According to the Bank of England's governor, Brexit will cost more than Covid. This is part of an article relating to an apparent internal government report talking up a perfect storm of economic chaos over the winter. Brexit alone will cause much of that as we hurtle off the cliff edge, Lemmings dressed in Union Jacks.
The Chancellor (or should that be Chancer), a man with no understanding of how sovereign economies work, has frozen public sector pay. Importantly, and conspicuously, this offers the NHS a reprieve. Even the Tories don't dare cut the pay of nurses after everything that's happened, byt you can be sure they'd love to. This is couched in terms of fairness. It is not fair to starve the poorest in society; it is, however, Tory policy. We all knew to expect a continuation of austerity.
The curious thing is that by cutting pay they are just putting more money into the hands of capitalists by saying they won't have to pay their staff more - even if they could (which many easily could). This is the great lie of capitalism: with no increase in pay relative to the cost of buying stuff (including luxuries because they are still made by people who need a wage) there's less economic movement. People can't spend what they don't have. They call this belt tightening and talk about it as though it were a virtue. It isn't. Strangling the economy just ensures people go without because workers can't buy the things that pay other workers their wage. All that the chancellor is doing is ensuring the bottom lines of companies. This is why he is economically illiterate.
Of course none of this will prevent the pigs getting their annual pay rise, as they have this year already.
Sunak also says more money will go to the NHS, enough to pay for 50,000 new nurses. By strange coincidence, of course, this is the number Slippery Matt the health minister promised would be hired. Remember that? The crazy shenanigans and mental gymnastics he put us through prior to the election to convince us persuading nurses to stay was the same as hiring them. What a liar.
The same paper has an article with comments from scientists, including members of SAGE (Science Antagonises Government Extremists). They seem fairly unequivocal in warning that the planned Covid Christmas arrangements will lead to a third lockdown. How can they not? We are effectively going back to where we were prior to November and the situation that saw is locked down for a second time. Imagine how that will be in January? The season of post-seasonal blues, with winter in full swing. This is a terrible risk the government are taking, informed by a mix of sentimentality and greed. The more convoluted the rules get, the more 'detail' and exemptions, the more Tiers there are, the greater the opportunity they will be exploited or ignored. There is no way any of this will be policed either. Are they going to have Christmas Covid Checkpoints? Do you have a Tier 2 passport sir, for you and your kids at the bridge into East Berlin? Of course not!
I despair of all this. On one hand lockdown is of course deleterious, no one has ever said otherwise. It institutionalises you, I think. Then, with no thought as to how that transition might work, they fling the doors open, yet advise people maintain their social distancing protocols. This of course doesn't happen and so one feels caught between two worlds, living in the worst of both: the stultification of lockdown, and the uncertainty of a more open world.
With the virus free in both.
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