To think that since covid happened some businesses have 'got lazy and stayed lazy'

[Ilovechocolate87]

DH and i used to have an expression a couple of years back 'because covid' which we used when we thought a company was just using the virus as an excuse for not doing something properly or making unnecessary cutbacks.

But even now it seems that this is STILL continuing, but for no legitimate reason!

Some examples include;
-Our local bank shutting at 3pm...every day of the week.Crap for 9-5 working people like DH!

• No fireworks display at center parcs, which is a shame as it was really good and atmospheric over the lake.
• Soft play at our local sealife centre sitting there unused and wasted...such a shame as there is nothing wrong with it.
• Fitting rooms have been scrapped at sainsburys and asda (maybe elsewhere too?) so there is nowhere to try on clothes, resulting in either having to order online and have the expense and bother of posting it back if its not right (which it often isn't) or travelling to return it, neither of which are very good for the environment either, with all that plastic packaging and fuel!)

Has anyone else noticed that it just seems like SOME businesses/companies 'can't be bothered' anymore and are just doing the minimum possible? And the most frustrating thing is that as usual, they make the cutbacks, but the prices keep on going up!!

We didn't know that the hospitality sectors would be closed for more than three months. We still don't know how much of the impact on hospitality is due to lockdown and how much is due to Brexit. A lot of hospitality staff were Europeans who left the UK. Even if you are cold hearted enough to just look at it from a financial point of view, millions of people dying of covid would also have a financial impact on the hospitality sector. We didn't know the balance of the two. Sweden didn't lockdown its hospitality sector and I don't think it's doing better than its neighbour Denmark financially as a result. There were just were a lot more deaths in Sweden.

Well obviously we didn't know how long we were closing them for, that's part of the point. When those decisions were taken there should have been an ongoing discussion about what the impacts were going to be. That does, yes, include the impact of not taking them. And this is what never really happened: there was never a frank explanation that we were choosing from two bad options, a modelling of what the societal impacts from all choices were liable to be. Instead, what we got was kicking the can down the road, a half arsed attempt in mid March that had been done far too late and then the government simply in reactive mode.

Obviously there was also going to be an inevitable impact on the workforce because of Brexit too, and clearly the Tories weren't going to be telling us that. But none of this negates the point that decisions taken in respect of covid were also going to have an impact. It isn't good enough to say oh well Brexit is going to fuck things up anyway so let's not bother,.

@Tommyrot

Actually Swedens excess deaths during Covid were and are roughly half of those in the UK:

www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-truth-about-britains-covid-deaths/

@SirMingeALot

Actually Swedens excess deaths during Covid were and are roughly half of those in the UK:

www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-truth-about-britains-covid-deaths/

The first one that comes to my mind: all those public services as Home Office, councils etc. I need settled status uploaded to my new passport. Sent all the paperwork to them in June, got the letter confirming that it's been passed to relevant department, and it's still not done. I spoke to them on the phone some time ago, so it's not lost or anything. It's just waiting in the queue "because we don't have timeline for this". I'm moving out of the UK in 1.5-2 years, I'm wondering if they do it by then.

You aren't comparing like with like. There were a lot more deaths in Sweden than countries with similar demographics such as Denmark and Norway. They aren't better of financially as a result of no lockdown than those countries either.

You aren't comparing like with like. There were a lot more deaths in Sweden than countries with similar demographics such as Denmark and Norway. They aren't better of financially as a result of no lockdown than those countries either.

I'm not saying Brexit was going to fuck us up anyway so what is the point of modelling economic costs. I’m saying that thanks to Brexit we don’t even know in hindsight the financial costs of lockdown versus no lockdown. I would be impossible to do it in advance. I think it very possible that little of the current crisis is to do with lockdown. We would have recovered if it wasn’t for Brexit, energy crisis and Tory financial mismanagement.

I wish more restaurants would do this - went to one in Harrogate the other day and they didn’t turn a soul away, but had hardly any staff, we were there 3 hours and only had pasta! We did complain and they moaned about being short staffed - well turn people away then!

Did they tell you about a wait? We tell people if we're in that situation and give them the choice to leave or wait, so we're not turning people away (they complain) and we're putting them in the picture that there is a wait should you choose to stay, if they didn't let you know, or keep you updated then it's unreasonable imo.

Some leave, some are happy to wait, some say they're happy to wait and then bitterly complain when they do wait, despite having the information and making the choice themselves - and feel totally justified doing so, and that's the attitude that needs to change, blaming someone else for their own bloody choice, if you're told there's a wait, and you choose to accept it, don't complain when you actually have to, you know - wait! Take some responsibility for your own decision!

I received a reply from the large supermarket after writing to them online to complain about my dismal shopping experience the other week
It was a bit curt , but they didn't address the staff shortages I encountered on that day or why they have decided to make two of the cold meat type aisles much narrower.
Everywhere we go seems to be just lacking in everything. It's about time these big companies started to invest a bit in their stores and repair things or hire more people to cope
They won't though

Absolutely they have. Then the Royal Mail, trains, buses debacle.
Then we wonder why (as referenced on another post) we don't go out as much..

The last two sentences are pure guesswork on your part, as well as being completely implausible. I'm a Remainer of the I told you so variety, I'm not even gracious about it, but those in our ranks who refuse to accept that there are problems stemming from covid and the response to it don't help the cause. There are businesses that have closed specifically because of the response to covid, not just because of the reduced availability of staff following Brexit. The labour force has been significantly changed by the pandemic and response as well as by Brexit, it isn't Brexit that caused mothers as a cohort to reduce working hours for example. And that's also something that was easily predictable. We all knew in early 2020 exactly which sex bears more of the caring load and thus was going to end up being disproportionately affected by schools and childcare being unavailable to most. Fuck all got said about that by Boris and co in March 2020.

@1dayatatime think you have the wrong person there as I haven't mentioned Sweden.

We don't know that lockdown has led to a greater reduction in staff than there would have been if we didn't have lockdown and millions had died. If people have decided not to go back to shitty jobs after realising how shitty they were following lockdown then that is the fault of the poor jobs/working condition/childcare in the UK.

You keep listing things we don't know and not acknowledging the things we know now and knew full well in March 2020, like the way in which women were going to be impacted. Funny that.

The reality is that it was never set out that we were going to be choosing from two shit sandwiches and that we knew what some of the problems were going to be in respect of both approaches. The attempts to say it wasn't actually the choice about restrictions but wider structural issues that did this are all very well, but the society and structure we entered the pandemic with were both baked in by March 2020. Things would've looked much better had we not had a decade of austerity at that point, for example, but the 'I wouldn't start from here' type approach was no use. The government made a half-arsed attempt too late and then went with the flow. That was not beneficial to anyone.

Also more people are dying now than during the peak Covid years:

www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-are-excess-deaths-higher-now-than-during-covid/

These are not due to Covid and largely due to postponed treatments, long hospital waiting lists and ambulance delays.

You keep listing things we don't know and not acknowledging the things we know now and knew full well in March 2020, like the way in which women were going to be impacted. Funny that.

We didn't know "full well" how women would be impacted in March 2020. If lockdown had only been for three months it wouldn't have been so much. Both men and women were at home so childcare should have been shared. The children of key worker that weren't at home could go to school.

@Tommyrot

I think it very possible that little of the current crisis is to do with lockdown. We would have recovered if it wasn’t for Brexit, energy crisis and Tory financial mismanagement.

Given the sheer number of businesses that closed down during the lockdowns and restrictions, I think it's pretty obvious that covid had a massive impact on the current problems. Not to mention the promised future tax rises which make businesses nervous about investing/growing etc.

Also, the sheer cost of covid, i.e. hundreds of billions of pounds that the country had to borrow to pay for furlough & support schemes (which still didn't cover the 3 million excluded), lost tax revenue from business closures/failures, etc has to be accounted for somehow, not only the interest we're now having to pay on the debt, but also we're "inflating away" some of the debt which is basically paid for by everyone in terms of higher prices and getting less for your money.

To say covid has had "little" effect on current problems is mind-blowingly naive.

That is the fault of covid itself not lockdown. Do you actually think non-covid treatments would have gone ahead if hospitals had been even more full of people with covid?

@Tommyrot

"You aren't comparing like with like. There were a lot more deaths in Sweden than countries with similar demographics such as Denmark and Norway. They aren't better of financially as a result of no lockdown than those countries either."

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Could you please provide links or evidence to back up these statements or are they simply your personal opinions?

I don't think it obvious at all that more businesses have closed down as a result of lockdown than would have shut down if we hadn't had lockdown and millions had died or been very ill with covid. Quite the opposite.

Still no half and half pizza at Dominos.

@Tommyrot

"That is the fault of covid itself not lockdown. Do you actually think non-covid treatments would have gone ahead if hospitals had been even more full of people with covid?"

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Again that is a personal opinion. There is no way of knowing one way or the other whether hospitals would or would not have been "even more full of people " and even if so then to what degree if there had not been a lockdown.

What we do know for sure is that the lockdowns, the argument for which was to save people dying from Covid, has in turn led to other people dying from other causes.

Were hospitals "full" of covid patients? Ours wasn't. From what was reported at the time, there were two covid wards for patients not needing intensive care, and another ward was converted to an ICU ward for covid patients in a bad way, with the original ICU being kept as ICU for non covid patients. It has about 15 wards, so not a big deal really.

What WAS stupid was that lots of the hospital remained closed down for no obvious reason, such as out-patients, various clinics, audiology, dentistry, and the non-urgent x-ray and scan depts. Maybe some of the staff would have been moved to other duties, but a LOT of damage was done to people who were denied non-urgent medical attention.

The local media kept reporting covid deaths etc and it was averaging at just 2 or 3 per week at the hospital, so hardly huge numbers. We were in an area (mostly rural) which didn't really suffer from the large covid outbreaks, so there was no need for the extreme responses of lockdowns and excessive restrictions!

I had to go quite a lot with my OH who has cancer, and even his chemotherapy was cancelled at first, and then delayed for 3 months until it re-started. The oncology dept was completely empty - at the start of the first lockdown, they closed it and moved it to a different hospital in the next county. It wasn't until early this year (2 years later) that it was repurposed and re-opened as an orthopaedic unit. Keeping it empty and unused for 2 years was ridiculous. (And yes, it was empty and unused as we kept walking past it and looking in the windows to see empty rooms!). The hospital didn't even tell us it had closed and moved!

@Tommyrot

"f we hadn't had lockdown and millions had died or been very ill with covid"

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Again this is a personal opinion and there is no way of knowing whether the lockdown prevented millions of people dying or been very I'll with Covid.