murraypaul wrote:odysseus2000 wrote:So roughly about 6 x 7.5 tonne vans is an HGV and 12 (post 1997 licenses) is an HGV equivalent load.
For critical stuff like hospital supplies could not the driverless HGV be replaced as a short term measure with hired vans. This would be more expensive but it would get critical stuff to hospitals. There are hire companies in most towns who would no doubt be thankful for the business.I realise that this requires politicians to think but surely in an emergency some set of critical supplies could be moved like this.
It would also require 6 or 12 times as many drivers to deliver the same amount of product over the same distance.
Yes, but if there are vital things in short supply, such as hospital stuff, then could not priority stuff be delivered this way. E.g. at my local hospital I am told that only emergency blood tests are possible as their stock of sample holding supplies are nearly exhausted.
This all seems crazy to me. If it was due to covid then after about 14 days most would be able to work again, but somehow there was a sudden collapse in supplies that began about a month ago and still hasn't been resolved.
All these figures of needing 100k or more new HGV goods drivers could make sense for the UK if many HGV drivers were European nationals returning home, but I am seeing reports of shortages all over the place: USA, Europe,.. I am beginning to wonder if all of these reports are false and that only the UK has problems. I can see mechanism that would do that such as above, but a general change like we seem to have seen that began about 30 days ago, based on my local super market I find unexplainable, especially when I didn't see such things during lockdown.
I have no idea what is happening and why. None of the explanations make sense to me and instinct suggests some folk are doing very well out of the suffering and inconvenience that many are experiencing.
There are all manner of conspiracy theories about, such as:
This is all Europe throttling their recent friends in a show of pique over Brexit. This has the support of the fishing industry which has been treated wickedly by Europeans not upholding the spirit of good will between friendly nations in a time of peace, but if so why now?
Various interested parties are using the change in Health Secretary to cripple the NHS and boost the private sector.
There has been a whole sale change in employees attitudes and they have left HGV to go other jobs, but if so what jobs.
The government has created a crisis so that they can later solve it and look good.
Others conspiracy theories get more and more wild, but all of this has the smell of something that will make some folk who are engineering this, or who come up with solutions rich and from a purely selfish perspective I wouldn't mind getting a bit of that cake.
Regards,