Sadly, just heard today that Pat has died at her home in Cambridgeshire. Many on here will have read her posts and agreed or argued with her.
Pat was an HGV driver with Bretts of Guyhirn and became an instructor there. She was married to Ian, a Bretts driver. I knew her for about 15 yrs and met her at the NEC truck show one year when she was involved with setting up the PDA....the Professional Driver's Association.
She was still in touch with a few C4P members through Facebook. I shall miss her regular ' rants ' about all manner of things in the News !
Pat Ratcliffe.......1946 - 2021. RIP. I shall miss her.
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That's sad Ted. I'll remember Pat not only as one of our few female members but more as someone who often went "against the flow" with some of her comments and opinions but was never shy about fighting her corner.
Thanks for letting us know.
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Sad to hear that, a woman of strong views, many of which I disagreed with, but knew her stuff as a lorry driver.
Slight thread drift, hope you are keeping well, Ted
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Thanks for asking CD. Hope all is well with you. Settling into retirement at 75.5 yrs. Still got the Jowett and just one motorbike, the Velocette LE. Banned from riding now by SWMBO. We have a 5 door RAV4 for the caravan and a Micra. Both autos. 5 Grandkids and a rescue terrier. Life is OK. Keep well, all of you !>>
Last edited by: Ted on Mon 9 Aug 21 at 22:53
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We didn't agree on much, but Pat stood by what she believed in, no matter what, and was honest and well meaning in her beliefs. And that is to be admired.
She also spent a great deal of her time trying to help others, which is equally admirable.
RIP Pat.
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Sorry to hear that. I meant to go on one of her open days, but, as usual, didn't get around to it.
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Very sad to hear that, I did miss her posts.
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Very sorry to learn about Pat's passing. Condolences to her family and friends.
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Very sad news. I went to one of her lorry driving experience days (don't call them trucks) and learnt much from it, one of which was she was more of a man than I.
Hope Ian and her grand kids are coping.
It was a sad day when she was banned from here.
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>>
>> It was a sad day when she was banned from here.
>>
As is so often the case, I think the ref penalised the wrong player.
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>> As is so often the case, I think the ref penalised the wrong player.
IIRC the other player was the ref!!
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>> I think the ref penalised the wrong player.
Not wishing to speak ill of the dead, one of Pat's downfalls was she didn't know when to shut up and stop arguing with people.
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>>
>>
>> Not wishing to speak ill of the dead, one of Pat's downfalls was she didn't
>> know when to shut up and stop arguing with people.
>>
Now isn't that unusual on an internet forum ;-)
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I saw a photo of Pat on her Facebook page back in June which shocked me and I assumed she was very ill.
One of her recent Facebook posts:
"I WON'T BE REMEBERED AS A WOMAN WHO KEEPS HER MOUTH SHUT. I'M OK WITH THAT".
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RIP Pat. I know Ian will be devastated, I told her the smoking would get her, she told me to get stuffed.
Last edited by: Zero on Sun 8 Aug 21 at 20:12
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Sad news indeed, but thank you for letting us know. The world needs more people who speak and act with conviction, and who go out of their way to help others. I’m sad to say I never met Pat, but she provided great advice on a number of occasions and was very kind after Andrew died. My condolences to her husband, family and friends.
RIP Pat, and thank you x
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Sad News.
I didn't realise it was so long but I met Pat and Ian near Doncaster in Sept 2014 to collect an outstanding payment of a Costa for services rendered :)
Ian had received notification from some Police Force regarding an allegation of a hit and run by a car driver on a dual carriageway whilst driving his truck.
It was a spurious allegation and I put together an appropriate response for him which resulted in the matter being swiftly put to bed.
We had a good chat and they continued on to visit Ian's parents in Scarborough.
What you saw with Pat was what you got.
RIP Pat.
Ian if you do look in, sincerest condolences.
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It's common knowledge we both had our differences, mainly about how this and the other place were moderated. She sure could argue until the cows came home.
No doubt she'll now be in discussion with Ernie that his milk cart wasn't the fastest in the west.
RIP Pat.
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Very sad to hear. Condolences to Ian and the family.
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Sad news. Condolences to her family.
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RIP fellow Burmese cat lover.
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Bit of a shock hearing of her death, best wishes to her family. Always willing to help, helped me out when I was at CAB with a prticularly difficult case involving a truck driver fallen on hard times.
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I 'spoke' to her a couple of times by email and we talked about meeting up when she was down this way on her hols. but you've guessed it, we never did. Rest in peace dear Gal.
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Very sad news, this place was the poorer when she was banned.
RIP. Pat.
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Sad news:-( She was definitely one of the more memorable contributors. I seem to recall being put in my place by her a couple of times, but I was never offended by it, or felt she was being unkind. RIP, Pat.
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Pat laughed at one of my jokes in the original jokes thread.
Clearly a woman of taste!
RIP Pat, we had differences, but you were and will be missed.
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I enjoyed Pat’s contribution to this site. For me views were thought provoking and interesting. Sorry to lose you, Pat.
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As someone said earlier, Pat had a great knowledge of her subject, if some of her views challenged some contributors.
Shame she can't read the eulogies.
Very much missed.
Last edited by: neiltoo on Tue 10 Aug 21 at 18:15
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Wonder what Pat would have thought of the pressure on lorry drivers and the shortage of numbers now due to Brexit.
I seem to remember that was one of her reasons for being pro Brexit to clear out all the foreign drivers?
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The driver shortage is down to several reasons, brexit is one reason but it's not the main reason there's a shortage.
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>> Wonder what Pat would have thought of the pressure on lorry drivers and the shortage
>> of numbers now due to Brexit.
>> I seem to remember that was one of her reasons for being pro Brexit to
>> clear out all the foreign drivers?
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>>
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Yeah, let's import cheap foreign labour instead of paying a decent wage to our own workers.
My guess is that was what Pat would have said.
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>> >>
>> Yeah, let's import cheap foreign labour instead of paying a decent wage to our own
>> workers.
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>> My guess is that was what Pat would have said.
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And that, in nutshell, is why so many voters voted leave. They weren’t seeing any of the benefits of freedom of movement and open markets. They weren’t the ones studying at EU universities, getting jobs in the EU or buying property there. The metropolitan left tries to ignore this, but reality is that the bulk of what was their core vote, the working class, have seen continued downward pressure on their pay and conditions enabled in part by freedom of movement of labour. They should be championing improving pay for these sectors, but they can’t bring themselves to do it. The pendulum has swung the other way, and in all probability it’ll equalise somewhere higher than it was and lower than it is. Some things will cost more, and some are too cheap anyway. Can it be right that a 2 litre bottle of sparking water can be bought for less than 20p? Maybe not, now that CO2 has gone up massively ;) But bottling and transporting that bulk around is only possible if transport is cheap…
Let’s not also forget that the web of Working Tax Credits put in place by Gordon Brown (at a cost he estimated to be around £1 billion but which now costs us around £15 billion) is also a huge subsidy to companies employing low paid workers. All else being equal, if salaries increase then the bill for this should also fall.
Paying someone responsible for drinking a 42 tonne lorry through busy streets to a town centre supermarket at anti-social times just £12 an hour was never right really, was it? Even with the EU labour, the average age of a lorry driver was mid fifties. Take out the younger Eastern European drivers and I wonder what that is now? Until now few companies have invested in training new drivers; why would they when there’s a constant flow of already qualified, cheap labour coming to fill the jobs. But what disruption does is reshape supply chains and create opportunities so I wouldn’t get too gloomy about it :)
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>
>> Paying someone responsible for drinking a 42 tonne lorry through busy streets to a town
>> centre supermarket at anti-social times just £12 an hour was never right really, was it?
>> Even with the EU labour, the average age of a lorry driver was mid fifties.
>> Take out the younger Eastern European drivers and I wonder what that is now? Until
>> now few companies have invested in training new drivers; why would they when there’s a
>> constant flow of already qualified, cheap labour coming to fill the jobs. But what disruption
>> does is reshape supply chains and create opportunities so I wouldn’t get too gloomy about
>> it :)
>
If we had a large unemployed pool of labour I would agree with you, but we don't. Corona virus issues are of course masking and highlighting the issue
What does need to change is supply chains. They shouldn't exist, supply and demand have been separated too far
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 22 Sep 21 at 20:23
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>> >
>> If we had a large unemployed pool of labour I would agree with you, but
>> we don't. Corona virus issues are of course masking and highlighting the issue
>>
You’re right, we don’t. But that doesn’t mean that the pool of labour we do have is efficiently utilised. The subsidies of Working Tax Credits distort it for a start. They encourage 16 or 30 hour contracts, which are well suited to supermarket/warehouse picking and delivery jobs in sub 3.5T vans, but not really suited to a job driving an HGV for example. The HGV driver probably couldn’t afford any childcare on £12 an hour. And the supermarkets will get someone to do 20 to 30 hours of work at £10 an hour because they’ll also get WTC.
My supermarket delivery costs me nothing if I spend more than £40. But I should probably be paying at least £15 if you think about the time spent picking and packing my order, loading the van, finding my address and driving there, covering the cost of the van, unloading etc. If it did cost that I’d either pick it up myself when I was passing. Or buy more from the COOP down the road ;) So maybe some of those drivers would be better trained and employed in full time roles as HGV drivers, but those roles are not subsidised and have a higher barrier to enter in terms of licensing requirements and cost. At £40k the market would sort itself out I expect.
There’s probably a whole raft of jobs that should disappear or be automated as they just don’t pay enough. Similar to what happened during/post war, when many jobs that had been done for little money mainly by women (housekeeping, cleaning, maids etc etc) went vacant and never returned after people went to work in better paying jobs in factories as huge chunks of people went off to war.
On the plus side, huge amounts of CO2 are generated by brewing in this country, and that’s not captured at all. So with a bit of investment, drinking beer will be good for food security :)
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In-work benefits have always been problematic and inevitably subsidise employers, especially bad ones. Ultimately they can be a tool that keeps the poor on subsistence wages. Gordon Brown is a decent man and I imagine he was aware of the history of in-work benefits going back to at least the 1700's and the Speenhamland system that kept the poor alive but enriched farmers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system
Even without that mechanism, once people achieve a wage they can actually live on they become easy prey for low paying employers, since any additional income at the margin produces a large proportionate increase in the capacity for discretionary spending (the pin money phenomenon).
To my mind this is where lies the case for a minimum wage. Neither is that without its problems. It's easy to see how communist doctrine led to command economies.
It's hard to see how a fair society can ever come about.
Last edited by: Manatee on Thu 23 Sep 21 at 07:06
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>>> ) So maybe some of those drivers would be better trained and employed in full …
Interestingly, one of the regular delivery drivers I have got to know said I wouldn’t be seeing him again, as he had been offered retraining as an HGV driver by Tesco.
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An excellent assessment of the current situation I think.
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Just popped in to add my condolences. Pat was kind enough once to send me a spare BT router she had knocking about, free gratis and for nothing, when mine was playing up. That was enormously kind of a total stranger. Took a few months for the smell of cigarette smoke to abate from it though...
I disagreed violently with Pat's stance on Brexit and I still maintain, despite her knowledge and passion around haulage, that it was the wrong thing to do, and I'm just as sure Pat would still be shouting that it was the right thing to do. I'll never get it, specially given the state of the country now, but there we go.
Sad to hear of her demise, and RIP to the lady.
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Oh no, that's terrible news. I met Pat a few times, she was brilliant at talking me through my options when I had money troubles and I hope I repaid the favour by fundraising for the PDA at a few Truckfests both with and without her.
RIP driver.
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I’m not sure exactly how to write this…
We exchanged Christmas cards with Pat and her husband Ian for several years, so I felt it was right to write Ian a letter expressing our condolences. When I went on Facebook to check he was still working for Brett’s it seems from several Facebook posts and groups that Ian passed away on 23rd September. I don’t have any more information on the circumstances, I’ve messaged a couple of the Brett’s group members sensitively, but haven’t had a response. Such awful news.
Last edited by: Dave_ on Sun 10 Oct 21 at 00:15
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Looks as though it's true Dave. I've just looked on Ian's Facebook page and there are a few tributes to him from friends . Messages have arrived since 25/9. He was a FB friend of mine, as was Pat, but wasn't very active, I think he let Pat do all the talking. Probably he couldn't get a word in !
I only met him once, at the NEC truck show....A big fella,always recognizable by his ' Indiana Jones ' hat.
Both keen campers, having moved from their touring caravan to a campervan, a favourite place being Looe in Cornwall.
RIP, they will be sadly missed.
Ted
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I know Ian had been battling recurring C events for a longish while, but if Pat went first I bet she bullied him to join her from the other side.
I ironically I told her once, on here I think when she was on her ferocious pro Brexit stance, that she would vote it in, then sod off and leave us with the mess.
She did.
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I was thinking of her today, top end of the A55 several Polish trucks queing for Holyhead Port. A friend, who works at the site, says it's as busy as it ever was as far as trucks are concenred. Covid seems to have reduced holiday traffic a lot. COnsidering a trip ove ron the bikes in the next 12 months.
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PDA PAT - smokie
