Are they trying to start again?

[Borchester]

Don't start him off,.then log.out and leave.the rest of us with it, like you usually do  ::

Sorry DD, but the temptation is nigh on irresistible  

[DeppityDawg]

Whatever heavy engineering we have left. It could be saved but it is mostly in Labour party constituencies and the Tory Boss Class is determined to starve the proletariat into submission.

Don't start him off,.then log.out and leave.the rest of us with it, like you usually do  ::

[Borchester]

What heavy engineering? (Not a trick question.)

Whatever heavy engineering we have left. It could be saved but it is mostly in Labour party constituencies and the Tory Boss Class is determined to starve the proletariat into submission.

[papasmurf]

I reckon heavy engineering

What heavy engineering? (Not a trick question.)

[Borchester]

The scale of the economic disaster about to unfold hasn't yet sunk in with most people, except to businesses and a few ministers. N'er mind. It will catch up with all of us soon enough. By then mind, it will be far too late. If it isn't already.

Dunno.



Things have been slowing down for a while so while I expect some sort of recession, I doubt that we are looking at anything major. Less the 1930s and more the 2008 unpleasantness.



I reckon heavy engineering and any labour intensive business will take the worst hits, followed by the housing market.We were thinking about putting the Rural Ruin on the market but we might wait a bit. I still haven't done the downstairs loo....

[DeppityDawg]

The scale of the economic disaster about to unfold hasn't yet sunk in with most people, except to businesses and a few ministers. N'er mind. It will catch up with all of us soon enough. By then mind, it will be far too late. If it isn't already.

[Javert]

You also told us that the UK would sink beneath the waves if we even thought of letting go of the hands of our beloved masters in Brussels.

Hilarious, but actually no I didn't.  I never said anything of the sort.  I probably said many times that leaving the EU would cause significant damage to the UK economy, and I was already proved right even though we haven't properly left yet.  I said several times that the UK would not disappear or turn into an Armageddon world after leaving the EU, just that it was pointlessly shooting ourselves in the foot.

[Borchester]

However, with everything these days, Rumsfeld's observation in an other context seems apt: "We know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know."...

Which more or less sums matters up. If any of the information available was even half accurate we could make a killing on the Stock Market, buy up Ruth Goodman's place at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydoRAbpWfCU&t=345s">//https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydoRAbpWfCU&t=345s%20%20%20, install Deppity and Tommy to run the winery and generally live like God in France.



But most stats are like the sort of thing I put in my potato trenches, so we have to console ourselves with the thought that there might well be a recession, but that it will be fairly mild. I have a brilliant explanation of this, but right now I feel like crap so will daze all and sundry later.

[patman post]

Seems to me the best way forward is continued suppression of infection — the premature relaxing lock downs, anywhere, appears foolish.

Although there are guesses that the coming recession will be worse than the 1920-21 depression and the Wall St Crash combined (extreme, but my guess is it's possible) — the whole world is involved in the current battle against Covid-19 — and the longer the current emergency lasts, the greater damage to the economy we know and its recovery. Trying to get the economy moving again with the possibility of the infection rate then soaring and requiring the lock-down to be re-imposed, would likely make the bad situation worse.

After Covid-19 ceases to be a general threat, and a "normality" resumes, it's possible there will be highly-noticeable after-effects in the world and national economies — eg, trimming of globalisation, increased localisation of production (particularly in essentials of medical supplies and drugs, industrial components, energy equipment and production, etc). It's likely there will be shortages of many imported goods, and populations will possibly be generally poorer as a significant number of companies take their overseas component manufacturing back home.

Costs, prices, taxes are likely to rise and new taxes applied (eg, wealth tax), all possibly initially under the guise of being short term.

Food self-sufficiency will be studied. At the moment the EU is among the self sufficient — along with Nafta, Australia and New Zealand, and Malaysia and others. The UK's ability to produce enough to feed itself could be questionable.

However, with everything these days, Rumsfeld's observation in an other context seems apt: "We know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know."...

[Borchester]

Well I don't agree with Borchester that the recession will be fairly mild.

You also told us that the UK would sink beneath the waves if we even thought of letting go of the hands of our beloved masters in Brussels.



Recessions are solved by democracy. Boris and Donald and Vladimir and even Jinping are keen to keep on the good side of the voters, so they will keep on printing money and creating demand and leave the problem of the debt mountain to future generations. The kids should enjoy that. The great problem in life is not the lack of security but boredom.

[Javert]

Well I don't agree with Borchester that the recession will be fairly mild.  I would expect pretty much the biggest headline recession number in 100 years, so I agree with DeppityDawg that the economic impact of this will be, judged by all prior standards, completely catastrophic and much worse than even the worst case Brexit scenarios.



I even agree that there is a very real potential of people dying in the future due to the economic damage caused by this.



However, I would still say that's not a reason to sacrifice more lives now.  



In my view, whether more people die after the lockdown goes away due to austerity measures imposed by the world's governments, is a choice for politicians and a choice for the World's people based on how they cast their votes and what actions they take in future.



Fundamentally, it's entirely possible to manage the world out of this situation without having huge numbers of lives lost due to an 3 month economic hard stop.  To do so would, in my view, require concerted and coordinated decision making by many countries globally including the UK, where the future measures over the next 5 years would prioritise health and lives over money.



If the people and politicians choose against this path, and choose, as in the 1920s and 1930s, to prioritise further drastic cuts in public servers above tax rises, and to prioritise nationlism and isolation above working together as a global community to get out of the mess, it's then more likely that many more people will die later on.



I will admit that the signs are not good right now, and the second scenario seems more likely based on the way the world's major powers are behaving - so from that perspective I agree with DeppityDawg that there is a very high risk of masses of deaths indirectly later on.  This was partially admitted by Matt Hancock yesterday but I think he will claim that he was talking about deaths due to mental health issues, or people being too scared to go to hospital with cardiac symptoms, rather than future deaths from his own austerity programs.



However, my point is that this is a moral choice in the future for politicians and people - it should not be used as a reason to stop saving lives now and just give up.  That's my opinion anyway.

[Borchester]

Thanks Thomas. It says what I think we've both been saying for the last fortnight. Tbf this is a once in a lifetime event, and I think people have their attention focused elsewhere for obvious reason. But most simply do not have the slightest idea yet of the disaster that's going to descend on us in the next 6 months.



Figures starting to come out that a staggering 17 million Americans registered as unemployed in the last 3 weeks alone    Theres simply no precedent for this.

Well, sort of Deppity.



Economic cycles are like Christmas. For most of the year we tick over quietly, living within our means. Then we approach Christmas where we spend like drunken sailors and business booms because of all the extra cash being pumped into the economy and all is marvelous until the New Year when the bills arrive and we spend the next month or so swearing never to spend another penny and living on the ribs of our arses.



We have not had a decent recession for twelve years so we are about due another, but I reckon that this will be fairly mild and sort itself out in a year or so.  Not good news for Tommy but when you are self employed you don't get much good news. But I reckon that he will weather the storm.



By the way, most of us do a job and if it is to the customer's satisfaction he pays up. Now tell me, have you ever heard of an economist saying well, there will be an extra million unemployed/employed next year and I am so convinced that I am right that I will refuse any payment for my advice until matters happen after the manner I have described? No? Nor me. One of the basic rules of economics is that the public's collective arses know more about shooting snipe than a world of economists ever will.

[DeppityDawg]

TBH I got the impression that your heart was more in the economy and for that I apologise. There was some confusion over regarding this virus as nothing more than a sniffle or standard flu which I think we can all agree it really isn't. I do wonder if the fear of what was coming hasn't hogtied us to a hope that somehow we can beat it and of course for those of us with family members who might come off worse in a fight with it, it was a hope to hang on to in the midst of so much confusion.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8208977/Deaths-recession-coronavirus-balanced.html">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... anced.html">https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8208977/Deaths-recession-coronavirus-balanced.html

Ministers might have to choose between deaths from economic misery and coronavirus, Matt Hancock admitted tonight. The Health Secretary revealed frantic work is under way to calculate the impact on the wider population of the lockdown that is threatening millions of jobs and businesses. And he made clear the toll from that will need to be weighed against the direct victims of the killer disease.



But ministers are facing a mounting backlash for stonewalling over their 'exit strategy' once the outbreak's peak has passed. Experts say that mass testing is the only safe way to ease the restrictions, which are threatening to destroy millions of jobs and businesses, as otherwise no-one knows what proportion of the public has been infected. But there are concerns that is unlikely to be in place for weeks - by which time the economy could have suffered calamitous damage.



Speaking at the daily Downing Street briefing, Mr Hancock said the government had to look at a variety of ways in which the virus itself and the government's response could cause deaths.



Denying Whitehall had already produced a forecast of 150,000 'excess' deaths from the hit to UK plc, Mr Hancock said: 'We do not yet have an established estimate of the impact of the huge problems in the economy... or to the health of the nation.

I am a bit pissed that my argument has been so badly misrepresented, but apology accepted.

[Thomas]

Sincerely, so sorry to hear that mate, because I know you work for yourself. I'm ok for the moment as I'm still working normal hours, although the wife has been furloughed. On a lighter note, at least lockdown has stopped her shopping expeditions to the Metro  ::



God, I'm absolutely choking for a pint of draught beer  

So am i deppity absolutely choking for a pint. Im reduced to quaffing bottled beer out the fridge with the stink of paint in my feckin nostrils.







My wife is still managing to get out shopping would you feckin believe.? I have a list of jobs the length of my feckin arm , and she still adds more each day . Theres no stopping the feckin shoppin though. If theres a shop open , she will find it.

[DeppityDawg]

unbelievable , the amount of yanks being put on the dole. The knock on effect when the yanks go tits up for the rest of us is going to be massive.



Trying to remain optimistic , but as i have said , and others like yerself , the sting in the tail of this whole covid 19 malarkey is going to be the economic side of things.



Dont know about you , on a personal level ,   i have very little cash coming in now after three weeks of lockdown , but all the direct debits are still coming out of my accounts thick and fast as though nothing has happened.

Sincerely, so sorry to hear that mate, because I know you work for yourself. I'm ok for the moment as I'm still working normal hours, although the wife has been furloughed. On a lighter note, at least lockdown has stopped her shopping expeditions to the Metro  ::



God, I'm absolutely choking for a pint of draught beer