UKC

This country has a systemic problem, not just an inept PM:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/08/why-britain-faile...

In reply to Bob Kemp:

A passage I remember from Will Hutton's book "The State We're In"  in 1995:

"No state in the twentieth century has ever been able to recast its economy, political structures and society to the extent that Britain must do, without suffering defeat in war, economic collapse or revolution. Only traumatic events on that scale delegitimise the existing order to such an extent that a country concedes the case for dramatic change. In this respect Britain's prospects must be viewed with great caution." 

So yes, things have been awry for a while now if you see Will Hutton as an informed commentator.  Maybe Covid and/or Brexit are those traumatic events hinted at above. 

In reply to Bob Kemp:

An interesting and excellent article, though I'd expect nothing less of The Atlantic - a quality magazine IMO.

Dave

In reply to Bob Kemp:

One early premise, that UK deaths were much higher than elsewhere which has been shown to be untrue as methods of collecting data were flawed. Doubtless this is true of many other nations for this unprecedented event of modern times.

It also seems that the writer is keen to find fault. We are a major nation with many advantages yet talking the country down seems to be a major sport. I call bullshit and be damned.

In reply to Stone Idle:

Has it? Do tell.

There's no need to "talk the country down". Look around you. It's f*cking shit. The idiots have taken over. 

In reply to Stone Idle:

"While England did not have the highest peak mortality, it did have the longest continuous period of excess mortality of any country compared, resulting in England having the highest levels of excess mortality in Europe for the period as a whole."

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriage...

In reply to Stone Idle:

Are you referring to the PHE data?  It was not a method of collection, but a method of categorisation.  It wasn’t “flawed”, just different to that of other states.  The ONS data categorised by cause of death from the death certificate is unaffected by this change, and it continues to show higher deaths than either the previous or revised PHE data.  “Correctly” accounting deaths is really complicated.  Regardless of method - previous PHE, revised PHE, ONS or excess deaths, we’re much higher than everywhere else, although a few places are starting to catch us up.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

There's no need to "talk the country down". Look around you. It's f*cking shit. The idiots have taken over. 

Is it really that bad?  

In reply to bonebag:

No deal Brexit at the bottom of the deepest recession in human history.

Can anyone explain this?

Anyone who can't see that this is f*cking shit is either incomprehensibly thick, or clinically insane. Either way, we would all be better off without them.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Either I’m thick, insane or you’ve been letting the headlines get to you. We aren’t in a recession any more since output is starting to recover this quarter and there isn’t going to be a no deal Brexit because the government is sufficiently chastened by its incompetence over COVID that it needs to establish a reputation for competence by doing a deal with the EU. 

I grant you the UK (and particularly England) remains in a poor shape but this is not an outlying phenomenon right now. COVID has exposed the weakness of an economy in which a high proportion of the population engage in selling hot drinks to each other. But the UK is not unique in this. In activities calling for intellectual property and a stable legal framework, like life sciences or the financial sector, we are competitive.

In reply to BnB:

Very good. Have a like from me!

In reply to BnB:

You're splitting hairs in a meaningless attempt to save face. 

Have you seen the time? Are we going to cave in on the ECJ and fishing? How do you establish a reputation for competence when you are, to the core, utterly and entirely incompetent? Bluster and outright lying can't get you out of this one. 

Well that's alright then. 

In reply to BnB:

In that case leaving the EU - a stable legal framework - is either damaging to our most competitive sectors, or we don’t change the legal framework, in which case the whole exercise is rendered pointless. 
 

Unless the whole point is to whip up animosity against foreigners, in which case it’s brilliant!

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Just pointing out that you are, not uncharacteristically and with typical brio, over-egging the cake. As for saving face, this is my first contribution to the discussion, so your comment is bizarre, and no less so if you are harking back to a Brexit vote I did not support.

I doubt that our views on England are far apart at all, just that we react differently to the same inputs and convictions.

In reply to BnB:

I'm pretty sure the economy is f*cked. Badly f*cked. 

I was referring to your brexit optimism, which is impossible to justify. I do quite admire your optimism as it is a useful and healthy disposition. It's a bit like Brett weinsteins "metaphorical truth" - personally I'm just interested in normal common or garden truth. Which is that things are very obviously f*cking shit and brexit cannot be justified as it will inflict appalling, long term pain on the vast majority of the population. 

In reply to Jon Stewart:

We have a sub-optimal two speed economy that is responsible for a lot of the inequality that undermines our society, and it has been placed in a form of hibernation, with obvious short term consequences. But I fully expect it to be back to its normal two speed cadence within a year or two and employment broadly recovered, always assuming COVID is overcome. Today, it looks to you as though the economy is holed, but next year it be clear that it’s in the government’s pockets that the real hole exists. The two are not unconnected of course but the distinction is that it might be society, rather than the economy, which pays the price. Not that this is any cheer.

I just don’t see the evidence that it will be as bad as you and your sources make out. The world turns all the time to change the value of relationships and it’s clear today that markets have moved away from Europe. My perspective is inevitably constrained by my choice of investments in the fields of life sciences and technology, but remember these are the sectors on which the future is being constructed, and all the companies I invest in find their customers in Asia and the US. The economy needs more focus on targeted education and Investment in R&D to capitalise on our skills and opportunities, but that is not the same thing as f*cked.

I’ve had nearly six decades of seeing my calm tested in the face of crises and, as you say, it’s a healthy and useful attitude which fosters resilient mental health and constructive decision-making. I always start with questioning anything from the pen of journalists! The article in the OP was a good read though.

In reply to Bob Kemp:

So have other countries

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/world/europe/corona...

Its hardly rocket science to suggest that Covid has exposed weaknesses in govt. 

there are similar crises elsewhere. 

In reply to BnB:

 

Then how do you explain that tech investors massively pulled away from Asia last year, slashing investments almost in half ? 
 

 

In reply to Alyson30:

Followed by a 50% rise in their share value YTD (see KWEB ETF for an aggregated example).

Don’t confuse weather and climate. Instead look at the astonishing growth in Chinese new economy companies, not just Alibaba and Tencent, but Meituan and Pinduoduo, Bilibili and TikTok/Bytedance. Or the forthcoming stampede for shares in Ant Financial, the world’s hottest IPO since Alibaba 6 years ago.

Ask yourself, wouldn’t you like to own a part of Ant Financial? A business that charges a toll on a huge portion of the transactions made by billions of Asians.

Or to look at how UK businesses can key into that vast market, one of my holdings is a London listed company that provides Tencent and others with a carrier billing service so that Asian gamers can make in app purchases via their mobile phone contracts.

In reply to neilh:

This is just whataboutery isn’t it? The point is that there is a specifically British set of weaknesses that have been revealed. 

In reply to BnB:

You seem to be the one confusing weather and climate, or should I say looking at the past instead of looking at the future.

The bigger picture is one of lower returns in Asia and in the US than in Europe (in the tech sector). Hence why VCs and institutional are currently increasing investment in Europe and reducing elsewhere.

I am not saying there aren’t any opportunities in Asia far from it, I am simply pointing out that your narrative is more political than data driven.

It’s by the way something weird happening, British VCs are currently investing more in Asia and moving away from Europe, whilst American VCs are pulling back hard from Asia and are going to Europe.

I suspect Brexit induced cultural factors more than anything else, well that is what I have observed anyway.

At the moment, I wouldn’t own anything based in China, for the simple reason that, as a western investor, I have no confidence whatsoever that my property rights would be guaranteed, or that I wouldn’t find myself caught up in various sanctions or embargoes.

Not sure how it is relevant to any points made here.

In reply to Bob Kemp:

You are refusing to look around at what is happening in other similar sized countrys. Widen your outlook. 

The accusation of What aboutery is an excuse to ignore what is happening elsewhere. Most Western European country’s have similar issues. It’s not a specific U.K. exception  

Does not mean it is right or wrong  

In reply to neilh:

I know that the U.K. is not the only country with issues, but they are not all of the kinds described in the article. The U.K. failed more than most, as the article says. It goes on to consider a range of issues and policy disasters going back two decades. 
As for pointing out the use of whataboutery, that is merely identifying a fallacy in your argument. It’s not an excuse for anything. The article doesn’t ignore other countries and neither do I. 

In reply to Alyson30:

No. It’s driven by the certainty that this is Asia’s century. I dare say longer than 100 years too.

Aren’t US investors concerned because of the US/China schism? It’s surely nothing to do with the vast scale and value of the China market. It’s the fear of reprisals after Trump’s sanctions on Chinese Tech. Meanwhile investment flows reflect valuations as much as opportunities. Chinese start-ups are pricey and dominated by the likes of Alibaba and Tencent Ventures. Europe is in its (relative) digital infancy so there is much catching up to do, which paradoxically can be profitably exploited by tech investors, where the US excels.

That is a valid concern but not a reason to eschew the benefits of selling to Asia. Let’s not confuse investment priorities with export needs.

In reply to BnB:

You seem to making some extremely unrealistic assumptions to prop up your optimism: "overcome COVID" - how? You do know that as the earth goes round the sun the energy density of the suns rays decreases, and we go from summer to winter? Unless we get testing properly nailed (no sign of that - how long have we had?), every time someone gets a snivelly nose, they go off work for 2 weeks and so does everyone they know. How are you meant to execute a recovery with that going on? And that's without there actually being a second wave in hospital admissions and lockdown restrictions, which is on the cards.

I can't see how employment could possibly recover, even without Brexit to stamp on the corpse. We haven't even seen the post-furlough bloodbath yet. Pretty much every business has been decimated by catastrophic hammer blows to both demand and capacity. Where is this recovery - not growth from pent-up demand for essentials we're seeing now (oh great! we're not in recession!) - going to come from? You do sound a  bit like la-la land's ambassador on planet earth.

I don't know what you mean by that. Do you mean overall GDP could be OK because some scumbags manage to make so much profit out of everyone else's misery and death that it cancels out on the national balance sheet? As you said, no cheer - frankly, I'd rather the scumbags were dead as well. At least covid's got a chance with the fat ones.

Well if you're a normal working class community that relies on big businesses being in the UK because it's a good place to make and sell stuff, then Brexit f*cks you in the ass, hard. What those businesses need now is low costs, and all Brexit does is increase costs and makes everything that was easy difficult. It might be OK for your investments long term, but if you just need an employer to stay operating in the UK, what you need right now is for your employer to have a stable environment in which they can weather the covid storm.

You do not need a no deal Brexit, because that will mean you don't have a job. And then you can't feed your family and then you might decide you're better off dead. Which Michael Gove and Boris Johnson and Jacob Reece Mogg will all have a good laugh about, because those silly people brought it on themselves through exercising their democratic rights their forefathers fought so hard for.

I wish I believed that Johnson et al will actually burn in hell forever, a fate they deserve a thousand times over, but unfortunately they will just continue to drink campaign as they suck the life blood of humanity and wank themselves to ecstasy in an orgy of indescribable evil. God I hope they all get the worst cancers biology can muster, because that would be as close to justice as this shit universe can feasibly deliver. I will pray every night.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Jon, if you were a mate, I’d be on the blower this morning to check on you and probably call round to make sure you’re okay and suggest you get some help. Your posts are increasingly despairing and allow no positive light to enter. Look after yourself fella.

As for overcoming COVID, the answer is here:

https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candida...

All 6 candidates that have reached stage 3 have proven to be effective and safe, in lab conditions. Now they are being tested in the wild, so to speak. There are more than 200 candidates still at stage 1 or 2. Notably, new inoculation methods are being pioneered, such as the Moderna and BioNTech Messenger RNA vaccines.

When will a successful candidate be ready? The US reckons late 2020, Europe thinks March ‘21. But Russia has already started inoculating its population in what is basically an unregulated whole population stage 3 trial. The regulatory methodology is murky but the science behind their vaccine and credibility of the Gamaleya research institute is not in question.

Assuming there is a vaccine, and the expectation is that there will be several successful candidates, the artificial constraints on the economy vanish spectacularly. The UK’s Covid-related unemployment is chiefly in entertainment, hospitality and travel, all of which, should Covid subside, will rebound spectacularly in an orgy of celebratory spending by a public that have paid down debt and increased savings during the pandemic. Do not ignore the huge levels of stimulus that are supporting demand.

Before a vaccine is distributed amongst a grateful population, the threat of a second wave is real, but the response is unlikely to take the same draconian, economy-flattening form, except probably in local pockets. And businesses have adjusted so effectively such that developed economies can run at c75% of capacity without anyone needing to leave the house to go to work. It is an astonishing achievement that only begs the question how businesses and economies could have coped just 10 years ago with the the same circumstances.

The pandemic will still have left scars in the form of failed businesses like high street shops and restaurants, but many will re-open and the lockdown has also created opportunities and markets in areas like online retail and food delivery, or financial technology higher up the reward scale. These adjustments mean that the Bank of England expects us to recover to pre-pandemic levels a little more than a year from today, and before the end of 2021.

It's hard to be happy during the pandemic and were all feeling the strain, for ourselves and our loved ones. But it will end and the economy will recover. In the meantime, look after yourself.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Not wanting to excuse testing being 5 months late, but I think it is coming together.  Pillar 1 cases are stable/falling, Pillar 2 cases are rising but the independent, randomly sampled ONS live infections count is stable.  There’s some big error bars but it looks from this like the effectiveness of test/trace and other test methodologies is increasing hence the pillar 2 rises.  Largely I think as a result of local public health teams re-emerging to fill the gaping voids in the national systems.  The effectiveness of local teams is a lesson we shouldn’t had to have (re)learned but still....  better late than never.

Its going to be close run between schools returning, students moving into university halls and the winter respiratory illness season on one hand and the public health response coming together on the other; but the pace seems to be picking up on locally based test/trace.

In reply to BnB:

I think some of the science is yet to be properly settled. As I understand it, the science for the Russian vaccine is sound but it’s not clear that a vaccine like theirs (or comparable ones from elsewhere) will be sufficient.

Their vaccine is based on the viral spike protein; that apparently gives a good antibody response and some T-cell response but there’s emerging evidence that having T-cells trained to a wider range of viral proteins is more effective.   With T-cells probably having the more important immune role in this case...

A phase 3 clinical trial is difficult to meaningfully do in many counties at the moment with such low levels of infection.   I can see a land rush to run such trials in India soon enough.  Until there’s good data on efficacy of vaccine candidate(s) I’m not counting on them; historically coronaviruses haven’t yielded to vaccination but there’s never been this level of spend before.  Candidates currently in phase 2/3 seem to be focused on the viral spike - easily identified early on and used to specialise existing vaccine platforms (either previously deployed or R&D level); where-as now much more detailed stuff is emerging from research labs which might start explaining why past attempts haven’t really worked on other coronaviruses, and laying a path to more effective vaccines.

Something I said early on - and now I almost think it could happen - this pandemic could drive a wave of R&D that gets us to the point the “common cold” and other respiratory infections can be wiped out by vaccination.  Then if people can be encouraged not to eat/drink/smoke themselves into the grave things get really interesting...  More focus on neurodegenerative diseases for starters.

In reply to Bob Kemp:

I think the article makes good points but it doesn't mean governments lack the ability to improve matters. This government of toadies and incompetants, chosen by Dom to not give Boris too hard a life in cabinet, was always going to struggle... even the backbenchers are waking up to the scale of this now

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/16/tory-mps-have-given-t...

In reply to wintertree:

Even if it works (and there are big doubts at this point) about half of the population will refuse to be vaccinated...

In reply to Alyson30:

Valid points of caution but the weight of informed opinion is that both obstacles will be overcome.

You are instinctively sceptical but do you honestly believe that the tidal wave of scientific effort striving with virtually limitless financial encouragement will fail to produce a vaccine? Let’s be clear, the six leading candidates have all elicited a robust immune response, and there are literally hundreds of further candidates using both proven and innovative pathways. Do you seriously doubt that governments will be utterly determined to “encourage” vaccination adoptions? In authoritarian regimes it will simply become compulsory. In liberal societies it is easy to conceive of a vaccine-validated permit to engage in normal activities. No ID, no entry to cinemas, bars, shops and, most coercive of all, your workplace.

In reply to BnB:

Or even, no pay out on life, illness and travel insurance if you make a covid related claim. Or you have to declare when applying for insurance your vaccination certificate number otherwise you are rejected. A bit like the yellow fever certificates for entering certain countries in days gone by. 

In reply to BnB:

It was a bit harsh, but I'm afraid I meant it. Personally, I'm very well insulated from the chaos (provided my dad doesn't catch the virus, as it could kill him) as I've got a secure job, pension and I'm settled in the place I want to live. But the minute I think about policy in this country, I immediately descend into apoplectic rage. The problem with our government is extremely serious.

If we'd had a competent response to the pandemic, then that would be OK. If we'd had a bungled response and a lot of people had died unnecessarily because it was a difficult task to get right, then that would be sad. But the reason we are where we are is that we elected people to govern who are themselves, just a disease. They couldn't be bothered to think about the most serious threat our society has faced in generations, then they didn't listen,  then they lied, then they lied, then they lied, then they turfed old people with the virus out of hospitals into care homes, then they lied, then they failed to protect the workers dealing with the crisis on the ground, then they lied, and lied, and lied. I can't think about that without getting upset, because a lot of people are dead.

So, that's terrible. Now, the idea of going ahead with Brexit and failing to negotiate any way to hold the simple mechanics of trade together - which has been handled in precisely the same fashion as the above, because that's all these germs are capable of - is too much. I can't see any rational response other than rage, hatred and despair. The people running this country are a disease, and we should wipe them out.

Yes, I think we will overcome the pandemic in time, because people are clever and there's a lot at stake. Just not in time to save a lot of people from having their lives ruined. It's worth remembering that there was absolutely no need to let the virus rip through the population - it could have been stopped, but we're in the league of Bolsanaro and Trump, so instead, it's f*cking everywhere and we've got a massive hurdle to overcome when the winter comes.

Really? Brexit was due to force a recession without coronavirus - I can't even see that the OBR factored in the no deal we're heading straight for. The pessimistic estimate is 2024. 2021 sounds like lala land to me.

I agree, it will. But the bottom line is that disgusting, venal people are behind this, and ordinary people in our communities are paying with their lives. I can't ignore that, and nor should I.

In reply to summo:

I think forced or coerced vaccination should be reserved for totalitarian states. In the free world people should be free to make up their minds.

The combined factors of individual and national competition, financial reward, personal and institutional glory, economic and political pressure mean I am unconvinced that any vaccine will be safe. Or more accurately, I believe that compromises will be made that skew personal risk very much towards not having a vaccine. I think the odds of being harmed by a compromised vaccine developed under these external factors are higher than catching, and then suffering long term consequences from Covid. This is particularly true for children and young adults.

I am personally very skeptical of covid vaccination in 2021, and will be thinking long and hard before letting any vaccine go anywhere near my children. Asking, or worse forcing/coercing me, to take a risk with my children's health to protect a wider society (which to be honest has shown it doesn't give two shits about my family over the last 10 years) is unacceptable in a liberal democracy.

In reply to XXXX:

I’d argue that the vaccine isn’t - statistically speaking - protecting you and your family directly but is doing so by protecting society.  Whilst you may feel society doesn’t care very much about your household, I imagine your household is almost totally dependent on that society on any timescale longer than 2-3 weeks.  This statistical approach only works when most people buy in to it...

I certainly am more cautious of a vaccine that’s happened so quickly, and of one where there’s a fraction of healthy people my age dying from an immune over-response makes me a bit more nervous about priming an immune response (although the biology is way more complex than that, and beyond my learning).  Some of the vaccines furthest through clinical trials are small adaptions to existing platforms which reduces their risks considerably.  

When one is available in the UK I think we will stagger who receives it in our household; with me going first (I must go to a workplace at least 3 times a month) then Mrs WT some time later, and so on.

We’ll almost certainly be in to new territory on coercion re: vaccination.  Interesting - and not happy - times ahead.

In reply to XXXX:

I agree.

And organisations will be free to turn non vaccinated folk away from their places of education, sports venues, concerts, aeroplanes etc.  

In reply to BnB:>

Valid points of caution but the weight of informed opinion is that both obstacles will be overcome.

You mean, the weight of your own uninformed opinion. We simply don't know if a vaccine will work as we want it. We won't know that until we have the results of efficacy trials. That is what all the experts are telling us.

Many of the vaccine currently in stage 3 are based on novel methods, which complicate matter. Even the most advanced, the Oxford/AstraZenaca, show limited efficacy on chimpanzees, but seems to go some way in preventing the most severe disease.

Fauci says it is unlikely we'll get a vaccine that is very effective. Others are more optimistic.
The reality is that we don't know, and you don't have a clue either.

And that is fine by me I can work with uncertainty, I don't need to bet on blind faith and naive optimism. 
 

In reply to Alyson30:

 

Welcome back, Rom

In reply to Bob Kemp:

This has been a failed state for some time. The electorate have been behaving as though there is something disgraceful about being safe, happy and prosperous. Amongst NW European nations, we are the established economic dunce in spite of our considerable advantages. The Establishment have been happy to let the plebs keep make the wrong decisions at the ballot box since it allows them to rip them off outrageously. 

Unfortunately, there are already signs that COVID-19, and an excess death total the same as the civilian deaths in WW2, is not enough to wake the British electorate from their irresponsible slumber. 

Following Scottish independence and Irish reunification, the North of England will start to see clearly how much it is being shafted. Can't blame the EU, or the Scots, or anyone else: there will be nobody else left to blame (take cover Wales!). I hate to think how angry that will get. 

In reply to BnB:

I wouldn't bet the house on there no being a no deal Brexit, plenty of people in cabinet were maybe still are keen on having one.  As for "being chastened by it incompetence" I'm sure we'll see more of this incompetence in the near future ~ currently the space is occupied by the A level results mess, but once they bluff through that they can fill it with some other mess.

In reply to summo:

I'm not sure excluding children from education if they're parents refuse vaccination is morally or ethically sound. It's worrying, but not surprising sadly, that so many people share your dubious values.

Fortunately, seeing as there has been no will to exclude children from schools who refuse to have established and safe vaccines for serious illnesses such as measles, I can't see it happening.

In reply to jasonC abroad:

Governments don't need to be competent if there aren't checks and balances on their power. 
 

In reply to BnB:

In many ways I think we are talking cross-purpose.

In my view that main long-term danger to the economy isn’t COVID itself (as in theory, the economy can recover as soon as the virus goes away or people learn to live with it)but the reaction to it by central banks and governments. It also happens that the nature of a hard brexit (And the wider geopolitical context it is part of) will just amplify the toxicity of the monetary and fiscal response to COVID.

In reply to Alyson30:

Why do you think they don’t share your view, which, correct me if I’m wrong, is that they should have let most businesses fail everywhere around the world, cutting off the two of the major sources of fiscal receipts (corporate and private taxation) and severely denting the third (consumption taxes) while paying a universal income to the world’s entire (not) working population at the same time as fracturing the very structures on which economies prosper and those fiscal payments ultimately depend?

In reply to BnB:

If you re-read your own tirade you’ll realise it doesn’t makes any sense.

1) we are already paying a universal income to the not working population. We are just doing that in a way that protects (only temporarily) unproductive businesses that should have failed to open the space to other.

This response is just first order thinking, it completely fails to account for the fact that when businesses fail, others take their place very rapidly.

2) the very structures on which economies proposers are being demolished as we speak. Money printing and assets prices (one feeding the others) are completely out of control.

They are taking risks they don’t understand. We are going from crisis to crisis and making the next one worse.

The U.K. has the worst recession ever recorded. What is it going to take for you to admit it was a complete and utter total failure ?

Why are they doing this ? Demagoguery, self interest, and sunk cost fallacy.

In reply to Alyson30:

In normal times, if one bad business fails, better businesses quickly fill the gap. This will happen in a fairly orderly manner even during a “normal” crisis. But if you let all the highly levered or just plain unlucky (eg hotels) enterprises fail, all at once, during a forced shutdown of the economy, it isn’t just the bad businesses which will fail. Corporate cash flows everywhere will freeze while the lenders become insolvent and you’ll have a complete economic collapse and financial crisis in one.

The recession is caused by the lockdown, not by the balance sheets of zombie companies, nor by the support being provided to them. How is the recession a failure? It’s simply an inevitable consequence of the decision to lock down. You do support the lockdown, don’t you? Or should the weak humans all be encouraged to perish as well?

Let’s be clear, I always appreciate the creative destruction when a shitty company like Carillion collapses, but my thoughts quickly turn to all the creditors, many of them small businesses, who are wiped out when the payments on which they were relying fail. You could argue, and I would agree, that all businesses should protect themselves from bad debt by diversifying their revenue streams. But that isn’t possible in every industry, and it’s not uncommon for large ecosystems to develop around a single large corporate entity.

In reply to BnB:

Well that is your “excuse” but I would dispute this strongly, the vast majority of businesses can adapt to new situations like a pandemic. 

This is just a very bad excuse. Changing trading environment is a constant. 

The massive increase in money supply goes way beyond what is necessary to make sure the cogs of the economy are well oiled. The purpose of that isn’t to make sure that the local pub stays alive for a few months, it’s to make sure the stock market doesn’t crash.

It’s not about saving the little man, it’s about saving this snowflake market full of spoiled brats.

We need to stop blaming coronavirus for all ills, the economic problems we have now are only partially the result of Covid.

We had a mild cancer, and instead of going through surgery to remove it we injected with novocaine for ten years, in the meantime the cancer has grown out of proportion. No wonder, catching a cold at this points becomes life- threatening. And what is your answer ? Increase the novocaine massively.

I’d rather go through the surgery, it will hurt temporarily but this is better than living in a permanent drugged vegetative state.

In reply to Alyson30:

Although stock prices are an important component of consumer behaviour, I think the Fed was worried a lot more about the bond market than equities. Meanwhile, you’re sounding rueful that, as I suspect, you did not unwind your put option at the depths of the crash before the Fed stepped in to reverse your huge potential gain. If I’m wrong, and you sold to close your put option in late March, then I take my hat off to you. But a Bear is all the more a bear at the bottom.

In reply to BnB:

Similar problem with the bond market.

And this isn’t about consumer behaviour. This is about maintaining this snowflake market full of rent-seeking spoiled brats.

When you have a market full of spoiled brats then you’ve got a lack of resilience. And this exactly what we are observing.

I unwound most of it, it’s done automatically on a rolling basis. This is (very cheap) insurance, not an investment, it’s nothing I can’t lose.

So don’t try to make it about me, because it isn’t. I do everything I can to stay away from the stock market. I don’t invest in anything other than privately owned businesses, and myself. And I’m happy bearing the consequences of my decisions.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

I feel your anger. What I can't understand is that the English are apparently such a cowed, spineless and self-loathing people that they tolerate this, and don't share my furious rage at these bastards. I've said it before, but it's a terrible shame that Johnson and Cummings survived COVID. If they had died it would have been natural justice.

In reply to Bob Kemp:

The degree of how much a country fails or succeeds can be directly related to who or what the popular media is prepared to support, and who they choose to oppose. The media, almost alone, is capable of creating a negative collective narrative, including seemingly irrational voting behaviour, polarisation of ideologies, bigotry, the demonisation of intelligent debate, and even the realignment of social norms.

Although I write this in a vain attempt to be an observer, I am by no means immune to the kind of rage the media has encouraged. I don’t normally ‘do’ anger, but spitting venom at those who appear to be the perpetrators of failure is something I have almost imperceptibly slid into, and the more heels are dug in with the help of the media, the more angry I get. It is almost certainly related to the feeling of powerlessness that comes with what I perceive as a systematic erosion of democracy. All we have at our disposal to change things is the chance to vote every 5 years - and even that is rendered impotent by the first past the post electoral system.

This country will fail because English exceptionalism and the economic status quo (the bread and butter of conservatism) is being aggressively maintained, at all costs, by a bunch of opinion-formers and unelected advisers. The handling of the pandemic is showing that even the sanctity of human life has become subordinated to the primacy of economy. Brexit illustrates that a nation’s electorate can be zombified by media bias into an act of catastrophic collective self harm.

It is incredible that an entire nation’s success or failure depends on the whim of a handful of media billionaires. And because of the incestuous relationship they have with government, it has become impossible to police them.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

"I wish I believed that Johnson et al will actually burn in hell forever, a fate they deserve a thousand times over, but unfortunately they will just continue to drink campaign as they suck the life blood of humanity and wank themselves to ecstasy in an orgy of indescribable evil. God I hope they all get the worst cancers biology can muster, because that would be as close to justice as this shit universe can feasibly deliver. I will pray every night."

with you all the way.  The people of the US can end the Trump era by voting him out.  We were denied a review of the f*cken Brexit rigged vote even after the idiocy had become clear and public opinion appeared to shift.

Perhaps it is worth taking up weapons and dying to try to stop this crap