The continued staff shortages would seem to mean that it's not simply an issue of pay, and there aren't enough Brits willing to do those jobs.

From what I've read (and take this with a pinch of salt) there are a lot of licensed HGV drivers in the UK who don't drive anymore, with common reasons being long, unsociable working hours, management that treat you like dirt, shitty rules around where they can park to take rest stops with substandard (typical everywhere in the UK...) facilities, and pay that hasn't risen in decades.

This, combined with not enough younger folk taking up the job, along with Brexit, has led to a shortage

The easily exploitable workers aren't available anymore, so the companies who exploited them will have to change their exploitation habits if they want to fill their positions from the remaining labour pool.

Of course a landed citizen isn't going to sign up to be treated unfairly if they don't have to, they're not as desperate and therefore not as exploitable. I imagine they're reading the terms of employment on these positions with disgust, and so they should.

And if, lets say, the corporations will now have to pay double for UK citizens to drive the gas delivery trucks. Wouldn't that raise the gas prices quite considerably?

The world outside the UK is working pretty well with labor import. Even a certain US ex-president was speaking about how bad it was, while he was requesting hundreds of low cost work visas for his vineyards (got to keep costs low...)

This suggests that doubling the pay of the truck drivers would make a much less than 2% increase in pump prices.

Sure, cities will be wealthier than the regions, but ultimately a city in Romania and a city in sweden, infrastructure and education being also equalised through structural funds, should present equal opportunities.

Completely disregarding the language barriers, which are quite extensive so practically freedom of movement would be easy for corporations to use the benefits but not the wider population even if you neglect family ties.

These questions need to be answered and I don't think the educational elite has an answer without painting flowery pictures not too many might be inclined to believe.

Most people in the UK are very supportive of HGV drivers finally being paid a fair wage. It is unfortunate that political leaders side so quickly with large corporations (although not surprising in Germany, it isn't usual in the UK, the public won't take it).

I've been trying to read into the causes and dont feel like I've come to understand it any better. I'm tempted to see it as part of the broader supply chain crisis but I get the impression its a little different.

Then again I'm not sure I understand why the broader supply chain disruption is as pervasive as it is at this point in time.

There is no direct link to the spikes in energy prices.

They are clearly struggling. And even if Brexit is only 10% of the problem, they run into the fact that it's key to central government policy to portray Brexit as successful, and so you mustn't mention that element.

That said, my local large Tesco had a small few aisles completely empty - yoghurts I think, and some fruit and veg.

Clearly not an apocalyptic situation, and much better than the Great Toilet Tissue Shortage, but unsettling nonetheless.

Would they try to force migrant workers to work in the UK, even against applicable UK law?

Other EU politicians have been quite diplomatic and friendly during the whole thing. A lot unlike a certain Prime Minister from a former EU member I could name.

As an EU citizen I’m sorry that UK left. And I do hope that things will not get much worse in the UK, though I fear they might.

I do think that brexit is the biggest self-inflicted harm a country has voluntarily done to itself in a really long time.

As someone who lives in the UK, I agree.

- Their political opponents have spent months dismissing their concerns as scaremongering.

- Many would still like us to rejoin the EU at some point. So it makes sense to point out the advantages of doing so.

There is just too much national pride around this move, and the British political system is so thoroughly messed up that it will take one or two leadership generations for them to come to their senses. They can hardly manage the exit, the Reintegration would be even harder.

After the Suez Crisis in 1953 it was clear to the British establishment that the US would put its own interests first over its allies, and the UK was a busted flush as a world power. Without its empire its only future was as a "first among equals" in the European project.

It spent the next two decades trying to get into the EU (or EEC as it was then) despite objections from Charles de Gaulle and domestic opposition on both sides of the aisle. But by the early 70s it was clear that Britain was not only no longer a world power, but was unable to keep the lights on. The Common Market - plus North Sea oil - was the lifeline.

Now the UK is back where it was in the 70s, only this time the North Sea oil wells are running dry and it is out of the EU with no prospect of joining soon, having trashed relations with its closest neighbours.

It seems unlikely. I would say it is more likely that being outside the EU leads to more euroscepticism among the young. Perceiving the sharp end of EU incompetence - triggering article 16 without even informing Ireland - or malice, such as seizing vaccines and the whole propagandistic negative portrayal of the UK during the vaccine rollout in the EU - has already led many a former remainer to think that the EU is not the most fantastic of institutions.

It is certainly true that there are many in the EU keen to paint every minor event as some sort of disaster for the UK. They will gladly ignore the wider context of the pandemic, of driver shortages in the EU as well, of this being a purely manufactured demand-side panic buy "shortage" - to gleefully jump up and down shouting about the UK being self harming and it is all 100% brexit. It really comes across as deceitful propaganda I am afraid - and people take note and the EU loses its shine bit by bit.

I always thought the Brexit vote should have required a supermajority.

Years, not months. Pretty much all concerns about Brexit were dismissed as being Project Fear.

It makes travelling in the EU harder, let alone it risks upsetting the Ireland situation. You can expect an international audience to disapprove.

The electoral commission went to great lengths and expense to find any wrong doing and came up with nothing.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/20...

Edit: Rant alert: It really irks me that the people who call the Brexit election unfair, don't seem to acknowledge that Britain was never given any kind of referendum when joining the EU

"Although the United Kingdom ratified the treaty in Parliament, this was not without some opposition. Broadly the governing Labour party supported the treaty, while the opposition Conservatives did not. The Liberal Democrats supported the treaty, while calling for a referendum on the UK's membership of the EU as a whole.[119] Several 'Eurosceptic' MPs called for a referendum on the ratification of the treaty. Daniel Hannan pointed out that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair had twice promised a referendum on the matter, to which Blair replied that he had promised a referendum on the European Constitution rather than the Lisbon Treaty, which unlike the former was not a constitutional treaty.[120] In early October 2007, the Commons' European Scrutiny Committee had found that the treaty was "substantially equivalent" to the rejected constitution.[121]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratification_of_the_Treaty_of_...

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-w...

Conclusion: Leave.EU was ultimately fined £66,000 in total after their appeal.

Vote Leave Ltd:

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-w...

Conclusion: commission found evidence, issued fines, most significant fines appealed, commission lost appeal and paid costs.

Investigation into payments made to Better for the Country and Leave.EU:

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-w...

Conclusion: The Commission had reasonable grounds to suspect a number of criminal offences and have referred the matter to the National Crime Agency, who investigated and found not much.

They lost their appeal but the Chairman of the Electoral Commission aplogised, and the Met found nothing

The specific offence was that there was collusion between BeLeave and Vote Leave which ultimately meant that money spent by BeLeave was actually supporting Vote Leave's campaign, which was not lawful.

Both 'parties' were fined - Vote Leave and BeLeave/Darren Grimes.

The judge who overturned Grimes's fine did not pass judgement on whether the spending was lawful or not.

The appeal was upheld based on the ruling that the Electoral Commission had not properly done their homework to prove BeLeave's legal status, or justify the maximum fine permissible for Grimes - essentially a procedural error, rather than a factual error.

You're right that there was no referendum for the Treaty of Maastricht which formally created "the European Union", but I think that places undue significance on that single event in terms of the trajectory of the European communities.

Personally, I don't think the Brexit referendum was unfair (what does that even mean?).

I do think that "the Brexit that was voted for" (i.e. the Leave platform) was quite different from "the Brexit that we got", and I therefore have some sympathy with those who ask for another vote. Whether the difference between the two versions of Brexit is down to deliberate lies, misunderstanding of the scope and complexity, wrong expectations about the ease of concluding agreements with trade partners, I cannot even begin to guess.

"Never given any kind of referendum" is far fetched.

When it’s half the country each way, you’re going to get a lot of people with very different ideas on what they voted for even at the best of times; with two different competing leave campaigns and shockingly inept government communications on the topic, it’s even worse.

[0] I’ve tried to engage with someone who blamed “the EU” for Russia annexing the Ukraine.

You mean someone blamed the EU for what Russia did under Catherine the Great (or whenever it was they originally annexed the Ukraine), or you mean someone blamed the EU for Russia annexing Crimea in 2014?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Community

So no, the UK joined the EU in 2009.

Also note:

The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE; commonly referred to as the European Constitution or as the Constitutional Treaty) was an unratified international treaty intended to create a consolidated constitution for the European Union (EU). It would have replaced the existing European Union treaties with a single text, given legal force to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and expanded Qualified Majority Voting into policy areas which had previously been decided by unanimity among member states.

The Treaty was signed on 29 October 2004 by representatives of the then 25 member states of the European Union. It was later ratified by 18 member states, which included referendums endorsing it in Spain and Luxembourg. However, the rejection of the document by French and Dutch voters in May and June 2005 brought the ratification process to an end.

Following a period of reflection, the Treaty of Lisbon was created to replace the Constitutional Treaty. This contained many of the changes that were originally placed in the Constitutional Treaty but, instead of repealing and replacing the existing treaties, simply amended them and abandoned the idea of a single codified constitution. Signed on 13 December 2007, the Lisbon Treaty entered into force on 1 December 2009.

So it was initially reject, some cosmtetic changes were made and it was shoe-horned through. Hardly what I would call democratic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitu...

The "European Union" as an entity came into existence at the time of the Maastricht Treaty (aka Treaty on European Union), and the UK was a signatory to that treaty. That was in 1992.

Could you explain why you think 2009 is the relevant date?

While we did have a referendum to join the EEC, I maintain that the EEC served a very different purpose (being a trade based agreement) to the EU.

The Treaty of Maastricht was passed by parliament, though was never put to the public vote.

The subsequent treaty of Lisbon and consolidation of the EU had no public vote either.

Brexit was a public vote.

It would be interesting to see what would have happened if the other two had been put to the vote

There's a handy dropdown that lets you pick the lie you want to explore.

EDIT: I replied to the wrong comment accidentally due to the delayed rendering from an HN helper extension I use, my apologies. I can't delete the comment once someone has replied to it.

Given what we know about Russian interference in other elections, it would be strange if Putin said "Nah, let's sit this one out..."

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/media-centre/vote-lea...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/29/vote-leave-...

The organisation (Vote Leave) withdrew their appeal, and paid the fine.

And the point of "net transfers" is to build up markets in less developed parts of Europe. No European country benefits from what is happening in Poland right now.

And Schadenfreude isn’t punishment.

Not nice, and I dislike the guy but I found the quote somewhat funny.

The laughing and snide comments are just A) Schadenfreude at being so stupid as to ask for that "punishment", and B) intense annoyance growing into anger at the fuckwittery of whining about "punishment" for getting what one asked for.

As such, it's all utterly well-deserved IMO.

It has to be said though, that the EU did go to great lengths to try to find some kind of common ground that would leave much of the entitlements in place (as a matter of self-interest of course, as these amounted to business for various EU states) - to which the HMG responded with V-signs and blowing loud Benny-Hill raspberries.

To trade across international borders you have to have agreements, and you can't have an agreement with somebody who openly flouts the rules at every given opportunity.

I wouldn't be relying on your neighbours' nativist agendas to drive some sort of "free trade" angle either cause nativism typically favours tariffs.

"A fifth of all EU border checks are now happening in Northern Ireland, the government has said."

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/brexit/unsustainable...

There is a distinct possibility that the EU is being vindictive

With time countries usually end up passing treaties to make these regular passings easier. When you are a country newly enforcing the Schengen border it’s a high faff affair and closely scrutinized.

I remember when Slovenia first got the border it caused huge problems and long delays.

The checks are at the ports in NI, the whole point of the agreement between the EU and UK was to avoid any checks at the land border between NI and the Irish Republic.

Particularly when people were screaming at the tops of their lungs, “There’s a lot of absolutely fundamental societal wide issues that should be considered…”

There is nothing shocking here.

Yep! This is exactly the kind of sentiment I was talking about.

No, you were talking about "smug" EU remainers / still-in-the-EU citizens, weren't you? The people who "voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party" are the Brexiteers.