The flow of pleas from companies like Landover, arts organisations like theatres and many others including charities, for ‘bespoke’ financial help from the Government, on the basis that they are a more deserving cause than any other, is getting louder all the time.
We shouldn’t doubt for one minute that the managers, owners, employees, volunteers and supporters of any organisation staring over the cliff edge that the Government has created, all feel that their purpose is most deserving of help as a priority. That’s what we all would do.
We notice big names because they usually have a big voice. But their status doesn’t make them different to anyone else or more deserving in any way.
As Covid and the Government’s response to it has impacted all of us equally and not in the way that something might be industry specific – like a permanent volcanic ash cloud grounding all aircraft would hurt only the airlines and travel industry – there is no excuse for bailouts or bespoke packages of support using public money and resources for singled-out causes when everyone is having to deal with different impacts of a problem that have been caused by exactly the same thing.
There is no doubt that the Lockdown was a mistake from the start. The Lockdown was a disproportionate response to a problem that the Government still doesn’t understand. It could not justify implementing it or the accompanying Social Distancing measures on that one basis alone.
Universal problems require universal solutions.
The point where that one error became the catalystic cause of an avoidable crisis, was the failure of the Government to simply put a stop to everyone and every business or organisation having to continue to pay all the bills. ‘Normal’ economic activity in abnormal economic times that could and should have been put on hold, right from the start.
Managing the economic impact of the Lockdown could have been as simple as only having to pay everyone who had lost income a subsistence allowance or basic income, or top it up.
The Lockdown would then have cost the Country much less and jobs and businesses would have been mothballed rather than lost. With none of them set up to fail in the very turbulent months and possibly years that now regrettably lie ahead.
Treating anyone or any entity as if they are different, now as we go forward – no matter how convincing or well-deserving their argument might be – will not help anyone in the long term – even the specific organisations involved.
Just like the so-called help the Government has given in the form of the ‘Job Retention Scheme’, targeted or bespoke help might look like it is benefitting those targeted temporarily. But it is only delaying the inevitable.
The solution to this universal problem can only work if it is a universal solution.
We must be collectively treated as one.
Adam Tugwell 