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Since i’ve been working from home I reckon I’m saving at least £500 a month. That’s £500 that would be spent on coffees, lunches, snacks, beer, takeaways and whatever else I manage to spend money on.
So how long until people start opening up cafes and restaurants in your suburb? A lot of modern suburbs are under-provided for in this respect, that could change.
I can't see anyone being stupid enough to open a new cafe or restaurant - anywhere.
With daz's monthly saving he could, in one month, buy a decent quality coffee machine and have change for some artisinal coffee and sourdough.
Going to a cafe means mixing with other people - that's another disincentive.
Going to a cafe means mixing with other people – that’s another disincentive.
For some people, others really miss mixing with other people and have cited it as a reason for not wanting to work from home
I think we will see people taking a punt on local work hubs in towns and cities. Like WeWork but smaller.
locally we have a coffee & snack van thats started coming round
weve also got these robots delivering snacks as theyve just expanded to my area of MK
https://twitter.com/alexdsword/status/1239913522689011712
things are changing
Its my £500 a month comuter fair Im not missing- tho Im back in 3 days a week so its £240 for now
Ive been pretty good for a while at making my lunch & buying minimal snacks/drinks in work
Its made me reassess my priorities, If I could find a similar research job here in Milton Keynes Id be on it in a flash! London is great fun & for my line of research its excellent
The only science jobs in MK are at the new covid testing labs here & the salary is poor (even accounting for my £500 commuting bill & it includes 12 hr night shifts, which Im not keen on)
I can’t see anyone being stupid enough to open a new cafe or restaurant – anywhere.
Like anyone's going to start a business in this environment! This is where the intervention by government is required. Meal vouchers are not going to cut it.
I'd hate to work from home full time. I need that definition of closing the door at work and switching off (as much as you can switch off!).
Call for volunteers for redundancy announced at my work today. 15 of 95 staff to go for now, voluntary or not. Manufacturing company in o&g industry, a very familiar tale at the moment.
Been working split site and home since all this started and much prefer it.
new job in sept will be much the same but probably visits to different sites.
I like the mix but have no intention of getting a job where I have to be on a site full time.
Crikey, so Sunaks announced:
– £1000 to the employer for bring a Furloughed employee back
– a 50% voucher (max £10) for all of us to pop out and eat
– VAT down to 5% on food in Restaurants, Cinema and attractions
– Removal of stamp duty up to £500,000
…all for limited times to kickstart the economy.
£1000*X employees won’t stop a business going under…
£10 voucher won’t get many more people eating out.
VAT cut is might stop a few restaurants going under but won’t get more people out as the price we pay won’t change.
The above hasn't saved my job. Found out yesterday that my branch is going from mothballed to closed as of the end of October and won't be opening up in the meantime.
We were on the edge of it closing but had to wait and see whether our clients in the pub, restaurant and retail trade came back fast enough and in need of our services to make it worth keeping us open a little longer and praying for some sort of recovery. None of the payments, vouchers or VAT reduction has made any difference and with the furlough scheme winding down Head Office pulled the plug at the end of last week.
Don't know if this is the thread for redundancy talk or is there another one floating around? If not I might start one as I've never been through the process before so may need a few pointers.
In the retail space, Oliver Sweeney closing their 5 stores and moving to online only.
locally we have a coffee & snack van thats started coming round
Even I didn't think of that - brilliant!
A couple of articles pointing to a little pain to come.
About the UK https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53402176
About the US - and that's just 3 banks https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53407965
Also read some comments earlier by a senior bod from Canary Wharf Estates trying to talk up the return of office working; a sure sign that offices aren't filling up and WFH still dominates - confirmed by separate comments from Barclays and Goldman Sachs.
Must be having a significant impact on the retail units in the mall beneath the buildings - all very swish, high rents and totally dependant on all the buildings being rammed M-F.
Car parking at Canary Wharf is almost non-existent; consider HSBC's HQ - 10,000 employees, c150 car parking spaces.
Everyone uses the DLR or Jubilee line.
Morning coffee, lunch, shopping at waitrose, a little light retail therapy at lunchtime or after work; beer/wine/cocktails after work.
All will be affected by reduction office attendees and increased WFH.
Yep. People just don't seem to be really grappling with the idea that London just doesn't work with any sort of social distancing- it barely even works with tube carriages packed like sardine tins, there's no excess capacity anywhere to add safety because the drive for so long has been to ram people into London by any means as long as it can keep the bubble growing and to have more and more people commuting further and further on the same infrastructure. It's been pretty much running on an edge-of-failure basis for years and just sort of forgot
I urge anyome who is bothered about macro economics to read Stephanie Kelton's very timely 'The Deficit Myth'.
The constant barrage of public debt warnings coming from the establishment are just not founded on anything in realty.
Learn about the public 'debt' and (and what it is actually made up of) specifically how the money for Covid-19 has been fully funded by the BoE. Learn how bonds are effectively unnecessary to fund government spending.
We do not want a repeat of the lies that led to austerity.
The constraints are real resources, employment and inflation. Not money.
Even the Guardian was kind to Professor Kelton's book.
So Rone, TDLR: We won't run out of money because the Government then just asks the BoE to print more; but to admit we can print our own cash at will to fund everything we want destroys the political machinations of taxation and control.
but to admit we can print our own cash at will to fund everything we want destroys the political machinations of taxation and control.
You also risk inflation if you just print endless money.
There's also the matter of demand, if too many people chose to avoid shops / cafes etc over fear of CV-19 we'll struggle to kickstart the economy. I'm certainly in that category - I think do I want to go out for lunch and is it worth the (small risk), to which the answer is no, I'll just wait for it to die down some more.
People just don’t seem to be really grappling with the idea that London just doesn’t work with any sort of social distancing
Or any city which has a significant business district, which is most of them. We've constructed a model of employment and working (ie commuting into a city centre to attend an office) which is redundant in a pandemic world. As northwind said, it's a bubble, and it's about to burst with massive effects causing a deflationary downward spiral. There's only one way to mitigate that, which is to print money and use it to prop up those who are negatively impacted so we can smooth the transition to an economy which is not centred around city centres and population density. Instead we have discounts at restaurants and token tax cuts.
Boris and co either don't understand the scale of what's occuring (which I doubt), or they're too indecisive, incompetent, and/or bound by neo-liberal ideology to do anything about it. I might be something of a pessimist on the economic affects of covid, but it's seems pretty obvious to me we're about to be hit by a tsunami, and no one seems to be that concerned, which is weird.
I'm more than happy to eat out - I'll just have to sit outside or takeaway. Cardiff Council has commandeered the castle (which it owns anyway) and closed the street outside so that eateries can put seats outside. Nice idea.
Some intersting and gobsmacking graphs in this.. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jul/16/number-of-uk-workers-on-company-payroll-falls-by-650000-amid-covid-19-crisis
And this is *with* the furlough scheme in place. Imagine what they will look like when its removed. The phrase 'slow motion car crash' has never been more apt.
@rone, you are absolutely right. Yet day after day we have the media, particularly the BBC, banging on about 'how are we going to pay for all this?'. They should give all of their reporters and presenters a grounding in economics and MMT. I think that George Osborne knew that he was lying when he compared our national situation to household budgeting, but it gave him a justification for austerity. It is to the media's eternal shame that he wasn't called out on it years ago.
All that, yes.
Even if you're not a believer in MMT- and imo, after the last few years if you're not you're an economic illiterate and shouldn't be anywhere near policy decisions, since it has fundamentally been used, and worked, just that they were very careful about how it was presented-the justification for austerity was entirely built on deception and misrepresentation regardless.
"We have to live within our means" was horseshit and every politician who ever said it, knew it. Living within your means is renting a tiny flat at a high price forever when you could get a mortgage for a house and pay less and end up owning the bloody house, because Borrowing Is Bad. It's not building that new factory that would make your company stronger and more profitable. It's losing your job because you can't afford a new car and you won't take out a loan. My own little side business was built with borrowing, I wasn't "living within my means" for those first couple of months and now it's paid that back at least a hundred times over, but Borrowing Is Bad and obviously I shouldn't have done it.
If you, as a government, can't get a better return on investment by borrowing at government rates than the cost, you're not fit to run a corner shop. But the point of all of this was never really to cut borrowing or spending- in fact a lot of austerity did no such thing. The point was to cut services. Austerity was just the universal excuse.
The pain will really hit early 2021. Furlough ends October, more redundancies announced, savings start to get eaten up paying the mortgage & bills, try to remortgage but you took the 3 month mortgage holiday so can’t get a good rate... then repossessions.
It’s not going to be pretty. Neo-liberal capitalism is going to ‘fail’ for the 2nd time in 12 years.
Also, let’s remortgage the house to pay for a holiday!
There's a lot of idiocy like this going on, hence my earlier comment about it being weird that people don't seem to be alarmed or bothered about the impending economic apocaplypse. I had a good example on a UK wide work call yesterday to update us on the completion of redundancies. In the following Q&A some idiot asked when the staff who were promoted in April were going to get their pay rises.
Newsnight tonight focusing on the very issue I've been going on about. The move to home-working hollowing out the city and town centre economy. Apparently Boris is desperate to get us all slogging back into the cities on crowded trains so we can spend our cash in the coffee shops, pubs and restaurants. Not going to happen. People like homeworking cos it's more flexible and they save loads by not spending money on frivolous crap. Businesses like it because as long as they can maintain productivity it will slash their overheads when the office leases expire.
I can't be the only one thinking why should I put myself at risk of catching covid and endure a miserable commute so I can spend 20-30% of my salary in the act of going to work? No thanks. I have sympathy for the jobs that will be lost in the hospitality sector, but that's the government's job to sort out.
daz - didn't see newsnight but my recent posts have also banged on about the same.
Patrick Vallance's comments to the select committee are a clear counterpoint to johnson's pathetic exhortations.
This government - and many before it - have deliberately moved the economy to be consumption-based so non-essential retail, coffee shops, fast food and chain restaurants have become fundamentally important.
Volume manufacturing has been seen as infra dig so little effort has been made to save and develop it; overalls and 7.30am start?
Most of us have been sucked into this consumption nirvana but enforced WFH has provided the opportunity to think carefully about what we want from life and the price we're prepared to pay.
Rammed offices, coffee/food to go, beer after work, a little light shopping at lunchtime - thanks but...no.
You're dead right to say that job losses in the hospitality sector is for gov to sort out; johnson and his clown circus own it.
But wait...end of Brexit transition will solve all our problems as we transform into an economic and trading powerhouse.
Rammed offices, coffee/food to go, beer after work, a little light shopping at lunchtime – thanks but…no.
Well I'll admit to missing the after work pub visits a little, but they're invariably massively negative whining sessions which are occasionally cathartic, but mostly depressing. I've been much happier in the past 4 months because I've not been surrounded by arseholes for the best part of the day. And I get paid more for the privelege and can work when it suits me, rather than when it suits my boss. Like now for instance, at 2am. They're gonna have to drag me back.
I have sympathy for the jobs that will be lost in the hospitality sector, but that’s the government’s job to sort out.
I absolutely get the bit about not eating out until this situation is under better control, I'm very nervous for me and my family to do that. I'm not quite so sure though about it being just up to the gov to sort out. We are a society and do we not owe something to our fellow workers in the sector to try and help them. Sometimes we have to put ourselves out a bit for the good of others - support your LBS, buy your veg from the greengrocer instead of the big supermarket....risk aside is this so much different?
It's not a position so to speak - I'm not telling you to, rather than I have a voice on each shoulder and wonder what others think?
I’ve been much maligned in the past 4 months because I’m able to be accessed by arseholes using MS Teams utilising every tiny gap in my diary for the best part of the day. And I get paid less now for the privelege and cannot have 10 mins in the car or on the tube to get away from it all.
Edited for generic realism.
It’s not going to be pretty. Neo-liberal capitalism is going to ‘fail’ for the 2nd time in 12 years.
It's not a failure that's what it is. While it could do with improvements (as every system need to keep evolving) it is the best system we have.
Neoliberal capitalism isn't the best system, IMO - social democratic capitalism is better.
The Neo-Liberal part is the bit that’s the biggest problem imo.
We are a society and do we not owe something to our fellow workers in the sector to try and help them. Sometimes we have to put ourselves out a bit for the good of others – support your LBS, buy your veg from the greengrocer instead of the big supermarket….risk aside is this so much different?
I'll be honest I feel absolutely no duty to support a particular business by spending my money at it. This is the problem that we have created for ourselves. The economy should be something which supplies things which we need, not an end in itself, and now the model of unnecessary consumption has been broken by covid in the form of wiping out all that superfluous demand, the bubble is going to collapse. It's not the responsibility of citizens to help the staff who are now looking at redundancy, it's the responsibility of government who have deliberately constructed this house of cards.
Of course I'll support local business before large chains etc, and I have been doing through my normal spending. If I want a takeout, I get it from the local pub or restaurant which I used to frequent before the pandemic, but I'll be damned if I'm going to start commuting into Manchester again just so the likes of Costa et al can stay in business.
While it could do with improvements (as every system need to keep evolving) it is the best system we have.
???
It's manifestly failed twice in little more than a decade. It's been failing from the very start, with millions out of work or stuck in pointless insecure jobs, social mobility at a standstill or in reverse, inequality at record levels, whole industries gone, and a tiny elite of billionaires who control a vast proportion of the wealth and power. This isn't capitalism as defined by the likes of Adam Smith, it's oligarchy, plutocracy and monopolism. If we actually had capitalism we'd be a lot better off.
I’ll be damned if I’m going to start commuting into Manchester again just so the likes of Costa et al can stay in business.
What about the people who work in Costa? Do we owe them anything? Or is that what we mean by the government sorting it out, with benefits, etc. (which we pay anyway)
What about the people who work in Costa? Do we owe them anything?
We owe them the support and help they require to either ride out the pandemic in their jobs through the furlough scheme and direct support to employers focused on saving jobs, or if the employer can't stay in business help with benefits and other support such as, mortgage/rent holidays, protection from creditors and evictions and bridging loans/training to help them transition into other work. Of course that won't happen because Sunak seems to think all we need is tokenism in the form of restaurant discounts and VAT cuts. The government needs to underwrite huge swathes of the economy. They've already proven they have no appetite for that in the medium-long term.
so if the government won't do it, as a society do we turn our backs.
I mean, I would love a society where we don't need charity, and don't need big appeals to fund the NHS, etc. but we don't. This is I guess another form of charity, but one where we still get something back directly.
as a society do we turn our backs.
If the govt won't do it, then as a society *we are* turning our backs. The government is the collective will and resources of a society, not some independent organisation. How does charity save a 3 trillion pound economy? It can't obviously. The state is the only institution/organisation which has the means to fund and execute action on such a macroeconomic scale. Unfortunately though the state is currently under the control of ideological zealots and idiots who are in hock to the plutocrats and oligarchs.
The demand will still be there for these services, it'll just move.
Instead of going for a pint after work with collegues, you'll just go for a pint with your friends at the local.
Hopefully it will reverse the trend for super cities and put things back into residential areas.
Yes there will be a lot of upheaval in the hospitality industry, but if theres more WFH, people will have more disposal income and time to spend in that industry?
IMO chain businesses such as Costa are bad news for communities & society in general. Didn't use them much before, will be going out of my way not to use them now. Yes, it really sucks that people might lose their jobs - but it's a direct effect of the rise of these massive chains who operate on tiny operating margins that risk going bankrupt with the slightest economic wobble. Things might have to get worse for some people/industries before we can make society better. Appreciate that's much easier to say when I'm not one of the people affected!What about the people who work in Costa? Do we owe them anything?
but it’s a direct effect of the rise of these massive chains who operate on tiny operating margins that risk going bankrupt with the slightest economic wobble.
What now? Costa is owned by a huge hospitality business who would in theory be far better placed to weather the storm than some small indie who might as well just shut up shop and go and work in a bank instead cos it's less hassle. I'm not sure your logic is sound here. You could argue that the current coffee shop boom that supports all these indies is on the back of a market created by Starbucks and Costa 15 or so years ago. That's certainly how it appears to me as a coffee buyer. All we used to have in Cardiff were a few old lady type tea shops until Starbucks came and opened three or four stores. Now there are loads of indie coffee shops and sundry other small eateries selling coffee as well.
I think it's more complex than you think. Certainly big chains can take over existing markets and edge out competitors but it does not look that way to me in the case of coffee.
If we actually had capitalism we’d be a lot better off.
Haha. Capitalism is a quality of a system not a definition of it. Norway is capitalist, the US is capitalist, but they are pretty different economically. Uncontrolled capitalism leads to the oligarchy you describe, because in a totally free market system money creates power which creates money so the money gets concentrated in fewer hands. Even the US has monopoly rules. Which they had to create after I think Rockerfeller nearly took over the entire country.
EDIT Rockerfeller and Standard Oil was the landmark case, the legislation was earlier.
The economy should be something which supplies things which we need
The economy doesn't just satisfy demand, it creates it - either by making stuff cheaply enough for us to afford; by inventing new stuff we want; or by creating services that make existing things essential. For example, I just bought a surfboard - why? Because I saw people surfing, because surfing became popular in the UK, because surfboards and wetsuits became common enough in the UK for people to afford them because manufacturers made them. No surfboards, no surfing, no market for surfing stuff, no surf shops and schools at beaches, probably fewer people staying there to surf and definitely far fewer T6 campervans. More campervans means #vanlife and non-surfers buying T6s because they are now more available and so on and so on. That's how economies grow and why we are having interesting holidays instead of just spending two weeks eating chips in Porthcawl whilst watching the kids paddle.
And before you decry all this, it has always been the case. In the Bronze Age, bronze smelting satisfied demand for tools and weapons but it also created demand for jewelry and ornaments and things which created a fine art metalworking industry that didn't exist before, which people then traded wealth for.
Following Pizza Express announcing closure of 75 restaurants, an almost identical announcement from Ask/Zizzi - 75 outlets to close.
Combined job losses are c2,200.
CVAs in both cases.
So, back in 2008 house prices dived by 30% but commercial rents didn’t and the whole edifice of overvalued commercial property has more or less remained standing or rather teetering on the brink of collapse. I believe retail has been unsustainable for quite a long time and that it was already in the first stages of collapse (House of Fraser et al) before covid. It’s my view that covid was not so much the last straw as the moment at which a whole load of retailers sat down and admitted to themselves that hope alone was not going to mean that they would ‘turn the corner’ any time soon and for once commercial landlords have (grudgingly) admitted that it’s not going to be glossed over like last time.
For the sake of interest on the high street I really hope that there’s a big revaluation. I know that pension portfolios hold a lot of rental properties and that is always the argument against landlords just accepting a lower rent. Does anyone know if there are any models for high street rental loss impacts?
Too right we have.
“At Laynes Espresso, a coffee shop on the doorstep of Leeds station, trade was only 20-25% of normal levels, said the owner, Dave Olejnik. “A lot of people are telling me they’re not coming back,” he said. “People have realised the value of the time they spent commuting.”
I genuinely miss Laynes.
Commercial property rents and values (and rates) are at the heart of the vague but “encouraging” current messaging. I suspect.
Does anyone know if there are any models for high street rental loss impacts?
Which high street? The one within sight of my house is doing really well, and as things (at some point) improve with regards to the pandemic is in a very strong position to develop further.
Hopefully it will reverse the trend for super cities and put things back into residential areas.
Yes there will be a lot of upheaval in the hospitality industry, but if theres more WFH, people will have more disposal income and time to spend in that industry?
Jesus Christ on a bendy bus
Chewk is talking some sense 😲😲😲🤯
Unfortunately we saw yesterday that Johnson doesn't share that vision
The priority from his speech was that commuters must pile back on trains & start buying their lunch from Pret & Costa again , those property investment vehicles need rent to be paid on all those shops & offices so that their offshore accounts stay healthy !
Millions of office drones have shown that they can WFH, it's cleaner, greener, cheaper, happier, more efficient, you can buy lunch on your local high Street.
Property prices in cities & commuter suburbs don't need to be sky high.
London & other cities don't need to be the centre of the world
This is a genuine opportunity to level up the country
kimbers - sorry to burst your bubble but Chew and Chewkw are not the same person.
Oh wow, apologies to Chew 😬
It would appear that RBS didn't get johnson's memo about getting back to the office.
Includes interesting comments from the CIPD.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53484767
Some of the medical specialists are also pissing on johnson's chips.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53488142
I completely agree with Mr Cheese 😉
Seriously though, Boris is completely out of touch both with employers and employees. As much as he may want it to happen he can't force us to go back and employers don't want to force us to go back. My place has already said they don't expect us to go back if we don't want to for the rest of the year, and that they'll prioritise use of the office for people who really need it. It's all good, unless you're a city centre business which sells stuff to people.
Like to all of the above. As a travelling salesman that used to have typically £1k-£2k of travelling expenses to claim every month - and I’m one in a team of four - you can see the savings. Not only that, the amount of money both of us at home have been saving is ridiculous in comparison to pre-COVID. Our company rented an office in Reading for 2020 while we re considered a new permanent place - I can’t see that happening.
Affected other ways of course my job performance is fine in the main from not going to meetings and I don’t think I’ve been out of bed earlier than 7:15 - and certainly haven’t stayed away From home - for five months.
<span style="font-size: 0.8rem;">
I can’t see it rushing back to pre-COVID ways. The biggest challenge I have right now is making sure I take a break from being 40hrs a week in front of a laptop without a break and keeping on top of my coffee orders. </span>
Having said that, we had our first “meal out” last night, a takeaway Nando’s to celebrate Jnr last day at primary. Phone up, socially distanced collection from the door and take it home.
Zombie companies - how many are there and are they approaching their demise?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53417948
https://m.facebook.com/anitasindiankitchen/
Anyone else seeing a number of these types of business popping up? We’ve had quite a few locally, I’m assuming they’re filling a gap vacated by city restaurants as take aways already existed, although locally they tended to be a bit shit!
Being reported in US that Virgin Atlantic has filed for Chapter 15.
The fact that Delta with their 49% shareholding were blocked from providing financial support can't have helped.
https://www.axios.com/virgin-atlantic-bankruptcy-coronavirus-a1f631e8-a032-4265-8b03-bfd66d93cd3e.html
Being reported in US that Virgin Atlantic has filed for Chapter 15.
The dominoes are starting to fall just as predicted with the drawdown of the furlough scheme. Add to that rising covid cases and the spectre of a second wave, and completely random and unpredictable govt panic responses to that, it's pretty much the worst possible scenario. A depression is looking like the optimistic outcome now, and catastrophic collapse is looking ever more likely. And yet everyone still carries on as if it's no big deal. Bizarre.
Unfortunately we saw yesterday that Johnson doesn’t share that vision
The priority from his speech was that commuters must pile back on trains & start buying their lunch from Pret & Costa again , those property investment vehicles need rent to be paid on all those shops & offices so that their offshore accounts stay healthy !
Those bungs to Tory candidates don't grow on trees you know !!
Unfortunately we saw yesterday that Johnson doesn’t share that vision
The priority from his speech was that commuters must pile back on trains & start buying their lunch from Pret & Costa again , those property investment vehicles need rent to be paid on all those shops & offices so that their offshore accounts stay healthy !
Millions of office drones have shown that they can WFH, it’s cleaner, greener, cheaper, happier, more efficient, you can buy lunch on your local high Street.
Property prices in cities & commuter suburbs don’t need to be sky high.
London & other cities don’t need to be the centre of the worldThis is a genuine opportunity to level up the country
i agree with most of what you say but i don’t think it will ‘level up’ as much as you would like, it will have a big impact on the very centre of london and the city (negatively) but the suburbs will benefit. local london high streets will grow as there will be more people working from home and going out locally both during the day and in the evening. the west end will still be there but as you say the daily commuting will be a thing of the past for a lot of office workers.
Some will move further out but a lot (like myself) who live in a leafy suburb will spend more time locally but still want central london and all it has to offer (post covid) a short cycle/tube/train/bus ride away.
i was actually doing this pre covid anyway working from home 80% of the time.
there is going to be lots of cheap empty office space.
A depression is looking like the optimistic outcome now, and catastrophic collapse is looking ever more likely. And yet everyone still carries on as if it’s no big deal. Bizarre
I’m baffled by everyone acting in such a bovine manner. Most people don’t seem to realise that they’re stood on a train track with a bullet train heading for them.
The industry I work in is essentially finished. It’s over. Done! As are most of the creative industries. They won’t survive this.
I’ve had no freelance agency work since pre-lockdown in March now. And no furlough, obviously as us freelancers don’t actually exist. There won’t be any work, either. The company I was working for made 50% of its staff redundant 3 weeks ago.
I Had a frank discussion with the agency I normally work through the other day.
They’re expecting most design agencies won’t open again. The ones that do will likely be making the majority of their staff redundant immediately furlough ends.
Just had a look at the few people who are looking for freelance designers. Not many. Accordingly, the going hourly/day rate, due to this new post-Covid reality, has gone through the floor.
Some are saying the rate is now minimum wage. There were actually a couple openly stating an hourly rate below minimum wage
That’s the new reality
I’m sure there are many, many industries the same. Employers are going to look at an unemployment rate the likes of which this country has never seen (5-6 million) and the glut of potential employees, to drive down wages massively.
Throw in Brexit and the removal of workers rights and, for employees, we have the perfect storm
An awful lot of people are in for one hell of a rude awakening. This country is going to look very, very different this time next year
Still... go and have a half price burger on Rishi. I’m sure everything will be fine.
Binners - the future is being a delivery driver for one of the supermarkets.
In other news today, WH Smith losing (upto) 1500 jobs; LGH hotels - holding co for some crowne plaza & holiday inns in UK - have placed 1500 jobs at risk. They're the headline announcements but jobs are being lost all over the country without getting any coverage - a few here, few there, day after day, a steady drip of job losses with some bigger headline grabbers.
Small shops closing, lifeblood dripping out of town and city centres; people's livelihoods destroyed; shops which have operated for decades/generations - going, going, gone.
As the first stage of the furlough unwind will be done at 31st August, there will be an increased focus on the emerging job loss picture - it will be ugly.
Further unwinding in September will bring worse.
On top of that we have the end of Brexit transition at 31st December - unless, unless...
Possible spike in CV19 layered on top.
The recent removal of any effective planning controls from local authorities so developers will operate without any real restraint.
If I had another drink from my half empty glass I would add some further gloom but I won't.
The upside is johnson has assured us, the plebs, that he will be working 'flat out' during the summer hols so that will make everything OK.
And this Tory administration plan on doing exactly the same as Fatcha in the 80’s when faced with mass unemployment...
Absolutely nothing.
They’ll leave it for ‘The Market’ to sort out. And those areas clobbered last time are going to be the same ones thrown to the Wolves this time too.
Those ‘red wall’ seats that voted Tory this time are about to find out what a mistake that was.
This shower are going to abandon us to our fate, without a second thought.
Covid’s actually helped them in the race to the bottom they engineered Brexit to achieve. It’ll be so much easier for them now
If I had another drink from my half empty glass I would add some further gloom but I won’t.
Allow me. Collapsing commercial property and house prices will create a tsunami of bad debt which will threaten the banks just like in 2008. This hasn’t even started yet.
Just to add a bit of balance to the doom and gloom, the mrs has just picked up her biggest piece of freelance work yet, she works as a freelancer in the creative side of things.
This hasn’t even started yet.
Agreed. This is the calm before the storm.
The banking crisis is going to look like a picnic compared to what’s about to hit us.
The government have had plenty of warning and done absolutely nothing as they’re all believers in mental Ayn Rand ‘creative destruction’ bollocks, elevated and insulated as they are from its results.
There’s going to be an awful lot of destruction, not so much creativity
It’s all just an interesting experiment for them. It’s going to be a lot more hardcore than that for the millions who are about to have their lives Decimated and lose everything
Just to add a bit of balance to the doom and gloom, the mrs has just picked up her biggest piece of freelance work yet, she works as a freelancer in the creative side of things.
Good to hear. Which bit of creative Julian? And where are you based, if you don’t mind me asking?
Interested to know as work-wise as a freelance creative, it’s been a desert out there. There’s nothing. Not just from my own experience but across the board from the people I know. It’s wall-to-wall doom and gloom
dazh - thanks for reminding me we've posited views previously about the commercial property market; don't forget that is directly and strongly linked to pensions - as are dividends (or lack of) from oil companies - BP recently wasn't good news - and banks.
I'm with you on the resi property market; prices have been inflated for a long time but now they're not underpinned by anything; pre CV19 there was the pretence of a strong economy - selling coffee & snacks and cheap clothes to each other.
That fig leaf has now been shredded.
I'm off to view a house tomorrow; Jones Lang LaSalle and the other property 'experts' reckon the market will fall by at least 7.5% by year end.
Local estate agents say the market is strong; I say panic buying before implosion.
My opening offer will be list - 15%.
My rapidly emptying glass still has a little room left for any further gloomy prognostications.
don’t forget that is directly and strongly linked to pensions
And that’s when it will hit home. If they can’t revive the city centre economy then pensions are going to take a huge hit. Combine that with a collapse in residential property prices and effective negative interest rates, savers (ie the older generation) are about to become a lot poorer. No one will be unaffected. I get the feeling that people think those losing their jobs are the only ones who will suffer. They’re going to get a shock when they see their nest-eggs evaporating before their eyes.
dazh - dependant on your definition of 'older generation' I could be part of that demographic.
I'm acutely aware of the approaching shit storm.
My focus is on being able to support my children - 34,31,28; two in UK and 1 in US; two grandchildren.
Few will be unaffected by the tsunami of recession/depression, brexit transition, CV19 that's steaming unstoppably towards us.
No doubt that many - too many - think they won't be affected.
I'm from Wallsend on tyneside (you know the area) - best known for it's shipbuilding past; been through the 3 day week, power cuts, thatcher, de-industrialisation so have seen and lived through 'interesting' times.
I fear that what's coming will make this look like a stroll in the park.
Compare'n'contrast - in the not too distant past, first day at work you're told to go to the pay office where you're signed up to the pension scheme; not a discussion point - old Margie says 'sign here, sonny' so you do and you're in the defined benefit scheme.
What a safety net that was.
Now?
DC schemes and far too many people with no understanding of pension value, performance and risks.
This lot want to tear up the entire post-war settlement, which includes pension provision, so don’t expect them to be remotely bothered.
That’s what Brexit was all about. They’re disaster capitalists. So Covid, in creating a disaster, has made their job easier.
They intend to completely restructure society along early 20th century pre-war lines. No NHS. No welfare state. No pensions. No workers rights. No regulation. No maternity pay, sick pay or holidays.
Covid is manna from heaven to them. Plays right into their hands. They’re loving this!
binners and daz, I'm really surprised that so few others think this thread isn't worth consideration or comment.
Owning an audi, woodburner, pizza oven, hand ground axe, aero press coffee machine, japanese cold forged kitchen knives, vi-spring mattress won't stop the shit storm headed in our direction.
Johnson didn't know what he wanted - eeny meeny miny mo...
He's now so deeply in shit he can't see a way out; not the premiership he envisaged.
Etonian - yes; extensive vocabulary - yes; bright - emphatically no.
Frank,
You do remember I started a thread 'were all in this together yeah?'a month before this one started, where I warned that all the mistakes made enduring the financial crisis were about to be repeated with bells on? That bail out money would go towards buying Lamborghinis protecting dividends and financing share buy backs and keeping 'zombie' companies afloat?
I remember banging on about corporate socialism, how all the risk will be transferred to the taxpayer (if there's any left) Whilst corporate interests, those too big to fail would be protected. It wasn't a very popular viewpoint at the time.
Truth is were all living in limbo land, like we're in some reality TV series where Giles Coren plonks us back into a 1970's winter of discontent for a half a dozen episodes. Only the last episode won't be a jolly little debrief before contemporary normality is resumed.
Think in multiples of two. If unemployment hit 3 million in the darkest days of the 1980's then double it this time (I see you've done that already binners). The gap between the rich and poor will double too. At the top end assets will be further concentrated, the top one percent will halve to the top 1/2 percent.
Forget the banking crisis, this is going to be the 80's x 2. Thatcherism on steroids, only this time it will effect the whole Country and not just the North. Add to that that there's no North Sea oil left to cover the costs incurred when pursuing an unremitting political ideology like there was in the 80's.
Everyone's going to be 'self employed'. Expect a 'New Enterprise Allowance Scheme' to be announced in the not too distant future. We're all in this together is going to be very much youre on your own jack.
To think, half a page back there I was going to reply expressing my interest in Anita's vegan haggis samosas.
They intend to completely restructure society along early 20th century pre-war lines. No NHS. No welfare state. No pensions. No workers rights. No regulation. No maternity pay, sick pay or holidays.
51st State?
inkster, yes I remember the thread and I've just re-visited to refresh my memory.
I think we're violently agreeing.
Rather than debate with you, I'm more concerned about widening the discussion to get others to understand - and, if possible, prepare - for what's steaming down the track.
I'm doing what I can to mitigate the likely impacts of johnson's incompetence; what are others doing?
The shit is always the same, it's just the depth that varies.
North Sea oil was never more than numbers on a spreadsheet; an opportunity to build a sovereign wealth fund - wasted.
Comments about thatcher are now totally irrelevant; her wishes and aspirations have long been exceeded.
I've always been on my own; no change there.
See comments ^^^ about zombie companies.
Assets will continue to be increasingly concentrated.
Too few people have any understanding about - or interest in - what is likely to happen to their investments, pensions, savings; that's their problem.
The days of looking out for others - other than immediate family - are gone.
I reference Thatcher only to paint a picture of what the forthcoming landscape could look like, and to me it looks like it could be the 80's on steroids.
Having grown up in the south then moving up North in 1986 I got to see the both sides of Thatchers Britain. In the South I had seen things steadily improve throughout the 80's whereas I could see the North had been laid to waste.
Our current incumbents have gone so far from even Thatcher's most distorted dreams that I'd have to agree with you, the link has become irrelevant. However, they might succeed in mirroring Thatcherism by achieving in the South what she only managed to achieve in the North.
Not sure how we can help people prepare for what's down the line, thus the limbo land I referred to. I'm sure self denial plays a role but in times like these the only ones who can plan for such an uncertain future are those with assets to spare. For everyone else its going to be a scrap.
And yet everyone still carries on as if it’s no big deal. Bizarre.
Out of curiosity, what do you want them to do other than just carrying on?
I'm well aware that the industry I work in is going to be in a very bad way in the coming months/years, as are lots of others - but there's sweet hee-haw I can do about that so... yea. I'll just keep carrying on.
To think, half a page back there I was going to reply expressing my interest in Anita’s vegan haggis samosas.
Highly recommended btw. One of a number of caterers that have changed their business model locally from weddings etc to home delivery.
I’m well aware that the industry I work in is going to be in a very bad way in the coming months/years, as are lots of others – but there’s sweet hee-haw I can do about that so… yea. I’ll just keep carrying on.
Mainly events industry in this household, nothing really is expected to happen, that’ll be worth happening until late next year, although that does mean the work up to those events start 12 months out at least. I won’t go full Doom Fapper and say the industry won’t survive and won’t come back but the landscape will look very different and it’s likely (when it does reliably become safe again) that there’ll be quite a few new businesses running those events staffed by people from organisers that didn’t make it through the shit show.
Im pretty much planning for unemployment and a significant decline in living standards. I’ll still keep “carrying on” mind you, don’t have any choice when doing 3 people’s jobs.
Personally I'm finding the working from home great and certainly not rush to go back. Now get up at 730 instead of 550, no hour each way commute and associated costs. Didn't go to the pub much anyway, now get to ride my bike at 530 in the evenings. Apart from the constant worry of catching the long version of covid, and concern for my pregnant wife, it's really not been that bad.
My work which was previously a bit anti home working had now said we're not going back till march next year. Currently trying to buy a house but since lockdown every other person is now after what we have been after - bit of land in the country.
Clearly I'm in a rather privialged position and a lot of people are ****ed by the situation. However the solution to this for me isnt to force me back into my car and office, but rather to move to a social democratic model and raise taxes significantly. I already in the lucky position that i pay a lot of tax, but I'd happily pay more to sort out our broken brexity society.
I'm another that follows this thread without commenting much. But I did in the early days on the big CV thread, and I wondered then and still do actually, about whether we have the balance right. Even with the measures taken, and the generally excellent way they have been followed (it's the exceptions that make the front pages, not the millions who behaved) we've seen ca 50K deaths. Every one a tragedy, and a family devastated by it, but 50K is actually not a lot. It's about a month of 'normal'
Yet we know that if we have a cold winter, thousands die because of fuel poverty and cold / damp homes. We know that lower income / no income leads to lower diet leads to lower health leads to death. We know that loss of work leads to mental health issues/stress leads to suicide increases. We count deaths of CV, but how many will die 'because of' rather than 'of' CV in the years to come.
I thought that as a concept herd immunity made sense, at least early on, because I think the long term effects risk being far worse than the short term. I saw how the pandemic developed and also learned more about HI and now i'm not sure, but we cannot live in lockdown for ever. So I am back at work for some days. I am using shops and cafes, and I have eaten out. It's small and a risk which I mitigate as best I can with masks and hand washing and the rest.
I don't know where the balance is.....but I'm sure glad it's not up to me. I wish it wasn't up to the clown circus either, mind. But i agree, we face a catastrophe that'll make the banking crisis and the 80's look like a picnic.