Pubs or kids?

[coffeeandllbd]

Whitty said we cannot have it all. Pubs are jobs. School is mental health.

I have a 13 year old struggling with lockdown. I would choose schools. My brother would choose pubs.

Who would you choose?

Schools because they have more society strategic value. Schools not only provide the much missed and necessary formal education but also the other child development tangible benefits including peer development interpersonal skills, mental robustness and a sense of purpose and milestone road map of personal childhood achievements. Schools also allow a large number of working parents to facilitate their pre Covid working requirements. This in turn has positive ramifications for and to allow other economic sectors to function survive or thrive.

So essentially there are more tangible positive knock on impacts from the physical reopening and reinstatement of schools providing there are strict Covid smart and secure systems including the wearing of PPE for all within the bubble as is customary in most advance first world nations with much lower Covid fatalities and community transmission.

Pubs are great as we all see and enjoy the social and leisure benefits. However as much as some drinks, food and catering sector jobs will be secured I still think (in the same breath) that they are not as vitality important for the average household or for the nation's economic health in the grand scheme of things should there be this unfortunate hard choice of one or the other. We can all of course continue to support the food and drinks manufacture and groceries sector and enjoy surreal safe but boring video conferencing drinks so cheers everyone as shaken and stirred in more ways than one!

I don’t think it’s just pubs, more a question of non essential retail, beauty and leisure activities vs schools.

If we had a good robust online learning platform then I would go with the economy over school. There will be no jobs for children to have in future if everything goes under. We also can’t afford to keep increasing the benefits bill.

I’d imagine there are less parents who would need to quit work to care for a primary aged child than there would be closing everything else down.

Not to mention workplaces have to be Covid secure whilst schools are expected to open with no SD or PPE so they will spread the virus far quicker and to more than businesses.

I would choose schools. But I don't see why country pubs and 'restaurant' type pubs cannot be open if they are following the rules. Pubs where people stand around drinking are different from pubs where people go for a meal, or call in for a drink whilst they're on a walk.

Town centre bars frequented by young people will come back, even if the current businesses end up closed. Country pubs won't.

A number of parents work in hospitality, their children need their parents in work, a secure roof over their heads and food on the table first and foremost. Everything's interconnected, you can't just separate sectors.

If we're getting to the point where the scientists are saying 'well we' ll just have to shut most other things down in order to get kids back in to school full time' then a full time return clearly isn't safe. A few more months home learning, even everyone repeating a year is preferable to children losing a parent or family members suffering severe long term health problems as a result of catching Covid.

I'd support part time school, online learning, as many businesses as possible reopening with mandatory mask wearing in place, the continuation for the furlough scheme for sectors such as travel and tourism where clearly the rise in cases abroad as well as at home is forcing the government's hand.

My DCs education is so important to me but not at the expense of all the young people and families who need their jobs in hospitality, non essential retail, leisure to pay their bills. There has to be a balance.

If my DCs school is open full time in September they'll be there because we want to keep their school places and one is going in to Year 6 and due to move up to secondary next year. Full time home Ed for all the DCs isn't for us. But if school isn't safe then despite struggling to motivate them all for the last month of the summer term and feeling pretty exhausted mentally myself at the moment, if it needs to be home learning until Christmas I'll crack on.

The situation is developing on a daily basis, the government may be forced in to a uturn in the same way they clearly didn't want to close schools when they did in March but had no choice.

Definitely schools. I have 2 kids sitting GCSE's and A' levels next year and yes mental health is important. People can have socially distanced drinks in their gardens.

Schools for me. Kids at least need to be back for a few months to start off the new school year even if it means by early next year they have to learn online again. Hopefully it won't be such a shock next time and schools will be more prepared. It will be very difficult to start off the year online imo. Also some kids will be starting GCSE/A Level subjects that are very difficult to do from home.

Or maybe just maybe if everyone just took a bit more responsibility and followed the guidelines reduced their social contacts, avoided indoor meet ups that are taking place up and down the country with family and friends with no social distancing. If people and places followed the social distancing guidelines properly and stopped getting on like they were exempt from these guidelines then we could have both ?

I wonder if people’s behaviour will change if they see the constant disruption in schools when year groups/schools have to keep self isolating.

I know we have a very different drinking culture in this country and I am sure itv is partly the media too, but when you see the contrast of when they show the hospitality industry in the rest of Europe and people are sitting very civilised at their tables and then they go to an English city/town centre and there are masses of young people with no social distancing going on.

Or maybe just maybe if everyone just took a bit more responsibility and followed the guidelines reduced their social contacts, avoided indoor meet ups that are taking place up and down the country with family and friends with no social distancing. If people and places followed the social distancing guidelines properly and stopped getting on like they were exempt from these guidelines then we could have both ?

Completely this!

Schools and education are one of the highest priorities a country should have. A marker of an advanced civilised country.

Before Covid-19, it would have been seen as a good thing to drink less, eat more healthily, fly less, gamble less. Now we are actually doing less of these things, we are being told to do the opposite just because large conservative party donors and tax revenues are being affected.

Schools and education are one of the highest priorities a country should have. A marker of an advanced civilised country.

Agree. And when other similar countries in the same situation provide it, it is a major political failing. I hope they are feeling that, I think they are given recent statements.

metro.co.uk/2020/08/01/fears-second-lockdown-autumn-spike-cases-13068146/

Swedish strategy. Somehow they mostly have schools AND pubs/beauty salons.

Also the government need to take action now. It will take 5-6 weeks to get cases numbers back down again.
People enjoying pubs, indoor dining, foreign holidays on planes etc had their time at school, they had the opportunities of education, whether they took advantage of those opportunities or not. Now they need to let the current 4-18 year olds get the benefit of an education, especially older pupils who do not have time to catch up after Covid-19 is gone/controlled.

Sweden - much much better health service, proper planning and preparation, better health of the general population...

Pubs, hairdressers, beauty salons and gyms should be closed immediately. I said at the time it was a bad idea to re-open these, they are all high transmission risk and now look at what is happening!

Swedish strategy. Somehow they mostly have schools AND pubs/beauty salons.

And their economy has tanked and their cases per capita are even worse than ours!!!

Children should be put first and schools should close, to protect them we don't know long term health problems that might show years later for our young. They can be home educated, and if pubs our economy doesn't open our kids will

Have no jobs and be left with all the debt to pay off out of their taxes. Pubs opening will be good for economy and kids future , save jobs now , people's houses etc.

@947EliseChalotte

Children should be put first and schools should close, to protect them we don't know long term health problems that might show years later for our young. They can be home educated, and if pubs our economy doesn't open our kids will Have no jobs and be left with all the debt to pay off out of their taxes. Pubs opening will be good for economy and kids future , save jobs now , people's houses etc.

Ffs.

Pubs opening will not be good for kids whose parents get drunk, aggressive and take it out on kids who are then hidden from sight because schools haven't opened.

Not all kids can be effectively home educated - both my kids are autistic and school being shut (rightfully so at the time) has had a negative impact on them and neither is working to the best of their ability. The blurring of lines between school and home is causing anxiety (anxiety can have longterm implications also).

Opening pubs at the expense of children is nothing short of ridiculous.

Difficult choice in my house - my Dp is the main wage earner, running a pub. My Dd will be going in to year 11 next year doing her GCSEs.
Knee jerk reaction is get the kids back to school no matter what, however she’s probably not going to do too well if her dad isn’t getting paid & we can’t afford to feed her.
If they shut pubs they need to extend the furlough scheme for pub workers (this applies to any industry they say must remain closed)

@QuarantineDiva

Pubs, hairdressers, beauty salons and gyms should be closed immediately. I said at the time it was a bad idea to re-open these, they are all high transmission risk and now look at what is happening!

Households mixing in each other's homes and gardens for house parties, barbecues, no social distancing appears to be a bigger cause of the new rise in cases according to test and trace. Unfortunately what we probably need is the restrictions on households mixing newly imposed in Northern England to be rolled out nationally, possibly for the Autumn and Winter.

Opening schools would make a mockery of those measures though as you're then immediately bringing hundreds of households in to close contact with each other in each school through the children.

You can't tank the economy to try and open schools in unsafe circumstances. People need homes and jobs, universal credit isn't enough to support a family and where are all the housing association properties for those who would newly have their houses repossessed or no longer be able to pay private rents with no job and the furlough scheme ended. Leaving landlords in financial trouble too.

If your job isn't in one of the sectors named it's very easy to look at it as services people can choose not to use and do without instead of considering how many livelihoods are involved.

Or maybe just maybe if everyone just took a bit more responsibility and followed the guidelines reduced their social contacts, avoided indoor meet ups that are taking place up and down the country with family and friends with no social distancing. If people and places followed the social distancing guidelines properly and stopped getting on like they were exempt from these guidelines then we could have both ?

This! There so many people doing non social-distanced play dates, parties, grandparent visits etc. Then the same people whining that schools might not reopen. We can’t have everything at the moment, if we want schools to reopen we need everyone to stick to the social distancing rules and that includes the children!

School and education are essential for a civilised country.
The children only get one education, only one shot at most exams (resits after 6 months of no school - that will be really hard).
The pubs and restaurants, Spain and France, they will all be there next year and the year after.
Education should be the government's main priority.

And it is also a very uncomfortable truth that alcohol and fatty/calorific food is bad for us as a nation, and doing without these things is kind of a good thing in health terms. Flying is very bad for the environment and if the aviation industry shrank to a fraction of pre-coronavirus levels, the planet would be destroyed less quickly. Obviously I know the personal financial cost to those who earn their livings in these industries, but healthier less-climate change trends are not all bad.

Both have pros and cons.

I have a primary age son (year 1 in September), I can work from home but only 9-5 (despite being able to genuinely do my job at any hour of the day, and I was until the summer holidays started). There is no suitable childcare here for summer so I’m on unpaid leave, luckily I had three weeks of holiday booked so only three of those weeks are actually unpaid. I’m very lucky that I can afford this in the short term, for a lot of families this is the difference between going hungry or not.

We also have the fact that many children are vulnerable, there will be thousands of children right now who are not safe at home. For them school is safety, structure and a meal everyday.

Pubs, should it not also include cafes, restaurants etc? Those people need a wage, to gain a wage they need to be open. Hospitality is a huge industry in the UK. Even if other areas were doing well in the UK we simply cannot afford to have that many people out of work, not just financially, but unemployment has a negative impact on mental health. If a childs parent/s work in hospitality they are close to becoming a vulnerable child because of loss of jobs if we’re not careful.

My son is happy at home and generally doing well, but he has the luxury of a safe home, theres food, theres sufficient water/electricity, theres no violence etc.

There are other children out there going hungry, an abusive parent, a parent with worsening mental health etc. When those children are eventually back at school they are going to need a hell of a lot of support from the pastoral team and in some cases external agencies.

Schools

Have kids struggling with mental health, this could affect their wellbeing for their whole lives if it continues beyond September. They need to be back at school. And as pp have said women are predominantly affected when children are at home also.

Pubs had been declining anyway, they need to move with the times as less people drink out in pubs than in the past what with a move to drinking at home. Tons round here have been converted to flats and supermarkets. They need to think of other ways to make a living like delivery or takeaway services.