Great Britain is experiencing spectacular delivery failures. Closed gas stations, long lines in front of the open ones. These pictures reach us every day from the island. Because there is a lack of truck drivers, the petrol and diesel pumps are not the only ones running out of gas. More and more things are missing from everyday life.
Despite the bottlenecks, Prime Minister Boris Johnson (57) does not want to relax the stricter immigration rules. Johnson’s fears are that if there were masses of cheap labor, salaries would not rise and the quality of jobs would not improve.
The crisis will probably last until Christmas
It could get even worse for the British: Boris Johnson said in an interview with the BBC that the crisis could last until the holidays. This has far-reaching consequences for the entire economy. Which products are affected? An overview:
beer
Almost nothing is more sacred to the British than going to the pub for a few pints. But what is missing more and more often is the beer. Wetherspoons, one of the largest pub operators, recently announced that there were delivery problems with certain types of beer. Because there is also a lack of truck drivers here to transport the barley juice to the pubs.
bacon
Because there are too few butchers who can process the farmers’ pigs, many of the dead animals may have to be disposed of. 120,000 pigs that have already been slaughtered are said to be lying around on farms. Pig farmers demonstrated in Manchester on Monday, some wore pig masks and T-shirts that said “Save our bacon”. They wrote on posters: “We have to feed the land, not the landfills”.
Turkeys
The British love turkey as a Christmas menu. Between eight to nine million turkeys are consumed annually at Christmas. Most of it comes from British farms. But there, too, there is a shortage of staff, and production has already had to be reduced by a fifth. Therefore, this year turkeys have to be imported from the EU – most of them from Poland or France.
Christmas trees
Not enough that the British have to eat Polish turkey for the holy festival. A Christmas tree may also be missing this year. Between eight and ten million Christmas trees are sold in the UK each year. One to three million of them are imported from continental Europe. Because importing goods has become complicated and expensive since Brexit, there will be fewer copies on the market this year. And the available ones get more expensive.
Medication
A British pharmacists’ association warned on Monday that drug deliveries to individual parts of the country could take longer than usual in the future. The reason for this: the gasoline crisis. The association called on the government to develop contingency plans so that drugs remain available to everyone. (oco)