Suggestions of using the army to deliver fuel to petrol stations

Driver training centres for CPC & ADR courses pretty much stayed open by going on line, test centres as you say did not and was very slow in opening up.
It’s the same for the testing of heavy goods, which is done by same department, they have only in the last few months got upto speed for MOT’s.

 

Lockdown didn’t cause this - Covid did.

If there’s one government department you want to see as an example of how a non lockdown world might have worked it’s the DVLA. They couldn’t send staff home because their IT wouldn’t work, so did they all work brilliantly through a pandemic?

No; it was chaos, loads of staff going off sick, backlogs of work piling up, unions threatening all out strike because the conditions were horrific etc etc.

Meanwhile in the rest of the civil service business as usual - NHS, DWP, HMRC, Home Office all didn’t just carry on working as normal, they all took on a huge extra demand (whilst working from home).

I mean… you couldn’t have picked a worse example to prove your ‘anti-lockdown’ stance.

 

Leconfield ?

 

And it’s still going on, with huge delays on anything, from licences to V5 sent by post.

Top tip for anyone looking at doing this in near future do it on line if you can, it’s much much quicker.

 

Wel said mate, you explained what happened brilliantly. Though all departments are still struggling, the thing most civil servant's working from home have found is they been more productive. Less garbage in the office allowed folk to actually do their jobs. I know that's not happened everywhere, some parts of the CS have been treated shockingly during the pandemic and lives have been lost.

 

Many of the HGV drivers in the army are reservists, who in their main job are *checks notes* HGV drivers... This might solve the immediate issue but would cause problems elsewhere...

One of the main problems is cabotage - drivers from the EU in to the UK (and vice versa) could make more money by picking up extra loads or dropping in multiple countries. This was stopped by the TCA (so is entirely a result of the Brexit negotiations) meaning that we now need many more drivers than we needed before Brexit. So, a Polish driver could (before Brexit) bring a load into the UK, drop it in London, take another load from London to Manchester, another from Manchester back to London, then another load back to Germany on the way home. Now the same driver can bring a load into the UK, and one out.

Driving licences from many other parts of the world are not valid in the UK. Even a licence holder from the USA would need to take a test to be able to drive in the UK (a friend did this before lockdown after previously also having to upgrade from an Indian to USA licence). So they would need to take the normal theory test, pass the practical, then start on the HGV side of it - unless you can drive an HGV without a car licence? So it would take months to get someone from *most* countries outside the EU to qualify to drive in the UK - and then there is the issue of insurance being sky-high.

 

well for 3 months travelling to a hostile country where people hate anyone ‘foreign’ to pay massive visa and health cover fees / insurance and with their qualifications not covering the same level as our as which will involve expensive retraining im guessing a lot.

 

Yep , work them to death . No wonder no one wants to be a truck driver . If anything it shows you how the EU immigrants were being exploited for their labour . Take said worker from a poorer country , pay them the least amount possible but simultaneously flood the labour market with likewise workers . Race to the bottom economics .

 

You can't train HGV drivers from home, you're just being deliberately silly now.

 

For someone to get rich, others have to be exploited.

 

Nice sarky reply to a genuine thought , why am I not surprised

 

and even ex members of the army air corps who have the qualification and a hgv1 or bowser mongs as we were affectionately called. would i go back on the road... would i ****!. brexit has not caused a shortage of drivers, foriegn nationals came over here and filled already existing vacancies, now they have returned home the jobs are again vacant, but due to over the years of no shortage then theres been no training of new drivers as they were'nt needed, when this was realised the pandemic reared its ugly head so no training could be given and when it was seen how badly drivers where being treated i'e not being allowed to WALK through a drive through to get a meal by mac d's ( happened to a few mates of mine still in the job) a lot of the "older end" chalked **** on it. now apart from the fact that i got my hgv3 when i was 18yo, hgv1 at 23yo, adr+hazpac over the years, driven artic tippers, containers, tautliners, rope+sheet, chemical tankers, refuelled aircraft, i dont profess to know as much as some of the ooooohhhhh look at me google informed click baiters ( not you) i just know that living in a tin box, crapping in a shopping bag in a bucket, no nightheater, no where to park and some little 5hitbag on a fork lift making you wait for 90 mins to take your last pallet off 'cos its my dinner HOUR in a minute.... SORRY for the rant, this has been caused by many years of the country being mismanaged by all parties, plumbers/building trades will be at it soon

 

The Tories had plenty of time prior to covid to reshape the HGV and logistics industry. Instead they sat on their hands, and covid provided the the fatal blow in many areas of government which is now being exposed.
They lie, they continue to be incompetent in everything they do. They've u-turned that many times I'm sure they'd be able to teach trainee HGV drivers the manoeuvre.

 

You couldnt even apply to train the DVLA was in chaos.
Sorry for bursting your bubble

 

Initially 75 army drivers to be made available and up to 150 max. A sticking plaster on an amputation.

 

Indeed .

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39196056

Remember this story from a few years ago . This is how much we cared about truck drivers when still in the EU ..... we did nt . Labour to be exploited under the guise of the EU s " 5 freedoms " . I do wonder how many of these EU drivers weren't even getting minimum wage especially if their truck and company employer were registered from outside of the UK .

 

Teardrop in an ocean, complete joke. Let's not forget the armed forces have been slashed to record low numbers by this Tory party.
Even Corbyn wanted to up numbers in army logistics etc, saw it as vital for our armed forces providing humanitarian aid in war torn and destabilised nation states. Just so happens now that Tunbridge Wells is that destabilised area / theatre.

 

Get ready for Tory national service.... keep the home fires burning lads and lasses!

 

Yes it's an awful job but it needn't be. The problem is that all the rest of society would be very unhappy about the higher prices in the shops which would come as a result of making HGV driving a nice pleasant career. That would of course lead to higher wage demands and inflation impacting the poorest in society the worst (as always). The cycle would then be completed by stagnating wages for hauliers and worsening working conditions till we arrive back where we started. I offer no permanent long-term solution to this but I do sympathise with you mate.

Actually I do offer a partial solution; return to moving most of our goods by train, better for the workers, better for the environment and better for road safety.