Paying for PM’s Brexit porkies
■ JOHNSON’S Brexit, Patel’s tough stance on immigration and Covid have forced essential EU workers to go home and restricted them from ever coming back.
It would have been sensible to at least have started to train UK workers to fill these roles. But this government isn’t fit to run a stag party let alone a country.
Now we’re short of HGV drivers, turkey and chicken pluckers, fruit pickers, abattoir workers, meat processors, nurses, care workers, doctors, hospitality staff and so on.
Supermarket shelves are getting emptier while pigs may have to be incinerated because we don’t have the workers to process their meat and the farmers don’t have enough space and cash to feed them.
How can people not see this incompetence? I’m afraid I despair this country has lost its mind.
Terry Marriott, Waterlooville, Hants
■ Boris Johnson claims the Brexit plan all along was to increase pay by denying employers a supply of cheap foreign labour. I can’t remember anyone promising this outcome. And I can’t remember any Tory government having any ambition to improve the living standards of the working class.
Johnson states the Government is spending record amounts on everything but remains unaccountable. Yet still he leads in the polls.
Starmer should adopt the phrase used against Richard Nixon: “You stop telling lies about us and we’ll stop telling the truth about you.”
Alan Mercer, Chorley, Lancs
■ The shortage of lorry drivers, abattoir workers, warehouse staff and fruit pickers started by Brexit, has created an energy, fuel and cost-of-living crisis leading to rising taxes and bills plus increasing inflation.
All of this is made worse by the reckless complacency of PM Boris Johnson and his Chancellor Rishi Sunak, the Laurel and Hardy of British politics. Another fine mess they’ve got us into.
Steve Goulding, Sheffield
■ It breaks my heart that 100,000 pigs may have to be incinerated. There will also be a high price to pay in terms of farmers’ mental health. It seems this uncaring government, instead of trying to find answers, has abandoned the pig farmers to their fate – as it has with so many others.
Ann Kelly, Manchester
■ A few years ago, I recall people complaining about the summer not yet being over but supermarkets being stocked with Christmas items. I’ve yet to spot a single Christmas item in my supermarket in October among the bare shelves. On top of a driver and labour shortage, I suppose there’ll be Christmas panic-buying? Is this what we get from Brexit?
J R Williams, East London
■ We have reached this point because abattoirs brought in cheap labour from abroad because they didn’t want to pay higher wages so British workers didn’t get a chance to learn the trade.
Now because of labour shortages those without jobs on benefits could be put to work in abattoirs and be paid a decent wage.
Jean Barker, Bridlington, East Yorks
■ The Tories say the HGV problems and shortages are Europewide. Not from what I understand.
Of course, it’s nothing to do with Brexit because they couldn’t admit that. If this were happening in France the army wouldn’t be called up to drive trucks but to stop riots. When will this country stop being like turkeys voting for Christmas?
Michael Meehan, East London