Coronavirus - do you trust the UK Government to make the right decisions ?

Coronavirus - do you trust the UK government to make the right decisions?

  • Yes

    Votes: 130 23.9%
  • No

    Votes: 414 76.1%

  • Total voters
    544
Well the obvious thing the government could do if it really was serious and more importantly, had the support of the population, is to do what any Island does during a pandemic and isolate itself. That means stopping all travel in and restricting imports.

Sounds good but I have my doubts that would be acceptable tbh.


...I actually agree and think they should already be doing this. It's all very well people saying, "....keep calm and carry on" or "......it's only x number of cases" but the facts remain, the numbers are rising daily because we are doing nothing other than being told to wash our hands. How many people on this forum, on this thread for example can honestly say, they've washed their hands today after touching a public surface and before then touching their face or eating something?

Not many I bet - so what hope is there for the rest of the UK.......?!!!!!!
😷 😷
 
As the days pass by and the more I read, I'm becoming less trusting that the government are going to get the timing right of when they need to take the appropriate steps.

Seems at the moment they're dithering.
 
I don't trust our government to make any decisions.

Listening to Boris talking about this on the news is cringe-inducing, he hasn't got a clue,
He's just happy that the government committee is called "COBRA" so he can play soldiers.

cobra.jpg
 
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Shut the country down and half of country will be out of work when we open up again.

Think about how long most UK businesses have cash flow for. Most it is a few days, maybe a week, close the country for a month and there will be nothing left and then where are we?

Houses being repossessed, unemployment like we have never seen before, no revenue for HMRC so there is nothing in the pot for the government to help with. It would be armageddon.
 
Shut the country down and half of country will be out of work when we open up again.

Think about how long most UK businesses have cash flow for. Most it is a few days, maybe a week, close the country for a month and there will be nothing left and then where are we?

Houses being repossessed, unemployment like we have never seen before, no revenue for HMRC so there is nothing in the pot for the government to help with. It would be armageddon.

As I was told many times in discussions over Brexit, there's more important things than money. Maybe we need a referendum on whether we as a country are willing to sacrifice 10% of our over 80s to save the economy.
 
Can you leave Brexit out of this ? Thanks.
 
As I was told many times in discussions over Brexit, there's more important things than money. Maybe we need a referendum on whether we as a country are willing to sacrifice 10% of our over 80s to save the economy.


Behave, Brexit never effected the country like this has already.

Shut everything down and the country will not recover, it will change the country, the world, completely and for a very, very long time.

How many businesses do you think would be able to survive 4 weeks of shutdown even, let alone the 12 weeks they say we need?

We would see millions unemployed.
There would be no money to treat anyone, police the streets, pay welfare.
So, yeah, I can see why they are weighing up letting the 2% of over 80s die vs shutting the country down very seriously.
 
I had the misfortune to be dragged kicking and screaming by the wife on a weekend shopping mission to Sainsbury's on Saturday, and virtually every other shopper was an elderly person with at least one and more usually two shopping trolleys loaded to the brim with bog rolls, packets of pasta and those Fray Bentos steak thingys I've always known as Land Mine Pies.
Now I'm not being funny, but the use-by date on these products is something like August 2058.
In fact I heard an item on Radio Four the other week where they found some corned beef tins on a merchant ship that went down off Scapa Flow during the Second World War and they were perfectly edible.
If there's one sector of the population that really doesn't need to stock up on non-perishables it's folks in their 90's - all they're doing is making work for the poor sods who have to do the house clearance when they pop their clogs in September.
I'm half expecting to read the newspaper headline shortly - 'Hundred Year Old Pensioner Killed In Cellar By Falling Pallet Of Baked Beans'.
It's a nasty bout of flu - if you get it you'll feel awful for a week then you'll be fine.
Unless you're currently loitering in God's waiting room in which case you'll die.
But I suppose it's a convenient distraction to scare the great unwashed for Boris so they don't ask any awkward questions such as why we don't currently have a trading agreement with anyone other than the Cayman Islands.
And it gives Muslims a bit of respite in the Daily Mail's constant 'Who You Should Hate This Week' blame game.

All trade agreements currently continue until Dec 31, after that if no agreement with the EU, we trade on WTO terms. (Or to put it another way we have a standard trade agreement with every other country in the world)

Bill
 
Depending on which expert you talk to, we should go to the next level now, should have done it a week ago or it’s not yet time, as for taking the advice of armchair experts, then this would be a complete unmitigated disaster, which hopefully the government will ignore.

Bill
 
Brexit belongs in the relevant forums. please keep it out of here.
 
Thing is this comes down to lives vs the economy. There’s a tipping point on that scale either way. As an island, I hope if it comes to it, we have the balls to block ourselves off. That’s probably the one major benefit of being an island in the first place!
 
Shut the country down and half of country will be out of work when we open up again.

This is the point that bothers me. At what point does the damage done to the worlds economy outweigh the damage done by the virus. At the moment it looks like we are walking into a repeat of the depression of the 1930's and given all the misery and deaths that will cause you have to start wondering whether this is all worth it.
 
Thing is this comes down to lives vs the economy. There’s a tipping point on that scale either way. As an island, I hope if it comes to it, we have the balls to block ourselves off. That’s probably the one major benefit of being an island in the first place!

Apart from the unthinkable consequences of that (no way is this country self-sufficient for food, medicine, or any number of other things), there might be a grain of an arguement for that if the virus wasn’t already here, but it is, so way too late.
 
Thing is this comes down to lives vs the economy.

That covers our entire society though, not just the virus. There are a huge number of things I could think of that the Government could do to improve life expectancy / quality of life, but they would severely damage our economy. There needs to be a balance.

I'm not too critical of the Govt so far to be honest, but then the Italian death toll is higher than I expected.

If Boris over-reacts and it costs millions of people their livelihoods in an already uncertain time, then he'd get an absolute hammering.

Given that the very old, and therefore likely to not be working, are by far the most at risk, I'm surprised they've not been asked to stock up and go into monitored home isolation. Surely one outbreak at a bingo hall or asocial club and we're likely looking at multiple fatalities.

Chatting to my mum last night (mid-70s), if there's an outbreak near her, she's planning on laying low for a few weeks in her house. Between my brothers and sisters we can make sure she wants for nothing.
 
Chatting to my mum last night (mid-70s), if there's an outbreak near her, she's planning on laying low for a few weeks in her house. Between my brothers and sisters we can make sure she wants for nothing.
Interesting point, what happens if you or someone else has the virus but for you/them it's just the sniffles.

You are looking after an elderly relative and you then pass it on to them when you visit?
 
This is the point that bothers me. At what point does the damage done to the worlds economy outweigh the damage done by the virus. At the moment it looks like we are walking into a repeat of the depression of the 1930's and given all the misery and deaths that will cause you have to start wondering whether this is all worth it.


This is the point people are missing.


What will kill more people? Coronavirus or locking down the country in case of Coronavirus?



To be honest, I think unless things change damned quickly, it might be too late anyway.
 
We have already driven the global economy into recession, people are losing their jobs by the thousands every day which is OK in the Western democracies with welfare states but if you are a worker in the 3rd or developing world without a job you starve.

Also if this ends up by getting to 1930's levels of economic crises that was exactly what drove the growth of support for Communist and Fascist regimes with all the millions of deaths that ensued from that.

I'm old enough to remember when we had the Hong Kong Flu outbreak that led to 80,000 deaths in the UK alone - we didn't shut down the entire economy, we didnt even have a recession. We just accepted that you would either live or die.
 
In answering the original thread question.

Of course, I do.


They've made so many wrong ones so far the statistical probabilities demand they have to get one right eventually.
 
Good budget from a guy who has only been in the job for a month, hopefully it will help mitigate some of the bad effects in the UK. Unlike the ECB who are still sitting on their hands whilst economic life in Europe collapses.
 
Government seems to be following advice, has committed billions, not sure what more they could do over something no one could have known about.
 
A lot of doctors seem to have disagreed about the decision to let Cheltenham races go ahead.
 
Posted this in the other thread, but it's more relevant here.

The Grand Plan uncovered.

 
Good budget from a guy who has only been in the job for a month, hopefully it will help mitigate some of the bad effects in the UK. Unlike the ECB who are still sitting on their hands whilst economic life in Europe collapses.


Not sure if it is enough for businesses.

I would have liked to have seen....

No VAT needing to be paid for the next 3 months from businesses, giving much needed increased margins in a difficult period.

No PAYE or NIC from the employer for the next 3 months for anyone on basic rate.

The government have given £1bn to a loan fund and said they will guarantee 80% of loans for SMEs so banks have virtually no risk.
However, we are talking banks here, many of whom want many SMEs to go under to get them off their asset books, these loans should have been direct through the government with them making the decision, not giving that to the bank.


Reduction from .75% to .025% is all very well, but have you seen the rates businesses are borrowing at?
I have my personal mortgage at 0.75%, it is costing me £133 in interest a month for £215000.

I have almost exactly the same amount with the business 'loan' (mortgage) at 4.9%, which is £877 a month, a 0.5% drop will see that drop to £788.
The repayments, including capital will drop from £1690 to £1600.
£25 a week! Nearly. Whoopee doo!

The reduction in rates is a bit better.
We have a rateable value of £25k roughly, we pay £8400 a year. That is now zero for 12 months.
So £160 a week saving.
But still, doesn't even come close to making a dent.

Delayed HMRC payments?
Didn't really say what they are offering.
It really needs to be pushed back until all this is over and then the debt spread over 60 months or so interest free, otherwise all you are doing is putting pressure on businesses when they get back on their feet.



We have spent the day working out how we can get through this if business doesn't pick up.
We can't.
That is the crux of it.
I work in seasons. My SS season is March through to August.
I have £9600 in mortgage payments, £4200 in rates, £3600 electricity, £1080 bins, £600 for phone/fibre etc., £720 for epos and card machine, £600 worth of bags, £24000 in wages (not including us taking anything), £118,000 paying suppliers and roughly £22000 will be owed in VAT.
So £185,000 worth of outgoings.
We need to do around £7000 a week to cover that, and that is with me and my wife taking no wages. We usually do around £8000-9000 a week.

So, as you can see, with takings down to around £4k a week, it is a killer.
Saving £25 a week because of an interest rate cut and £160 on rates really doesn't make fudge all difference in this situation.
Don't get me wrong it is nice, but to me it says they really haven't got a grasp how hard this is hitting the UKs largest employment sector at all.
 
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...although on a brighter note, if you self-isolate you can claim sickness benefit, which is a massive £85.60 per week.
But that's the enhanced rate - to qualify for that you have to be medically certified as seriously ill.
If you're just a bit ill, you'll get the standard rate of £57.30.
I'm sure this comes as a huge relief to the legions of self-employed and zero hours contracted folks with families to feed.
I wonder if self-isolating MP Nadine Dorries will be getting £57.30?
 

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