A tsunami of bad news.

[cromwell]

The government says £250-£300 for the initial license. Due to the changes in licenses, there is no more Class3/2/1 but C and C+E and C1E and I'm confused already.

But, essentially, up to 7.5t without a trailer costs the above, so they say. Articulated over 7.5t CE, costs more.

Also you need to renew every 5 years and do 35 hours of refresher training before renewing. Paid of course.

Same in the gas industry. If you want to keep your gas safe certification you have to keep going back to a training course, which you the gas engineer have to pay for. Also when you are on this course you are not earning.
Some say it's to keep your skills up to date, others say that it has morphed into a rip-off scheme that penalises the honest.

The not so honest? They are the ones fitting all the off the books boilers. in some cities as much of 90% of replacement boilers are estimated to be fitted by people who do not have a gas safe certification.

[Workingman]

Try working with aircraft... a cert to blow your nose.

But forget the 7.5t and the certification things. What about the uncertified, the unskilled or semi skilled workers? They are the ones hit hardest by this latest tsunami of bad news. They do not have the means to mitigate or escape as some of us do, they are locked in. The "I'm alright. Jacks" are fine, they are not.

Please do not tell them to upskill. The abysmal education system of the past five decades has left them unable to upskill. This mess is an immediate problem for them and they currently have no escape.

They need help, now. It is not there.

Never mind, let's talk Strictly...

[Kaz]

Petrol shortages. Co2 shortages. Energy price rises. Potential energy shortages. GP's not seeing patients and people dying of cancer because of that. A beautiful young woman murdered in London.
It's as though with Covid not being so threatening now, something else has to come along to worry and upset people.
This is what worries me about the quality of our current crop of politicians.
They are very good at posturing on the world stage, at virtue signalling to other politicians.

But we have real, pressing problems that need to be solved. We can't be spending £100 billion on Hs2 when we need that money to build nuclear power stations to keep the grid going. They talk tough about the channel migrants then send out the RNLI to give them a lift here. It transpires that two thirds of our Co2 production is owned by a foreign firm.

I read the other day that there is a Europe wide shortage of HGV drivers. How? There wasn't two years since? Similarly there is supposedly a world wide shortage of doctors.

We have real world problems that need solving and our useless MP's chunter on about micro aggressions, trans rights, gender neutral toilets, transactional feminism...
They need to get back onto planet earth, quickly.

Yes, 100%

[Suff]

Try working with aircraft... a cert to blow your nose.

<snip>

Never mind, let's talk Strictly...

My father always said you can't get out at 25,000ft and fix it so it has to be right first time.

As for strictly, not just strictly but same sex partners!

Nothing else important in the world to discuss.

[Workingman]

Yes, there are some types of work where skill levels have to be maintained by refresher training and testing and I guess that hauling up to 44t of goods in a huge vehicle on public roads is one of them.

This has been known about since, forever, so why it was not prioritised during the pandemic needs answering by the government, RHA and the employers / agencies of the drivers.