Brexit Food Shortages Beginning in Britain Now

[peterlund]

Funny remainer guy "A different bias" is making fun of brexiteers and Boris Jonsson in daily videos for months now. Been laughing my ass off all evening by now after discovering him today on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-39mpHEgzTM

[peterlund]

And it is just getting worse apparently.

Check out Phil Moorhouse's update today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rQRMvDNnNc

So why is Octavious so silent? Do you not have any shortages in your stores?

[flash2015]

Is it only a UK problem? The US is experiencing labour shortages causing inflation:

https://www.businessinsider.com/labor-s ... ion-2021-7

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chicken- ... 46549.html

https://nypost.com/2021/06/20/worker-sh ... -industry/

[Randomizer]

The US inflation rate has been suppressed by Covid-19 reducing fuel usage. The calculations are continually changed to keep the number artificially low by changing the items being measured. Companies kept prices low by choice as costs rose for the last year and now are raising them because they can.

Labor shortages aren't new and there are plenty of unemployed workers in the system that were layoff during the last year. The problem is businesses are slow to bring them back now there is a demand for some services like the airlines.

[MajorMitchell]

I watched the wretched video with the chap whining about labour shortages. He seemed to me to be arguing that the only solution is to relax UK immigration standards to allow foreign workers to fill the labour shortages. A "return to the past"" false premise imho.
The free market solution is not to interfere by importing cheap labour who will accept "whatever's on offer" but to force employers to become more effective at purchasing labour domestically, that is to compete with each other for workers, so offering better conditions, higher wages.
It seems that if market conditions favour employers over employees that's fine, but when market conditions improve the relative bargaining power of workers, particularly in the lower income types of employment, then it's a flipping crisis and a new source of cheap labour has to be found.
This isn't the first time the UK has experienced this sort of crisis, the "Black Death" plague of the mediaeval UK led to a radical change in the working conditions of the peasantry of those times.

As for food shortages, that's more a problem of domestic labour shortages in the UK than actual supply shortages. The UK has signed a free trade deal with Australia and we, along with New Zealand can ship as much grain, beef and lamb, beer and wine etc etc as you can purchase to eat & drink.
Who knew that Comrade Nigel Farage and UKIP were secretly working to improve the pay and employment conditions for lower paid British workers? British trade unions should acknowledge Comrade Farage is a revolutionary socialist, maybe give him an award, the Trotsky Medallion for Services to the Union movement?

[orathaic]

The free market solution is not to interfere by importing cheap labour who will accept "whatever's on offer" but to force employers to become more effective at purchasing labour domestically,

Is that not the definition of a regulated market. You regulate who can come and work in the market thus making it less free (and arguably less efficient as the costs raise).

I haven't been keeping up, but I did see comments on twitter about British supermarkets having to import more food for the EU because the British farmers have no been properly prepared for the consequences of this national racism project.

[orathaic]

British trade unions should acknowledge Comrade Farage is a revolutionary socialist, maybe give him an award, the Trotsky Medallion for Services to the Union movement?

Some kind of National Socialist? Interesting..

[MajorMitchell]

No Orathaic you are incorrect. The new UK immigration regulations were part of Brexit process.l
So the existing pool of labour within the UK and those external workers who could come in under existing regulations is the total available labour in the existing "marketplace".
If the immigration regulations are changed specifically to increase the available supply of external workers to increase the total available labour then that is clearly a manipulation of an existing marketplace to benefit employers by improving their negotiating position and weakening the negotiating position of existing workers within the UK labour market.

You're a bright fellow reputedly Orathaic, this is pretty basic stuff. Unless there's an ideological reason your analysis is skewed?

[peterlund]

You MM seem to miss the point!

The internal work force does not seem to be large enough to replace all the EU workers that before the pandemic and brexit did drive the lorries, work in storages, stores, hotels and restaurants.

And that already now before all the necessary customs personell have been recruited. There are currently basically no checks at all being done on goods entering Britain from the EU.

UK is heading fast for the brexit chaos that could easily be foreseen when going for the hard brexit.

Instead UK needs to do as Boris and Nigel actually said in the 2016 campaign. Go for the Norway type of relationship with the EU and reenter the EU customs union.

[orathaic]

I think I agree on the 'missing the point' bit, though I was going to say, my clear position was the regulating who can work is not a 'free market'. That is a regulated one.

Whether there is a shortage of workers because of Brexit, or because England has become known as an unwelcome racist place (cf racist comments at a recent sporting event made by England fans) many workers don't feel safe, or legally secure than they did pre-brexit.

Nobody wants to move, settle down, and then 5 years on be told their right to work has been revoked.

EDIT: not to say peterlund is wrong in anything he added