We’ve hit coronavirus crunch point, so set a date to release UK from house arrest
Covid crunch
NO Briton alive has experienced the scale of economic devastation looming over us.
A three-month lockdown will hit us harder than the Great Depression. Worse than World War Two, the global financial crisis of 2008 or any recession.
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A gargantuan rise in debt and unemployment. A terrifying collapse in tax revenues. A vast Government bailout to save businesses and jobs.
It should be a comfort that these same official forecasts also predict a rapid rebound, assuming the lockdown ends and the virus is largely conquered.
But even if that startling optimism — which we struggle to share — is borne out, immense and permanent damage will already have been done. Millions of jobs will have been destroyed, thriving firms bankrupted and a monstrous new debt pile amassed, taking years to pay off. The pain of the austerity era after 2009 will have been a mere taster.
It is good at least that Britain now knows this. We hope it sinks in. The public must consider it before it rails against any relaxing of the lockdown in case more Covid victims die.
No one wants more lives lost. But the debate is not lives versus money and jobs. Many will also die from the hardships of poverty, unemployment, tax rises and spending cuts if the economy is kept paralysed much longer.
The behavioural scientists advising the Government rightly fear that the public will doubt whether the lockdown’s success in protecting the NHS is still worth it if the recession it triggers kills thousands and destroys the health service’s funding anyway.
We are not there yet. We do not yet know if UK deaths have peaked, though hospital admissions are flattening and the NHS does now look likely to cope.
But the crunch point, where a date is set to slowly release Britain from house arrest, cannot wait much longer.
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Banks’ shame
WE should never forget that the same banks rescued by taxpayers 12 years ago are failing to return the favour.
The granting of loans to keep businesses and jobs alive has been shamefully and pitifully slow despite being largely underwritten by public money.
Lloyds seems to find every excuse not to lend. This after we bailed them out with £20billion in 2008.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak must bypass the banks and grant loans direct from the Treasury, as happens abroad. Hundreds of thousands of small firms and their staff do not have months to wait.
They’ll be destitute in days.
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And a plan to lock them up together in isolation during the Covid crisis.
What could possibly tan-go wrong?
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