26th September 2021
Ebeneezer Blackadder:
In fact, there is something in your stocking, Baldrick, something I made for you.
Baldrick:
Ah, well that’s the best kind of gift, Mr. B. What is it?
Ebeneezer Blackadder:
It’s a fist. It’s for hitting people with. See?
– Blackadder’s Christmas Carol (1988)
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The government’s proposal was daft to begin with.
An extraordinary proposal, even for this government.
And just in case you would not believe me, here is the BBC tweet announcing it – and the BBC’s name is good upon ’Change, for anything it choses to put its name to.
5,000 overseas lorry drivers and 5,500 poultry workers will be eligible for three-month UK visas until Christmas Eve https://t.co/g9bCbEtucP
— BBC Breaking News (@BBCBreaking) September 25, 2021
The necessary implication of the government’s proposal is that by automatic operation of law these lorry drivers who will deliver our Christmas goods and these poultry workers who will provide the Christmas turkeys will become illegal aliens at the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve.
What a Christmas present for those who choose to come over here to provide services, goods and food for those of us in Great Britain.
The following tweet on this is (I think) intended as satire:
BREAKING: Home Secretary announces plan to set up task force to deport any EU lorry drivers who remain in the U.K. after 24th Dec.
Ms Patel said “It is a special privilege for lorry drivers to be able come here and work and it shouldn’t be abused”— Michael Lambert (@MichaelLamberta) September 25, 2021
But as Zoe Gardner observes, it it not far off the actual legal position:
I mean… Apparently this is satire?
You do know that if you overstay your non-extendable non-renewable 3-month visa you ARE LITERALLY liable for deportation, right?
Like hahaha she'll try to deport you if you don't leave haha imagine, no LITERALLY that is what happens??? https://t.co/BTybWgplhl
— Zoe Gardner (@ZoeJardiniere) September 26, 2021
She is right: that would be the legal position on Christmas Day.
*
And as this blog averred yesterday, there is no reason to believe this quick fix will work in any case.
Let us remember what happened last year.
Would you like a three month visa until Christmas Eve, having been effectively interned in a car park for the duration of the holiday period when you tried to work for us last year https://t.co/I75c92MApR
— Hannah Rose Woods (@hannahrosewoods) September 26, 2021
There is thereby no particular reason to think there will be a rush of workers wanting to help Great Britain out at this time of need.
And so the proposal may become an(other) example of the post-Brexit government discovering that the many problems created by Brexit are not capable of quick easy solutions.
Inviting such workers on terms where – once they have delivered Christmas goods in their lorries and helped provide the turkeys for Christmas dinners – they will literally become illegal aliens at the strike of midnight – is a thing not even Charles Dickens would have imagined.
To adapt Blackadder:
Ebeneezer Blackadder:
Thank you for helping save the British Christmas, there is something in your stocking, something I made for you.
EU migrant worker:
Ah, well that’s the best kind of gift, Mr. B. What is it?
Ebeneezer Blackadder:
It’s a deportation order. It’s for deporting people with. See?
*****
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The season of feasts and shopping doesn’t actually stop on Christmas Eve, it actually continues into the New Year. I think the spiteful choice of date was made with appeasing the slavering mid-market tabloid columnists in mind.
Most continental Europeans celebrate with the family on Christmas Eve. If they’ve any sense they’ll be long gone by the 25th. And this year they’ll presumably be driving UK lorries and so will simply book a flight home and park the wagon in the depot the night before. No need to spend any time in the Manston concentration camp courtesy of Ms Patel.
I really don’t believe that this woeful government intends that this proposal will have any meaningful impact. It’s tokenism of the worst kind; Grant Shapps extolling it as part of the government’s “big package” of measures to address the problem, when in reality, if I may resort to crudity, it will produce as little effect as flatulence in a thunderstorm.
I thought I’d heard somewhere along the line that Christmas had an underlying spiritual meaning. O Come All Ye Faithful workers, God Rest Ye Merry Lorry-drivers, enjoy a Silent Night in a lorry-park and on Christmas Day in the Morning be Away in a Manger but Ding-Dong Merrily on High and Goodwill to All!
There ins a point beyond which even Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Sheridan, Ionesco, Beckett, Pinter can cannot hope to pillory this extraordinary reality. It is beyond satire. Perhaps only the Russians under Stalin would have been able to make the best black joke.
Spot on.
Driving from Italy to the U.K. today, I spoke with two HGV drivers on their ‘rest’ day; one Polish, the other from east of the EU.
‘Would you take advantage of the U.K. short-term visa scheme to drive there until Xmas?’
Driver 2 ‘Why? I have good work here’ (in the EU)
Driver 1 ‘I drove to the U.K. for 5 years, but not now. Too much papers/problems.’
If the 3-month driver visa is as complex and expensive to obtain as other U.K. work visas, then what’s the point? In all probability an employer will have to be of sufficient scale, and have the required administrative capability/capacity to make the application on behalf of a driver, or potentially, a driver with vehicle.
The market in Europe is already competitive for qualified drivers, to the extent that the big Lithuanian and Hungarian players are hiring from the Ukraine and points east in order to fulfil existing demand.
The U.K. has gained many economies from (or ‘added value’ to) its logistics operations and supply chain. In the process of so doing, the financial price of everything is known, while risk has been transferred to the haulage firms, owner operators, or day-rate drivers.
Alas the same chain is extremely delicate, and small variables can make a big difference.
For the immediate future, the country needs to fix the availability of reliable fuel supplies before asking drivers to take a three-month contract. The only available fuel for sale between the M20 and M25 was at Folkestone, immediately upon leaving the Channel Tunnel.
Finally…. One wonders the extent to which Ms Patel had to grit her teeth in order to accept this proposal, and how much home office ‘hostility’ will be shown to applicants?
Yes, you’ll be deported from Christmas Day onwards. We don’t want you here – understood ?
But in the meantime we’re in a bit of a hole. So come and help us out till then ? Please ? Pretty please ?
Beyond satire, as Patric said.
Rob McKenzie of the Road Haulage Association on BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House this morning explained the problem as: a Polish HGV driver would need to give notice to his current job, come over to the UK, get the temporary visa, find somewhere to live and then go home by Christmas. It really doesn’t sound like an attractive option. But of course, according to the Daily Express, Rob McKenzie is a Remainer, so what does he know?
“Ms Patel said “It is a special privilege for lorry drivers to be able come here and work and it shouldn’t be abused”.
Satire? What’s satirical about sheer stupid arrogance and superiority complex? The message conveyed to lorry drivers and to anyone reading it anywhere – non solely in the UK – is: “Keep well out, bloody foreigners! You are warned!”.
However, nothing new under the sun, culture crises are the norm: Shakespeare didn’t speak Greek and Omer didn’t speak English ;-)
It’s no task at all to acknowledge the foolhardiness this invitation to EU, foreign truck drivers, and fowl EU pluckers and packers. Part of a better Government initiative would be to promote fresh produce: Pick your own bird, take it home, feed it (to eat it), cook it and share it.
As for drivers, there’s a worldwide shortage of them, with an EU shortage which is absent of all the hassle associated with the accepting of a British Christmas present. Ironic too, given the fuel shortage in Britain, plus Covid-19 restrictions or the lacking thereof. From a foreign perspective you’re only damned if you do.
There is a skill to plucking poultry that has long been lost. In years gone by, if you shot a pheasant, you often took it to a fishmonger, or perhaps a butcher, who would pluck it for you.
As to dispatching livestock, we are way too squeamish generally to do this ourselves.
Of course, your solution may well lead to more people embracing vegetarianism, though given the shortage of pickers and given that not everybody could pick from a field (e.g. the elderly) that won’t quite work for everyone either. Plus driving from a city to a rural area to pick your own food is hardly good for the environment. Yes, there are city gardens – but I seriously doubt there would be sufficient capacity to feed all city dwellers.
The foolishness of the invitation you speak of is more about the disgraceful attitude the current government has had towards foreign workers. Listening to the Polish lorry driver this morning, I can quite understand the anger behind his words: you cannot turn migrant workers on and off like a tap. They have lives to lead and are not a commodity to be treated like a convenience. And the attitude that is routinely displayed towards them in our press and in our high streets (which I deplore) is evidence of how unwelcome they are on our shores.
I fear, as a nation, we are seriously b*ggered, and it is all our own fault.
Albeit that this is not a chat, and that we do jest a little about a serious matter while making pertinent points, I share your displeasure regarding “… the attitude that is routinely displayed …”
Isn’t this another Brexit victory? More high-paying Christmas shifts for our great British prison warders, more profits to flow to the offshore accounts of our great British private gaolers?
It is an appalling state of affairs and a shortsighted and ineffectual response by this useless government. As is suggesting the Army will be called in to help. The Christmas Eve end date is beyond parody. Apart from being a callous insult to the very people we are inviting to help us out (having not long since deterred them from operating here) the shortage of drivers will not be over by then.
These are all just announcements to make it appear that the government is doing something about the issue. Then any more failure can be blamed on the supply chain. This is a government by soundbite. Reacting to events, not planning for what was an easily predictable shortfall of resources.
In our representative democracy there is little the public can do about such things between elections. The normal way to hold ministers accountable outside Parliament is by proper scrutiny from the press and media. But they are so compliant these days that it simply does not happen any more. It was illuminating that Johnson only admitted to having six children under direct questioning on a US TV network. Something often talked about in the UK but never directly asked of him because the British press is too afraid to ask. Afraid of losing lobby privileges and access to those in power. They are happy to put opposition leaders under uncomfortable scrutiny, but not Government ministers.