Eat Out To Help Out: Brilliance or Lunacy?

[verdantverdure]

On the day the Covid Inquiry convenes I thought I'd ask your opinion on Eat Out To Help Out.

Covid case numbers and deaths were low, as we'd done a phased return out of the first lockdown.

Then we had Eat Out To Help Out and it all kicked off again within weeks.

What did you think? At the time? Now?

YABU Eat Out To Help Out was brilliant, I loved it.

YANBU Eat out To Help Out was a bloody stupid idea that was obviously going to help the virus spread, leading to another wave, more economic devastation, and tens of thousands of us dead. And it didn't even help the hospitality industry because it screwed up Christmas which is usually their most profitable quarter.

This!
They needed to encourage people to get out and start living again.
Some people were shit scared, and still are quadruple vaccinated and still shit scared of covid

No, it really didn't. Those businesses would have been busy even without EOTHO. People were desperate to get out, have meals, etc., that they'd been banned from doing for months. All it did was massively increase the risks due to the cafes/restaurants/pubs being busier than they needed to be, causing the establishments to employ more staff (increasing the risks further in small/confined kitchens etc), causing crowded eating areas, etc.

Non food shops were busy when they were first allowed to reopen and they didn't need an EOTHO scheme, did they? Nor did all the pubs/restaurants who didn't take part in the EOTHO scheme - they were also busy.

The short lived scheme they did before Christmas where you had to buy a meal (or a pork pie in some cases) to be able to enjoy a drink- now THAT was bloody stupid. It made absolutely no sense. I went in the pub and sat for ages with a coffee but if I’d wanted a glass of wine, I had to get a plate of food 😂

Agreed

Possibly but remember their was never a guarantee that vaccines would work or how successful they would be.

It was stupid from the beginning, like all schemes that cost taxpayers money. Shouldn't lock us down in the first place, we could all work and wouldn't have to pay it back now.

God, nearly 3 years on, who cares. Anyone who was worried about the virus didn’t use the scheme, anyone who didn’t care assumed the risk of getting Covid. Places had to reopen irrespective of the scheme and deaths and cases would have increased as soon as that happened. I wasn’t a fan of the scheme but was it that which led to an increase rather than reopening per se. What would people have done, kept businesses shut forever to stop Covid spreading?

As someone who worked in a very small McDonald's through it, it was lunacy. Horrible experience, with at least two members of staff being assaulted by irate customers because we didn't have table space for them.

Lunacy and we didn't take it up

Just the Health Secretary saying he's getting feedback that Eat Out To Help Out is already causing problems 23 days after it began but he's kept it out of the press...

And the Cabinet Secretary saying places were insanely packed during the EOTHO days then deserted the rest of the week.

Agreed

One of our neighbours is a hospitality business owner and she said she's not sure if it brought the wankers out or brought the wanker out in people but they were glad when it was over and would not have participated if it had been repeated.

They didn't make any extra money out of it and staff sickness caused huge issues in September.

And then it fucked Christmas for the whole industry.

that Christmas was fucked for everyone.

Total lunacy.

Schools had reopened in June 1st though, hadn't they?

Yanbu.

Pressed too soon. Total lunacy which I said from the outset. That's not me being clever, it's just them being stupid. It was just so obvious it was going to f it up for everyone.

Agreed. Thanks to Eat Out To Help Out kicking things back off again IMO.

EOTHO was one fuck up amongst many. The worst fuck ups stretch back to the start of the Tory period of government, with the cutting of our health services, all our public services, which meant when the pandemic hit we were so under prepared.

It would have been ok to do Eat out to Help Out had they never been planning any further lockdowns regardless of how many people were dying/in hospital.

Case numbers shooting up a few weeks later then locking down again only served to confirm what utter fuckwits we have in government.

I thought it was basic logical common sense that it would ruin our hard won peace and equilibrium and kick it all off again.

And to be honest, I suspected it was designed to.

Why else exclude people buying takeaway from the same outlets?

It was reported that the Great Barrington people had been advising the government so I thought the old, failed herd immunity experiment was rearing its head again.

They weren't planning to have any.

But reality impinged.

„Rich“? We eat out occasionally, so do most of our friends - didn’t know that made us „the rich“

Absolutely. I made most of it eating out a couple of times a week meeting up with friends I hadn’t seen for several months due to lockdown.

it was great to see people out and about smiling again and for hospitality venues to be thriving after a horrible few months.

Maybe not the best use of tax payers money but a real boost for many people and businesses