Good morning,
First, what a complete disgrace and tragedy that key public-health decisions are being made not on the basis of saving lives but on the basis of a handful of leadership contenders jockeying
I do not see it that way, what I see is that some Tories are beginning to make the decisions that they should have made way back when BJ prorogued parliament and stood up for the idea that MPs should challenge bad government.
By now most of us have settled our view on the economy versus health argument, but for most of us it is very difficult to say that we have had anywhere near enough information to have made that a fully rational decision.
For example, have we have reduced our pensions by 1%, 2%, 5% or 25% to pay for COVID? Although the last value is probably too high it is nowhere near out of the question. Would we accept another 2%, 5%, 7.5% cut for more prevention measures?
Just how much tax revenue have we written off for this year and the next few years by making profitable companies unprofitable and used general tax revenues to offset their business rates and staff costs and just how many have been driven out of business or into zombie company status?
The obvious implication of the above is how much do we want to cut the health, education and defence budgets for more prevention measures?
Interestingly, for some reason the BBC has been making a big deal about Trump's golf courses claiming furlough funds, is this because the journalists now feel safe to start explaining just how much it is all going to cost and want some bad guys to blame to make it all seem better?
All that is happening now is that many MPs are starting to feel that they can say, look we have real health risk numbers and the costs of more preventative measures are too high. We simply can't afford it and we really do believe in freedom, the risk is not great enough to justify the restrictions.
Sadly some should have been doing this from day 1 but nobody was willing, which is why NI, Wales and Scotland still feel free to implement such measures. Of course the devolved regions can always fall back on the excuse of we want to save the population but central government won't give us the money.
Whether the history books will look back on this as the point where the country completely lost perspective and started a process of economic collapse that was never reversed is not yet clear. Although much of the debt acquired to pay for COVID measures was fantasy money, the BoE just "printed it", so in theory it may never be paid back this would have consequences as well.
Bye
Ian