And lived happily ever after
1 Like
There’s a backlog of 54000 unprocessed HGV licenses at the DVLA because the Welch are all WFH for the last eighteen months. There’s your solution.
Top banter by Nigel
Nick Ferrari is on the case
1 Like
I like the way they downplay Johnson to make him look like a normal idiot rather than the caricature he plays up to
COMMENT | PETER TIEDE
Oh, the delicious schadenfreude! Germans grin at Britain’s labour shortages and fuel crisis
We warned Brexiteers this would happen. Now we don’t care
Peter Tiede
Friday October 01 2021, 12.01am BST, The Times
We Germans have got our problems — we still don’t know who our next chancellor will be, inflation is running at 4 per cent and our electricity is getting more expensive by the day.
But then we realise how much worse things are in Britain. No lorry drivers! No fuel! Empty supermarket shelves! Ministers dependent on the army or prisoners to help! What’s happened to you? Have you been in a war? Are the French on strike and paralysing your island? Whatever the reason, thanks for making us feel better. Every time we see long queues at your petrol stations on TV, we experience a delicious schadenfreude. Germany cannot help but grin at your troubles.
Olaf Scholz, the SPD candidate for chancellor, may be a terrible know-it-all but he spoke for most Germans when he said this week that it was all your fault. You voted for Brexit, you threw out foreign workers and you don’t pay your lorry drivers enough. I hate to say it, but we did warn you this might happen.
Olaf Scholz, who is hoping to become Germany’s next chancellor, said Brexit was to blame for the UK’s labour shortages
MICHAEL SOHN/AP
So forgive me if we on the Continent are now snobbish about you in the way Britain was often snobbish about us. The truth is that Britain — and mostly England — succumbed years ago to simplistic populist politics peddled by the likes of Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. You are finding out how it ends up. The nation that chases away diligent eastern Europeans must persuade its own people to drive lorries and deliver goods. And if they won’t work for the low wages you paid drivers from Poland, Bulgaria or Romania, you’ll have to pay a lot more.
We discovered something similar in Germany. The average salaries in our nursing homes fell to the point that German staff began quitting in large numbers. That’s when eastern European workers came in and rescued the sector because they were still being paid more than they would be in their own countries. But this is the path that has been closed to Britain because of Brexit. Boris Johnson’s belated attempt to persuade HGV drivers from the Continent to come and save fuel deliveries is too little, too late.
Yes, we in Germany and Europe know how dependent we are on China and how frail global supply chains are. But we are still able to distribute what we produce ourselves. You can’t even manage that. We can only savour the irony of the situation you find yourselves in — the hard-working EU migrants you shut the door on are now working for us and keeping our shelves full and petrol stations fully stocked.
Economic experts and political commentators in Germany are united: Britain’s troubles are a direct consequence of Boris Johnson’s embrace of Brexit. His claim that the coronavirus pandemic is to blame is seen as nothing more than a desperate evasion of reality.
We will bring the stories of the day to life with warmth, wit and expertise. Listen for free on DAB radio, your smart speaker, online at times.radio, and via the Times Radio app
Brexit, he and his former sidekick Dominic Cummings told voters, was all about “taking back control”. But he has demonstrated recently what a hollow claim this was. The world is not as simple as he pretended.
Getting rid of the admittedly complex and often frustrating bureaucracy of Brussels does not automatically make life at home easy. Before he entered politics, Johnson made a career out of bashing the EU to the delight of British readers. But his hackneyed claim that “It’s all the EU’s fault” no longer holds true. Now it’s just his fault.
I’m sorry to say that Brexit also makes us less interested in Britain: your crisis does not really concern us. Nowadays it seems that nothing happening on your shores makes much of a difference to our lives.
If you’re short of lorry drivers and your supply chains are creaking under the strain, it’s your problem now, not Europe’s.
Peter Tiede is chief political correspondent of Bild newspaper in Germany
1 Like
Ooofffttt
The Krauts have sold their souls to Putin.
What’s the German for schadenfreude?
4 Likes
The Versailles Treaty.
2 Likes
There’s talk of conscription/mandatory national service being brought in to make young lads drive petrol tankers, that’s a fantastic idea
Ouch
It came back to bite the authors though
That it did.
What could possibly go wrong?
1 Like
1 Like
There’s a reason its rising quickly, mate