After lockdown...the sh*t will hit the fan

[Desperado40]

My biggest fear is not covid or if life will be ever back to normal. I know this will pass and we will be able to socialise, travel etc. at some point.
What’s keeping me awake at night, literally, is the state of affairs when we are out of the immediate covid crisis. There will be high unemployment, lots of businesses will go bust after support tap is off, mental health and general health crisis (think of the huge backlog of surgeries and treatments postponed!). But most of all, I ma fearingthe day when the government starts clawing billions spent back from us. I feel that our quality of life will be much worse (as a nation) than we realise. There is also brexit to add to it all. Has anyone got any positive views on this to share (and make me feel better?). Need some optimism desperately.

Trying not to think about the after part. The during part is stressful enough.

Just have my fingers crossed that son's restaurant will survive all these lockdowns. That he will have a job and place to live after all this.

I'm not sure its all super gloomy. Although it is hard for people who have lost their jobs, and some sectors like shops, leisure and hospitality have been hit hard.

But there is strong growth in areas like online shopping, distribution and delivery so there are more jobs in these areas.(I appreciate its not the same set of skills). And lots of new smaller businesses started in the last year, offering postal packages, meal kits, baking boxes etc to employees that are working remotely because companies can't just take people out to the pub or for a meal anymore. Also some entertainers are doing shows by Zoom, just last week we had a work comedy night over Zoom.

The inevitable huge increase in unemployment is a worry for me because not working is linked to depression, rough sleeping, domestic violence, suicides, and poverty. There won't be anywhere near enough vacancies to get the unemployment rate down by much and people in jobs will generally be less likely to leave.

I also think there'll be a lot of PTSD for people.

@ItsIgginningtolooklikelockdown

I would assume the "pennies" reference was to the time when the poster picked them, it would be more now! Why on earth shouldn't a teenager take on a summer job, most are keen to do so to earn their own money. I don't think they'd be doing it "for" anyone else, it's a job to get money not National service.

@ItsIgginningtolooklikelockdown Thanks, that's exactly where I was comimg from. ☺ I've no idea what the going rate would be now for strawberry picking, but lots of teenagers did it back in the 70s and 80s, and I loved being out in the sunshine, so it was ideal for me.

@AnaisNun You've misunderstood me completely. It's not about sacrificing the young for the old. There is rising unemployment, especially among young adults, but there is also a need for seasonal workers in the farming industry every year, and due to Brexit it may be less practical to bring in migrant workers. So, for those who are young and fit enough to handle the work, it could be a solution.

I was made redundant in November, from a job I enjoyed, which I held for over 20 years. At 59 I doubt I'll get another job quickly, if ever, and I feel quite despondent about the feeling that I've been forced into early retirement, years before my pension is available, with a statutory redundancy payment that will soon dwindle. So no, it's not just the young that have lost out, and I'm far from happy about my future prospects. I was trying to put a positive slant on things and put forward some ideas, but the way you responded anyone would think I'd suggested sending your children to a forced labour camp!

@89redballoons

There was an interesting article in the FT a few weeks ago about why British agriculture can't just employ casual labour for the harvest as it did 40/50/60 years ago. Basically, if I remember rightly it said that minimum wage laws on the one hand and the demands of supermarkets on the other means that farmers just can't make a profit employing inexperienced/casual workers to pick fruit on a paid-per-weight basis anymore.

@89redballoons Yes, I understand there are issues. I believe that farmers get around the NMW issues by offering accommation as part of the deal, to migrant workers. Well, maybe they could do the same for UK workers? It could be the UK version of a summer camp, with work... teens and 20s from towns could go away for the summer, and get a taste of rural life. Plenty of youngsters go away on gap years abroad, and do all sorts of low paid jobs, so why not encourage them to work in the UK instead? There's nothing wrong with hard manual labour, although I dare say some young people might feel it's beneath them, depending on how pampered they might have been. Gone are the days when a degree automatically led to a well paid job... with 50% of young people going to uni, there will always be many graduates who end up in low paid jobs. Mind you, experience also counts for next to nothing - since being made redundant I am competing with young graduates for low wage jobs, but am unlikely to be successful, as employers look for keen young workers who will accept low wages and be moulded into the corporate mindset, without questioning it. I honestly wish I was young and fit enough to do agricultural work, but I'm decades too old to cope with it now.

It won’t be anything like the roaring twenties. There was no internet then. The high street will be decimated and the likes of Amazon will dominate. Commercial property will crash as will all of the businesses that service them including local coffee shops. We will look back and think WTF did we sit back and let them destroy everything.

I'm also inclining towards this view.

If we're lucky we'll avoid an ongoing recession, but the impact that's already been had won't be fully recovered.

I can't imagine consumer confidence being high. It feels like ever since 2010 our economy has been artificially propped up by low interest rates and cheap credit, and savers punished to do that, but interest rates can hardly go any lower. That button can't be pressed again.

It's hard to say exactly how bad it'll be but I do believe things will be generally worse than they were before the pandemic (and let's be honest they weren't great then after the last economic crashes). Also the divide between socio economic classes will be even more pronounced than it was previously. A lot of people who believed that unemployment figures have always just been people who were workshy are about to get a very rude awakeneing.

It will be like the late seventies/early eighties, but we know more now. We know we can 'talk up' the economy and the public mood. A lot of the things that won't go back to how they were are either improvements (more people happily working from home etc) or were ready to go anyway (eg Debenhams/high street shopping).

Defenbaker It’s a sad state of affairs when local youths desperate for work all signed up to work for our local farms to be told, no because they had to pay to live on site. Why should they? When they could go home to their families every night.

So long as the minimum wage exists our young employed are cut out of a labour market which rightly or wrongly favours cheap migrant Labour, where living in a crappy caravan with 5 or more colleagues still brings enough money in to send home and seem like a fortune.

Think I Am Legend but much worse ....

On a serious note why can't the government have a legal road to residency for the estimated 1 million plus illegals obviously with some caveats but a lot are hard working industrious folk living under the radar that would jump at the opportunity to work hard and for minimum wage in a post Covid post EU economy.

@Defenbaker

Taxes will need to rise, that's inevitable, but hopefully the high earners will bear the brunt of it

Problem is everyone wants someone else to pay don’t they. This is going to lead to a total overhaul of the tax system, where everyone will need to pay more and we won’t just be judged on our income. We need to better tax large corporations and online retailers first. We also need to tax assets as well as income, particularly the vast amount of untaxed wealth which has been accumulated in property over the past 30 years. And for those saying people are asset rich and cash poor, they’ll have to release some equity. You simply can’t expect workers to be taxed to the hilt meaning they can’t buy a decent house just so you can stay in yours. We need to better tax capital gains so they don’t deter people from investing but they are a fair reflection of returns.

I hope that some of the money saved by Brexit can be ploughed into the NHS, and be used to support the UK farming industry, so that we import less food and use our own labour

This is delusional. The money “saved” from Brexit has been spent on Brexit shambles multiple times over. EU exports have collapsed, business is being driven away from the UK and we have no prospects of meaningful FTAs with any other major world markets which could come close to what we had with the EU in sufficient time to stop businesses from collapsing. The costs of Brexit will be conveniently masked by Covid for years to come. Whilst I do expect there will be a spending spree, or a release of some kind, we are on track to make the slowest recovery of all developed countries.

I think students could work on farms during the summer, and be taken to farms in buses, rather than have large numbers of immigrants moving to the UK each season before returning home, taking their money with them. (I can remember working as a strawberry picker when I was 15... we were all collected by a minibus and taken to the fields a few miles out of town. I think we received a few pence for every punnet we picked. I enjoyed it, but it's hard work, best done by youngsters, with strong backs.)

So not only have the younger generations suffered disproportionately from measures necessary to protect those most at risk of Covid (older generations), and will disproportionately suffer the effects of brexit the longest, all this after having grown up with the effects of austerity on their families and education, you now want them to go and pick your strawberries for you for a few pence a punnet because it’s FUN and it keeps the IMMIGRANTS out?

Sadly whilst all these ideas might make you feel a bit better, none of them are going to help the country recover. The only way we can do that is to genuinely transform the way work, live and pay taxes, and for everyone to play their part, and every generation.

@Puzzledandpissedoff to be honest I think because residential property is generally owned on a personal level, one of the things that could be done to get through this would be to collapse the residential property market - reduced property prices would help mitigate pressure on wages.

People always talk about wages being too low, but I personally don't think it's wages are too low, it's that the costs of living (most notably property) are too high.

I would ban BTL mortgages (even ones in existence would expire after a certain amount of time), and bring in REALLY strict rules about the levels of maintainance required of a rental property and force a lot of starter homes onto the market. It would do some harm, but it would actually do a lot of societal good for younger people who are working but poor. Eventually owning a BTL would become something you could only do if you already owned the property outright so you didn't have the moral horror of young people paying additional mortgages (that they could afford themselves if only they had a deposit) for people who already have property wealth.

@Hollyhead in principle I agree the cost of living is too high, and that bringing down house prices would reduce pressure on wages (so people could buy a house on a multiple of 3 or 4 times their salary like our parents disc rather than 10). But, the issue is the proportion of people who would be left in negative equity having borrowed to buy houses at those prices in recent years.

I think BTL will gradually die out anyway tbh. The costs associated with buying and the diminishing gains on propriety just don’t make it worthwhile anymore. Most people did it because they thought property prices would outpace other investments forever.

As for starter homes, the obvious answer seems to be transforming some of the empty retail space in town centres into flats. Flood the market with supply (even if it’s part ownership) and that will keep a lid on price rises long enough for property prices to come down in real terms without pushing people into negative equity.

Just read that back.... obv we’ll never get to multiples that low again unless wages go up REALLY fast, AND property prices come crashing down. Which obv isn’t going to happen!

@tawnytowel yes completely agree about empty retail space conversion and flooding the market. I think the only way for high streets to survive is to reform them into a blend of retail/entertainment and communities who live there.

Negative equity is only a problem if you want to move, and it is a risk people take - I think rather than a 'crash' a steady deflation would be preferable to 'cool' the market and allow it to deflate in real terms.

I feel very passionate about the immorality side of young people paying BTL mortgages of the wealthy. Renting used to be the cheap option, so although you were paying someone else, it was because you couldn't afford to buy. Now, as long as you have 10-20% deposit, buying is the cheaper option, and in most cases is much better for long term financial stability.

We’ve been printing money so that leads to inflation and we are headed for negative interest rates. Wages will stagnate so cost of living will increase. Saving will be pointless.

Boris has been talking about introducing measures to attract businesses to Britain. So that’s probably a combination of low taxes for big corporations and maybe even a relaxing of Employment laws.

I don’t think the Labour Party in its current guise is going to get elected anytime soon. They are too ‘woke’ and still out of touch with red wall voters. Tbh most red wall communities have suffered a lot of problems in the last 20-30 years some of it caused by Tories and Labour government and councils. They’re at rock bottom anyway it’s the SE turn to see hardships now. London is going to become a ghost town, especially the city. Where are all the people who live in London who worked in retail, leisure, hospitality and tourism going to work once furlough ends and their places of work and customers don’t turn up?

It’s a recipe for civil unrest.

Renting needs to be a much more secure option, similar to Europe. This country is fixated on property ownership largely because private renting is so insecure and is basically a way for people to make money rather than a way of providing what is a basic necessity.

One way of doing this would be the provision of high quality social housing, like those between the wars and after WW2. Big properties with gardens. My two sets of grandparents both lived in council properties and they were large, three bed properties with plenty of outdoor space.

We also need to get rid of the weird stigma of having a “council house” on a “council estate”.

@Sleepthief

I am very worried for the arts - we're going to lose theatres, orchestras, opera companies, theatre companies, I try not to think too much about it as it's so upsetting. *@Echobelly* lucky for you that you CAN try not to think about it. There are many for whom this is their income, which has now gone. A bit more than upsetting g

Bit of a mean reply to *@Echobelly* there. Someone who thinks and cares about the loss of so much of the arts sector isn’t your enemy. Do you understand how many people have the approach of ‘fuck the arts, they’ll have to make a living some other way, people are dying, get a proper job’?

People like Echobelly who care about the arts and are upset about the impact on it aren’t the ones to be annoyed at, they can’t help that they’re on the outside looking in, would you prefer they pretend to be one of the arts workers affected or for them not to give a shit instead?

@tawnytowel

A well written response- despite nostalgia the UK cannot and should not try to turn back time to the 1950s.

Interest rates can hardly go any lower. That button can't be pressed again

It can actually (as a PP said, with negative interest rates) but at least it'll be a boom for a couple of sectors ... burglary, when too many keep cash in their houses instead, and offshore investments when the clued-up remove their money from the UK completely

Hollyhead I also agree about the house prices, and that negative equity's only really a problem when folk want to move, but with property ownership being such an emotional "thing" here I really don't imagine it would go down well

@GoldenPenPot

I live in one of those large three beds with large garden (built directly after the war). Did wait 9 years on the council list for it, but it’s absolutely perfect and I feel so lucky we didn’t need to private rent. Home ownership was out of our reach. I really hope they invest in more social housing, I feel for friends who have the instability of renting 😢.

Plenty of youngsters go away on gap years abroad, and do all sorts of low paid jobs, so why not encourage them to work in the UK instead?
The idea of a gap year abroad is usually around foreign culture immersion / travel / learning a new language / finding new friends, not the attraction of a low wage job as such. Not very applicable to living in a caravan with three other random British people in the middle of nowhere in the UK and working 12 hours a day outside in all weather.

@Sleepthief - sorry if that appeared insensitive, many of my friends are musicians and actors and my parents run a classical music festival so believe me, it is close to home!