Back To The Beginning 4: Caution

It seems the budget was designed to encourage spending now; stimulate that economy don't worry about the after effects. Don't worry about the austerity that will follow. Reportedly Sunak plans to cut four billion rom departmental spending. That's our money he's keeping. Where does that go if not on the public services it's intended for; isn't that the point of taxation? Instead the Tories want us to believe it's going into some imaginary conservative piggy bank. Saved for a rainy day. But the only time it rains is when the rich need money, and they'll get it. Piggy bank indeed.

The uplift will last for another six months and so is correctly being reframed as a benefit cut. At which time people in receipt of working tax credits will receive a £500 windfall. Everyone else gets nothing. Legacy claimants and Universal Credit claimants both. The message is clear: these are for working people. The struggling newbie Tory voters in the red wall. Will it be enough to paper over the cracks, especially post Brexit? Quite probably, some of these people I'm afraid are easily swayed. Besides who can afford to thumb their nose at £500!

Our local Butchers was hit pretty hard by covid apparently. Yet still the local teenagers (shakes fist) hang out en masse as if it were any normal year. I don't know whether that's naivete or indifference. I find myself wondering if their parents even give a damn. This period hasn't been easy for them, or anyone, but the outbreak in the local shops demonstrates how easily this virus can strike. Somehow someone bought it into the shop with or without caring. They may well have had no idea. All it takes, one slip. Lives could well have been lost. So far that doesn't appear to have been the case, but it still could. They still have staff self isolating.

As far as I know we have been lucky. Or at least I, too, have been ignorant. No one I'm aware of has had this disease. There have been no (other) outbreaks. Naturally you don't think it will happen in your neck of the woods, but clearly it can. Here, or anywhere. Despite the roll out of the vaccine, and the speed with which one, apparently quite effective, jab has been given, we are not out of the woods yet. That will come with time, but unfortunately a long time. As long as a trace remains, we are not safe. We may well be vaccinated, but we can't risk having it spread. Perhaps the vaccine has rolled out too quickly. That sounds bizzare,  but my concern is whether people's sense of perspective and responsibility is matching the pace of the rollout: whether people will take being jabbed as an opportunity to go out and party thinking they are now immortal. Or whether they will correctly choose caution for now.