Westministenders: The Virus

[RedToothBrush]

Its like living in a Bad Disaster B Movie.

If you thought Brexit on your TV every day was Bad, The Virus is a whole new level.

The 5pm broadcast with Johnson and friends, and the public infomation video with the unblicking Chris Witty (who has such unfortunate mannerism he makes me think he's me a Dr Who alien akin to the Slitheen).

Who knows what will happen. Just that everything has changed and our entire economy is now on life support whilst we figure out how to deal with the crisis and what on earth our exit strategy is.

Johnson has however refused to join a joint EU purchase scheme designed to assist countries through the crisis.

Meanwhile the US is about to go nuts... so what does that do to a trade deal?

More money for the NHS? More hospitals?

Well its possible that might just happen...

[ClashCityRocker]

As long as they have results for the 2018/19 tax year and have submitted a return, they can access the grant, I believe.

It's anyone who started a business since April 2019, or has averaged profits of more than 50k over three years (or two years, or one year).

50k threshold is rather low. I'm quite sure more than 5% of self-employed people earn more than that.

It also leaves the one man band type limited companies in the schtuck with the traditional low salary and dividend structure. I know a lot of people think that such structures are the epitome of tax avoidance, but at below 50k of profit, they generally aren't worthwhile and my suspicion is that they are recommend by accountants more often than they should be for various reasons:

1. They can generally charge higher fees for limited companies and all the related compliance
2. Clients feel like the accountants are 'earning their fee' if they have some sort of structure in place. Some don't want to be told that the best thing to be is a boring old sole trader.
3. Being a director of a limited company sounds sexier.

I personally feel that in the industry there has been a culture of incorporating unnecessarily amongst some (not all) accountants. If one good thing comes out of this, then it is perhaps that it will cease some.

[Plonkysaurus]

I'm in bits over the self employed bail out. Im a wedding photographer, about to go into my second year. Due to having young children and 2 years of putting all of the money I made back into my business (cameras are bloody expensive), my previous tax returns aren't great. I stand to get about £60 a week under Rishi's plan, not enough to cover the ongoing costs of my business which remain despite no income.

I was about to make 9k between now and end of June. I make barely anything between November and Feb, my work is seasonal. I do not qualify for UC. I've fallen through a big fucker of a crack, as have about half of the entire wedding and events industry. We are all the opposite of furloughed.

[Motheroffourdragons]

PMK - have been MIA for a while, have lost the will to think about brexit and am fearful for the future now.

Have my elderly mother in law staying with us, got her here just before the lockdown.

She has Alzheimers and seems to have got exponentially worse since the weekend, probably due to the upheaval.

Trying to work and make sure she is not doing something crazy is very hard.

And she doesn't sleep at night, up and down all the time.

My son is at home from university trying to study for his finals but he doesn't yet know what format they will take, so he is a bundle of laughs as you can imagine.

I miss my other three children, but they are safe and well and coping so that is something.

Sorry for the moaning, feeling very depressed this morning.

[Motheroffourdragons]

Sorry to everybody else who is struggling too, especially financially. It is a terrible worry.

Plonkysaurus

[TheElementsOfMedical]

to everyone who is having a hard time

[RedToothBrush]

Naomi O'Leary @naomioreally
Regarding UK claim that 'comms mix up' stopped it joining EU scheme to procure ventilators:
UK was invited to join health ministers meetings on March 6 & 10 that initiated procurement. It declined.
Telegraph reported worries that collaborating on health could interfere with Brexit

[RedToothBrush]

What do they live on until June ?

Your 'other money' of course

Same as those who applied to UC prior to Covid-19 for 6 weeks.

Know plenty of people who are screwed.

The happy rainbow posters and Facebook meme crowd do my head in, in this context.

[Fivefourthree]

I really appreciate these balanced threads. Many thanks as always

[QuestionMarkNow]

@Plonkysaurus, same here
With the added bonus I had to take 3 months off last year due to ill health so my savings/buffer is already down.

[RedToothBrush]

amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/27/millions-to-need-food-aid-in-days-as-virus-exposes-uk-supply?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium=&utm_source=Twitter&__twitter_impression=true
Millions to need food aid in days as virus exposes UK supply
Food charities warn of spiral of hunger unless government intervenes

Millions of people in the UK will need food aid in the coming days, food charities are warning, as the coronavirus outbreak threatens to quickly spiral into a crisis of hunger unless the government acts immediately to reinvent the way we feed ourselves.

In just a few weeks, experts say, the pandemic has exposed the extraordinary fragility of the food system. And they worry whether it will withstand the growing pressures expected in the coming weeks and months.

Supermarket distribution systems, based on “just in time” supply chains, are struggling to cope with a sudden surge in demand since Covid-19 took hold. The most pressing concern is finding a way to feed the country’s most vulnerable and isolated people.

And

Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University, London, and a former government adviser, said ministers have worked on the assumption that feeding Britain can be left to the market and big retailers. While ministers have been in discussion with supermarket chief executives during the pandemic, Lang argues they are failing to grasp the structural weaknesses in the food system and the scale of food poverty.

“The official line has been that it’s all seamless and would be fine if only stupid consumers would stop panic buying. It is not,” he said. “The just in time system is breaking. Government were only talking to a narrow range of people in industry rather than local authorities and community groups, who know where vulnerable people are.”

Lang added: “Borders are closing, lorries are being slowed down and checked. We only produce 53% of our own food in the UK. It’s a failure of government to plan.”

In normal times, about 30% of calories are eaten outside the home each day, in restaurants, cafes and canteens. The lockdown has significantly increased the amount of food people are eating at home, most of which is sourced from supermarkets.

And

Out–of–work Britons have been responding to calls from farmers and food processors to plug the gaps with a new land army, but with the harvest season only weeks off, many labour providers say they are still facing huge shortages. The British Meat Processors Association has also warned that red meat and poultry factories are at risk of serious disruption if, as predicted, up to 20% of their staff go sick or into quarantine.

Whole article is worth reading.

[Plonkysaurus]

@QuestionMarkNow solidarity. I can't think straight today.

[AuldAlliance]

I'm sorry to read about those of you struggling and falling between the gaps.

[ListeningQuietly]

FWIW The Sunak help for self employed does have gaping holes
BUT
It will support a lot more people than the Tories would naturally have helped.
Yes it screws over single person companies (like mine) but that has been the plan for years.
I just hope that big companies are forced to cancel dividends if they make use of the furlough scheme.
(and yes I know that dividends are our pension income)

I really cannot see how Brexit can go ahead in 9 months .....

[ListeningQuietly]

RTB
I read that Guardian article earlier .....
in 2019 30% of food calories were eaten away from home (cafes, schools, workplaces etc)
no wonder supermarkets are struggling to restock the shelves

[Plonkysaurus]

Listening it's more insidious than that. Announced after parliament was sent home, to a largely unrepresented, disparate group. The cracks are, by design, massive.

They knew exactly what they were doing, and media outlets just run with the headline "£2500 per month to the self employed".

[ListeningQuietly]

Plonky
Last night I was trying to read multiple sets of legislative changes at once
but yes its all rather a mess

[BigChocFrenzy]

Those with profit over £50k not getting anything would be outrageous

There should be a maximum benefit of £2,500 p.m. like the ordinary employed
as it is:

SE profit £49,999 and receive the £2,500 p.m
earn a £1 more and receive nothing ?

Is that really what he means, or am I confused ?

[BigChocFrenzy]

Red I've been worried about UK food supply all along

It's obvious - or should be - that, unlike the worst case Brexit No Deal, there could actually be a shortage of food supplies available for import,
not merely held up by a Brexit logjam at the ports

Production could be affected in all affected countries, if a chunk of farm workers and pickers are unavailable for wekks at a time

[BigChocFrenzy]

The civil service have never worked on that kind of scenario, unless as part of WW3 planning

[RedToothBrush]

I've been worried about UK food supply all along

Likewise.

Dh and I are very aware of it...

[Peregrina]

I was just reading about people volunteering to be fruit pickers, although not enough of them apparently.

The university terms were based round people needing the summer off to get the harvest in, so I couldn't help but wonder if we could see a scheme of civil service, where students who volunteered would get a commutation of the fees?

What we desperately need now is someone with vision, someone who can see a way forward. At that is not Boris Johnson. I do think Theresa May would have done a better job - she would have got stuck in immediately, instead of running away, like BoJo did.

[BigChocFrenzy]

What has always seemed a flashing red light:

The continued panic and shortages in UK supermarkets hasn't been seen to anything like that extent in Germany or afaik other EU countries

Are the UK govt so contemptuous of British people that they think we panic more than others,
or were they too arrogant to check how their neighbours are coping

• the embassies & consulates should have told them there is not the same problem.

Sure in Germany - no hand sanitiser or masks for months, rationed loo rolls and sometimes pasta
but after an initial 2-day scramble , there are full shelves of food as usual, people don't seem anxious about supplies and I can get online slots within 2 working days

It looked like a UK distribution / manpower problem at first and I'm sure that will continue to be a major problem,
but I've also been worried that the supermarkets are having trouble buying in extra food from abroad
- EU suppliers will probably have much less spare than normal; maybe other suppliers too.

Reports of Wholesale prices of some foods going up - while the pound has been sinking
- so there may be large price rises coming up too

Also, it was always going to require govt planning to redistribute the food that restaurants & fast food places no longer need
Who else can do this ?
It would be disgraceful if that is just left to be binned, if people are going hungry

The govt needs to act urgently, because civil disorder can start v quickly over food shortages

[ICouldHaveBeenAContender]

bcf & rtb re the food supply chain: I'm sure I read on the BBC that Serbia may not be exporting as much sunflower oil, and Kazakhstan less flour, to maintain supply to their own country. Other examples were also given.

[ListeningQuietly]

Bigchoc
The Self employed benefit is ....
80% of averaged monthly earnings over the last 3 years
but its taxable
so somebody on £49999 will get taxed 49% on it when the time comes
and people on £50k self employed really should have buffer savings

[DGRossetti]

Ever heard of "Lock Step" ?

From the 2010 report ... here ..

www.slideshare.net/workingwikily/gbnrockefeller-scenarios-on-technology-development

A commentator (www.globalresearch.ca/lock-step-no-futuristic-scenario/5705972) says ...

‘LOCK STEP’

Whatever has occurred inside China at this point it is almost impossible to say owing to conflicting reactions of the Beijing authorities and several changes in ways of counting COVID-19 cases. The question now is how the relevant authorities in the West will use this crisis. Here it is useful to go back to a highly relevant report published a decade ago by the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the world’s leading backers of eugenics, and creators of GMO among other things.

The report in question has the bland title, “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development.” It was published in May 2010 in cooperation with the Global Business Network of futurologist Peter Schwartz. The report contains various futurist scenarios developed by Schwartz and company.

One scenario carries the intriguing title, “LOCK STEP: A world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback.” Here it gets interesting as in what some term predictive programming.

The Schwartz scenario states,

“In 2012, the pandemic that the world had been anticipating for years finally hit. Unlike 2009’s H1N1, this new influenza strain — originating from wild geese — was extremely virulent and deadly. Even the most pandemic-prepared nations were quickly overwhelmed when the virus streaked around the world, infecting nearly 20 percent of the global population and killing 8 million in just seven months…”

He continues,

“The pandemic also had a deadly effect on economies: international mobility of both people and goods screeched to a halt, debilitating industries like tourism and breaking global supply chains. Even locally, normally bustling shops and office buildings sat empty for months, devoid of both employees and customers.” This sounds eerily familiar.

Then the scenario gets very interesting:

“During the pandemic, national leaders around the world flexed their authority and imposed airtight rules and restrictions, from the mandatory wearing of face masks to body-temperature checks at the entries to communal spaces like train stations and supermarkets. Even after the pandemic faded, this more authoritarian control and oversight of citizens and their activities stuck and even intensified. In order to protect themselves from the spread of increasingly global problems — from pandemics and transnational terrorism to environmental crises and rising poverty — leaders around the world took a firmer grip on power.”

A relevant question is whether certain bad actors, and there are some in this world, are opportunistically using the widespread fears around the COVID-19 to advance an agenda of “lock step” top down social control, one that would include stark limits on travel, perhaps replacing of cash by “sanitary” electronic cash, mandatory vaccination even though the long term side effects are not proven safe, unlimited surveillance and the curtailing of personal freedoms such as political protests on the excuse it will allow “identification of people who refuse to be tested or vaccinated,” and countless other restrictions.

Much of the Rockefeller 2010 scenario is already evident. Fear is never a good guide to sound reason.