[Scarlett.]

All staff have been made redundant as of today

[arista]

Sad news

[Kizzy]

Very sad news shearings coaches have been going for years

[Kate!]

So sad to hear this.

[James]

It's worrying the effect the continued lockdown is going to have on the tourist industry.

Standards of living are going to drop if there is bad economic damage.

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by James

Standards of living are going to drop if there is bad economic damage.

Standards of living are going to drop be decimated if when there is bad catastrophic economic damage.


We're a bit past "if" I'm afraid.

[James]

Have experts done analysis / modelling into the long term effects of the lockdown, is what I want to know, like they done for infection rates etc..

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Standards of living are going to drop be decimated if when there is bad catastrophic economic damage.


We're a bit past "if" I'm afraid.

Do you think it is worth it?

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by James

Do you think it is worth it?

I think that's going to be the big question over the next 5-10 years. I hope so. But I think a lot of it hangs on what sort of changes governments are willing to make in the aftermath to ensure that people are well supported. I'm not overly optimistic, but then again, the biggest political changes in history have come off the back of events like this so who knows.

[Scarlett.]

We don't really have a choice, just like we didn't back during the Spanish flu.

[Samm]

Originally Posted by Scarlett.

We don't really have a choice, just like we didn't back during the Spanish flu.

To be fair Spanish Flu was over 100 years ago, and straight after a long world war with much less scientific advances, you can’t compare the two in certain aspects. The lockdown should continue until safe but because of the world we live in, we are right into possibly looking into the ways a long term strategy could be determined in deciding when possible economic damage would cause greater harm.

Saying all this, the fault still lies within the government none the less. The late response to the virus in the UK, will cause greater economic damage as well.

[Shaun]

...literally never heard of them

[arista]

"the fault still lies within the government none the less"

No it is China's fault.

The Government can not save Companies
as there are to many going under at the same time.

[bitontheslide]

my thinking is that a lot of companies are going to go this route .... clear out the debt obligation that they built up and then when things settle down, they will restart under a different name. For many, it's the only option they have

[Cherie]

Originally Posted by bitontheslide

my thinking is that a lot of companies are going to go this route .... clear out the debt obligation that they built up and then when things settle down, they will restart under a different name. For many, it's the only option they have

I have been waiting for 9 weeks now for a holiday refund, I fear they will do this, and we will lose our money

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by Scarlett.

We don't really have a choice, just like we didn't back during the Spanish flu.

It's apples and oranges to be honest. In 1920 western economies were still largely industrial, and it was pre-globalisation, other than the fact that we were still at the tail end of Empire. The effects of a crash of this scale on an economy that leans heavily on City Trading and the service sector are completely unknown. I have a little voice in my head saying, in 100 years when History students are studying the 2020 pandemic, after talking about peak death figures it'll include the line "...and over the following decade the toll of the economic crash was far worse".

When people talk about limitless economic sacrifice "to save lives" they fail, repeatedly, to acknowledge the very simple and multiple-times-proven fact that when the economy declines, people die. We won't know for a long time if the lives saved by lockdown were outweighed by collateral deaths afterwards. It depends on the true extent of the global economic damage.

I get a little stuck on the morals of it all, too, and that's where I have to sadly be really blunt because people don't like to see it or think about it. If we've done all of this to save hundreds of thousands of mostly-elderly lives, and the cost is millions of starving children, then that is a complete and utter moral disaster.

[bitontheslide]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

I get a little stuck on the morals of it all, too, and that's where I have to sadly be really blunt because people don't like to see it or think about it. If we've done all of this to save hundreds of thousands of mostly-elderly lives, and the cost is millions of starving children, then that is a complete and utter moral disaster.

When society doesn't intervene then it defaults to nature and the natural laws apply with regard to something like a virus - the strongest/healthiest survive. At the moment what we are basically seeing are the laws of nature and us (at the moment) futilely trying to fight against it. All these things are an equilibrium. We are adjusting to a knew equilibrium and we really have no experience of adjusting to such a fundamental change.

We pay lip service to social care, but it really is nothing more in the scheme of things. I think we will go now full pelt to one extreme or the other ... proper social care, or none at all

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by bitontheslide

When society doesn't intervene then it defaults to nature and the natural laws apply with regard to something like a virus - the strongest/healthiest survive. At the moment what we are basically seeing are the laws of nature and us (at the moment) futilely trying to fight against it. All these things are an equilibrium. We are adjusting to a knew equilibrium and we really have no experience of adjusting to such a fundamental change.

We pay lip service to social care, but it really is nothing more in the scheme of things. I think we will go now full pelt to one extreme or the other ... proper social care, or none at all

Indeed, I think a level of hubris developed throughout the 20th century where we (as a species) started to believe that our technology had more or less conquered nature; that there was no natural problem that couldn't be solved "with enough science".

We now seem to be being shown repeatedly that this was very much wrong. Oceans full of plastic that we can't clean up, climate change that we're unlikely to get under control, and desperately trying to get a virus under the thumb when realistically it's very unlikely to happen.

[Kizzy]

Because we've been governed or advised by those who either push paper or chase it for decades. Anyone who tried it any different was erased.
BOTS post sounds like an advert for eugenics, sink or swim there's no hand up or hand out, if you flounder the hand holds you under.

[Scarlett.]

Originally Posted by Shaun

...literally never heard of them

I worked with them for 10 years :P

[michael21]

Originally Posted by Shaun

...literally never heard of them

You literally just read about them

[michael21]

Originally Posted by James

Have experts done analysis / modelling into the long term effects of the lockdown, is what I want to know, like they done for infection rates etc..



Do you think it is worth it?

Yes there have the government has a task force's

There said the other day that it looking bad very bad

[Scarlett.]

Apparently a lot of other coach companies are heading the same way too, I think we're looking at a widescale collapse of the UK tourist industry.

[bitontheslide]

Originally Posted by Scarlett.

Apparently a lot of other coach companies are heading the same way too, I think we're looking at a widescale collapse of the UK tourist industry.

as i was saying earlier, i think many firms will go down this route and then restart under a new name when life is more normal. People still want to go on holiday/trips, just not at the moment, so the industry will come back again in some form. By doing it this way, the companies don't need to be re-paying debt for 20 years. Of course, people suffer as a consequence, but if we can get life back to a new normal quickly, it can be dealt with

[James]

Coronavirus: Leading economist warns of 10 years of depression and debt
By Karishma Vaswani
Asia business correspondent
22 May 2020


Economist Nouriel Roubini has warned of a prolonged downturn and sluggish recovery from the coronavirus.

Nicknamed Dr Doom for his gloomy predictions, Professor Roubini said there are some jobs that simply will not come back after this crisis.

Even if the global economy recovers this year from the impact of the coronavirus, it will be "anaemic".

He warned of "unprecedented" recession. Professor Roubini foresaw the financial crisis in 2008 before many others.

"During the global financial crisis it took about three years until output fell sharply," he told the BBC's Talking Asia programme from his home in New York.

"This time around it didn't take three years, not even three months. In three weeks there was a freefall of every component."

Drastic

Professor Roubini also said any recovery will be in the shape of what economists call a "U", or even "something closer to an L" - what he calls a "Greater Depression."


A U-shaped recovery means that growth will fall and bottom out, and then pick up only after a prolonged period of slow or no growth.

An L shaped recovery is even more drastic - falling sharply and staying there for an extended period of time.

That's because of how many jobs have been lost in both rich and poor countries as a result of massive lockdowns to combat the virus.

"These jobs that are gone are going to come back only in part, with lower wages, no benefits, part-time," he said.

"There will be even more insecurity of jobs and income and wages for the average working person.".....

From https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52752172

[bitontheslide]

it is going to be grim for a bit, but we humans are very good at adapting, so I think that is quite a pessimistic piece.