Photo: PA.
Sky News presenter Ian King is going viral after describing the current state of England and suggesting the future does not look optimistic.
In a video, King said: “England has become a country where the pubs have no beer, farmers don’t have anyone to pick their fruit, and even if they did there aren’t enough lorry drivers to get it to the shops.
“And today there’s a warning from industry leaders that businesses could be plagued by labour shortages for years to come.”
John Maddocks told Boris Johnson about “Global little England”. “Vote Brexit and get what it says on the packet. Assuming you can find one,” he added.
Damian Sullivan said: “Imagine a country imposing sanctions on themselves. Gobshites.”
And Roger Taylor added: “The UK is a country that has abandoned its taxpayers for no reason, really no reason.
“The party I’m ashamed to have voted for (never again) is dragging us down the toilet, whilst its nose is in the troth.”
One Twitter user said: The Tories have decimated this country and it’s only going to get worse. Can you imagine the shelves in supermarkets around Christmas. There’ll be nothing.
Another added: Oven ready – no checks at border – easy peasy trade deals – nothing will change – we will have more money – what a f*cking load of bollocks we were told.
Meanwhile, UK’s wholesale industry warned consumers will not be protected from price increases forever.
It comes as worker shortages caused by Brexit have been persisting across fruit and vegetable picking, meat processing and HGV driving.
Tomatoes are among products which have doubled in price over the past year – a kilogram of tomatoes wholesale costs £1.47 compared to 75p in 2020, The Guardian has reported. Meanwhile, vegetable oil prices are at their highest in more than 30 years.
“We are trying our utmost to absorb as much of the increases as possible but we, as well as the rest of the supply chain, can’t absorb those price increases forever,” Darren Labbett, managing director at restaurant supplier Woods Foodservice, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
James Bielby, chief executive of the Federation of Wholesale Distributors, told The Guardian that there are 500,000 vacancies across the supply chain, which means Brits should expect food prices to increase.
“The labour shortage means you are having to pay drivers specifically more, and that will be passed on,” he said.
And he suggested it is not as simple as just training British people to fill the vacancies. “The skills gap needs to be filled, you can’t just pay people to be a meat processor, it is a skilled job and you need qualifications,” he told the paper.
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