Every Little Helps: Former Tesco boss Dave Lewis to advise UK govt on supply chains The UK has appointed Sir David Lewis, formerly the CEO of Tesco, as the government's supply chain adviser. He will be advising the country's prime minister, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, and its "Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster" – aka minister without portfolio Michael Gove – on both "immediate improvements and any …
Tell the media to shut up about constantly banging on about shortages. If the brain deads stop panic buying, we'd be OK.
OMG there is a shortage of Kellogs cornflakes! Well, buy that other fucking brand right next to them.
99% of the "shortages" just mean you have to buy a different brand, or (insert deity) forbid, you don't buy that item this week
#firstworldproblems
It's not panic buying if there's a real shortage. It's not panic buying if you can see the shelves are already empty. It's not panic buying if over 1/4 of garages are not getting deliveries and you need to get to hospital. It's the media's job to report that and they would be failing if they didn't.
Buying the next brand is fine until it runs out, or you're allergic to one of the ingredients, or there are no other brands left. Stop blaming the problem on the symptoms, we should all know the actual cause of the problems by now.
@myithingwontcharge
"It's not panic buying if there's a real shortage"
Panic buying causes a real shortage. Thats why people were acting stupid and dangerous (and illegally) as they put petrol into water containers and bin bags. There was no fuel shortage until demand jumped 500%. At the best of times that cannot be handled. Same when toilet roll ran out after brexit, there was plenty of it but it was in the warehouse because such excessive demand could not be known in advance.
Even an 'implied' shortage of something will send people into a frenzy and end up causing an actual shortage.
Scenes of mile long queues at petrol stations, blocking roads, hindering emergency vehicles... stopping said emergency vehicles from getting fuel... all reported by the media caused it to be far worse than it was.
There was no shortage of fuel... just a few dozen fewer delivery drivers... that's it. By the time they drafted in army drivers to fill the gap... of the 100 or so people... more than 50% of them were support... not actually drivers ... the 'alleged; shortage went away... that was it... a few dozen drivers cannot cause the mass disruption and hysteria we saw.
So why was there a shortage of drivers to begin with... it's not solely because of a lack of HGV testing during lockdowns and it's not solely because of EU drivers leaving the UK after brexit.
It's because for years they have paid crappy wages for backbreaking work that keeps you away from home for long periods... and people no longer want to work in that kind of environment.
Then there were companies enticing workers away from one part of the supply chain to another by increasing wages and offering starting cash incentives... If you worked in that industry and could take a better paid job...with a bonus just for signing on... Yeah... you probably would.
So a literal... few dozen people leaving one specific sector of the supply chain... coupled with the medias irresponsible reporting, and peoples general sense of selfish entitlement and the power of the moronic group mentality... caused the problem.
last year I couldn't get pasta or flour for weeks or more because of the panic buying.
I made something else to eat instead, I learned that you can use peeled leeks instead of pasta sheets in a lasagne, I found recipes for flour free foods... I adapted and I survived... although my waistline didn't during the first lockdown due to trying out all these alternate recipes and gaining 8kg between March- August. :)
But I did eventually lose 9kg to make up for it.
Ok - I'll not buy the blood test bottles that I need to get blood tests done. Those blood tests are required to monitor the health of my liver since one of the drugs I am on is known to be liver toxic.
The GP can't prescribe a shared care drug without the blood test, but the consultant can' issue the blood test.
Nothing bad could happen, after all last time I stopped taking the drug I only ended up in hospital for three weeks and permanently disabled.
Fortunately the consultant did issue a direct hospital prescription, but that was alot more stress than I needed.
Shortages are not an "oh well buy the next brand" issue. They are life and death for various people.
Additionally the shortages are of greatest effect for those who are already in, or on the edge of, food poverty. If you struggle to put food on the table each day then the increase in cost, and the secondary increase in cost because the closest alternative is a more expensive brand doesn't make it any easier.
If they want to fix things, they start with the essentials... because well all know 100% that your average person one the street will panic and turn into a selfish wanker at the merest hint of a supply issue... Toilet roll, flour, pasta... petrol... We've seen them all over the last 18 months or so. Not because there was any real serious shortage of anything, but because the implied shortage caused mass hysteria that caused the shortage.
So focus on essential supplies... resources to industry and food chains... food stuffs to shops... fuel to petrol stations... and so forth and so forth.
The last thing people need is a 1 day rush for a bit of wrapping paper from amazon because you want to get ready for xmas... non essentials can wait a few days.
If people stopped being selfish and entitled... a lot of these 'so called shortages' would never happen to begin with.
Also
Fuck the media for stoking those fires and making it 10 times worse... if they'd stopped fanning the flames every couple of hours... things wouldn't get as bad.
"Focus on essentials first "
You mean all the things brexit broke and the country (including all my local Tesco stores it seems) now has no staff and resources to fix. I wish him good luck. :-)
Hint: That was actually the original issue and blaming the press and public for it is just gaslighting.
Focusing on a single issue... IE Brexit... is a narrow minded way to look at the whole picture. It's just a single part of the problem.
There isn't a worker shortage... there's a shitty job/wage environment problem. Pay people crappy wages, treat them as disposable and toss them aside whenever you can... and people won't want to work in your industry.
That existed long before brexit... leaving the EU only showed what a shitshow it was before. It's highlighted the problems and done nothing to fix them... only broke them further.
But it's not the 'cause' of turning non existant shortages into actual shortages.
So what if people can't their new shiny for a few extra days... if arseholes stopped being selfish inconsiderate arseholes for a few moments...and if the media stopped creating bigger issues than actually exist... things would be better for everyone.
"There isn't a worker shortage... there's a shitty job/wage environment problem."
This isn't an either/or situation. It's a long and short term situation.
Employment factors combined with Brexit might have left us short of HGV drivers but that doesn't mean that simply upping wages will suddenly materialise a sufficiency of drivers. It simply means that drivers are being shifted to whoever can pay the most. In some instances that means your rubbish won't be collected because bin lorry drivers are being poached by transport companies.
New drivers have to be trained and tested. The capacity for both is limited. Even if training suddenly stepped up there needs to be an increase in testing and that means either training more testers (which takes time and presumably means diverting some existing drivers into doing that with short-term knock-on effects) or shortening with the existing testing. HMG seems to have settled for the latter; we'll have to see what the road safety consequences of that are in the coming months.
Just because someone is the head of an organisation with a large supply chain does that really mean they are an *expert* in supply chains? I would have thought the person you really wanted was not a "suit" but someone like the national warehouse manager. But they they probably don't go to the right cocktail parties to get invited to apply.
"a series of measures to relieve pressure on vital supply chains, including by streamlining the testing process for HGV drivers, creating skills bootcamps to train up HGV drivers, as well as introducing short-term visas for fuel drivers, food haulage drivers and poultry workers to ease pressures facing these supply chains."
There's a list of fire-fighting activities if I ever saw one. If Lewis's is expected to concentrate on that things aren't going to be fixed. A lot of our problems are decades old. They stem from governments keeping retail price inflation* down by sourcing more and more stuff from the cheapest manufacturers world-wide. The retailers were complicit in that. Appointing someone from a manufacturing background would have made more sense.
* By ignoring housing as part of the cost of living they let actual inflation rip, fuelling it with low interest rates.
For those who don't know what the 6 P's are "Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance". Something that those who promoted Brexit seem to have completely ignored/forgotten. Yes, there are driver shortages worldwide caused by everyone always wanting everything cheaper than everything else. That puts pressure on companies to keep wages low which means that people got out of the crappy low paid jobs and found better ones. People will do crappy jobs, but ONLY if they pay well.
In Britain we had a substantial part of our economy reliant on cheap labour from the EU, primarily from Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, to do those crappy low paid jobs. Due to the rampant xenophobia following the Leave vote they pretty much all went home with the last of them leaving because of the final straw of the Covid lockdowns. I don't blame them for going given the way we as a nation treated them, but I do blame our incompetent government for not seeing the problem coming and doing something about before it reached the stage of shortages. It's the same every time with this shower and it's never their fault.
As for the media being at fault, are you referring to the same media that made a mountain out of a molehill over EU membership? You swallowed their bullshit then but now all of a sudden you find it distasteful when it starts to affect you directly?
For those who don't know what the 6 P's are "Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance". Something that those who promoted Brexit seem to have completely ignored/forgotten.
Um... IIRC (and it is if) there were no cries of "we'll finish up with a shortage of HGV drivers if we leave" from the pro - Remain camp.
One possible reason for this might be that the current shortage has got something between little and bugger all to do with leaving the EU...
One possible reason for this might be that the current shortage has got something between little and bugger all to do with leaving the EU...
Dream on.
EU supermarket shelves aren't empty and Johnny Foreigner's petrol stations haven't run dry. How come?
Perhaps a lack of Polish HGV drivers hasn't buggered things up for us by much. But the extra checks and customs paperwork to get trucks through the channel tunnel will have a lot to do with the current shortages and supply chain problems.
Fragile, over-optimised supply lines don't help.
Centralising distribution and relying on HGVs reduces the number of points required for a system to fail.
Closing small abattoirs means more transport required for animals to be butchered, and increases costs in the supply chain.
Interrupting the supply chain to a large abattoir or a large distribution centre interrupts the supply to a larger area and a larger number of customers.
Reliance on cheap foreign labour is a fragile over-optimisation.
while pro-EU in general, and anti-brexit in general, I hate to agree with you that this has become an EU agenda over the last 20 years or so. Ironically though, it's mostly likely going to fail (though I'm not rejoicing), because nobody in Europe (well, not on the 'mainstream public / voters) is happy for such... direction and goal, and the harder the political elites push the plebs, the harder they resist. Even though, even more ironically, becoming United States of Europe would, probably, benefit Europe, overall. It would be interesting to read why it worked with the US of A, and probably won't with Europe. Perhaps just down to 'different times, different context', etc.
All that said, this was not a major brexit agenda, though possibly lurking in the background.
in the spirit of post-brexit Schadenfreunde, I'm happy to announce that in terms of quickly resolving acute, short term issues, the number of EU-HGV applicants for the privilage of working in Great Britain, has (according to last night's news) hit the '300' mark. Of which, I haste to announce, 20 have been issued a (sort of) work permit already! This great result will go, no doubt, a long way to relief (re-live?) a shortage of approx. 100K and there's nothing to worry about, Boris said again.
We already requested our extended family in Eastern Europe to get ready to send us food pre-xmas food parcels, but I'm a little concern about delivery... Perhaps, if food parcels can't reach us here, we can reach the food parcels overthere? As long as we don't run out of air pilots / retired attendents. Apparently they sent out those letters to retired Luftwaffe staff to help us out in crisis...
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