Westminstenders: All bets are off

[RedToothBrush]

We are seeking an extension. Apparently. No prizes for guessing why.

There is no news but COVID news. And that's all there will be for a long time.

Enjoy your stockpile and your sunny uplands it brought.

Keep safe.

A few vague thoughts for the most reasoned corner of Mumsnet.

Firstly thoughts to everyone suffering.

Secondly, having just got back from regular shop (items not sourced: Red Label tea, Ox tongue from deli, UHT milk) it finally dawned on me why the supermarket reporting felt vaguely familiar. (And it surprised me I've not yet seen anyone else mention it). But the pictures we are seeing are basically what we were shown of shops in the old USSR as a reminder of how much better it was to be capitalists. Which also made me think there's an opening for some whizzkid to open them as a cold war theme park.

Thirdly, I suddenly remembered an odd BBC4 series by Rob Newman back in the early noughties called "A History of the World Backwards" which has (from memory) some eerie foreshadowings of where we are right now.

Overall the roads were quieter as was the store. All very calm. But it's actually a beautiful sunny (if chilly breezy) day here, which can't be a bad thing.

I'm thinking we haven't even started to scratch the surface of the changes this event is going to make to our entire way of life. We've been pushed over the Rubicon ... maybe last years ER flare up could be considered the equivalent of us - as a planet - dithering over the edge wondering whether to jump or not. Then the cliff gave way.

"take them back to the reality of the blitz spirit, "

For most of them, it is as new as to the young

• only those 85+ would have even a vague memory of those times, 90+ to realise the danger

The last several weeks had a number of MN posts claiming older people are more resilient & less "hysterical" because they've been through worse and the silly young snowflakes
Nope, only the very elderly who lived through WW2

For the rest of us, in our 60s, 70s & 80s this is by far the worst crisis we've experienced

• the Cold War never felt this scary, because it wasn't so up close,

didn't wipe out lives and livelihoods in the West, didn't start a global depression, didn't lockdown whole continents

Yep, DG A global depression alone and e.g. the UK GDP crashing 15% as estiated,
would be enough to totally change how most of us live:

far more unemployment, higher taxes, lower wages / takehome pay
AND
therefore far less "discretionary" income for treats and luxuries
a concentration on the essentials for most people
and a sea change in lifestyle and the throwaway culture

So anyone providing non-essential services is looking to an even bleaker future

I expect pubs & betting shops will still flourish
but hard times for e.g.
entertainment outlets, gyms, nail salons, hairdressers, masseurs, coffee bars, cafes & restaurants, hotels, travel agents, domestic cleaners, gardners, taxis etc and of course airlines & plane manufacturers, also cars

plus probably a massive house price crash

• except that will be difficult to see as very few will be buying

and the govt will be working desperately on support measures & new laws to avoid millions of owners & renters losing their homes

Another reflection on those claiming it's nothing like as bad as the Blitz:

Uk civilian deaths for WW1 and WW2 combined were "only" about 70,000
so 2 world wars seperated over 2 periods of 5 years or so,
not crammed together over a few months in 2020

Most of the govt scenarios for Coronavirus have higher death tolls than that,
not just the worst case ones

Yep, DG A global depression alone and e.g. the UK GDP crashing 15% as estiated, would be enough to totally change how most of us live:

I'm old enough to remember the miners strike and one point the NUM made that mines once abandoned can never be reopened. You'd need to cut new seams.

I think the post covid world is going to contain the equivalent of a lot of flooded mines. No need to bailout the airline industry if the post-covid world is not going to support people flitting all over the globe.

If fewer people need to travel to work, then how many second cars are going to be surplus to requirements ? With the implications for the motor industry, fuel sales and insurance industries.

I've been seeing a future where personal motor transport is replaced by autonomous electric vehicles, but there's no reason why that can't come a little earlier with people switching to a huge fleet of Ubers.

Presumably the seismic shifts in social behaviour will feed into crime and policing ? I wonder how fewer domestic burglaries there will be with more homes occupied during the day ? With the added weight of people not being able to go out for the foreseeable future ?

With the entire global economy being a series of interlocking cogs, there is only so far the UK can buck the trend before something explodes in a nightmare of clockwork.

The most important thing is what a post-covid political demographic will represent. A combination of older folk who suddenly "get it" plus a younger generation that can no longer be denied as they were in 2019, and it's an incredibly fluid and plastic situation.

One irrefutable fact - certainly from everyone I've been chatting with (online, naturally ) - is that there is now a realisation that something if not everything has to change. And how that gets interpreted and put into reality in the next few years will be up for grabs.

When the Great Storm of 1987 had immediately passed, there were tales of doom and gloom about the environmental disaster it was. But within 6 months, scientists were amazed at the transformation visible in the destroyed forests. Most markedly where tall trees had been felled and light was reaching the ground for the first time in centuries, occasioning the sprouting of plants long thought gone, and the associated insects and birds that go with them.

I will be fascinated to see what nature fills any covid-made vacuums with.

Thanks to all who responded on other thread. I've had it taken down as it was a bit identifying.
Breathing and heart back to normal ish levels. Just feel weird and rubbish, and lethargic. The symptoms come and go in waves. It's very strange. Feel appalling to have wasted nhs time for a panic attack, but I honestly thought I was dying.

Being ill and alone is no joke at all. to all in same boat. It's good to have this little community to turn to.

I will stop the derail now.

DG Changes look mostly negative to me - becoming substantially poorer rarely has an upside,
especially for those living from week to week even before this

Also, an extended Brexit transition is just the beginning:

unless the govt changes tack completely to a Norway++ EEA Brexit,
I remain seriously worried that Brexit could be the final straw for what will likely be the shattered remnants of the UK economy after a year or two of this,
with much of the service industries destroyed and no longer relevant

Welcome back, Grinchly 💐
Very natural to panic when you are suffering from such a new illness and are on your own
Stay warm & safe, keep drinking fluids

That is the strength of MN:
somewhere for those with noone around in rl to share worries, receive advice and calm words

Yesterday, I said goodbye to the children who won't be coming back for weeks, if at all. A couple are key worker's children so we're staying open for them.

Most are children I've cared for since babyhood. It's so hard to know that I may not see them again.
The older ones are frightened and needed reassurance. Some think they will die; or Mummy and Daddy or I will die. The younger ones remained oblivious. They know their world is changing and the grown ups are worried, but they don't grasp the reality.

Financially, I don't know. A couple of parents are very generously carrying on paying what they can. Their generosity moved me to tears again: it at least ensures that I can carry on supporting those key worker families that are putting themselves at risk for us all.
I'm self employed, so yesterday's announcements probably won't help us, though I was again very impressed by the Chancellor. I know that the civil service and his department like and respect him.

And next week, I gear up to caring for and teaching the key worker children, on greatly reduced income. Thank God I listened to Bellinsurge and the rest of the preppers and I can at least ensure everyone is fed and has what they need for now.
Most of my childminder colleagues are not so fortunate.

DG Changes look mostly negative to me - becoming substantially poorer rarely has an upside, especially for those living from week to week even before this

Everything is connected - hence my comment about cogs. The UK might think it can force a screwdriver into the machine and stop the mechanism. But the reality is it can't. When the Levee Breaks mama you got to move ....

It may be (and I did float the idea years ago on this thread, but not because of covid) that at "the end" of all this, Brexit is meaningless and there won't be anything for the UK to be "out" of ...

WW1 gave us universal suffrage.
WW2 gave us the NHS and welfare state.

Neither outcome was predicted - nor desired before the events that precipitated them.

What a time to be alive. (And hopefully stay that way).

unless the govt changes tack completely to a Norway++ EEA Brexit

We'd have to reapply to join EFTA, since we left that at the end of January too.

Rationing continued into the mid 50s and my grandmother still had an outside loo with squares of newspaper hung on the door until the early 70s when she was rehoused. Post war rehousing programmes took decades to complete (not helped by the high levels of corruption which meant much of the demolition and rebuilding in the 70s wasn't of a great quality, indeed the fall out from the Poulson trial actually left the land my Grandmothers back to back stood on derelict until very recently ). Certainly by the 70s when asked to debate "we never had it so good" it was perfectly valid to point out that working class society was only really emerging from the post war era, only for Thatcher to be widening the gap between rich and poor again. I was mainly talking about the over 80s who face an approximately 20% mortality rate and will have direct memory of wartime conditions but many over 70s, whilst they may be sat in their own homes with healthy pensions, would have experienced rationing. Coming up hard against seeing their generation left to die as a result of the rationing of ICU beds might just shift them back to that mindset. Change does not come easily to that generation. Before she was ill my mother was rolling her eyes skywards and huffing at the mere mention of online shopping. Now they have built a sort of bunker by their gate for things to be left in, and they now agree Boris is a buffoon.

People can paint the past as rosy, even when they lived through it
Sometimes denial is from shame

My late dad grew up in the 1920s and 1930s Depression period in a v poor NE wc family.

He & mum said whenever they mentioned being often hungry and always barefoot then, no medical treatment, leaving school at 14 to work ft ....
his sister - only a year or two younger - would flat out deny this
and also deny specific incidents,
e.g my gran having to pawn her only remaining pair of shoes for food and walk back barefoot all the way from the pawnshop

His sister kept saying it wasn't so bad and that people shouldn't talk about it any more,
the family were all doing OK now etc

She was apparently ashamed that the family were ever so poor;
wanted to deny how they had all suffered.
So they had to agree never to mention the topic in fron of her again

Grinchly
We are your imaginary friends.
Some of the posters on here are on my FB.
Some people I've 'met' on boards have become real friends
You are never alone on a Brexit thread
Get well as soon as you can.

< 🧚🏽 imaginary friend waving to Grinchly 😁 >

Mum just phoned.
My aunt is dying.
She will die alone.
If it is your custom, please pray for her x

DGR I admire your sunny optimism about the possibilities of what life or politics could look like post CV-19, but don't you remember about how the finanical / banking sector was going to be rehabilitated post Financial Crash?

So much talk then of using the opportunity to bring a halt to the rentier class exploiting the system. Now we have the likes of Johnson, Cummings, Gove, JRM, Patel et al who maybe share one empthatic cell between them for the great unwashed. Not quite a recipe for optimism but you never know.

yoikes
Wishing you and your mum and your aunt as much emotional support and strength as I can, now and in the days and weeks to come

No words to express Yoikes

Oh yoikes I'm so sorry

I think Society has remarkably short memories, and once this is behind us, will pick up and carry on much as before.

The potential game changer will be the economy. We are currently spending way beyond anything envisaged, and Lord knows how we are going to settle our accounts.

Yoikes I am very sorry.
💐

yoikes

Civillian deaths in WW2 were 70,000. Just 2,000 in WW1.

40,000 civilians died in the seven-month period between September 1940 and May 1941, almost half of them in London.

The real 'Blitz Spirit' was depression, fear and an immense amount of pent-up anger directed at the wealthy classes especially Churchill, a hate-figure for the trade unions and much of the working-class because of the General Strike and Tonypandy.

Because of the depression, you must also add in the suicides (Virginia Woolf) and many elderly and sick people who gave up hope. The real death figure would thus be much higher.

yoikes so sad for you and your family.

On that sombre note - just had a newsletter from my surgery saying one thing only - stay indoors and isolate. No punches pulled: says people are dying from CV19 in this region.