Westminstenders: No pubs till Christmas?

[RedToothBrush]

Today the news has moved towards acknowledging covid-19 reality: Nicola Sturgeon has explicitly stated that some social distancing will carry on until the new year in all likelihood.

When Matt Hancock asked if this was true for England too, he refused to say yes but he said that Scotland was working from the same framework as England.

In case anyone does still need this spelling out, this means the outlook for the hospitality and leisure industries is bleak.

There are extremely unlikely to be many enjoying a holiday in the sun any time soon, whether it be in Devon or Spain.

We won't be celebrating birthdays in restaurants nor having a pint in the pub.

Conversations on the doorstep from a couple of metres away is as good as it gets.

That means if you can't adapt you may not survive.

To add into the mix changes to customs to those companies who are operating seems insanity. But that's a political not a scientific decision to be made.

Whether reality in this will kick in, in the next six weeks or so before EU budgetary decisions relating to an extension have to be made remains to be seen.

Until then, there is no news but covid-19.

From the FT article:

Some of these deaths may be the result of causes other than Covid-19, as people avoid hospitals for other ailments.

But excess mortality has risen most steeply in places suffering the worst Covid-19 outbreaks,
suggesting most of these deaths are directly related to the virus rather than simply side-effects of lockdowns.

David Spiegelhalter, professor of the public understanding of risk at Cambridge university, said
the daily counts in the UK, for instance, were “far too low” because they only accounted for hospital deaths.

“The only unbiased comparison you can make between different countries is by looking at all cause mortality
 . . . There are so many questions about the rise we’ve seen in death that have not got Covid on the death certificate, yet you feel are inevitably linked in some way to this epidemic.”

Louise higher wages mean higher prices - which hit the poorest the hardest
The era of cheap UK food may be over for quite a while

Remember to that lockdowns will have greatly reduced deaths for RTAs, work, street crime, flu (!)

The expression "artificially cheap flights" has been used a couple of times now....could I ask what people mean by that?

Airlines don't pay full taxes on fuel (sorry not sure of details). So its cheaper to fly than catch the train within the UK.

Airlines don't pay full taxes on fuel
Basically an international agreement - that will take considerable renegotiation and open a huge can of worms.
One issue is how to avoid eg airlines carrying excess fuel because taxes at destination make refuelling there costly - or carrying minimum fuel because they are leaving a high tax regime. Fuel loads should be based on safety and efficiency considerations - not tax minimising?

BCF my sense is that the death toll in care homes is massive, and massively underreported. Certainly in the Trust I work in (we send our nursing teams into care homes) what we hear from the front line is dreadful - and none of it is making it into the stats, because none of these people are making it to hospital.

I don’t really quite understand what the CQC are doing. Where are the care home stats? We were told they would be out soon about a week ago.

In The Graun today Downing Street warning that they may need to walk away from the talks at that point to prepare solely for a no-deal outcome.

Such weasel words. Not that it's their choice or that it's entirely within their grasp to honour the WA atvl...and Frost has ruled out an extension of the transition period. The UK believes there is ample time to agree and ratify a free-trade deal if the EU changes its position.

Specious and disingenuous positioning. Getting ready to point fingers and blame.

Fairly obviously if you want labour because you need a job doing, the people doing it should be paid properly.

This is not the way capitalism works.

Airlines don't pay full taxes on fuel (sorry not sure of details)

FWIW if you whack national, varying levels of taxes on fuel you end up with the problem Frankie has alluded to - your airlines start introducing a policy of carrying extra fuel into the destinations that are high tax. That means to reduce filling up on the ground in those expensive places prior to next sector...That in turn has an environmental impact because the amount of fuel you burn on a sector increases as the aircraft weight increases.

ATM with a few exceptions the policy at most airlines is to load minimum legal fuel if safe to do so...varying taxes at a national level would end that..

Going back to my query about the "artificially cheap flights" comment..
the reason I raised the point is one look at the tax element of any ticket price for any flight ex-the UK, verses flights ex-just about anywhere else, tends to show in the UK we have already seem to have artificially expensive flights...

Is the idea actually to make then "artificially even more expensive"?

As a snapshot the care home F in L was at had 40 beds, and have lost 11 residents (who didn't go to hospital) and a further one has recovered. Thats 25% of residents - replicate that across the country...

One issue regarding the cost of flights is surely also the environmental cost that isn't factored in to seat prices.

While some flights are "expensive", others are ridiculously cheap and that encourages unnecessary air travel when investment in rail is needed.

The business model introduced by O'Leary et al. has created situations that are unsustainable, such as people living part time in one country while working in another, because they can commute between the two on low cost flights from small regional airports and the rise in cheap weekends abroad, causing the type of issues seen in Venice and other towns that are "invaded", with the additional damage caused by Airbnb style rentals...

A significant increase in the cost of flights (or mandatory 2 week quarantine on each side of a trip) may also see a decrease in the number of highly skilled immigrants willing to change countries for work, indeed, I think some will return to the countries where their families live. If I were not able to see my family once a year, I'd struggle with justifying staying in the UK. It's already hard being so far away and I know I am easily employable in my country of birth.

The business model introduced by O'Leary et al. has created situations that are unsustainable, such as people living part time in one country while working in another, because they can commute between the two on low cost flights

..and he followed other business models - it's not not that unusual to commute to work by air/cross State boundaries in the US..especially if one of the family member 's work location has been a forced change due to a posting, it's not that unusual for people to commute by air within the UK...and I know in some cases that's down to the exorbitant price of train fares, state of the road network as much as supposedly cheap flights ( which actually often aren't that cheap).

As for seemingly frivolous weekends away and the curse of Air BnB..You may well have a point but if the feeling is that we should cut down on air travel then IMHO in the interests of fairness it shouldn't just stop with ending travel for other people's R&R.

I've spent enough time around airports over the years (until I was furloughed) to see not just the rise in "weekends away" and stag do's to exotic places, but also the massive rise in recent years of organised school parties. Hoards of groups of teenagers heading out in Feb/March (ski-ing) and again off on their travels in mid summer (cultural trips to China, Southern Africa/America). Essential to their development? You tell me..but good luck getting that Genie back into it's bottle..

Wonder how long people will be satisfied with school/college outings being a day at the local zoo and at A -Level a week in some windswept biology field centre on the Devon coast.

Some flights remain very expensive, some seem ludicrously cheap to me. Maybe you have some figure on actual prices notmiagain? Here are some for air passenger duty

www.gov.uk/guidance/rates-and-allowances-for-air-passenger-duty

2 bands one of up to 2000 milesand then one of over 2000 miles. That’s really, really crude IMO. The difference is that longer flights incur a far higher APD rate. For me, shorter flights need to become much, much more expensive.

The distances in the US make air travel more necessary than it is in Europe.
As TheMShip says, the inevitable rise in air fares in the next 5 years will mean workers become less mobile. That will perhaps affect the UK more than countries on "the Continent": there is quite a lot of train travel possible between Germany, France, Belgium, NL, Spain, etc., but the UK's island geography and pricy/unreliable onward travel from London complicate matters. It will add to the brain drain caused by Brexit.

School trips abroad existed long before cheap air fares.
In the late 80s, my school's annual ski trip from Edinburgh to the Alps didn't involve planes.
I travelled regularly to France from Scotland as a student, taking the train to London and then the coach-ferry-coach to Paris, followed sometimes by another train.
Kids in my French town take a coach 900km on the annual exchange trip to the twin town in Germany.

If people can't afford to go for cultural trips to the other end of the world, they will just have to content themselves with what they can afford to do.
The world is not going to return to normal any time soon, except perhaps for the wealthiest.

What is a big problem is the need to invest in railways and rail transport to allow work-related travel to continue where it is indispensable.

AuldAlliance - ds' old school still goes by coach on its (bi)annual trip to the Italian Alps from Glasgow! Overnight coach trip to minimise costs.

Like you, as a student I travelled regularly to France by train (& boat), often choosing the overnight boat-train to minimise costs, and then on down to Avignon (spent my year in France in Bagnols-sur-Cèze) - in the era before the TGV .

TheMship - I agree re travel home - thou we couldn't move "home" until DH retires .....and then where will our children living.
We were meant to be in NZ now, and yesterday morning my 10yo announced that as soon as lockdown is over we're going to NZ...... I had to break the news that I doubt that will be the case. DH and I have already discussed that things will have to move a long way in this epidemic for us to be jumping on a plane.

I think what may change (hopefully) is the short trips to Europe..... there are a few young people in DH office that spend most weekends in Europe in summer - one went to Ibiza every weekend.....(and she would be well paid against the national average - but not hugely ...)

If an airline ticket reflected it's environmental impact, it would be waaaaaaaaaaay more expensive.

Lockdown continues, no surprise

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/apr/27/uk-coronavirus-live-news-boris-johnson-back-at-work-amid-talk-of-easing-lockdown?page=with:block-5ea6944a8f08e05690dc52d1#block-5ea6944a8f08e05690dc52d1

Johnson says the government should only ease up on the lockdown when it is confident there will be no second peak.

He says he wants “maximum transparency” about how the decisions to relax restrictions are taken.
He says he wants to involve the opposition parties as much as possible.

"and yet we must also recognise the risk of a second spike
the risk of losing control of that virus
and letting the reproduction rate go back over one

because that would mean not only a new wave of death and disease but also an economic disaster
and we would be forced once again to slam on the brakes across the whole country
and the whole economy
and reimpose restrictions in such a way as to do more and lasting damage

and so I know it is tough
and I want to get this economy moving as fast as I can
but I refuse to throw away all the effort and the sacrifice of the British people
and to risk a second major outbreak and huge loss of life and the overwhelming of the NHS

and I ask you to contain your impatience because I believe we are coming now to the end of the first phase of this conflict"

I've got a £18.99p ticket to fly to Alicante in May with Ryan Air.
That wont be happening now of course, but doubt we will see those prices again any time soon.

I've got a £18.99p ticket to fly to Alicante in May with Ryan Air. That wont be happening now of course, but doubt we will see those prices again any time soon.

Which leads to a question of how much capacity will be around ? After all if flights are £50 a pop, and 10,000,000 people a year happily have 4 a year, then the capacity needed will be dramatically different to the situation where flights cost £500 a pop, and only 100,000 people a year are able to take them.

In the latter situation, you might end up having to have a state-subsidised airline that can be used by fuck all of the taxpayers supporting it. Like opera, and Concorde.

In fact Concorde is an interesting example. When the UK first approached the US in the early 60s (what ? You really thought France was our first choice of partner ?) the US economists pored over it, and very quickly twigged it was never going to be commercially viable. And they recommended the US sit this one out, as they pointed out it would be very difficult politically to justify spending American Tax Dollars on what was ultimately a playboy toy.

So how do posters here feel about subbing up an airline whose tickets you'll never afford ?