Why is there a shortage of HGV drivers?

The UK needs 100,000 more HGV drivers if it is to meet demand, according to the Road Haulage Association (BHA).

Hod McKenzie, from the organisation, told Sky News it was a “critical situation” and a “cocktail of chaos” had led to the crisis. 【小题1】?

Retiring drivers

It says around 2,000 drivers are leaving the industry every week, often due to retirement, with only 1,000 new recruits joining over the same period. Mr McKenzie told Sky News, “【小题2】, so we’ve got more lorry drivers leaving the profession because they want to retire.”

Cost of training and pay

“We want younger people to want to be truckers, and it’s expensive—at least £4,000, possibly £7,000—to train to be a trucker and that’s beyond the pockets of most young people,” he told Sky News. “So we’ve got to make it easier to take that financial burden away from them and make it easier for them to gel in and stay in. 【小题3】.”

Working conditions

【小题4】, according to Ms Short. She said, “When we’re trying to attract talent from mainland Europe to come here and work, and the pay and conditions that they have there are better, we need to consider how we can look at things like that for them as well.”

【小题5】

A change to rules on how people pay tax has been blamed for some HGV drivers leaving the industry. The reform of the IR 35 rules were designed to prevent workers from setting up limited companies through which they pay less tax and National Insurance while working, in effect, as an employee.

Prices for collectible baseball cards seem to be rocketing. A Mike Trout card was sold for $3.9 million in 2016. A 1952 Mickey Mantle card jumped to $5.2 million on January 15. 2021. Even a Spencer Torkelson card is worth thousands right now. Spencer Torkelson may become an All-Star one day. But he is just a 21-year-old who has just joined the Detroit Tigers recently.

A baseball card is a mass-produced picture of a professional (职业的) baseball player, not an original work of art. Spencer Torkelson is not Oscar-Claude Monet, although we don’t know yet what a guy with a bat in his hands could do in the future.

Then, what makes a baseball card worth thousands, sometimes millions of dollars? John List, the University of Chicago economist, told me. “The sports card market is doing well because it’s part nostalgic (怀旧), part art and part potential profit (利润). That combination is what’s magical.”

I am a sports fan, and certainly had baseball cards as a kid. Friends still send me an occasional card, as a gift, which I treasure. But I think the true charm of baseball cards is when they are cheap. Children should be able to trade them, put them in their pockets or under their pillows with you worrying they’re damaging some future windfall.

But professional baseball card traders typically don’t even open the packs to see what players are in them and keep them stored for future sale. Eventually, they put the cards almost out of reach for children, who used to be the market for baseball cards.

Can the multi-million-dollar cards stand for what we value? I don’t think so. We have learned again and again that the most truly valuable players among us are those who treat the sick, keep communities safe, teach children. I’d like to see prices paid to those kinds of all-stars go up, too.

Kindness and kids just seem to go hand in hand. But 62% of more than 2, 600 participants in the NBC News State of Kindness Poll believe that today’s kids are less kind than those in the past. Women (66%) feel about this kindness fall more strongly than men (58%). Most of the participants who feel that way (77%) thank parents caused the seeming lack of kindness among today’s children, with a few thinking that society, schools, or friends caused it.

At the same time, Americans say they don’t put kindness first when it comes to teaching kids values. Among all participants, honesty is taught more than kindness as well as other things like courage, leadership and storing work ethic (道德). But the younger generation—those aged 18～24—think highly of kindness rules. They choose kindness by 10% over honesty as the most important quality to teach kids.

The question of whether kindness is learned or taught—or somewhere in between—causes different opinions. According to the study, Americans have different opinions on whether kindness in something one is born with or needs to be learned and nurtured over time. Slightly more than half (52%) of the participants believe that all of us are born with the ability to show kindness, while 48% believe kindness must be developed.

Parenthood (父母身份) makes a difference to your thoughts on the causes of kindness. Those without kids (56%) are more likely to think that people are born to be kind, while 50% of the participants with kids think kindness is developed.

Also, 51% of dads and 54% of men with no kids believe kindness is something time is born with. Slightly more than half of the moms say kindness must be learned, while 48% believe it is what one is born with.