Viewing 40 posts - 561 through 600 (of 677 total)
  • Coronanomics
  • binners
    Full Member

    Another Tory Minister – Mrs Doubtfire Theresa Coffey – is asked the same question by Kay Burley as Honest Bob yesterday:

    could you live on the £5.84 an hour that many people will now be surviving on under tier 3 restrictions imposed by the government.

    No answer again, obviously, but ‘some’ people ‘may’ be eligible for universal credit

    inkster
    Free Member

    Followed that link greentricky and it led to a pay walled site. I presume you were trying to be ironic, encouraging us to track the link only to find no trace of information.

    What I think you meant to say is that the government has funneled 8 billion pounds to their mates and assorted Tory donors who have no relevant experience but a track record of abject failure in any of their other endeavours.

    Just don’t make the mistake of calling the government incompetent. What they’re doing is deliberate.

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    frankconway
    Full Member

    inky, £8 billions is a massive under-statement.
    Government performance is a melange of incompetence and deliberate actions – those who benefit do so as a result of deliberate decisions; for the rest of us, we’re at the whim of ever-changing decisions.
    I’m now off to resume sticking pins into my johnson voodoo doll – hope they transmit direct to him.

    greentricky
    Free Member

    The article I was linking to:

    If ever you wanted to know what could go wrong with paying people to dig holes in the ground and then fill them in, look no further than England’s coronavirus test and trace system.

    The idea behind a crude Keynesian fiscal stimulus such as we’re seeing is that it does not matter much what government spends the public’s money on. That cash will end up as people’s income, which they will spend. It then becomes someone else’s income and multiplies the original public expenditure significantly to ease a nation itself out of a metaphorical economic hole.

    The test, trace and isolate programme was introduced in England in May. It was expected to bring huge returns to the economy, with the Treasury allocating £12bn to it this year, comparable to what the government spends on nursery and university education. The promise made by Matt Hancock, health secretary, was that it “will help us keep this virus under control while carefully and safely lifting the lockdown nationally”.

    This was not one of the speculative moonshots the prime minister’s team are so hopeful will transform the economy. Instead, it was a supposedly a careful investment of 0.6 per cent of UK national income with huge returns all but guaranteed. The service would allow the economy to reopen safely, emerge from a Covid-19-induced more than 20 per cent drop in output, and limit pernicious long-term economic scarring.

    Not only would the government spending form the income of employees in the test and tracing system, it would also enable many more people to resume their past livelihoods, generating returns far in excess of the cost. If it contributed to a recovery worth 6 percentage points of national income, a tenfold return would have been achieved in a matter of months.

    The problem has been that the money was not spent well. Test and trace has been mired in crises since birth. This autumn, it has failed to deliver sufficient tests, been slow in informing people they have tested positive and allowed a spreadsheet error to miss almost 16,000 positive cases. Trust has evaporated to the extent that the UK’s scientific advisory group has assessed it was having at best a “marginal impact” on transmission of the virus.

    There is a strong case to go further and say the £12bn has so far had a negative rate of return. By allowing people to believe the nation had built a world-class system, social distancing slipped, the virus spread and the country is again thinking about local or national lockdowns, with inevitable severe economic costs.

    How governments spend money matters. As Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, said this week, “there is scope for sustained public investment, but it does have to be on projects that earn a rate of return and [our] history is quite mixed on that front”.

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    In the wider field of economics, an increasingly fashionable view is that governments should use fiscal policy and heavy borrowing to run the economy hot so as to use all available resources and minimise unemployment. The only downside, according to schools of thought such as modern monetary theory, is a bit of possible inflation, which can easily be tamed.

    The lesson from British public-sector investment disasters, including the Humber Bridge, advanced gas-cooled nuclear reactors and the NHS electronic patient record system, is that the growth-enhancing promises of investment projects are often overstated and multipliers might be very small.

    What test and trace has added to the picture is that if government gets it wrong, returns and multipliers can be negative. In other words, if you’re going to turn on the public spending taps, make sure you get it right or you will end up with a horrible mess.

    binners
    Full Member

    This was just posted up of King Street, right in the middle of Manchester city centre at 8am this morning. Completely deserted. On a normal day, this street would be full of people

    It’s easy to see why Andy Burnham is resisting Tier 3. This is after 10 weeks of Tier 2. I don’t see how any of those businesses with premises in the city centre can survive much more of this

    inkster
    Free Member

    Disaster capitalism is about making cash from chaos. This mob are beyond that, they’re not looking to make cash from chaos they’re looking to take cash from chaos. It’s got nothing to do with capitalism, it’s theft and corruption, pure and simple.

    inkster
    Free Member

    Binners,

    I put my mind in 80’s mode some time ago, I know it’s going to be worse than that, this time there isn’t too much fighting on the dance floor because there is no dance floor.

    EDIT

    On the plus side, living in central Manchester I’ve rather enjoyed cycling on the empty streets and enjoying the cleaner air this last six months! Lots of conflicted feelings though, watching the ‘Manctopian’ dream crumble is painfull, on the one hand I hate what they’ve done to my city, turning it into a ‘New Suburbia’ but on the other hand, seeing peoples lives and businesses thrown into turmoil is even more depressing.

    yourguitarhero
    Free Member

    Not getting much traction with the £50k digital project manager jobs I’m applying for. Just chucked in application in for a NHS contact tracer – seems cushy.
    Any tips of scoring a customs agent job? Heard there’s 50k of them going. Am very much willing to steal, rob and be bribed.

    binners
    Full Member

    Well we’ve got part two of the Boris/Rishi good cop/bad cop routine

    They need to do something or the business failures over the winter are going to be enormous

    Lets see what they come up with

    frankconway
    Full Member

    binners – yet again, nothing for you and many others like you.

    binners
    Full Member

    I’m a realist Frank. I’m completely resigned to it now. To the point where I think the entire industry may be finished, for the foreseeable future, at least. As well as many others. I’m lucky in that I was in a position to diversify into something else that used a similar skill set.

    Many aren’t so lucky. By next March every sound or lighting engineer, graphic designer, photographer, events co-ordinator or cameraman is going to be driving an Amazon van or stacking shelves. Or, like Fatima the ballerina, we could work in cyber. If we’re lucky.

    We were deemed ‘acceptable collateral damage’ in March and that was never going to change

    superdan
    Full Member

    By next March every sound or lighting engineer, graphic designer, photographer, events co-ordinator or cameraman is going to be driving an Amazon van or stacking shelves. Or, like Fatima the ballerina, we could work in cyber. If we’re lucky.

    That’s leads me to wonder about something I’ve been curious about – how much content do the BBC/Sky/streaming services have in the pipeline, vs the speed at which new content can be produced with current restrictions etc. Realise that likely there is post-production work going on on a lot of stuff that was shot pre-March, but this is a pipeline that needs to be kept fed I guess.
    Forgetting all the other terrible stuff going on, lockdown has been made more tolerable by some interesting series to watch.
    Ignoring the all getting together on Zoom stuff, how do you keep the media content consumption beast fed? Animation carried out via home-working? The snarky answer I guess is something around a load of that backlog of movies that haven’t come out this year being released direct onto media services, or re-cut into mini-series (like a reverse Das Boot).

    binners
    Full Member

    The thing is the long term implications too.

    You don’t just have an on/off switch. These industries (because they are industries) have their own co-dependent ecosystems. Most of the staff are freelance. So they’ll have had little, if any, work since March, and have been excluded from all government support, so have had no income at all other than universal credit.

    So it’s quite an assumption to think that next year you can just say ‘ok everybody, we’re going to start filming/recording/rehearsals again, can you all come back to work?’

    To which the answer in most cases will be “I would do, but I’ve got all these packages to deliver”.

    reluctantjumper
    Full Member

    My sister is saying exactly that for her Theatre. They may well be able to open in the spring but there will be no shows coming through as they haven’t been rehearsing, the technical staff will all be unavailable as they will have to have taken other jobs and a lot of the companies that supply things like the sets, lighting and sound equipment will have gone bust. So anything to do with the arts, Tv etc is going to take a long time to get up and running again once they are allowed to resume working.

    grum
    Free Member

    By next March every sound or lighting engineer, graphic designer, photographer, events co-ordinator or cameraman is going to be driving an Amazon van or stacking shelves.

    Puts hand up.

    I’ll be living at my mum’s with my partner and three kids for the foreseeable future. And I’m probably one of the lucky ones.

    Tom-B
    Free Member

    ooh ooh ooh….puts hand up too

    Musician here so didn’t even make it on to Binners list. Everyone knows it’s a hobby not a job though yeah…..

    I’m due to start as a delivery driver next Friday. As above, I’m probably one of the lucky ones.

    avdave2
    Full Member

    What do you mean by March, I’ve been a binman since June. Not much call for any of our kit, just running a few zoom meetings. Hopefully enough work to keep the company solvent but not to actually pay anyone.

    binners
    Full Member

    Hoy thread reboot!

    So, todays development is that even the ‘Red Wall’ Tory MPs can see the writing on the wall and are pointing it out

    Much was made of the ‘Red Wall’ Tory victories, but it was against the most hopeless labour leadership ever seen, and it was hardly some thumping landslide. Those MP’s are sat on paper-thin majorities. My own new Tory MP’s majority is 100 votes. He’s signed the letter despite being a rabid Brexiteer, Boris cheerleader and utter ****!

    What they will be painfully aware of is that our economy is about to go into freefall. Every day that goes by with no plan to get the north out of lockdown means more business failures, more job losses, more misery and hopelessness, more kids needing free school meals. The compensation being offered for this by central government is pitiful and amounts to little more than loose change. It’s a drop in the ocean compared to what’s really required to see us through a winter under lockdown. And everyone up here thinks (knows) this will be a full winter under lockdown. We’re not stupid.

    These Tory MPs haven’t suddenly developed social consciences. They’re Tory’s after all. This is basic, naked self-interest. They all have tiny majorities and they want to keep their seats on the all-expenses-paid gravy train. They can see what we can all see from up here. That, far from Levelling-up, Boris and his Westminster chums seem happy to sit back and let a re-run of the 1980’s rip through northern communities again over a long bleak winter, while the South remains unaffected, as is has done up until now. Just to reiterate: ‘The North’ has been under Tier 2 restrictions since July. We only ever came out of lockdown for a couple of weeks.

    They don’t give a flying **** about us. Even their own MP’s know it.

    Either that or those in power really are so economically illiterate that they completely fail to see the true magnitude of what is about to happen here

    I suspect it’s a mix of the two

    BillMC
    Full Member
    5thElefant
    Free Member

    Great news for consumers and bike shops.

    BillMC
    Full Member

    Speculation: the government ‘blends’ Serco into the NHS, like the ‘behaviour unit’ into the civil service. In a trade deal any US firm can buy into Serco, result, they have further advanced the flogging of the NHS.
    I’m hearing about proposed ‘regrading’ of some ancillary staff positions in the NHS to reduce their pay. Don’t be surprised by anything.

    fossy
    Full Member

    I was in Manchester on Friday and Saturday. Friday it was dead in the business areas, shocking to see. Saturdy, only Market Street area had any numbers and it was a quarter of usual foot fall.

    MrsF signed on today, furlough not extended for her. Another 1 to the many millions unemployed.

    dazh
    Full Member

    I was in Manchester on Friday and Saturday.

    I’ve not been back since March apart from one day in June when I rode through the city centre on my bike. It was like a ghost town, and yes was shocking to see when you consider how many jobs are dependent on it. I don’t know how all the hospitality and smaller retail businesses survived the first lockdown so surely they won’t survive this one?

    I’m even more convinced now than I was a few months ago that the era of big cities as a place for retail and business is over. There’s still a role for them as a social space but without the footfall that business and retail provide they won’t be able to support the range of food, drink and entertainment outlets so its something of a chicken-egg problem. For the likes of Manchester I can’t see anything other than terminal decline and decay.

    binners
    Full Member

    I don’t know how all the hospitality and smaller retail businesses survived the first lockdown so surely they won’t survive this one?

    Having quite a few mates who run small independent hospitality businesses, they know they can’t weather this. Some are trying to innovate and do whatever they can, but the games surely up now. They won’t last the winter. Remember that in the north they’ve been in Tier 2 since July, which has meant operating at 25% capacity anyway. Those sums don’t add up. With this just piling further misery on top of that.

    You think Manchester City Centre will suffer? Wait until you see what the average small-town high street is going to look like by next March. Particularly as December is where they make a big chunk of their annual income. There’s going to be nothing left. They might as well board them all up now.

    robbo1234biking
    Full Member

    MrsF signed on today, furlough not extended for her. Another 1 to the many millions unemployed

    My wife signed on on Sunday. She was made redundant during Wave 1. She opened her own business doing beauty treatments as she was re-training anyway and it was going good. I think people felt safer as it was controlled by one person. She has to close it down tomorrow until who knows when but as she only has about 8 weeks earnings there wont be any support. Hopefully she can re-open in December but we will see. Post Covid I think we have seen enough that it will be a strong business for her but there are little opportunities in the run up to xmas unfortunately.

    inkster
    Free Member

    Watching C4 news, weve seen a 10% dip in the economy since covid, compared to about 5% in France, Germany etc, whilst the US has seen a 3% dip.

    Sunak was saying this is because our economy is built around the entertainment, eating out type of thing much more than almost any other country.

    Two things, whilst our economy might be more skewed toward leisure service industries than most, it’s surely not to the extent that those figures indicate?

    Secondly, what a damming indictment of the kind of economy we have chosen to build and how brittle and lacking in resilience it is in relation to outlier events.

    dovebiker
    Full Member

    what a damming indictment of the kind of economy we have chosen to build and how brittle and lacking in resilience it is in relation to outlier events.

    UK economy has always been hugely exposed to consumer sentiment, now combined with a commercial property crunch that will knock on pensions and public services who are exposed.

    frankconway
    Full Member

    dovebiker – covered in much detail earlier in the thread; having said that, no problem with your comment as it may prompt further discussion.

    Northwind
    Full Member

    inkster
    Free Member

    Sunak was saying this is because our economy is built around the entertainment, eating out type of thing much more than almost any other country.

    Two things, whilst our economy might be more skewed toward leisure service industries than most, it’s surely not to the extent that those figures indicate?

    Secondly, what a damming indictment of the kind of economy we have chosen to build and how brittle and lacking in resilience it is in relation to outlier events.

    Ask yourself whether it’s actually true, or whether it’s a convenient excuse and the actual reason for our economy doing worse is because of the mishandling of the crisis- not just in terms of spread, fatalities, lockdowns, but also in terms of lack of clarity for businesses, unreliability of government support etc

    And of course ongoing brexit uncertainty means our economy is naturally less resilient than Germany.

    paulneenan76
    Free Member

    I agree with Northwind

    inkster
    Free Member

    Northwind.

    It would seem that our economy is naturally less resilient than everywhere. When the incompetence and mismanagement along with Brexit is priced in I still don’t think it explains away a dip 3 times greater than the US, hardly paragons of competence and management recently.

    binners
    Full Member

    So Boris is due to announce the new guidelines once we come out of lockdown and it look like.

    Tier 3 – is basically still lockdown
    Tier 2 – Is what was previously known as Tier 3
    tier 1 – What was previously known as Tier 2

    To summarise what this means for the hospitality industry

    Everyone better savour the memories of those enjoyable evenings you spent in your favourite pub or restaurant. They’re unlikely to ever be reopening.

    Our mates just admitted defeat this week and called it a day on their successful restaurant that they’ve run for 15 years. They’ve haemorrhaged money since March, including the thousands they invested in making their business Covid-safe, and have now simply run out. It’s going to be a sad loss to the town and is obviously devastating for them.

    Their opinion is that everyone else in the business and all small independent shops are surely presently at the same financial position.

    In the North we all know we’ll be straight into Tier 3, which just means a continuation of lockdown under a different name. If we do ever get out of lockdown and you fancy nipping out for a pint, you’ll have the choice of Wetherspoons, Wetherspoons or Wetherspoons and if you fancy going to the shops you’ll have the choice of Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys or Morrisons.

    The high street will be completely boarded up.

    monkeycmonkeydo
    Free Member

    ^ Looking that way.

    ctk
    Free Member

    Should Labour oppose the lockdowns?

    Northwind
    Full Member

    No, but they should oppose people being left to hang as a result of the lockdowns

    crikey
    Free Member

    I think that given for years and years the ‘health’ of the retail sector in this country has been based on the amount of sales over Christmas and the subsequent sales from Boxing day through to the New Year, it is probably inevitable that things will have to change. It’s been a house built on sand for as long as I can remember and although the change will be destructive and painful, it needs to happen.

    TL:DR, buying shite you don’t need is no way to run a country.

    ctk
    Free Member

    It would take a brave person to turn back that tide of shite. Agreed it is necessary though.

    binners
    Full Member

    Should Labour oppose the lockdowns?

    No, because they’re necessary.

    What the government should be doing is engage with independent businesses and offer them some hope or financial lifeline. They’ve just been hung out to dry, especially in the hospitality sector. The people who run these businesses have spent money they’re not got to make their premises as Covid-safe as possible, just to see them shut down again with no financial help on offer. Absolutely loads will have quietly folded already. Many, many more will never re-open. The figures published yesterday said that if we they’re unable to open until next year then 95% of hospitality businesses are now unviable

    Talking to another friend who owns a bar last night and who’s lost a fortune already, but is clinging on hoping they can open again next week (unlikely, given our greater Manchester location). He says he’s considered suicide over the last couple of months watching his debts build up as his business sits empty.

    Thats the reality of the present situation

    binners
    Full Member

    Rishi is saying that the governments own figures are predicting a rise in unemployment to 2.7 million next year. I’m taking it that they’re erring on the conservative side with those figures.

    Something to look forward too

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