Greggs – no.

Wooooooaaaah there.

WHAT?!!!

Age does not guarantee maturity, insight nor sophistication.

Studies in countries with track and trace actually in place link most of the spreading to 30-45 year olds, not youths or older folk.

Off you trot, prep your cc and….go spend; save the UK economy single-handedly. Fill your wardrobe with (more?) tat.

Bizarre that you think I’m supporting credit card spending on junk..?

Anyway, the point is that the reasons for debt (as other self destructive behaviours) are complex and subtle – disparaging those people who suffer from this behaviour is egregious and also extremely unhelpful.

Travis Perkins to cut 2,500 jobs and 8% of stores, they’re forecasting a two year downturn

My local high street is full of begloved, facemask wearing geriatrics getting in everyones way. So much for shielding?

And the boris bollocks spin begins – comparisons with Franklin Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ are pathetic and insulting.
The big speech on Tuesday will focus on infrastructure and construction; does johnson or any member of the clown circus have any direct experience of these markets sectors?
No, didn’t think so but why would a lack of knowledge or experience stop these poundshop politicians from spouting undeliverable bollocks?
Roosevelt was a political giant; johnson is a political and intellectual midget.
A measure of the ‘man’, if we can call him that, is that he’s running scared of a TV interview with Piers Morgan.
Do johnson or his boss, cummings, have any understanding of…what Roosevelt delivered, how it was done, why it was done, the circumstances which drove his decisions, his long term commitment and focus, his ability to communicate with the public?
No, no, no, no, no and no; all without doubt.

It’s funny how Johnson has to keep trying to reframe himself as other actual great leaders

Johnson launching this today is just desperate politics, he’s lost control of the narrative & been completely overwhelmed by covid, this was an attempt to seem like he’s in control again, Leicester lockdown shows he’s not & overshadows his announcement

Anyway, Brown had some good points here

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/27/we-are-in-desperate-need-of-a-recovery-plan-but-the-treasury-has-gone-missing

And a July budget seems like a no brainer at the moment

Brown focuses on growth not environment, does not address structural inequality, talks of ‘flexibility’ (aka zero hours) and is a great admirer of Baron Sainsbury of Turville. Oh lordy, how long before The Right Honourable Baron Brown of Brownnose?

So, 10,000 job losses announced in 2 days.
Andy Haldane says, without providing any evidence, that economy is rebounding more strongly than expected and re-states Bank of England view there will be a v-shaped recovery.
Really?? Some shops opening and an initial surge of spending is no evidence of recovery or re-bound.
As for johnson’s stream of consciousness statement yesterday – as expected, hot air; tiny in scale, no new money.
Let’s hope that next week Sunak delivers a chunky and innovative package of new spending commitments with a much broader focus than just infrastructure and construction.
Green energy, on-shore manufacturing which has been out-sourced to China specifically – UK’s response to HK will anger China so this will be no bad thing.
Publish a comprehensive and heavily funded strategy for UK manufacturing – you know, making stuff rather than just assembling bits manufactured elsewhere.
It would be great to see evidence of innovative thinking but I doubt it will happen.

Andy Haldane says, without providing any evidence, that economy is rebounding more strongly than expected and re-states Bank of England view there will be a v-shaped recovery.

I’m always amazed these claims are made without any supporting evidence. As always they need to show their working, because it doesn’t take a genius to look around and see almost every business in the hospitality sector on the brink of ruin, along with lots of others in manufacturing and other non-desk jobs.

As for Sunak, it’s seems pretty obvious that ‘whatever it takes’ has rapidly turned into ‘the least we can get away with’. It’s not surprising as the core problem is they just don’t have the genes to be an interventionist, economically radical government, and that’s what this crisis needs.

Publish a comprehensive and heavily funded strategy for UK manufacturing – you know, making stuff rather than just assembling bits manufactured elsewhere.

Good luck with that – having sat on numerous joint industry initiatives / MP select committees / seminars with Government officials I wouldn’t hold my breath. Politics in this country has reduced strategic industrial policy to 2-3 ‘spin cycles’ where the new minister announces a new raft of initiatives, obtaining funding by cancelling all the current ones created by their predecessors, but there’s no new actual money. On one project, I spent 3 years bidding for 5 year / multi-million funding for skills – one year after starting the programme, the Government canned the lot to fund another programme. With 5 year Parliamentary cycles, the chance of sustainable, year on year investment of the scale needed (hundreds of millions) with match funding from industry is remote.

The only way manufacturing investment in the UK is attractive is access to a large, local or adjacent tariff-free market, maybe like 600 million people?

large, local or adjacent tariff-free market, maybe like 600 million people?

We had one of those but the wheels fell off.

dovebiker – I’m not holding my breath; more like living in (vain) hope…

the least we can get away with

That’s Tory ideology in a nutshell.

I have horrible feeling the UK is going to enter a period of pain.

Job losses announced today. Furlough scheme ends soon and companies don’t have the money to keep their staff ticking over. Oh, and brexit is coming.

Things here in Germany aren’t exactly rosey, but a darn sight better than the outlook in the UK.

Please, do not forone minute think I’m gloating. My life is also about to get **** over by this shit show.

Revision to job loss numbers – now 12,000 over two days.
I think it’s striking that Accenture have announced job losses; if they can’t find ways to extract fees from gov and business generally we really are staring down the barrel.
Now 4 weeks until the furlough scheme begins to unwind; more job losses to come before then.
August 1st will be when job losses really begin to escalate and deferred redundancy stops being deferred.
The further reductions in support at September and October 1st respectively will accelerate the job losses.
Who knows what will happen after that?
I know a few small business owners who haven’t re-opened yet and are pessimistic about ever re-opening; this is probably typical across the country.
Deeply concerning and depressing.

They are also about to re-institute claimant commitments for Universal Credit – i.e. making you spend many hours a week looking/applying for jobs with failure punished by ‘sanctions’ (i.e. no money for you sonny boy).

I have horrible feeling the UK is going to enter a period of pain.

Of course it will, every country will. Some worse than others.

So far Sunak has talked about austerity from September but Cummings said no. Nudge Unit a while ago tasked with looking at Keynesian reflationary measures. Good so far but it’s been claimed £5bn of his spending splash had already been purposed so not extra lollie and M Hyde claims his total investment equates to 0.6% of Roosevelt’s New Deal. If there is no mention of extra pay for NHS staff then the rest can go hang too (although the MPs did manage to give themselves a £200pw rise for wfh). Now we’re being told to clap the bankers, or something like that. The focus of the government is business (Boris’s first words at the beginning of the crisis), the bigger the better, and if you’re not part of that then you’re on your own. The thinking of a government minister that is prepared to shaft one of the poorest boroughs out of £40m planning gain for a photo op and a £12k bung from a billionaire pornographer requires no further explanation.
£7m Question:
how have your circumstances changed since the Brexit vote?
how has JRM’s circumstances changes since the Brexit vote?
A significant chunk of unemployment will facilitate more ‘flexible’ arrangements for the workforce, reduce the chance of major protests and the chaos and misery will allow for ‘reforms’ in the NHS to be part of a trade deal negotiated largely out of view. If the government is prepared to pass the Agriculture Bill in the face of farmers, loyal tories to a T, what might you imagine they’ve got lined up for the workers?

I know a few small business owners who haven’t re-opened yet and are pessimistic about ever re-opening; this is probably typical across the country.

I cant blame them in some ways if you can shut down again days later like in Leicester – I don’t see how that is sustainable for them to keep opening and shutting.

Wife’s furlough was extended until end of this month but we aren’t hopeful of a return. She works for a charity that provides lunch clubs for the elderly so we don’t think that will restart. I am lucky in that work is stable and our business has been recruiting during lockdown so no risk to me but we have had to swallow a 10% pay deferral (hoping it doesn’t change to a pay cut!) so we are down a lot of disposable income per month so wont go out and spend in other businesses.

‘provides lunch clubs for the elderly so we don’t think that will restart’, very droll.

Wasn’t supposed to be! They have been very lucky in that very few members have actually been affected but a lot of these people are lonely and depressed and this situation has only made that worse. A large number will likely be afraid to leave their homes.

I put it in the redundancy thread but the main contractor I work for has mothballed it’s West London division which had over a billions worth of projects set to go

Boris’s big build won’t do anything bar help those at the top as bidding for sub contracts are going to hit rock bottom pricing

Labour-run Tower Hamlets is sacking workers and re-employing the lucky ones on worse contracts. Haven’t heard any protests about it from the Labour MP or Starmer or Lord Sainsbury.

Crikey, so Sunaks announced:

– £1000 to the employer for bring a Furloughed employee back

– a 50% voucher (max £10) for all of us to pop out and eat

– VAT down to 5% on food in Restaurants, Cinema and attractions

– Removal of stamp duty up to £500,000

…all for limited times to kickstart the economy.

Interesting times!

Crikey, so Sunaks announced:

– £1000 to the employer for bring a Furloughed employee back

– a 50% voucher (max £10) for all of us to pop out and eat

– VAT down to 5% on food in Restaurants, Cinema and attractions

– Removal of stamp duty up to £500,000

…all for limited times to kickstart the economy.

£1000*X employees won’t stop a business going under…

£10 voucher won’t get many more people eating out.

VAT cut is might stop a few restaurants going under but won’t get more people out as the price we pay won’t change.

Stamp Duty cut is pandering to the Tory base who don’t like the idea of affordable housing…

So now Boris is telling us it’s not safe to stay at home.

Not safe for the economy that is.

Here we **** go- Johnson urges Britons to go back into work.

Surely proof that life is one big Ponzi scheme.

All my life, governments have been urging me to be prudent, save for the future, for a house, for a rainy day for retirement. It’s all bs. We need to go back into work- and why? So we can spend, spend, spend. The government really hates it when we save, despite what they tell us- unless we waste money the whole **** deck of cards will collapse.

Vinnyeh – google any definition of Capitalism.  The big people need the little people to be earning and spend money to pay taxes.  The more taxes the little people pay the bigger the big people get.

The only reason your allowed to be well of and encourage to spend your money in a shop is that more of it goes upward in an ad Infiniti’s circular motion.

The government really hates it when we save

Erm, yes as our economy is largely based on consumerism thats pretty obvious. Spending = more taxes.

More taxes = more/improved services such as the NHS.

Will be interesting to see how many few businesses will now encourage employees to stop WFH and return to office-based working.
A permanent transition away from WFH is bad news for coffee shops early morning and lunch time trade; that, in turn, leads to more business closures and job losses.
Also likely to put an end to ‘just nipping out to pick something up’ – translate to…a quick bit of light shopping.
Employers will be looking at their property costs; combined with the reliability of
home-working technology, requirements around work-based social distancing and providing
CV19-safe environments this will be a major driver in decisions about vacating office space.
That, in turn, will negatively impact on the commercial property sector.
All under-pinned by economic uncertainty and employment fears.

will negatively impact on the commercial property sector

The commercial property market is hugely financed by pensions companies – any ‘readjustment’ of property values could have a big impact on our future pensions as well as business rates revenues to your local councils to pay for services etc. Whilst the government is trying to avoid the term austerity, this is going to be austerity with knobs on.

dovebiker – how right you are.

I think most businesses will return to the office. Many people don’t have a good reliable broadband connection yet, even mine which is 30 mbps on a good day and an average of 20 mbps has dipped during this so meetings freeze. People have found somewhere to work from home because this is a crisis, often using their own PCs etc. Permanent working from home means properly setting people up with works stations and hardware, it’ll be expensive. Many people don’t have the space or won’t want a permanent reminder of work at home. One good thing about commuting is there is a hard break between work and home, home can be a space away from work for many. Blurring the lines will mess with the heads of a lot of people.

As for Boris, yes this blatant politics and nothing to do with covid controls, he wants the coffee shop economy back and people to feel like we’ve got covid done. Unfortunately we haven’t, another month of decent controls maybe, but all the way through we’ve been too lax and eased off early, hence our death tollwhich no one can argue paints the UK in a good light.

stumpy – interesting counterpoint to my earlier post. Time will tell.

My SiL (lawyer) said it costs £60k pa for a desk in an office in London. Wfh has shown them they don’t need it and are off to the midlands. A lot of her high net worth clients are very keen to get in on the PPE supplies, it seems that killings are being made.

Yeah working from home wont stick I agree. For many their work is their life despite what they may tell you otherwise. People are generally hard wired to need to be doing something in a crowd with others – you only have to look at mob behaviour to see how that works. Working solo at home suits some, but the majority will lose the plot fairly quickly after the absolute need subsides and want to return to the office.

I’ve said in other posts and other threads that the long terms affects of covid economically are going to be felt in the cities. City centres are completely dependent on the weekday working population spending money. Since i’ve been working from home I reckon I’m saving at least £500 a month. That’s £500 that would be spent on coffees, lunches, snacks, beer, takeaways and whatever else I manage to spend money on. Even if only a minority of the office workers like me don’t go back that’s a huge drop in income that many city centre businesses won’t be able to absorb. The result will be shuttered shops, pubs and cafes, lost jobs and all the associated decay that comes with it.

And that’s just the impact from people not spending money in cities. Once office based businesses start scaling back their office space due to increased home-working (and they will given how much cheaper it is), it’ll cause a collapse the commercial property sector. The result again will be more boarded up properties, social decay etc. Following all that then the residential property prices collapse because no one wants to live in a dead city where the homeless and drug dealers are the main street presence. It’s a downward spiral, and will need massive intervention to prevent cities turning into decaying, crime-ridden ghost towns.

r. The result again will be more boarded up properties, social decay etc.

perhaps, but probably not in london. There’s no reason a desk in london costs much more than a desk elsewhere (I guess the costs to hire servicing staff are slightly higher) other than demand. If demand drops right off (I suspect you’re right on that), I think we would see a lot of significant losses in the commercial real estate world, but places that have enough underlying demand will just be able to drop prices until the bare running costs (ie power, support staff etc) aren’t covered. Any outstanding loans & other sunk costs will just be wiped out by bankruptcies – the result would be the same number of people in the City, just their employers paying less per square foot for real estate

the result would be the same number of people in the City, just their employers paying less per square foot for real estate

If, for arguments sake, 30% of office workers continue working from home (and that’s a massive underestimate I reckon), then that’s obviously going to result in less people in the city. The fuel for a city centre is people, and the money they spend. Take that away, as covid inevitably will, and they will quickly decay, and that will cause a feedback loop where less people will go to them. I reckon we’re about to see a massive transfer of economic activity away from city centres (especially outside London*) to the suburbs and surrounding towns.

*London is a special case on account of its size and the distribution of its population.

So 20% hit in April and less growth than hoped in May

June should see better as things opened up a bit more but things looking more U than V shaped although at this stage L shaped might not be impossible.

And Andy Haldane (the one Cummings wanted as BoE head,) assured us it’d be a quick bounce back
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53233705

Interesting chatting to family & colleagues, people keen on home insulation scheme & eating out vouchers, although they are delaying doing those now until the schemes start in September & August.

Maybe pre-anouncing them so far ahead will suppress activity until they are available