Category: Brexit

Lord Puttnam’s important speech in full; by kind permission

Editor-in-chief

Shirley Williams Memorial Lecture. October 15 2021 19:00 POWER AND FEAR – THE TWO TYRANNIES Before I begin, I’d like to offer my sincere condolences to the whole of the Amess family – what happened today is not just a tragedy for them but for all of us who believe that democracy must operate free […]

The unelected men who’ve scammed the country

Anthea Simmons
Lord Frost and Dominic Cummings

We’re all a bit tired of pretending that Brexit is fine/will be fine, aren’t we? There are even a few cracks appearing in the BBC’s propaganda wall. Plausible deniability is over. A Brexit-supporting Question Time audience can see it for what it is: a disaster. The government is turning itself inside out trying to spin […]

Johnson’s high-wage hype: a fake plan for a real crisis

Mick Fletcher
shot of HGV from a bridge

It is really hard to believe they are serious. A predictable shortage of labour because of Brexit, dismissed in the referendum campaign as ‘project fear’, has suddenly become part of the plan all along. Loyal Tories have apparently swallowed Johnson’s claim that crises in the supply chain show we are moving to a high-skill, high-wage […]

Thank you and goodnight: the Conservative Party conference…

Graham Hurley

Watching Priti Patel tossing chunks of glistening legislation to the rapt audience at the Tory Party Conference is to be powerfully reminded of feeding time at the zoo. The same Pavlovian flutter of audience hands at the applause lines; the same salivating eagerness for yet more blood, yet more political protein; the same smacking of […]

Pigs sacrificed on the altar of Brexit

Anna Andrews
Pig snout poking through fence

“…This government has always been quite comfortable with importing… more food from abroad – cheaper imports – and not worrying about our food security and producing at home here, and I think that philosophy is starting to show now…” (Nick Allen, CEO of the British Meat Producers’ Association, on the BBC’s Farming Today on 6 […]

Welcome to the Kingdom of Shambolica

Graham Hurley

As the Conservative party conference ploughs on, welcome to the Kingdom of Shambolica: 137,000 deaths from Covid (official figures), but probably a great deal more blowing over £37 billion on a test-and-trace programme that never worked properly an NHS on its knees and menaced with yet more privatisation growing evidence of dodgy Russian donors to […]

West Dorset Conservative MP Chris Loder happy to see supply chains collapse…

Anthea Simmons

Ever get the feeling that the current crop of Conservative MPs – especially Brexiters – fail to think things through? Brexit is itself the most monumental example of a failure to understand (in fact, wilfully mis-understand) the consequences of shooting ourselves in the foot. There’s an endless stream of nonsense from John Redwood whose Twitter […]

Closing doors: Brexit and TEFL teaching in Spain

Helen Johnston

West Country Voices has recently highlighted how Brexit is affecting the language teaching sector in the UK, with dire impacts on school trips abroad and on the TEFL sector in the UK. Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) has also, for many years, provided many British people with an opportunity to move abroad, selling […]

Employers are in the driving seat, but they don’t train drivers

Mick Fletcher

In an attempt to pose as doing something to help tackle the shortage of heavy goods vehicle (HGV) drivers the government has announced that the Department for Education (DfE) will be spending £10 million to train an estimated 3,000 drivers.  Set aside for the moment that this is a drop in the ocean compared with […]

“It’s only one petrol station…”

Tomasz Oryński

“It’s only one garage”, I was told when I mentioned that there was no HGV diesel at Lomond Gate earlier this week. But is it really not an issue when only some garages have no fuel? A thread: Lomond Gate is the last garage on the A82 going north that is really suitable for trucks. […]

The double whammy: Covid-19 and Brexit in Spain

Mike Zollo

Part one: Si no vuelves … (If you don’t come back …) An account of our recent trip to Spain in times of Covid-19, and our first post Brexit A few weeks ago, half way across the Bay of Biscay on Brittany Ferries’ Pont Aven, returning from a long visit to Spain, I listened to […]

Polish truck driver to Grant Shapps: digital licences are nothing new and you did not have to leave the EU to get them!

Tomasz Oryński

“Our transport network will be fairer, greener and more efficient thanks to our exciting new post-EU freedoms. We will introduce digital licences…” – wrote Grant Shapps on his Twitter. “Cool”, I thought to myself, “finally some benefit of Brexit!” But is it? I had heard about digital licences somewhere before. Where was that? Ah, I […]

What? No turkey for Christmas? Don’t panic!

Eric Gates

The prime minister has put Michael Gove in charge of “fixing” Britain’s food supply chains, quipping that he “doesn’t want to have to cancel Christmas again”. The Times, 15 September No turkeys for Christmas? Time to stiffen the upper lip, have a drop of that Dunkirk spirit and think how our grandparents managed in the […]

School trips abroad: the “Grand Tour”, blighted by Brexit

Mike Zollo

Cultural osmosis For many decades, visits, homestays and courses abroad in the country of the ‘target language’ have been considered essential to the study of a foreign language, both for UK young people going abroad and for young EU nationals coming to the UK. Indeed, this is nothing new: human beings have always travelled, mixed […]

A beginner’s guide to supply chains

Eric Gates

The term ‘supply chain’ is bandied around frequently in discussions about Brexit. Since it appears  that some cabinet ministers have a somewhat hazy grasp of the phrase, I wonder if it would be helpful to explain it in simple terms. I am not trying to imply that readers of West Country Voices have an understanding […]

Why pay rises won’t solve the Brexit staffing crisis

Russ In Cheshire

There SHOULD be pay rises in most sectors, including HGV. But pay rises won't solve the staff problem, and here's why. For arguments’ sake, imagine we give a 20 per cent pay rise to HGV drivers. This attracts 20,000 people from lower paid jobs. HGV problem solved (in a year or so) But… The industries […]

The Brexit-exacerbated blood bottle shortage: why your doctor may not be able to offer you the blood test you need. UPDATED

Anthea Simmons

About a fortnight ago we saw medics and commentators expressing concerns over shortages of blood bottles. Research indicated that this was a worldwide phenomenon created by the massive hike in demand as a consequence of the pandemic. Now it appears that Brexit is exacerbating an already difficult situation with supply chains interrupted by border issues […]

Send Botham Down Under? That’s just plain batty!

Anthea Simmons
Chappell and Botham cartoon

Liz Truss, the cheese obsessive who counts rollover trade deals as the sign of the dawn of a new era for ‘global Britain’ and crows about flogging a few stiltons to the famously-lactose intolerant Japanese has hit diplomacy for six with her gleeful appointment of Brexit-fanatic Botham as trade envoy to Australia. Ennobled for his […]