People,
below is a letter i hae raised that i intend to send to my local MP. feel free to sneer and criticise about it but if you feel you would like to use some/all of it and send it to your MP then please feel free to do so.
i know there is a few things that need tweaking with it but i am in the process of doing it. also the link i refer to is this one
business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/b … 716801.ece
if you have any points to raise then please post them. if you want to extract the urine then go ahead but at least some of us arent just sitting round moaning about it.
perhaps if enough of us write to our MP’s something might be done about it
anyway, im rambling on, here is the letter i intend to send over the weekend
Dear Mr Train
Thank you very much for your personal letter that was posted through my door today. In your letter you have asked for my support and more importantly to you, my vote in the up and coming local elections. At this moment in time I have not decide which way I will vote but I will be interested to hear your views on the points I have raised in this letter.
The questions I have for you are numerous and I will try my hardest to explain to you why I have raised them.
My first question is with reference to the amount of fuel duty being paid by the residents of the UK. At the moment I am currently serving in the armed forces but will shortly be leaving them due to having served my time for Queen and Country. When I do leave the armed forces I hope to make a career move in to the logistics sector as an HGV driver or even an owner driver. At the moment the average price of diesel fuel in the UK is approximately 115p per litre. Where as in most other parts of Europe the average price is well below the one pound mark. I understand that the government does add a tax to the price of fuel but why is it so high in the UK compared to other countries?
My second question is what is the government going to do to help the haulage industry in the way of subsidies towards running costs? The farmers of the UK receive what I believe in some cases are substantial subsidies from the EU to allow them to compete with the other members of the European states in a “fair playing field”. Why hasn’t the haulage industry been given the same amount of support as farmers have? The average cost of operating a haulage company in Europe is 30% cheaper than it is in the UK. If you are sat in your office while you read this letter I would like you to take this opportunity to have a look around and see if you can find anything, and I mean anything at all, that hasn’t been transported on the back of a lorry at some stage of the manufacturing process. Where would Britain be without the haulage industry? I can have a very good educated guess that if all the haulage firms in the UK decided to remove all the HGV’s from the roads of Britain for 48 hours this country would practically come to a standstill. There would be next to no food in the shops. There would be very little fuel in the petrol pumps and there would certainly not be any mail for people to receive their bills or birthday cards.
Why can’t the government introduce a scheme like the one that is in place with the red diesel usage for farmers? This would not eliminate the massive void between UK and European but would move some way to make the ‘playing field’ more even
My third question is why is the government in the process of allowing other European country haulage firms to bid for contracts within the UK? At present, I believe it has been sanctioned that European haulage firms can do three ‘runs’ within the UK before they have to return to their mother country, as do UK drivers on the continent. If the other European nationality haulage firms are able to tender for contracts in the UK they will be able to fulfil such contracts at prices that are so much lower than UK haulage firms and therefore more and more UK haulage companies will go out of business due to the ever increasing running costs in the UK. The European haulage firms will save money in numerous ways. The main reasons being European drivers running over hours, If they do get caught they just get parked up for a rest period that is required and they will be free to go on their way. If a UK driver is found going over hours they inevitably get a large fine (as well as their company getting a fine) with the possibility of losing their operators licence or having it suspended. Another reason is the reduced running cost that the Europeans encounter, as previously mentioned (fuel, insurance, wages etc). How many foreign HGV’s have been stopped on the roads of Britain and found to be non compliant with our laws? (Please see enclosed copy of article taken from the Times Online on 10th April 2008, address link at the top of the enclosed page, just type it into your address bar in internet explorer and it will take you to the article)
When is the government going to open more truck-stops for safer parking for lorry drivers working hundreds of miles away from home? Numerous have been attacked or had their loads stolen due to having to park in a dimly lit lay-by because operators will not pay parking fee’s due to the running costs already mentioned. How many would prefer to be able to park up at night so they feel safe and have the chance of a proper nights sleep after a shower and a good meal without the fear of being robbed or attacked because they are driving items to keep Britain’s industries running?
At the moment I feel that no government is, in anyway, backing an industry that has so far been the back bone of our great country and is being sold off to cheaper and, in my opinion unsafe, opposition from across the water.
I would like your thoughts about this and what the labour government intends to do about it. I fully understand that nothing can be done at local level but surely it could and should be raised at parliament before this country is, yet again, sold off to Europe. At the moment I think the general feeling of the UK HGV driver and operator is that they get no support from the government and ever increasing everyday pressures to do their job legally and stay afloat. Sometimes working 15 hour days, 5 to 6 days a week for what is not even the national average wage and getting no support from local or national government.
When will this end? When all the Lorries on Britain’s roads are driven by foreign nationals that have run over their hours and are over laden? When the casualties on Britain’s roads has risen to such a level that it won’t be accepted by the public any longer? How many more deaths will happen caused by illegal operators and drivers on the roads of Britain will it take? How much longer can this industry last with all the problems we are dealing with at the moment? Would you be happy driving from here to London along the M3 and not seeing a single British registered lorry on the road? I know I wouldn’t as it would be a very sad day if this ever happens but unless something is changed soon I believe that it will.
I hope to hear from you soon
Yours sincerely
if you have any points to raise then please provide evidence so i can quote it to them as well.
thanks for reading
lets hope we can make a change by sticking together
