I am beginning to become profoundly worried by the utter incompetence of the UK government.
No one knows how many people have lost their jobs this month. It may well be millions.
It is highly likely that many, and quite probably most, self-employed people — and there are 5 million of them — have seen their incomes disappear, overnight.
Half the UK corporate sector — of maybe 1.5 million active companies — might be in the same position.
Almost none of those companies can access any government support as yet. When they do, some might get tiny grants which give them no chance of survival. The government backed loan schemes will not be available to almost any of them.
Vast numbers of those who lost their jobs will now be waiting weeks for paltry benefits.
Those who are ‘furloughed' may well not be paid until end April at the earliest, when the government can reimburse their employers who will not otherwise be able to pay them.
The self-employed still have no idea if they will get any help at all and the indications from the Chancellor today are that this could be months, and not weeks, away.
And all this is despite the fact that it is known that 40% of UK non-pensioner households have too little saved to pay even a month's worth of household bill. But they're going to be asked, in many cases, to last for at least two months.
They cannot do that. It is not possible. And if the government does not appreciate that fact then the reality of it will hit home very soon. That is because mothers (in particular) who cannot feed their children first of all steal and then they riot.
Unless the UK government can get cash to people — employed, self-employed and unemployed — very, very soon then social order in this country is going to break down. I give us a fortnight at most, and literally nothing the government is doing right now is even close to preventing this happening.
And if it happens there are no resources to deal with it, including beds for the casualties.
The time for emergency cash injections has arrived. They may not need to be big — but something has to happen, and very, very soon because no one in their right minds should let this breakdown happen, and yet the chance if it occurring is growing by the day.
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So all our supermarkets need to become food banks then.
That is what I would do and have the army and police on hand to stop hoarding.
Paying supermarkets to do this would surely not be that difficult?
Richard,
People need to take responsibility for their own actions. We all know that the government has not taken care of the mass majority of people for decades so why has this come as any great surprise to you?
Knowing this why have people not made contingency for situations like these?
We can all sit here and complain about the government all we like but you and I know they will only look after their friends. It is about time the people did something for themselves and thought for themselves. The problem is most people cannot think for themselves and need to be told what to do. You only have to look at the world of marketing and advertising which successfully gets people to buy things they do not need. At times like these people need to be concentrating on growing their own food and become more self sufficient and less reliant on the whims of the government.
You do know you can’t grow vegetables in a couple of weeks, don’t you?
And that you need a garden?
Plus equipment?
And we can’t go out?
Or to out it another way, how absurd you are being?
Can I ask how you plan on defending your veggie garden when the food rioters arrive? What plans do you have for when hungry mobs are going from house to house, smashing down front doors, raiding anything they can find? I’m guessing you’ve made no plans at all as this simply hasn’t occurred to you.
Wow. A comment equalled in ignorance only by its sheer callousness. You must be a Tory
Of course some of us anticipated that the government might nor be able or willing to feed my family, 10 years ago! And took precautionary measures.
And there are strategies for keeping your preparation secure, to some degree. We see the principle risk as appropriation by “government” for use by themselves! Politicians will redefine my strategic reserve, suddenly as a Hoard! There are strategies to deal with that too.
As with all strategies, its about playing the odds. At least with tonnes of wheat in my grain store, and a crop in the fields, we have some bargaining power.
Wow! Your ignorance is astounding and you obviously do not know anything about gardening. Do you know you cannot eat money? You stick to the accounting and I will stick to gardening (inside and outside) and we will see who has the healthier lifestyle if and when this is all done and dusted. As for the idiot who posted the Tory comment – I have never voted Tory and will never vote Tory so keep your bigotry to yourself.
Jonathan
I have gardened for 35 years
I had an allotment for quite a number of years
You most certainly do not know about gardening
And you sure sound like a Tory
Now go away
Richard
I read an article about Chancellor Merkel ploughing £billions into helping people survive the pandemic in Germany, she said, ‘we have to do this and we can sort out the money/economy later on after all this is over’, or words similar to that. She absolutely has the right idea, I fear UK EngGov will in no way ever have that same sensible caring human response, hell mend ’em.
civil disturbances – hungry people (with no money) will do what it takes. & neither the police nor the army will be able to stop them.
This will be the legacy of electing a mendacious fatberg.
Johnson wasn’t elected, the vote would have had to be democratic for that. England has been a republican oligarchy since 1688.
Your writing is very strong, especially now. I don’t always agree with your perspective but I think your understanding of money and the issues around it at the moment makes you one of the most important writers relating to the state of our society right now.
Thank you. It provides solace to know there is a sane person out there.
Thanks
You will notice that some disagree
But then there are still those who believe the earth is flat too
On a note of light relief flippancy, it has been observed that the compelling reason for accepting that the earth is not in fact flat is that, if it were cats, would by now have knocked everything off the edge.
Thank you for your continuing trenchant observations. I hope someone in government has time to read them.
Anyway here is the agenda of ratcheting down on the population and the divide and impoverish policy continuing:
‘The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, said the delay in announcing help for the self-employed was down to it being “incredibly complicated” finding a way of designing a scheme that would help those in need, while not giving money to people who did not need it.’
Lol. These ‘middleclass’ waged workers with pensions and savings and stuff and the execs and bankers obviosly NEED it and the hand to mouth self employed — yes even these who only work for cash — supposedly don’t need it.
Meanwhile the Government experts have reduced the status of the Virus – ‘As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK.’
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19
And did we all get the same text today?
‘GOV.UK ALERT
CORONAVIRUS
New rules in force now: you must stay at home. More info and exemptions at gov.uk/coronavirus
Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives’
Talk of moving goal posts and mixed messages.
I’ll also remind us all that today is World Tuberculosis Day.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis
Now this one really is a pandemic.
The tories have no intention of letting this crises achieve anything approaching fairness, quite the opposite it seems to me the rush to pass draconian legislation under cover of this ‘medical emergency’ is leaving us with martial laws being imposed and taken for granted.
DunGroanin wrote: “Meanwhile the Government experts have reduced the status of the Virus — ‘As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK.’ ”
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19
This is staggering! 6 days in which we’ve seen an exponential spread of Covid-19, with the whole of the UK put into a state of lockdown and UK officials think now’s the time to downgrade the virus. More evidence of heads in sand and left hands being unaware of the activities of right hands.
I wouldn’t read too much into this downgrade. My reading is that it basically means that rather than requiring treatment at specialist CDC like centres, it can be handled within existing hospital facilities (subject of course to appropriate PPE for the health care staff, etc).
So they’ve done a Trump again. They’ve announced measures (ticks box) and now can downgrade (ticks box), while the measures are both inadequate and very, very slow to be acted on.
I wish I could say I’m shocked. Sadly, no.
I keep comparing the response of the UK government to the French or German governments, I shouldn’t, it’s deeply depressing.
There’s not enough Calories to go round – even if we move all crop storage and meat into the human food chain directly, rather than into Calorifically wasteful products like animal feed, beer and pet food, that leaves UK domestic capacity at around 2,800 Calories a person.
Some amount of fossil fuels is fungible with Calorific requirements, but we want to be leaving that stuff in the ground not using it to make edible fats and oils.
And if we’re without imports and running around panicking like frantic rabbits, then we are very gradually and unequally going to starve. And the rich with their pets and their countryside access will be the ones laughing while the rest of us turn on each other.
There is no reason to think imports will stop
I believe there are. First there’s the inclement weather we’ve been having, making growing and harvesting crops a matter of chance rather than (relatively) safely predictable. Secondly there’s the problem that a lot of it comes from areas where no sane trucker would wish to be seen so less than usual will be being picked up. It’s more likely to be distributed in its country of origin rather than ever reaching us here.
During the Rice and Wheat crises of the last decade, Countries with surpluses stopped shipping, because they were not sure how high the price will go. This time I think they will stop because they will be asking “Will we get paid?”
We must also consider whether the countries normally with surpluses will stay as efficient. With say 20% of the population compromised for 3 months.
And of course we have to assume those countries keep effective governance
Finally, the logistics problems, with border closed and ports compromised.
Here in Ely, our farmers are having difficulty recruiting field staff, ironically because of the “Job Retention Pay” . Expect the call for a volunteer “Land Army” to get more strident in the next few days.
The good news, is if everyone lives on “bread, potatoes and beans” we can pretty-close feed everyone.
Peter – retention pay is not creating that situation
Uncertainty on retention pay is
When people know what they can and can’t do that will resolve, and many will take a second job
Helicopter money?
Only because they have failed
I much agree
Compare and contrast with the ‘bureaucratic’ French:
http://www.progressivepulse.org/economics/the-bureaucratic-french
[…] Read here […]
Just a brief thank you for this blog – easily the best, most thoughtful and incisive political/economic writing around at the moment
I fear that Sunak will take forever trying to invent a single plan to recompense all the self-employed for loss of income, when there are dozens of different types of self-employment, each with its own peculiarities and conditions, but many are characterised by living near edge of poverty. For instance the creatives – musicians, artists, actors, sculptors, potters, writers etc – are driven by their need to create: this is what they are born to do and this life force will often lead to them taking extremely poorly paid work just to satisfy their creative urges.
I’ve known jazz musicians who preferred to play 5 pub gigs a week for £20 a time, rather than play a single function gig at £150 simply because they had so much to say musically that could never be played on a commercial gig. People like that are hard to fit into a single one-size-fits-all bureaucratic solution and I fear that our inspirational creatives, who have generally never been adequately valued in their lifetimes in the UK, will become casualties of bungling ideologically-driven policies. A nation’s culture is a nation’s soul and damaging it can cause deep-rooted long-term outcomes, like civil anger, discontent and eventually unrest.
I am not sure I agree
The plan I wrote could cover anyone I have ever seen – and I have seen thousands of self employed accounts, including creatives. I wrote a book on accounting for artist once.
I am completely baffled by the delay
And the backlash will be enormous
>And the backlash will be enormous
I’m not sure. It never ceases to amaze me how much abuse people will tolerate because they are unwilling to challenge their perception that things are as they should be.
But I hope you’re right.
Ostensibly the delay is because Rishi Sunak & co are trying to come up with a fair system (please apply the irony font to the word fair). It has got to the point now where fairness is the least of our concerns, and tax justice can wait until the chaos is over. I think that’s especially true of the call to indiscriminately whack up corporation tax. It would surely be very tricky to do that without killing vulnerable companies.
It seems very clear that, behind the scenes, the neoliberals in government and the Treasury are still trying to minimise the damage to their reputation for sound finance.
And are still seeking to reduce cost wherever possible
This is madness
A sober analysis. I think you are right.
Yes. Sadly an incompetent government.
It’s true it can be complicated to bring about a payment system for self employed people. Especially if HMRC are involved! What about those in the black economy. They may have no record with HMRC at all. But they will make excellent rioters, judging from the one or two i’ve come across.
It’s difficult but imperative. Moral qualms swallowed and give everyone who asks for it some cash. But it’s cheaper to give everyone the same cf winter fuel payments for oaps. Use retired civil servants all over the country to dole out the cash. They can be trusted can’t they?
If they can find people
There will still be problems with that….but the smaller the sum required the lower the risk
It’s true it can be complicated to bring about a payment system for self employed people. Especially if HMRC are involved! What about those in the black economy. They may have no record with HMRC at all. But they will make excellent rioters, judging from the one or two i’ve come across.
It’s difficult but imperative. Moral qualms swallowed and give everyone who asks for it some cash. But it’s cheaper to give everyone the same cf winter fuel payments for oaps. Use retired civil servants all over the country as volunteers to dole out the cash on a local basis. They can be trusted can’t they? Or even bank branches, that’s where the money is after all. Though it would pain me to see the government putting even more cash into the hands of the banksters. Just needs some imagination.
I would also like to thank Richard for this blog. It’s my first stop now to interpret the events of the previous day. No pressure.
I create my own pressure
Thankfully feeling a bit better this morning
I find it interesting and sadly predictable that government is struggling to work out how to pay self employed. Apparently there is concern about abuse of the system. Made me laugh. Sure some, maybe many will try to over claim, instead of getting say 300pw they may try to get 400pw, so what?
In our society we celebrate those who accumulate over £1 billion through abusing the system.
My suggestion to government is give everyone money, now. Ask questions later.
A change of tune from you
How about issuing “Crisis £s”, rather than regular £s?
Easier to account for
If you get it wrong easier to correct
At the end of it, we restart with regular £s, and choose whether to do a Crisis £ Sterling £ exchange, or not!
People with lots of “Crisis £” could get a gong!
This makes no sense
There were Bradbury pounds in WW1 – but they were simply fiat and non-gold standard pounds to be honest, and utterly interchangeable
There is no reason for complicating life with two currencies now
Hello Richard
I’ve been saying as much for the last three weeks. Total incompetence. We should have simply created a job guarantee scheme and made everyone an employee of the government. They could have received a monthly salary plus a golden handshake to help them prepare for the quarantine period. This would be very much in line with Bill Mitchell’s proposals. The salary and initial payment should be equal across society.
Their approach to managing C-19 patients is also deeply flawed and ricks many lives. The NHS hospitals and staff should be kept free of the virus as much as possible. Community triage and treatment centres in sports halls and stadia – like they announced last night with the Excel centre in London – should manage initial contacts with developing cases being transferred to secondary specialist centres. I suggested remote country homes, luxury hotels etc – just like we did last century with infectious disease hospitals or sanatoriums. Away from population centres, towns and cities.
We need to isolate victims quickly – but also our very fragile NHS system, that will also have to deal with other non C-19 emergencies and care.
But we are fast running out of time and I suspect we may yet lose the country before long.
I hope you are wrong regarding riots but I can see it happening.
I’m not sure whether this government is just incompetent and does not have a clue what to do or whether it is just malicious and knows exactly what it is doing. Could be a bit of both.
We certainly don’t have a leader for a PM. We have Coco the Clown.
Craig
I am not surprised the government is taking it time in helping the self employed. For them it may seem that they have done enough with helping the non self employed. It is in their ideological bent not to give money away feedly. To them it’s seems a recipe for disaster because the economic and social order will break down. After all they just spent 10 years demonising benefit claimants as scroungers, so nope they will not change, they will not help. The tories would rather crack heads, sending in the police and army. Oh by the way i can see the police being armed as a matter of course. Riots will happen, people will be sent to prison or prison camps, and council flats and houses will be taken off them as another form of punishment. It seems the tories want chaos
As you well know Richard, people will become victims of poverty first before the coronavirus pays them a visit, if it ever does. The immediate problem will be poverty and the UK government predictably are making no noises about that.
I appreciate what you have to say. Thanks.
Thanks
The cheapest system would be the one with the least number of people required to administer it. The Universal Basic Income would fit this criteria, put money into the pockets of those who need it quickly and prevent the wider costs which would be incurred if the newly-impoverished turned to rioting.
But I have explained why that is simply not possible right now – because there is no system available