I didn’t listen to the speech but reviews seems to be OK.
Out of interest dud he rip the current government apart giving examples of mishandling and corruption?
I rather liked his line that his father was a tool maker and, in one way, so was Johnson’s father 
The “leveling up? They can’t even fill up” was also good.
Well, it’s that or despair (and Prozac).
That’ll go down well. Unintelligible advice on unfathomable problems.
All Europe seems to be enjoying the chaos in the UK - this Polish newspaper cartoon says:
“So unrealistic…a Brit in a car with a full tank of fuel…”
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That’s Dutch not Polish 
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Whatever its original it’s a good larf
Is this what Boris went to India to see Modi about?
Exporting jobs? They could have just used £1,000 a day wet behind the ears consultants from firms run by their pals, as they did for track and trace.
One piece of evidence today: in the first opinion poll after the Labour Party Conference support for Labour fell - they’re now even further down on the Tories. (Support for the Tories fell as well - not surprising given the current chaos in the UK, and the fact that - as the opinion poll also indicated - most people blame the Tories - but support for Labour fell even more.)
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One factor I’m struggling with is this (justified) "HGV wages must rise is where the money comes from to do this.
Either the haulage companies take that on the chin…and as I understand their margins are about 2% I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon. The other is that the wage increase comes from their customers…and that will undoubtably feed through to high street prices.
The talk about rebalancing the UK economy is all well and good but higher wages in the private sector means higher high street prices and high wages in public second means higher council tax or central taxes…but of course this side of the equation is never mentioned.
Never mind we can watch these contortions unfold in the UK with amusement!
The mantra 'high skill, high wage economy" leaves out an element. High wages mean high prices, with a good dollop of inflation added probably.
I find it difficult to find any amusement as most of my close family are in U.K. (with close and extended family in Canada New Zealand Australia)
I found it difficult to watch so no…no immediate love for Keir Starmer…still feeling politically homeless as ever….
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I mentioned that my son is an HGV driver in U.K….he was considered an essential worker and worked all through the lockdowns….he’s been with his previous company for 5 years but has just recently handed in his notice and is now driving for Morrison’s (contract not with Morrison’s) As soon as he said that his hours were better….his pay was better….his contract was better….the incentives to leave his previous company were compelling then it felt obvious to me that the prices for the consumer for food etc were bound to increase….
He self funded his HGV licence…underwent further training monthly in his own time….spoke often about gaining his licence to drive fuel tankers….
None of the training is without substantial cost to the individual licence holder who wants to progress….
Maybe it will change now there’s a shortage but I don’t see how it can unless the government starts funding and fast tracking those who want to gain and then further enhance an HGV licence….??? 
It seems to me though that it’s not an industry that can cut corners and allow just anyone to drive an HGV….someone my son knows was off the road for months pending an enquiry where a motorcyclist died under his wheels on a roundabout…he was eventually cleared but he never returned to being an HGV driver as the experience weighed too heavily on his mind…,
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The high cost of gaining an HGV license, and the barrier this presents to most people, is rarely mentioned - but it has actually been part of Tory economic mismanagement for 40 years (unfortunately not fully reversed by the Blair governments). Making the UK one of the most expensive places in the world to get higher education is another part of the same jigsaw.
It’s amusing to hear Johnson talk about moving away from the UK’s low-wage-low-skill economic model, since his own party has been the prime mover towards this since the 1970s (and the left has been arguing against it for just as long).
On wage rises feeding through to price rises (or leading to inflation, which is not the same thing) by the way, this linkage is complicated, but depends largely on productivity, either directly (in the case of prices in the businesses affected) or indirectly in the whole economy (in the case of inflation). But here again you can see innumerable ways in which the Tory ‘small state, market knows best’ ideology has been a major factor. For example, I wonder how much UK HGV productivity is shaped not by anything the drivers are doing, but by the volume of traffic?
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Absolutely Geof. Johnson blustering on about ten years of wage stagnation as if Tory austerity wasn’t a major factor is galling. But yet again the media didn’t pounce on this hypocrisy.
You are right too on productivity. How does one improve road haulage productivity? Larger trucks, faster trucks, dedicated truck lanes, route optimisation, faster loading and unloading? I’m sure these issues have occupied many minds in such a competitive industry (and no doubt have spawned the large logistics centres) and if they haven’t come up with silver bullet by now I doubt one is going to suddenly pop up.
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Comment in the Guardian:
"This is just embarrassing at this point.
The nation is sinking and this clown is telling us this is all part of the bigger picture, in stark contrast to the reality of it in a nation being hoodwinked and sailed into the rocks for profit and ideological zealotry based on incredibly fuzzy logic and the expense of workers rights, families prosperity, hope, health, ambition, collaboration, standing or any other metric we should use to judge a successful, functioning society.
At every turn they are looking to pin the blame elsewhere like some stupid school based japes, this is the fucking real world where people are going to starve and freeze potentially due to this clowns callous and reprehensible actions, actions I doubt he even gives a second thought to. I guarantee he spent more time choosing the wine for the post conference speech circle jerk than he did on the farming crisis.
He’s so totally out of his depth that even his Russian ‘friends’, disaster capitalist backers and doting coterie must now see the empty vessel for what he now is, a busted flush waiting for the first person in the crowd to pint out he’s naked…"
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