General News Thread

I remember the Vietnam boat situation, would we see something on the same scale with people from HK?

WTF?
Cummings "to tour security sites"
He'll be needing a eye test for all those signs he'll be reading then.....

***********BREAKING NEWS**********
CRANE COLLAPSES IN BOW, EAST LONDON TRAPPING RESIDENTS

I think this package will take a little time to kick start the economy but I think there are people who will say some of it is "too little too late" or "It's not what we wanted to see" the vouchers in August probably will be something I probably won't get as I think they'll be for families only and not for a single person on their own. Probably my parents will get one.

The £1000 return to work bonus for companies bringing back furloughed staff is to me a small extension of the furlough scheme and should be seen a positive step to help smaller businesses with any financial problem, but my big worry with this incentive, is that many big corporates may try to work around it by bringing back staff from furlough then employ them for a short while before redundancy pocketing the bonus just to make way for employing younger people under the Kickstart programme. And I believe it will be good to have careers advisors in school again!! I remember those. Never had much contact with mine when I was at school. There was some good stuff in the package, but I think what many expected was an emergency summer post - Covid Budget.
LATEST UPDATE : -
HMRC Boss has told Rishi Sunak that he can't certify his £1,000 job retention bonus as 'value for money' because of uncertainty about costs and numbers of jobs saved as well as his eating out voucher as being not "value for money"

Tomorrow will be the 10th anniversary of the ending of the Raul Moat stand off

John Lewis have announced that two full-size department stores in Birmingham and Watford will close, along with four At Home shops in Croydon, Newbury, Swindon and Tamworth and two travel hub shops at Heathrow and St Pancras with possible 1,300 losses.

Pharmacy High St giant Boots to announce 4,000 job losses due to virus

Feel this round of job cuts is going to be the most significant yet.... and probably is going to be a possible hammer blow to any real bounce back of the economy through Sunak's policies announced yesterday the fact that these losses all are on the High Street suggest that the retail sector has the worst yet to come.

I think it's going to be hard for there to be any sort of economic recovery despite these measures because this is an economic crisis like no other. Previous major crisis: The Great Depression, Black Monday & 07/08 recession were the result of problems in the market where this is an entirely new scenario created by a health crisis.

The Chancellor has come up with some innovations for the hospitality sector, the voucher scheme & a cut in VAT, which is the most affected by the pandemic & where most of the job losses are likely to be. However the massive underlying problem is still the danger of catching Covid-19, customers are going to be unwilling to go to restaurants, cafes, bars, cinemas, theatres where social distancing is more difficult if they think they will contract the virus. Many people in these industries particularly those who work in Cinemas & Theatres that show no sign of opening any time soon & could be looking at unemployment when the furlough scheme ends come October will be wanting to save every penny for when they no longer have a job & there was nothing in the mini budget for Universal Credit.

And so unlike all other economic recoveries that have been driven by consumer confidence in the market & their own finances this recovery will be driven by consumer confidence in public health. When you look at the countries that have handled the pandemic the best they all have a strong test, track & trace infrastructure, The UK on the other had has been slow on testing, included tests that had been sent out but not completed, included two tests carried out on the same person, just admitted that they previously overstated their total testing number by 200k and have completely failed to produce a track & trace system adding that it will be available by December. Add the fact that Leicester has had to re-enter lockdown, it is hard to see where that consumer confidence is going to come from.

Instead of throwing billions at £10 vouchers off your next TGI Fridays perhaps the government should do whatever it takes to get our test, track & trace infrastructure up to speed & insure we have a robust welfare safety net that will be up to the task of the pending unemployment.

The last major pandemic was 1918 and that was followed by the roaring 20's so it might be a boom.