The thing with these gimmicks from the chancellor is that it's all well and good giving people 50% off but it's about whether people want to go out and are fearful still.

I'm a bit disappointed that the rumoured '£500 to spend in the local economy supporting small businesses' wasn't announced. Clearly the annoucement on VAT is welcome but I feel the proposal, including that on the £10 vouchers on meals on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, will just end up benefitting the larger businesses and chains and is ultimately more of a sticking plaster on what could be a really awful 12-18 months for the hospitality sector, likely to conclude with many smaller businesses going under and many redundancies even from larger ones. It also was clearly aimed at distracting from the absolutely massive £15bn being spent on PPE (over 7 times greater than this big annoucement)! As you've mentioned Steve this is all about confidence and feeling safe when dining out in public (eating out, as Twitter pointed out today has rather DIFFERENT conotantions), I'm not sure whether this or a more efficient Track & Trace programme in place would be more effective at that - but for me the latter would be much more reassuring.

 

Don't get me started on the props for the corrupt UK property market, clearly designed to maintain the overly inflated property prices and benefit land barons like Mr Desmond.

Short term temporary VAT cuts are a waste of f***ing time. A lot of tax departments in big businesses will be absolutely furious at not only the cut itself but the short notice. Many won’t have been able to properly update their systems by next week.

 

 

I wouldn’t hold my breath for the rate cut to be passed on. Small cafes are likely to be under vat threshold anyway if they’re a single wee shop so don’t charge vat already. Other SMEs are more likely to keep prices the same, or increase them post COVID and pocket the change to help them recuperate their losses. Big chains most likely to pass on but I can foresee some not.

 

 

 

Germany has a similarly pointless but wider VAT rate cut that is just a wholesale slashing of both vat rates. Big electronic stores are passing savings on, as is Netflix and Vodafone. But my food shop is still the same price, eating out is still the same price. Makes no difference to the end consumer in reality.

@1281186388587753473

 

Things really are about to get rough — I'm not convinced the new jobs scheme is actually going to work. No comment on that meal voucher idea either.

@1281186388587753473

 

Things really are about to get rough — I'm not convinced the new jobs scheme is actually going to work. No comment on that meal voucher idea either.

 

It's only going to work for those industries that were a bit on a knife edge. The problem we have is the high street as we know it has been slowly dying for a good few years and the pandemic is just going to accelerate the change.

 

The economy is going to shrink 20% the effect will be felt pretty much across all industries (even the manufactures and supermarkets who operated during lockdown). Supermarkets are doing OK but online delivery is a loss making service so prices are inevitably going to have to rise. It's why if we have a second wave there is no way we are going in to a national lockdown, I don't think we would survive economically.

Welsh Government have announced today that schools will return full time as normal in September with no social distancing between the children.

 

I’m relieved in a way because I really wasn’t sure about the ‘blended learning’ approach that we’ve been preparing for and you just can’t beat teaching children who are right in front of you. I do hope though that by September I’ll be able to do other things like go swimming again.

 

Perhaps some parents might be grateful to the teachers from this point on but seeing comments in the media, I won’t hold my breath.

Country's a load of shite. Offering some minimum wage jobs for 6 months, what a pisstake.

Country's a load of shite. Offering some minimum wage jobs for 6 months, what a pisstake.

I can't help feeling that some companies that were gearing up to take on new staff and pay them above the minimum wage will now take the opportunity to employ them and pay them nothing for six months.

Interesting deep dive here into the UK Coronavirus response (or lack thereof): https://www.reuters.com/investigates/specia...ritain-tracing/

 

Now, a Reuters investigation reveals further missteps and failures by officials and government agencies, including Selbie’s Public Health England, in testing, tracking and tracing. Among decisions that doctors and epidemiologists say cost lives were:

• Failure to build up capacity to perform mass tests for COVID-19.

• Deciding on a narrower definition of COVID-19 than used by the World Health Organization and other countries.

• A decision to abandon testing of most people who didn't require hospitalization, and failure, early on, to create any way to track infection.

• A decision to abandon a programme of widespread “contact tracing,” in which people in contact with an infected person were traced and told to isolate to stop the outbreak spreading.

• Deciding to share almost no details about the location of infections with local public health officials or the public.

• Fragmenting local responsibility for public health.

“Every mistake that was made did, unfortunately, cost lives,” said Professor Tim Spector, an epidemiologist at King’s College London.

 

It's pretty damning (unsurprisingly), but well worth a read. Especially interesting is how it reports that many believe the UK community spread was seeded heavily from wealthy middle class people skiing in Italy and returning to the UK after the half-term holidays...

 

Many frontline doctors believe the disease was carried home to Britain from Europe’s ski resorts. The biggest influx was when families returned from their half-term break, shortly after Selbie’s February 21 blog post that celebrated recording no further cases.

I think the lack of mass testing at the start was a scandal, hospital workers couldn't get tested but celebrities and the royals could (as I argued at the time about Prince Charles much to most BJs annoyance). But for me it highlighted the inequalities in British society these days.

 

Nicola Sturgeon announcing movement into phase 3 and making face covering mandatory on public transport and in all enclosed spaces e.g. Shops etc.

 

Highlighting autistic children and people with breathing issues as exceptions but even for them to give it a go as you can get used to it and it's an important thing to try.

Edited July 10, 20205 yr by Steve201

Interesting deep dive here into the UK Coronavirus response (or lack thereof): https://www.reuters.com/investigates/specia...ritain-tracing/

It's pretty damning (unsurprisingly), but well worth a read. Especially interesting is how it reports that many believe the UK community spread was seeded heavily from wealthy middle class people skiing in Italy and returning to the UK after the half-term holidays...

Skiing has been a big factor in Belgium and The Netherlands as well. The Netherlands had carnaval as an extra acceleration shortly afterwards, which caused 1 area in particular to be hit hard

Ditto for Germany. Skiing and then Karneval in NRW lead to the Heinsberg hotspot that was for a while the leading Corona area in Germany.

 

Skiers then infected others in clubs and bars and stuff.

 

 

 

 

My quarantine in the UK is now over so ventured out today. Aside from one woman at post office, mask compliance was actually really good. Pleasantly surprised to see. Some supermarkets using a face shield rather than a mask tho. Would be interested to see if that is actually as effective as a mask

So basically rich people brought it in on the way back from skiing and it's the poor worst affected now!

Yeah that sums it up nicely! When Berlin had around 300 cases, one third of them could be traced back to a single person who’d been for a ski holiday, as I think I’ve said before, according to the state health authorities.

 

Insanely easy to transmit

Well I wouldn't really call skiers rich

Well, I can’t afford to go skiing...

That's a shame, it's a lot of fun!

That's a shame, it's a lot of fun!

 

 

Not if you break a leg though.... :D

Edited July 11, 20205 yr by Crazy Chris

Well I wouldn't really call skiers rich

 

Middle-class people who sought those trips on the basis of cheap travel.

I deliberately said that to spark the debate lol but I would def say the majority who go skiing are fairly well off and most who go skiing from Jan - March generally don't miss out on a summer holiday either from my own experience of people I know.