A FEW years ago I reached 65 and sent my licence to the DVLA for updating.

When it was returned all the vehicles I had previously been able to drive were removed from my licence and all that is now remaining are cars and vans up to 3500kg gross weight.

I can understand the removal of HGV trucks, but automatically removing smaller 7500kg trucks seems very short sighted for two reasons.

Some drivers would prefer to continue working either because of financial necessity or through choice.

Losing this resource at this time does seem a little daft.

I would have thought that putting food on shelves and keeping the filling stations supplied with fuel was an important issue and telling a driver that ‘next week’ you are too old to drive a truck is a little odd.

I believe the average age of a HGV driver is 58 and this country, because of various reasons, is drastically short of drivers.

If the average age is 58 then in seven years time about 50 per cent of HGV drivers will have been forcibly retired. If you think the situation is bad now, come back in seven years time because I doubt that the new drivers coming through will be sufficient to replace the retiring drivers and make up the 100,000 current shortfall.

About 20 years ago I watched a documentary on TV about a man who built his own house, (or had it built to his specification). There was no heating in the house at all,(apart from presumably a stove), the interior was kept warm by the heat given off by the bodies of the humans living there.

The outer walls had 30 inches of insulation and the windows were triple glazed.

He must be quids in by now, and that’s before we start talking about the environment. If the entire country had gone down a similar route since then the cost of gas would not be such a major issue.

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