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.
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.
Lone voices shout against the crowd, trying to stop everyone walking onto the beach to see the spectacle of a disappearing sea before the overwhelming horror and force of the tsunami returns, overwhelms and destroys everything whilst it kills or injures people indiscriminately and at will.
No, this is not the tragedy and disaster of Boxing Day 2004 in the Indian Ocean. This is what we are experiencing and living through right now. Albeit within what feels like a parallel universe where it has become necessary to attempt communication in metaphorical terms because it has become too difficult to communicate with people who have been taken in by the Government narrative in any other way.
You will either get it or you won’t. But just because you don’t get it doesn’t make it untrue.
Those that do understand the crisis that the UK is facing and has faced from the moment that the Lockdown began and are prepared to speak or act publicly even now, some 6 weeks in, remain very few in number. But that isn’t to say that a great many more don’t agree at least in part with what is being said.
Yes, the momentum appears to be completely behind the Government.
So successful has their media campaign been based on propaganda and the misuse of behavioural insights, that terms such as ‘social distancing’, ‘stay at home, save lives’ and ‘protect the NHS’ have turned the general population into a zombie nation . One that has become progressively more fearful of catching this virus since the COVID-19 Pandemic began.
Not only has the Government imposed an unnecessary and dubious Lockdown with physical distancing measures that has seen social distancing becoming common parlance and accepted terminology for the 2020 police state in the UK. They have failed spectacularly to mitigate and insulate our businesses and jobs against the fallout from their mistake. They are now consolidating the problems they have caused and are in the process of causing by doubling down on the steps they have already taken, using lie after lie in the form of hollow advice and directives to give credibility to the giant ones they issued to coerce the British Public to accept the Lockdown in the first place.
Such commentary appearing on my own Facebook feed via a friend who was commenting yesterday drew my attention to the Court Action and related crowd-funding request that is being initiated by businessman Simon Dolan.
Mr Dolan has instructed Solicitors Wedlake Bell and Barrister Francis Hoar to begin proceedings to sue the Government over the imposition of the Lockdown and already drawn much derision for doing so.
Having seen it suggested by the twitterati that Ms Perrins was experiencing a mental breakdown when she Tweeted that (as an experienced barrister herself) she might well initiate proceedings against the Government in the future on a similar if not the same basis, its not difficult to picture how the court of public opinion is feeling about anything that goes against the official narrative that still remains in place – no matter how wrong or how damaging it is or will soon turn out to be.
The difficulty for Mr Dolan, Laura Perrins or anyone else who wants to tackle the ineptitude and ignorance of the politicians our system tells us we must call a government, is that the tide of groupthink that is carrying the establishment will continue to convince everyone who is travelling with it that both the Government and they are right until the very moment of impact when it is too late to head off the disaster that is now destined to come.
Suing the Government and its abuse of its responsibilities and powers to impose the Lockdown upon us all is certainly justified.
But when you are dealing with a Government and an establishment that is drunk on its own power and obsessed with the sound of its own voice, doing the right thing and in this case attempting to use the very legal system against it that we know it controls is not going to achieve the result that those of us who are awake already want, even though it is precisely what all of us – including those who are currently blind the realities of the Government’s actions – so desperately need.
Every day that this Lockdown and any form of the complete injustice that is ‘social distancing’ continues will be another day too many that has added damage to real lives, our economy and our Country.
It was avoidable at the start, but has for many already become irreparable harm.
The false populism that the Government created with the Media’s help has ensured that too many people believe everything they say. The same people will regrettably not see it differently until the tsunami hits them personally.
In the same way, the majority of us will not hear the alternative message, reality and truth – that opposes the one the Government is foolishly doing everything that it can to reinforce and to repeat – until the physical impact of that message has actually arrived in our lives.
Using the Courts to tackle a Government that is failing in its job whilst legitimising stupidity is neither playing the same game, nor playing by the same rules.
Court action will regrettably fail in delivering any beneficial purpose – even if the action wins, simply because it will come too late to turn that tide. It will only succeed in making an already inept Government lie to us again and say they will do things differently if the same thing were to happen again. It will not change the people we have in power nor the way that they think in any way.
With the Lockdown now having been running for 6 weeks already, the options for anyone who arrives in power to clean up the mess that the Johnson Government has created are becoming fewer and harder by the day.
Domestic abuse, suicides, evictions, debt, job losses, unemployment, abuse, safeguarding issues, divorces, anxiety, depression, long-term mental health issues, deaths, reduced standards of living, poverty, hunger and much more besides are already inevitable. They will not be changed or headed off in ways that they could have been if we had good politicians and a responsible Government from the start – One that would not have opted for the Lockdown as the route out of the COVID emergency in the first place.
To limit the pain from the problems the Johnson Government and the political culture they are part of has created, we need different leadership right now.
Democracy will not solve the crisis. Democracy cannot repair the damage that has already been done. Democracy will not put the UK back together and rediscover our place in the World once the fight against Covid is won. Because democracy in this Country has become a lie.
We need a government that will literally impose all the changes and direction across all areas of public policy that will be in the best interests of all, rather than trying to court public opinion and that of a media that will only appreciate the steps that have genuinely been taken in the best interests of all once we have weathered the storm. That can only come when everything has been fixed and the changes made have had adequate time to run their course.
The regrettable reality is that it is too late for this Government and the Politicians that we have to get any of this right. They are not wired the right way. We need people taking the lead who will weather this storm for us and on our behalf who really are ‘in the same room’.
Whilst we should wish Mr Dolan and his legal team all the very best with what they plan to do, the reality is that we will need the money that we have and our time and our support will be better spent placing focus and effort elsewhere.
We will only see the end of this narcissistic Government and stop the process of damage and harm this political culture is doing to us all once they are removed from power. They and the kind they represent must never be given the opportunity to return to pay lip service to responsibility in the way that they are doing now.
Rioting, violence and public unrest will serve no purpose in the fight for our freedom and justice for all.
That doesn’t mean we have to continue to maintain our consent for the politicians we have to continue to lead.
We have to recognise and then break the herd mentality that we have all unwittingly become part of that has given legitimacy to the Lockdown and everything wrong with what the Government has done and will continue to do.
Their words mean nothing. They have no value to us all.
So when you see local businesses reopening in whatever form the might choose, or see people out and about walking or in their cars in whatever way or at whatever time of the day they choose, support them. Applaud them. Encourage them to do more. Even if you are not yet ready to do it yourself.
The only way that we can be rid of this Lockdown, the police state known as social distancing and begin to turn all the problems in the UK around, is to ignore the politicians who no longer have legitimacy in power to lead us and ignore all of the ridiculous messages, actions and rules that this out-of-touch establishment continues to impose.
We need leadership that respects the realities of public consent rather than abusing it to extend their own purposes and selfish cause.
There was a time when it didn’t feel like it really mattered who was in charge because everything would always stay the same.
Now we know different.
We must withdraw our consent for politicians, who through a process of self-gratification, are masquerading as our leaders whilst getting way with treating us all like fools.
Let’s focus all our energies on doing what needs to be done to limit the damage before the tsunami that has swallowed the sea that is the Covid emergency returns.
The Banks, big business and the finance sector must be thinking that all their Christmases have arrived at once.
We are living through what in time will surely be seen as perhaps the biggest overkill in history of political leadership.
But instead of the same thinking, the same approach and the same rules being applied the same, equitably and with consideration for everyone, the Government is in the process of setting up the majority of us to fail, whilst it is creating the perfect conditions for the few or the usual suspects so that they can clean up and win.
The inequitable nature of what the Government doing looks more like a strategy to divide and conquer than a plan to bring people together in the way that it now should.
Yes there are grants. Yes there are subsidies. Yes there are loans.
But none of these responses are addressing the size, virility or indeed the longevity of what is already the supersize elephant in the room.
The best way to tackle a loss of income and trade for people, businesses and the self-employed during an event of this magnitude is to put the bills and interest that they ALL have to pay on hold.
EVERYONE who has lost out should then be given the same to pay for the food and essentials that won’t be covered. That way nobody gets less and nobody ends up able to take more.
For a hint of the undercurrent of what is going on around the world and who is happiest with the way that politicians are creating both unnecessary and avoidable pain, look how the US Money Markets responded yesterday when they heard that a $2 Trillion fiscal stimulus was on its way.
Making money or profit is a non-essential activity and no business whether it is purely financial or not shouldn’t be able to continue rolling on with charging and levying fees on the people who cannot. It certainly shouldn’t have these activities endorsed by Government by the public policy it promotes.
To be clear, we are not talking about cash handling, cheque cashing or card services which are essential to keep everyone fed in their homes. Its this ridiculous idea that an economy cannot stop or be mothballed – which the Government has inequitably already done to employees and many businesses – just because it hasn’t been done before.
By listening to economists and the people of influence who have their own agendas in every way, the Government is showing us that it is happy to store up a world of long-term problems for anyone who doesn’t have a name, and that it will continue to do so for however long it refuses to take a balanced and considered approach to EVERYONE involved.
If these Politicians want to remain credible and be forgiven for the unavoidable things that have gone wrong during the Coronavirus Crisis, the only way they can do this is by stopping bill payments for anything that is not itself essential to life or living.
They must put a hold on each and every form of interest too.
Above all, they must give EVERYONE who has lost income the same amount for food – and yes, £94 a week would be enough for one person if they don’t have to pay any of the other non-essential bills that they normally would.
The Government has the power to do this now and this is what they should do.
It doesn’t matter if it’s electricity, gas, water, credit card, a loan, a lease, rent, a mortgage, phone, broadband, TV streaming, contract subscriptions of any other kind, or anything else. It is the ceaseless demands of the private, profit-making interests in this Country being allowed to continue sucking money from our pockets that is the real problem people are facing now and will continue to do so long after Covid has been put in its place.
Subsidies, Loans and Grants from the Government make great headlines when politicians are obsessed with how things look. But these hollow actions are giving legitimacy to the continuance of profiteering and endless money making on the part of commercial interests and what we have come to know as ‘the few’. All at a time when there is no longer any excuse for the people we elected to provide opportunities for the usual suspects to carry on making money at our expense, whilst we cannot earn, and as if they are entitled to act, behave and continue doing so like gods.
By allowing the economy to unravel, pretending it can be propped up by giving people the means to pay bills that could otherwise be put on hold so that everyone is in the same position, whilst pushing many people and businesses into what will quickly become unserviceable debt, the Government is initiating a downward spiral for this Country and what should be a robust economy.
The outcomes of this political ineptitude will be far worse for real people and for businesses over the long term than the outcome from the temporary hit that the Government should be taking on our behalf right now.
The pathway that the Chancellor has taken so far indicates that the Johnson Government is either incompetent and doesn’t understand the reality that people like small business owners, Deliveroo riders, people on zero hours contracts and those simply laid off from jobs in cafes and bars face, or they are intentionally using a crisis to assist in shackling all of these people and many more into forms of debt and the emotional bondage that accompanies it, simply so the friends and supporters of the Government can look at the piles of cash that they already have and smile as they start making even more.
Whether deliberate or created by stupidity and ignorance on the part of politicians who should always know better, the situation that this Government is now facilitating for us all will quickly become little more than profiteering from the misery of the many, simply to line the pockets of the few.
No matter what anyone says – whether they are an MP, so-called ‘expert’ or specialist, journalist or anyone else who has fashioned themselves as part of the ‘celebrity cause’, the solutions that the Government are now offering up do not go far enough in just about every way.
The PM, the Chancellor he appointed, the Government and the Politicians around him have the power and therefore the means to do whatever is necessary to help all of us and keep the Country in the best position going forward as it is possible to do so. But that is not going to happen if politicians are misguided by the self-interests and biases of the people and influences around them, rather than the Public at large – which should always be any Governments one and only cause.
Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures on the part of the people that we have elected to lead us.
This means they must step up, read the situation for what it is in reality for everyone – rather than what they think it might be or what their advisers are telling them – and adopt a much bigger, realistic and worldly view.
Economic thinking is just another set of ideas that become real simply because it is the line that people choose to believe.
Current economic theory is one founded upon the idea that money must be kept flowing at all times, just as if it is a blood supply that cannot ever be stopped. It works and operates on the basis that money and the systems that support its generation and movement are the only important thing.
They are not.
What economists and the people who have been influenced into thinking this way are failing to consider, is there is something far more important than money. That is the people and the communities that we live in. Beyond the thinking and the ideas that the ‘money men’ and their supporters choose to accept, there is most definitely another and very clear way to approach this crisis which is an option.
As such our decision makers are currently making a choice. One that is all about profit or all about them.
It should be people first. Money only when its sensible to return to it thereafter.
To deal effectively with the Covid Pandemic and without long term fallout for the many, the economy as it stands can be and should be shut down and stopped from operating in its current form.
Interest accumulation should be halted, and a payment or repayment holiday imposed on everything – whether it is for domestic use or for business – so that EVERYONE is being treated fairly and just the same.
The Government should temporarily renationalise all essential utilities and services – that’s the ones that were sold off and should be in the hands of non-profit making management and ownership anyway – and simply take the steps necessary to underwrite supply to ensure that the essential services the public need are simply provided for the duration of the Pandemic without the need for anyone to worry about how they continue to pay.
For the people who have been laid off, have had to stop trading, have had their hours zeroed out or have had their incomes stopped by the Covid Pandemic in any way, there should be a basic income provided to cover the costs of food and essential items so that everyone is able to function in their homes and remain clean and healthy in every other way.
To do so would ensure that the people who have been left completely vulnerable and at the mercy of circumstances that they had no part in creating, are able to standstill and most importantly survive at the very least, without anything changing. They will therefore placed in the best situation possible to pick up and return their own lives to normality alongside those of everyone when the Covid Pandemic is accepted as being over and what will then become life as usual is once again ready to begin.
For the businesses and the workers who are able to continue working throughout the Pandemic, the payment holiday that they will then all inadvertently receive will itself be a bonus and for many of them thanks enough.
Yes, the Government could and should now be doing this.
MPs, Politicians, Government Officers and Advisors must start thinking outside of their very tunnelled and out-of-tune Westminster box.
Just to begin with, these are preventative steps the Government should now take:
Ditch the £Multi-Billion plan for Grants, Subsidies, and underwriting Loans
Stop Interest payments and accumulation of any kind
Stop Loan Repayments
Stop Mortgage Repayments
Stop Rent Payments
Stop Leasing Payments
Stop Utility Bill Payments
Stop Phone Payments
Stop Broadband Payments
Stop TV Streaming Payments
Stop Insurance Payments without penalty for any function not in use whilst maintaining ongoing cover for capital value without charge
Stop any other form of contract subscription which is non-essential in any form
And a here are some proactive steps that the Government should also begin by taking:
Provide a Basic Income to cover the cost of food and essential items for everyone, their dependents, and the people they care for, who has lost their income as a result of the Crisis
Provide a top-up for anyone, their dependents, and the people they care for who’s income has been reduced to a level below that which matches that above
Take all former public services that were privatised back into temporary Government control
Provide gas, electricity, and water to every household for the duration of the crisis without charge
Create legislation that outlaws profiteering or price gauging of any kind, with companies, their directors or the individuals fined heavily or jailed when charged
Create legislation that prevents any commercial or private interest seeking compensation or interest of any kind from anyone or any business who has not paid them for the duration of the crisis, in the future at any time.
Setting any of us up to fail in the long term as a result of implementing policies during a time of crisis that have not been through will not be in the best interests of anyone. Least of all the Politicians who are failing us by coming up with such stupidity or lack of foresight in the first place.
Fundamentally, the approach currently being taken is morally as well as practically wrong.
This National Crisis and the future of this Country of ours simply demands thinking from them that is new.
As someone who set up a successful distribution business by winning a contract with a large newspaper company and setting it up overnight, I’m well aware of how to make a delivery operation flow right for staff and customers in a time sensitive environment.
Of course, as a commercial provider to a business customer, my key considerations were very different to that of a supermarket supplying a weekly shop to a retail customer. Or rather they would have been in normal times.
One of the greatest inefficiencies of the way that supermarkets have been working, has been to give customers the freedom to choose their delivery time and fit the delivery of their online order around that specific requirement.
This in effect means that even with deliveries grouped as much as possible across the number of vans that any store has, they will be zigzagging across a district or suburban area most of the time, adding time and running costs to the journey which limit or short-change the extent of what the driver and vehicle can do.
With the landscape changing and the idea that the customer is always right having been exchanged for one where we will get what the supermarkets can give us at the location and time it is available, the retailers we use for food and essential goods have options to cover more ground in less time and extend their online delivery services during the Coronavirus Crisis in ways that at other times they never could.
It all boils down to just one thing. Telling customers when they will get their delivery rather than giving them options to choose in the way that they currently do.
People are working from home and not going far.
If customers want food and the goods that supermarkets can provide them they will be grateful to have them delivered during the crisis and won’t worry about what time.
By being able to group deliveries into the closest distances between a set of addresses in blocks over a few days, efficiency is certain to increase. Even one more customer per van per shift would help more people than the system currently is.
If the supermarkets start delivering around the clock on a 24hr basis – prioritising more social hours for the elderly, the vulnerable and reaching key workers between their shifts – the existing delivery system could be able to double deliveries and perhaps even more.
Yes, there will be a shortage of staff that needs to be filled. But there will also be many people willing to step into help where possible to do so. I for one would be happy to do a few shifts from a local store or even drive an artic from a nearby distribution centre to the supermarket back door if I can find a doctor to sign off the medical for my Heavy Goods Class 1 renewal once more.
In difficult and challenging times, business as well as politicians have to consider whats fair and best for EVERYONE. Not just those who pay, complain or can influence more.
But we ALL have an investment in the government, the public sector and the businesses working to keep us alive getting this right.
They cannot do it alone and need our support to get there – even if that means opening the door to an online supermarket delivery person at what feels like a very peculiar time.
Adam Tugwell 