Who pays the ferryman?

Yesterday, at 11:00 GMT, all 800 UK emplyed seafearers from P&O were told they were having their eomployment terminated with immeditate effect and were to be replaced with cheaper agency staff.

All P&O ferry services were suspended until Monday of next week at least.

I'm not going to go into the rights and wrongs of this, but point out a couple of things.

First is that before Brexit, Britain was a land bridge between the mainland EU27 and Ireland. Trucks would leave Ireland for ports like Hollyhead and then drive through Wales, down through England to either Dover or the Tunnel.

Brexit made this slower and more expensive, so additional direct routes between Ireland and Europe were begun, and additional capacity added to existing routes. All leading to a drop in traffic through Dover, on top of the reduced levels to Britain also caused by Brexit.

Brexit might not have caused the terminations, but it didn't help.

And of course, as warned, Brexit would lower personal and working rights. There was a bill before Parliament last year to make exactly this kind of activity against the law, but the Government killed it saying "it was bad for business".

This will be bad for Dover, as many who lost their jobs will be from here, but places like Hull and Hollyhead will also be affected.

Brexit was to deliver jbs for British people, the reality is turning out to be somewhat different, just as "project fear" said it would.