on this, but Norway at least used to have staggeringly low levels of hospital acquired infections, attributed to the fact that they paid (and trained) their hospital cleaners at a level that they felt suitably valued. To the point that there was a negligible market there for what we were developing.
You are right. For some reason, suddenly the HoC came to mind.
Or they’ll retain some core capacity but start out using contractors to cover the peaks. Then if there’s business growth they’ll cover that with contractors too, and before they know where they are they’re dependent on them, to the point that if any large fraction should disappear the business is in serious trouble. I understand this is what’s happened to at least one of the large logistics operations here.
Beancounters love contractors because they’re not a long-term commitment on the books. Reliability of the business’s operations is not their problem.
VB
Long term and bean counters …… there’s the problem.
Still in the lead, but it’s moving the right way…
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LOL, nobody in the House could state that she would lie… 
The Speaker would direct the Master at Arms to remove her from the chamber and impose a suspension
