No. 213 Chickens Coming Home to Roost, James?
Dear James,
Yesterday I tried to book one of my favourite restaurants for Sunday evening before going onto a concert. The Maitre D said, ‘Sorry we’re closing on Sunday at 3pm. Lack of staff’. On the same day I went down to Waitrose in Sudbury. Large gaps on their shelves. Other shelves were full but particular products were missing. When I drove home along the Bures Road, a long queue of stationary traffic stretched back to the roundabout beyond Sainsbury’s. They were waiting to get petrol from the BP Garage. Is that the sound of wings flapping, James? Chickens coming home to roost?
Of course, poor old Boris continues to blame Covid 19 and the supply chain disruptions happening all over the world. But there are no petrol queues in France or Germany, no empty shelves or restricted restaurants. The present crisis is a very British crisis. Panicking motorists, frustrated shoppers, disappointed restaurant goers. Yesterday Boris, ‘Mr Booster’ himself, appeared on tv for the first time during the current fuel crisis, looking downbeat. The flame of boosterism was guttering due to lack of gas. All he could say was, “I can see an improvement in the supply of petrol to the forecourts”. Not that I could see yesterday, Boris. This hapless man hates being pushed into delivering bad news. He prefers those sunlit uplands which continue to elude him.
Next week he chops the £20 universal credit to the poor, gas prices are going through the roof and very soon food prices are expected to rise by 5%. Next April the poorest get clobbered again by the rise in the National Insurance rate. These aren’t just chickens. It’s a full scale armada of vultures coming our way and much of it is due to Boris’s failure of leadership, absence of planning and strategy. Don’t worry though, the army is on stand-by and a paltry 5,000 temporary visas are being issued to EU citizens to come and save us before Christmas even though it is estimated we need 100,000 more HGV drivers to save our supply chains. Not only that. A further 5,500 visas are being issued to EU chicken workers to save our turkeys for Christmas. There are staff shortages everywhere from pig farmers to fruit growers. I can hear those eager EU people rushing to return to the UK after they were told in no uncertain terms that they were persona non grata in 2016. Come to our aid but make sure you’re out of here by December 24th! I think not James! Just more desperate measures as Boris and your sad government seek to react to crises of their own making.
Estimates for the number of job vacancies vary from one million down to a few hundred thousand. Boris and Sunak urge Brits to take up the slack and their employers to pay more and improve conditions of work. Very few Brits are willing to work in the cold and damp of British fruit fields and, if they are, employers report much lower efficiency than their East European counterparts who fled this unwelcoming country two years ago. Meanwhile care homes are reporting massive staff shortages, again because of the withdrawal of European labour. The number of EU citizens searching for work in Britain has fallen by more than a third since Brexit according to a study that exposes the impact on UK employers as they struggle to recruit staff.
Figures show searches by EU-based jobseekers for work in the UK were down by 36% in May this year from average levels in 2019. Low-paid jobs in hospitality, the care sector and warehouses recorded the biggest declines at 41%. The latest ONS figures suggest the trend continues. Employment of EU nationals fell from 2.4m in Jan-Mar 2020 to 2.2m in April-June 2021.
But the real news for me is Boris’s own psychological state. He’s clearly not enjoying himself. It’s as if his minders have to push him into the tv studios and hold him there until he’d delivered his sorrowful messages. As Kier Starmer said this week, ‘Boris is a trivial man. He’s a showman with nothing left to show. He’s a trickster who’s performed his one trick. Once he’d achieved his ‘Get Brexit Done’ his plan ran out. There is no plan.”
You can say it’s all ‘adjustment’ James. But adjustment to what? To more and more of our citizens, the reality is beginning to dawn. It’s an adjustment to a nation ruled by incompetence and bluster, to crisis after crisis, to lower incomes, to more inequality, longer queues and failing public services. Brexit has been ‘done’. And all we have now are its inevitable results!
Kind regards,
Your Concerned Constituent