Whilst many are unwittingly still in denial of what’s really going on around us, an economic tragedy is now beginning to unfold that is likely to touch all of us before its horrid effects are done.
More sensible MPs have only very recently recognised how catastrophically wrong the Government got their response to the Coronavirus Pandemic and Covid-19.
Some of us were well aware of what the consequences would be of opening the Pandora’s Box labelled ‘Lockdown’ and failing to mitigate its impacts universally before it was implemented. We were not alone for very long and groups like #ForgottenLtd followed once the inadequacy of Rishi Sunak’s Public Money giveaway began to hit the Directors of our powerhouse small businesses who had watched their incomes evaporated the moment that everything was stopped.
The Lockdown itself was completely unnecessary. At the start of the Pandemic in the UK as now, the Government could and should have been directly controlling any genuine upsurge in illness on our behalf with the public money and resources available rather than using public money and resources to attempt to control us all with the aim that we would do their job and manage the crisis for them. They chose the alternative that made it easy for them by making it a problem for everyone.
The Lockdown was a universal response to a focused issue that created universal problems that were addressed with focused solutions.
Once they chose to implement the Lockdown and stop the normal flow of work and business, the Government should have stopped the normal flow of money too. Loan repayments, mortgages, leases, interest and payments for or against anything that anyone or any business wouldn’t order or commit to having without any income should have been put on hold until the Lockdown was seen though.
What the Government did instead was attempt to override the universal laws of cause and effect and burn public money to create a false floor by underwriting jobs that vaporised within days once the wheels of industry and commerce were stopped from turning.
Now we have reached August and the requirement has come for businesses to begin contributing to furlough payments too, you can see what businesses are doing. It’s a case of ‘back to work’ or redundancy for all and not just the few that it would have been if the Government had handled this whole crisis as it should.
Furlough money to keep jobs open that no longer exist is in fact a basic income and it would be a very generous one bearing in mind that in terms of an investment for the future, these are payments that will never give anything back,
The time when there should have been a basic income – and a universal basic income too – would have been if the Government had Locked-down the Economy as it did with jobs and businesses too. Payments would have been necessary to EVERYONE who lost their income as a result of the Lockdown, but because they had no bills to pay, it wouldn’t have mattered whether they were a gig-economy worker, a company director or a PLC CEO because their needs would have been exactly the same and would have been universally low-cost too.
Sadly and very regrettably, the time has now long since passed when Boris and Rishi Sunak could have taken this Country along a very different path that would have addressed the Coronavirus question whilst insulating people and businesses against any economic worries too. They blew it.
What is in none of our interests now is for the charade to continue in any way or at any level.
We need to face up the reality of what the Johnson Government has actually done and take the steps and implement the actions that will see us ALL through the massive economic depression that is now dawning.
The people who have lost their jobs need financial help and other forms of support. But we will be helping nobody other than Boris and his Government if we continue to apply this help whilst pretending its purpose is to prop up jobs.
What we do need immediately is further provision targeted at those who have so far not bee helped but still have something to offer the economy post-Lockdown like the Directors of small Limited Companies and those left behind who are ‘Self-Employed’.
Above all however, we need to stop pretending that the Government and the MPs that we have are suitable candidates to get this Country out of the mess that they have created, and that we need new leadership in London to turn things around and take the UK in a very different way.
The reset that is coming is no longer a choice. But the options that will be available within it must be taken for the benefit of us all. That’s when we will have a fair society and people will treat everyone else equally and we will all have what we need and feel happy and content rather than life only appearing to be great for very few.
Adam Tugwell 