It makes me laugh actually that the Tories (especially Mrs Thatcher who practically invented the single market) who for so long wanted access to an almost unlimited supply of cheap labour from Eastern Europe in order to hold down the wages of average UK working people have actually handed the working class the opportunity for a huge rise in wages with Brexit. One only has to see how this has driven up the wages of truck drivers sharply and you can bet that the same will be happening in other jobs where there is a growing shortage of workers - nurses, fruit pickers, care workers, tradesmen, motor engineers etc. Restrict the supply of people and economics shows us that the price for their labour will go up!
Unfortunately this will also increase business costs and drive inflation. I was always strongly opposed to Brexit because although I could see the appeal of some of the slogans, I shared grave concerns with 95% of economists worldwide about the impact it would have on business efficiency and as a result I thought it posed a threat to unemployment. In fact the reverse may be true and it's having the unintended consequence of reducing unemployment and driving up the wages of ordinary workers. I don't think it's going to do much for white collar workers - we've no shortage of accountants, middle managers, bankers, estate agents and IT professionals but Brexit plus Covid is really exposing how undervalued the vital people who care for our elderly, drive our lorries and pick our crops have become.
I also think that we are witnessing an entirely new business revolution thanks to Covid and climate change. It's becoming readily apparent that people mostly love working from home/hybrid working and the notion that 9 million people needed to make their way on overcrowded roads and public transport into London everyday further polluting the planet is a nonsense. The business driver for it is that companies are realising that they don't need to pay for huge office buildings in city centre locations stuffed with battery hens and the savings on premises costs are gigantic. They also don't need to pay for their workers to get on planes to fly to Brussels, Tokyo or New York for business meetings every day of the week. Consumers are realising that they didn't really enjoy the high street shopping experience either and are embracing online shopping and also the joy of holidaying at home rather than jumping on a plane to go to Prague to get ****** at the weekend. Seismic shifts in human behaviour are happening and much of it will benefit the planet and its ecosystem. The Government's desire to get people back into city centres is old world thinking in the face of a new world order. Companies like Overclockers and Amazon will benefit greatly, companies like high street computer shops will suffer. Why do we buy so much on Amazon nowadays? Because we're fed up of the limited choice available on the high street, fed up with the hassle of losing a paper receipt and trying to get a refund, fed up of PC World putting every USB cable in packaging that makes returning an item almost impossible, fed up of paying the inflated prices on the high street, fed up (and with covid fearful) of struggling with traffic and parking and crowds, fed up of dealing with shop assistants who simply know nothing about what they are selling due to inadequate staff training. Yesterday I ordered a Thrustmaster Airbus throttle quadrant for my simulator with the click of the mouse and it will be here in under 24 hours on my doorstep. I bet that item would be impossible to find on any high street.
The Governments of the world have known lots about climate change for decades, they knew that a pandemic was coming but they have done little to prepare for either. Human behaviour is changing much faster than governments are reacting, the only issue is it's probably still too little too late. Business and government will only start to react to the climate emergency when the short term cost of not doing so becomes higher than the short term costs of doing so (sadly).
Birdseed007
