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Most people on most days certainly. There are some situations when a doctor is rather more necessary than next day amazon delivery
Though of course you may find the Dr isn't necessary at all if no one is delivering the penicillin to control your staph infection, the blood to transfuse you with, the light bulbs for the theatres, the food you both eat, the fuel for your cars or the ambulances and so on.
Did you consider that he might be embarrassed because he knows he’ll be judged by loads of other people based on the job he does?
Yes, of course I understand that's exactly what he's feeling. And what I'm saying is get over it and do the job, I don't think for one minute he considers himself better than anyone else, I think his problem is he's worried about the opinions of people whose opinions if they are what he thinks they are the opinions of people he shouldn't give a shit about. If anyone of my neighbours thinks less of me now because I empty their bins that says more about them than me. We've both been put out of work because we've been told we must sacrifice our jobs and income to protect others. It's pretty hard to take I fully understand but we are where we are.
FT front page reporting that job losses between now and year end will be 1 million.
Gulp.
That low? Could easily be that alone from restaurants and coffee shops.
But then we have the ‘opportunities’ of Brexit to look forward to in January… middle of a pandemic… middle of winter… it’ll be the land of milk and honey.
That low?
thats what I was thinking. That’s wildly optimistic, given that the job losses with the hospitality industry alone are estimated at that.
I can think of many more industries, also presently ceased from functioning, that are going to make pretty much their entire workforce redundant once furlough ends
3.5 million unemployed is probably a best case scenario
We've all posted, with varying degrees of pessimism, about what might happen.
I certainly have, at some length.
We, generally, don't have any great insights into the labour market but when the FT puts down something of a marker that carries much more weight.
One of my earlier 'forecasts' was unemployment to hit 4 million.
Ever have the feeling of wishing you were completely wrong?
Ever have the feeling of wishing you were completely wrong?
Every morning, for a little over four years.
The CEO of Reed recruitment, who I would imagine has considerable insight in this area, was interviewed on channel 4 news a few weeks back. He was talking about a potential unemployment rate of 5-6 million.
That really doesn’t bear thinking about
Talking to a recruitment consultant in my own industry (design) and she said they’re expecting an absolutely huge wave of redundancies when furlough ends next month, with all the newly unemployed looking for freelance work.
There isn’t any freelance work around, obviously. At this time of year you’re normally gearing up for Christmas. Designing promotions for the hospitality sector, fashion photo shoots for retail etc.
You can imagine how much of that is presently going on
None
Unemployment of 4 million = 13.2%.
He was talking about a potential unemployment rate of 5-6 million.
5 million = 16.5%
6 million = 19.8%
For context...in 1930, early days of the great depression, the unemployment rate was 20% and there was a sizeable manufacturing sector and heavy industry which provided mass employment as the depression ended.
We have traded manufacturing for a hospitality sector and financial services; the former is dying on it's feet and the latter is showing signs of migrating to other financial centres.
On the upside, here comes the cavalry - liz truss and tony abbott are delivering trade deals every day; govey gove has sorted EU cross-border trade and cummings is busily turbo-charging the UK tech sector.
So...nothing to be concerned about.
I see they've wheeled out the spectacularly dim Helen Whately to do the rounds of the studios this morning. Handily she's so thick that, for once, you actually get an honest answer out of a politician.
Looks like the government are quite relaxed about letting pretty much the entire creative industries collapse over the winter. As well as hospitality and any other sector that isn't immediately able to open up and be independently 'economically viable' without government support
Given that typically short-term attitude I think those upper 5-6 million estimates of unemployment could be soon looking like a reality.
One of the most alarming things about the whole pandemic is that it's been left to Piers Morgan to somewhat inexplicably become the voice of reason. Its deeply disturbing
https://twitter.com/GMB/status/1310473579570618369?s=20
https://twitter.com/KayBurley/status/1310470944603938816?s=20
Looks like the government are quite relaxed about letting pretty much the entire creative industries collapse over the winter.
Wow. They're not even keeping up the pretence of supporting affected sectors/jobs. They're going for the full Thatcherite destroy everything and wait for the pheonix to rise from the ashes approach. As well as gifting Starmer the biggest open goal in history, I reckon it's also pretty much confirmed that Boris isn't planning on hanging around for much longer. Why else would he dig his own grave?
I did read, but can't confirm it's veracity, that for every person whose contacts they pursue Serco is paid £900.
You've just got to ask yourself 4 simple questions as to whether your industry is going to be supported by this govt:
A: Does my job directly make someone who is very wealthy even richer?
B: Does the company that I work for trade in the FTSE 100?
C: Does my company get awarded govt contracts on a regular basis?
D: Does the owner of my company donate to the Conservative Party with the numbers running into 7 digits or more?
You could also add in 'Does my company have a direct line to Cummings?' but that tends to go hand-in-hand with D.
It's not a fool-proof list (my now ex-employer ticked them all off) but it does provide a good indicator of whether the company/industry will still be around at the end.
They’re not even keeping up the pretence of supporting affected sectors/jobs.
If they've temporarily closed your sector down (by law), then you don't get any help. If they've helped you stay open by adjusting the rules to enable that, but you are still effected by a drop in custom, then you get some help. It's crazy.
reluctantjumper has it, sadly
I'm a wedding photographer and have had basically all my summer's work postponed/cancelled. After the first lockdown eased people started getting excited about getting married next summer, that all seems to have died off now as people realise it probably won't be much different by then. I have some bookings for next year but people are already talking about postponing again.
I had 80%/70% of 'averaged' earnings during summer but normally my summer months are far from average and I earn most of my year's money during that time. Now I'm going into winter having eaten into my savings that were supposed to be to buy a house, but I'll get 20% of my average earnings now so yay! Can't see when it's likely to get any better really, everyone will be broke for the foreseeable future especially after Brexit.
Had to move from Glasgow back to my mum's in Cumbria with my partner and our three kids. Could be worse obviously but it's not ideal. Think I'm gonna have to look at delivery jobs or something too.
Its looking like we could be hitting something of a tipping point here.
I've just heard Andy Burnham on Radio 4 this morning and he's clearly livid. This on top of the Middlesborough, Liverpool, and Hartlepool Mayors saying the same thing yesterday. And they've all got a valid point
These increased COVID restrictions are being imposed with no consultation and no notice on what is now pretty much the entirety of the North now. In a lot of cases, this means they are effectively shutting down the entire hospitality industry (as well as others) in the northern towns and cities.
But because it's not technically a national lockdown, there is now no financial aid package. And with the furlough scheme winding up, businesses are now truly on their own. How many are going to still be there after the winter?
On top of this its obvious that these restrictions are effectively indefinite and again all decisions are being taken in Westminster with absolutely no local level consultation. There is no exit strategy and the test and trace system is still a total shambles.
So much for 'leveling up'?
Are Local Lockdowns Worsening The North-South Divide?
Definitely time the whole country was locked down to the same level as the north. The different restrictions make it way too confusing and undermine the intention. Plus I don't think people up North are taking much notice anyway based on a combination of the increasing infections and personal observations from the few times ive actual gone out. It doesnt feel like there any restrictions.
Asking for a colleague, TUPE does not protect you from redundancy after the fact right? He's about to be TUPE'd and joyfully thinks he's legally guaranteed 2 years employment and prancing around like an idiot, but I'm pretty sure even after the TUPE process is complete, he could be made redundant form "restructuring" or similar?
FWIW is not a "taking over a contract from another supplier" TUPE, its a company entity change.
TUPE protects you from being singled out for redundancy from the other workers for the new company but if the company puts everyone on notice or folds then you can still lose your job. It's there to stop Company A absorbing Company B's workforce and contracts only to dump Company A's workers as their terms and conditions are better than Company B's. As for an entity change it would just protect their terms and conditions, redundancy is still an option. The company I just got made redundant from were in the same situation and TUPE rules were examined during the 'consultation' period. Worked example:
G4S were a giant company that encompassed Guarding, Prisons, Personal Security and CVIT (cash and valuables in transit) services. This giant was formed between a merger between Group 4 (the part of the company that is always in the news for dodgy behaviour etc) and Securicor. Last year the CVIT side was split off to be sold. A new company was set up, G4S Cash Solutions. All of us that worked in the CVIT part were then TUPE'd over to the new company, all completed in April last year. Under TUPE there could be no changes to terms or conditions for 24 months unless agreed with the workers via a union ballot. After using the furlough scheme it became obvious that redundancies were inevitable so negotiations and examination of the TUPE situation began. As we were all in the same boat redundancy-wise there was no TUPE protection to help us. They were originally going to trim the headcount at every branch but that would have triggered a 6 month consultation period due to some quirk at one legacy site from the Securicor era so they instead decided to just close whole branches instead, mine included, with no redundancies at sites staying open. Redundancies were finalised on August 31st with PILON used to hurry up the process.
So despite TUPE meaning to protect your job for 24 months it doesn't in certain circumstances.
These increased COVID restrictions are being imposed with no consultation and no notice on what is now pretty much the entirety of the North now.
I can't find it now but on twitter a week a or two ago someone posted a map of covid restriciton areas along side a map of former UK coal mining areas. You can guess what they looked like. It's Thatcher 2.0, on steroids. They have a radical economic plan involving a post-brexit deregulated sweatshop gig economy, and the labour supporting ex mining areas are the guinea pigs. They can't use Scotland any more so it's the next best option.
So despite TUPE meaning to protect your job for 24 months it doesn’t in certain circumstances
TUPE just protects your T&C's for 2 years, not your job.
I can’t find it now but on twitter a week a or two ago someone posted a map of covid restriciton areas along side a map of former UK coal mining areas. You can guess what they looked like. It’s Thatcher 2.0, on steroids.
A couple of months ago, as local lockdowns kicked in, the resident racists were trying to pin increased infections on race. It was all bullshit, of course. And a distraction from the reality
What all these areas had in common was poverty. The people in these areas were all in zero hours, gig economy, minimum wage jobs where they simply couldn't stop working. Probably working in jobs where you were most potentially exposed or for employers who couldn't care less about their employees safety.
The areas being adversely affected are predominantly poorer areas. There's been no leafy Surrey commuter belt suburbs or Cotswold villages been locked down, to my knowledge. When Trafford had restrictions put on it they were up in arms. But trafford certainly isn't all footballers in Hale Barns
But you're absolutely right that as these Welsh or Northern areas have been locked down, they're being offered the same amount of care, concern, and financial support as Thatcher offered these very same places 30 years ago.
Absolutely * all.
At least we can give up what always was a ridiculous pretence, sold to the harder of thinking ... levelling up.
There's about to be a huge spike in unemployment as businesses go down like dominoes and the hardest-hit areas will be exactly the same areas as in the '80s
And Boris, Dom and chums couldn't give a flying *! We're being treated like completely expendable colonial outposts.
Next year is going to be another grim chapter in the North West, North East and the Welsh Valleys
I can’t find it now but on twitter a week a or two ago someone posted a map of covid restriciton areas along side a map of former UK coal mining areas.
While there may be some truth in it, you can do a similar thing with population density.
The obvious one in the game of spot the difference between lockdown map and population map for the uk at the moment is London, which I believe is on the watch list?
They have a radical economic plan
I've highlighted the mistakes in your assertion DazH.
What was it we were saying about lockdowns being politically motivated?
https://twitter.com/BWDDPH/status/1312669570319167493?s=20
Five Live are just about to discuss why affluent southern areas are not having restrictions imposed while having far higher infection rates than poorer northern areas who have been under lockdown restrictions for weeks.
It sounds like what measures you have imposed depends not on the infection rate, but on who your MP is. Johnsons own constituency has a lot higher infection rates than some northern areas that are under lockdown, but has had no extra restrictions imposed. Probably as his dad demands his god-given right to stroll around without a mask on and cough on people.
It sounds like what measures you have imposed depends not on the infection rate, but on who your MP is. Johnsons own constituency has a lot higher infection rates than some northern areas that are under lockdown, but has had no extra restrictions imposed.
If only we'd voted in a PM that gave a shit about the poor.
I did read, but can’t confirm it’s veracity, that for every person whose contacts they pursue Serco is paid £900.
By my maths, the government have just saved £14.4m.
Nah, Serco will still charge for them, and they will get it.
How much is it to license a copy of Excel nowadays?
A SPREADSHEET??? A ****ing spreadsheet!!!
World class track and trace system and they are storing the information in a spreadsheet? Bunch of inept, crooked, incompetent, fraudulent cockwombles!!!
So Sunak is planning to 'balance the books'. Aside from the fact that its complete fiction, if true it'll be the final nail in the UK economic coffin. Mrs Daz works for the local authority, and received an email last week asking for volunteers for early retirement and redundancy. Austerity 2.0 at a time of national crisis. It's going to be worse than I ever thought it could be.
https://twitter.com/BBCPolitics/status/1313098277584338944?s=20
It’s going to be worse than I ever thought it could be.
I genuinely think that the UK will be put through it before Christmas, with today's cinema jobs but the tip of a huge iceberg.
Add in the folly of Brexshit and the new cuts and/or taxes Sunak is promising, and we are all going to feel it by Easter.
It’s going to be worse than I ever thought it could be.
It was inevitable.
These lot are the least imaginative people on the planet and are absolutely blinkered by right wing neoliberal dogma. Did you honestly think that they would offer up any other solution than more austerity? It's the only thing they know.
Next year, after the horror of a no deal Brexit, will be a total nightmare in this country, as one things for sure... these lot won't have any answers to the economic crisis other than to slash public spending even more.
The rest will be like Thatcherism's even crueler big brother. 'The Market' will be left to decide as unemployment goes through the roof
The only reason Rishi looks like he knows what he's doing is that when it comes to understanding how the real economy actually functions, my cat is more clued up than the rest of the cabinet
that kinda depends. Balance books probably does not refer to getting our debt back to where it was a year ago, it probably means, at some point in the future (probably 5 years out so it can nicely be over-ridden by then), have spending be forecast to approx equal spending. if this is a V shaped recession that's easy to achieve (especially with interest rates where they are).
Sunak has, to date, been mr popularity; splashing the cash but that's now stopped, eloquent, apparently personable.
Eat out to help out was well-intentioned but naive; it was never going to provide a sustainable benefit unless many other things went well - they haven't.
gove and cummings will do everything necessary to ensure he isn't seen as the main man.
Failure to continue providing meaningful support, escalating job losses and 'balancing the books' will rapidly tarnish his reputation.
if this is a V shaped recession that’s easy to achieve (especially with interest rates where they are).
I think the one thing we can say with absolute certainty is that this isn't going to be a V shaped recession
These lot are the least imaginative people on the planet and are absolutely blinkered by right wing neoliberal dogma.
Just like with the financial crisis they betrayed the lie that the money tree doesn't exist with the furlough scheme and other industrial support when the pandemic kicked off, now they're reverting to type talking about balancing the books. Seems to me that Sunak has had his wings clipped for being a bit too pragmatic and is now having to get back on message about repaying debts so they can continue with their 'national credit card' fiction. Either that or Sunak is an idiot who doesn't understand where money comes from. I'm betting its not the latter.
have spending be forecast to approx equal spending
Assuming you mean spending equal to tax income that would be an incredibly stupid idea in a recovering economy. As long as inflation is under control and we don't have full employment then we need to maintain a govt deficit to stimulate recovery. Reducing the deficit will prolong the recession and risk a depression. By saying he wants to balace the books Sunak is saying he wants a recession/depression. He only gets away with that nonsense because the public don't understand where money comes from.
if this is a V shaped recession
Are we all pretending that 2021 is going to be sunlit uplands?
We've only achieved a Government surplus twice in the last 50 years - any notion that this can be achieved in the near future only means austerity and bugger-all fiscal stimulus / infrastructure investment.
Assuming you mean spending equal to tax income that would be an incredibly stupid idea in a recovering economy. As long as inflation is under control and we don’t have full employment then we need to maintain a govt deficit to stimulate recovery. Reducing the deficit will prolong the recession and risk a depression. By saying he wants to balace the books Sunak is saying he wants a recession/depression. He only gets away with that nonsense because the public don’t understand where money comes from.
You might want to read this https://www.ft.com/content/fde4b931-6cd9-4cb2-8cec-89b3ac876b88
Literally the only way "balancing the books" can work just now is if they (sensibly) allow it to include lending and printing money as balancing spending.
"Balancing the books" isn't really a very meaningful term at all, it doesn't have a technical definition outside of the most simple applications- balancing a chequebook frinstance just means checking the cheques you've written have been cashed, so you know you're not going to get an unexpected debit. Easy. Balancing the books on a big company? Very dissimilar. Doing it for a country? Pretty much meaningless. Literally none of the approaches or the logic work the same way, you have to basically unlearn everything you know about household finance before you can start thinking about bigger finance.
But of course conservative politicians like to pretend that running a country is similar to running a household- you have to "live within your means" (a lie) and reducing spending and reducing borrowing is always prudent (also a lie). They know it's not merely untrue, but a really bad way of running a country. But they also know it rings true to everyone who lives paycheck to paycheck, which is a double whammy since successive tory governments have left more and more people doing exactly that.
But of course, "living within your means" means not borrowing to invest. It means not spending a grand on your credit card to fix your house, so it falls down and you end up losing all of the value and also having to rent a new house for £500 a month, forever. But that's "prudent" because you have £500 a month spare and therefore should spend it all on rent whereas borrowing £1000 and paying it back in 2 or 3 months and then having £500 a month spare again would be "not living within your means", and your credit card is the "magic money tree". And god forbid you should actually earn more.
And for countries, it means not borrowing at the incredibly good terms that countries can borrow at, and it means not taking advantage of low inflation by printing money, which are the only things that have any chance of getting us through the next couple of years without financial devastation. You either half to be a cretin not to do it, or you have to be clever enough to understand that you should do it, and awful enough to choose not to because you prefer the alternative, and you don't want to admit that it works.
Any government that can't borrow or print money and get a better return on it by investing, shouldn't be running a corner shop but basically the poorer you are, the harder that is to understand. And they make people poorer so that's a win win.
One of those situations where you kind of have to grimly admire how good the tories are at this sort of thing, while bearing in mind that it's all absolutely terrible and will totally kill people and ruin lives. It's not the incompetents like Johnson and Hammond you have to worry about, it's the Sunaks and the Osbornes who know how it works well enough to do something else.
Whilst mooching about the FT
There is an article detailing plans to “borrow £100 billion” over five years for a “clean energy & infrastructure plan”
https://www.ft.com/content/68300806-d197-4e94-8dc8-e9af2d1e67df
Does involve Boris so high possibility of blustering bull****
You might want to read this https://www.ft.com/content/fde4b931-6cd9-4cb2-8cec-89b3ac876b88
/a>
If you're gonna post a paywalled link at least summarise or quote some of the content relevant to the topic.
It’s about Sunaks speech. I thought you had a free account where you get a few free articles?
You either half to be a cretin not to do it, or you have to be clever enough to understand that you should do it, and awful enough to choose not to because you prefer the alternative, and you don’t want to admit that it works.
The tories can leverage the ignorance of the public in being the party of 'prudence' and responsible financial management. They know it's bollox but it wins them votes so they carry on with the lie that the countries finances are the same as a households. Also by maintaining the public's ignorance they retain use of the money tree for themselves and their friends, using it to maintain their position as the natural party of power. It's a win-win for them, and the interests of the country at large don't even come into it.
It's an extremely clever psychological trick which persuades the public that using the state's power in their interests is irrresponsible, whilst using it to maintain the wealth and power of the elite is the model of prudence. If the general public ever really realised the extent to which they're being conned they'd be on the streets.
Sunak's retraining proposals are based on an employee-deficit model which will do nothing to rectify an investment-deficit reality but at least it encourages victims to think they are the author of their own woes.
The other problem with his scheme is that he seems to be suggesting that people who were in highly skilled professions (ie: lighting or sound engineers) should 'retrain' to be van drivers or work in coffee shops.
Once they've spent the requisite period of unemployment for them to qualify for any assistance, obviously. I'm not sure how much 'retraining' is required. Doubtless it'll be supplied by Serco at immense cost to the taxpayer?
Can an economy actually still function based on selling coffee, delivering pizza and people ordering Amazon deliveries? I suppose that come January we'll find out
I think there may be a slight flaw in his masterplan
Can an economy actually still function based on selling coffee, delivering pizza and people ordering Amazon deliveries? I suppose that come January we’ll find out
Just need the telephone sanitisers and we've got ourselves a B-Ark.
Having previously one of the cross-sector industry skills programmes, which was shelved 5 years ago when the money was re-allocated to another Government initiative: It requires a significant employer contribution which means that the only uptake will be from larger employers - most small businesses that represent 80% of the UK's employees simply won't participate.
As for $160m of 'investment' that would 5 miles of motorway or employ about 2000 people for a year - whoop de ****ing do!
The £160 million is intended to develop ports to handle mega sized turbines but putting that to one side...to most people it sounds like a lot of money but, in the context of the sector, it isn't.
It would cover the cost of 10 deep water turbines - manufacture, ship, install, connect.
Jurgen Maier, the ex Siemens UK MD, estimated that we need 3,000 new turbines to hit johnson's new capacity target.
As sharma is sec of state for BEIS can we look forward to him being wheeled out to pontificate on this?
Could he explain how the estimated job creation will be facilitated by training inc
re-training, upskilling and apprenticeships?
As for apprenticeships more generally, Interserve Group has sold its Learning and Development business (think apprenticeships and adult education) for an undisclosed amount to a private equity fund called Enact.
That sounds problematic to me.
From whats been said by Johnson and Sunak over the last few days, a few really worrying things are apparent about economic decisions that have clearly recently been taken.
There will be no economic stimulus from government. None. We can forget any hope of any kind of Keynesian infrastructure investment (in true Johnsonian fashion, this isn't new money, he just re-announced it yesterday). It's austerity, the even more hardline sequel, from here on in.
It's clear from what Johnson stated yesterday about 'any investment having to be lead by the private sector', that they plan to go 'Full Thatcher'. Everything will be left to 'The Market' and they will sit back and observe the economic 'creative destruction' like the Ayn Rand worshipers they all are. Economic policy seems to be Cummings crossing jis fingers and hoping the next Apple or Google emerges from Cambridge
For us lab rats about to be the subject of the Covid/Brexit economic experiment in neoliberalism, any of us who lived through the 80's in the North of England will be experiencing a sense of deja vu. This will probably be worse. Much worse.
Next year is going to be very very grim indeed. I was sceptical about claims from economists about 5-6 million unemployed, but given the recent announcement of these policies and the general noise coming out of government, it looks like thats very much on the agenda
Just got a wee email from Universal Credit to log on and update my "looking for work" details so I can get help finding a job.
Cattle prods out for all us shirkers!
Bloody layabout! 😉
Have had two "thanks but no thanks and don't insult us by asking for feedback" responses to applications today.
Oh well, guess I'll go for a bike ride and get pished. Or vice versa. Possibly simultaneously...
And now the mother of all u-turns. A very welcome one, but how many have already lost their jobs because of the uncertainty and dithering? Turns out Sunak is cut from the same cloth as Boris after all.
I'm changing my mind about Andy Burnham... always thought he was an empty weathervane of a politician, but he's proving himself to be a hard working, dedicated and smart but diplomatic mayor.
always thought he was an empty weathervane of a politician
I think his crushing defeat by Corbyn was a salutory lesson which he has obviously learned from. I was a supporter back in 2015 and it was soul-destroying watching him compromise his principals in the pursuit of what he thought would win him votes. I still believe if he'd stuck to his instincts and beliefs he'd be PM now. Maybe he'll get another chance in future.
it was soul-destroying watching him compromise his principals in the pursuit of what he thought would win him votes
This is exactly what the numbers say though - the middle ground wins votes.
I’m changing my mind about Andy Burnham… always thought he was an empty weathervane of a politician
I've always admired how tenacious he was in getting the Hillsborough inquiry. It simply wouldn't have happened without the constant pressure he applied
I also think he was very shrewd in extricating himself from the Corbyn car crash, and Westminster's loss was definitely Manchester's gain. He's been quietly effective in the job.
At the moment he's doing a great job of making himself a right royal PITA for the government. It does feel like we're got someone with some clout and ability fighting our corner against a government that doesn't give a **** about us. Obviously, they can't ignore him when he's making so much noise. He throws the term 'leveling up' in at every available opportunity, which must wind Boris up.
We'll have to wait and see what Rishi actually announces. With anything this lot do, it gets filed under 'I'll believe it when I see it'
He’s been quietly effective in the job.
He'd be a lot more effective if it wasn't for that king size p**** Richard Leese obstructing him at every turn (or so I hear). I heard a while ago that relations between them are not good, which is a good enough reason for me to like him 🙂
And now the mother of all u-turns. A very welcome one, but how many have already lost their jobs because of the uncertainty and dithering? Turns out Sunak is cut from the same cloth as Boris after all.
The WhatsApp group for my old employer has just exploded due to this news of the furlough scheme being extended. Bosses that are still there have popped on saying if they knew this was going to happen our redundancy could have been pushed back with the hope of reduced numbers. You can guess how this has gone down! 6000 jobs at £30k a year and the 6 depots that go with them have been lost for no reason other than a politician not looking at the bigger picture. *****.
The frustration and anger must be palpable reluctantjumper... really feel for everyone effected. There will be thousands more as well. Labour have been pushing for this announcement for months now, it's a real shame that this government keeps acting only once it is too late.
Yep being reactive is hopeless when the damage has been done. They completely lack a vision.
So the announcement is help only for those businesses told to close. Presumably if your business or workplace is allowed to open but supplies goods or services to those closed businesses you're on your own? Say if all the pubs and restaurants are told to close, they get financial help. But what about the businesses that supply the food and drink, do they get help or are they told No because they are allowed to trade. The fact that all their customers are closed is brushed over?
Taking a bit of heart that this doesn't change the situation with my old workplace, we'd never have been on the closure list. If we were there would have to be bigger issues than a pandemic to worry about!
"All this spending will mean some hard decisions will have to be taken" When will someone call them out on this BS?
After all the news today something struck me about Boris's demeanour in that he looked like the penny had finally dropped. Not just on the difficulties of suppressing the virus, but on the economic front. He said months ago that another lockdown would be catastrophic for the economy, and much more so than the first, and I don't think he was lying. Well here we are, and he looked like he'd seen a ghost.
Back in April in an attempt to be transparent the bosses at my firm released some research they'd commissioned on the economic outlook and its impact on the business. They had modelled 4 scenarios, a V-shaped recovery, a U shaped one with a more extended recession (which they thought most likely), a 30s style depression, and then the doomsday scenario of economic collapse. The last one was described as being caused by repeated lockdowns causing a chain reaction of collapsing businesses, banks, and currencies. So if we couldn't prevent a second lockdown, who's to say we can prevent a third in the spring or a 4th next autumn, and what will be left after?
That second lockdown (or the same as what we has earlier in the year) is a very real possibility and he knows it. If we do go into one it will destroy so many lives it's hard to think about it.
I'm resigning myself to the fact that if these current measures don't slow the virus down rapidly then I'll be staring at a long time unemployed or at best in a crap job, probably part time, that doesn't bring in enough to pay the bills. My personal plan is to hold out until Christmas looking for new permanent work somewhere, if I don't find it I'll terminate the tenancy on my flat and move back home with my parents. That will give me the flexibility to either retrain, find part time work to slow the drain on my savings and give me the option of moving anywhere in the country where there is work that will pay my living costs. This is one of the few times I'm actually happy to be renting and not have a mortgage!
johnson is now living out his own personal nightmare created by little old him; he didn't introduce the virus to the UK but, other than that, he completely owns all of the problems resulting from his and his government's decisions on covid and brexit.
His inadequacy, incompetence and lying are on full public display every time he opens his mouth.
Mr popularity is now increasingly reviled, laughed at and is barely tolerated by swathes of tory MPs.
He has now realised that neither he nor any of his clown circus - and I'm now including Sunak - have the ability to lead at a time of national crisis.
The fragility of the UK is well and truly exposed; he and his various diktats are generally ignored; a ground down police force are under-resourced and disinclined to enforce the
ever changing regulations; shattered relationship with the EU; rising infection rate; Nightingale 'hospitals' re-opening; multiple lost opportunities; every reason to believe there will be a high death toll over next 6 months.
Trade deals? No, I can't see them either.
I absolutely despise him for what he's inflicted on the country.
Is he the worst PM in parliamentary history?
No wonder he looks like he needs a drink - or maybe he looks like that because of the drink...
Dead man walking - but for how long?
reluctantjumper
Full MemberThat second lockdown (or the same as what we has earlier in the year) is a very real possibility and he knows it. If we do go into one it will destroy so many lives it’s hard to think about it.
Unsure. I think at the moment, the financial/economic/cultural impact is ironically a lot like the virus- incredibly bad, but not quite deadly enough. So we're still approaching it exactly like we did the financial crisis- let's do as little as we can, disrupt things as little as we can, and then put things back how they were as much as we can. And anything that can't be easily saved or put back we just go, meh, TINA.
But it doesn't have to get a lot worse, for that to absolutely stop working. I mean, it doesn't really work now, but it's not open and shut enough. People can still delude themselves into thinking old solutions work, and they can definitely be misled into thinking it's true.
Capitalism is a pretty incredible thing, and I often think that really the only thing that can dent it these days, is its greatest enemy- capitalism. It might very well turn out that the longer term good of the nation is served by a proper reset now, rather than the usual state of constant sustainable survivable dysfunction.
I really don't want to have to live through a real financial collapse. But I also don't want to live through another half century of poisonous financial stagnation and built-in equality with things getting more and more into the rut. If I live through the proper collapse now, maybe it means my kids if I have any get to live in the better world that follows.. Without a real shake, we could easily just keep doing what we're doing, forever. The world gets richer, practically everyone gets poorer, and real critical issues- like global warming, and pandemics- get mishandled because they don't fit nicely into the algorithm
I really don’t want to have to live through a real financial collapse. But I also don’t want to live through another half century of poisonous financial stagnation and built-in equality with things getting more and more into the rut. If I live through the proper collapse now, maybe it means my kids if I have any get to live in the better world that follows.. Without a real shake, we could easily just keep doing what we’re doing, forever. The world gets richer, practically everyone gets poorer, and real critical issues- like global warming, and pandemics- get mishandled because they don’t fit nicely into the algorithm
The cynic in me (which is most of me) suspects that all a financial collapse will achieve is richer rich, poorer poor, and an even bleaker future.
The collapse in investment long pre-dated CV but this episode will see an acceleration of big business gobbling up the competition, money cascading over landlords and builders, more insecure employment and housing, falling wage rates, unemployment, austerity and privatisation whilst they spaff taxpayers' money on their mates for future rewards. CV has just put Tory policies on speed and they'll be quite chuffed with the abstention of the opposition. There will be a rush on trussed Turkey Twizzlers and White Lightning this Christmas.
Meanwhile they aim to cloud people's vision with The Proms, Marxism in the classroom, statues, poppies, scousers, netting refugees, identity politics, patriotic bunting, cancelling culture and maybe a murder on Corrie and another narcissist on the Archers. You have been warned.
The cynic in me (which is most of me) suspects that all a financial collapse will achieve is richer rich, poorer poor, and an even bleaker future.
Nothing good will come from an economic collapse. To paraphrase Michael Foot, the rich will look after themselves as they always do (and they're doing an awful lot of it right now), and everyone else will be left to fight it out in a world where they have no savings or income, and all the things we take for granted become more scarce or disappear completely. Civil society has extremely shallow foundations, and we're more exposed to its collapse now than ever before.
I put this on the Coronovirus thread, but it's probably more appropriate here.
Honest Bob has drawn the short straw this morning and gives a full indication of what financial support the people of Liverpool who’ve just had their jobs closed down can expect from the government
https://twitter.com/KayBurley/status/1315904028333703168?s=20
And of course, the businesses and jobs not 'directly' closed by the government's new measures will not even be entitled to that.
And they wonder why Andy Burnham won't be bullied into closing everything in greater Manchester?
They've made it pretty clear now that there isn't going to be any more financial aid for the peasantry who continue to have their incomes devastated by covid and the government's incompetent reaction to it. 'The Market' will be left to decide our fates.
Someone more cynical than me might suggest that it would be terribly convenient to have huge-scale unemployment and millions of desperate people once this lot are free of EU employment law in a couple of months
It's not cynicism at all, it's been much written about by eg Marx, Wilkinson, Klein, it's the destructive forces of capitalism.
Someone more cynical than me might suggest that it would be terribly convenient to have huge-scale unemployment and millions of desperate people once this lot are free of EU employment law in a couple of months
That may well be their thinking, but they're not in control of events. They're going to have much bigger problems to deal with than how to take advantage of all this available cheap labour. Whether Boris and Sunak like it or not, if they can't prevent future lockdowns they're going to have to step in and underwrite economic activity because the alternative is widespread public disorder. The economic pain is only just beginning to kick in, and when it accelerates so will the anger. It's not just the virus which spreads exponentially.
The collapse in investment long pre-dated CV but this episode will see an acceleration of big business gobbling up the competition, money cascading over landlords and builders, more insecure employment and housing, falling wage rates, unemployment, austerity and privatisation whilst they spaff taxpayers’ money on their mates for future rewards. CV has just put Tory policies on speed and they’ll be quite chuffed with the abstention of the opposition.
Rentier Capitalism.
https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/blog/rentier-capitalism-uk-case/
Good article!