Eat Out to Wipe Out: The Great Escape from Lockdown

Double Whammy: Spending our taxes and spreading COVID

The gestation period of Covid is over and as lockdown has been relaxed. strange waves of lifestyle choices are beginning to emerge. In April and May, house prices were in steep decline, traffic levels were minimal; shopping, including food from supermarkets, was largely by by deliveries. People were discovering the joys and constraints of working from home and meeting by Zoom. Key workers in transport, retail, and manufacturing were expected to work; there was no option, just the fear of contracting Covid. Others were furloughed as the economy was run down.

Kindness became the currency of conversation with passing strangers. The fear of Covid was prevalent, ramped up by the filming of scenes from first Italy and Spain and then from hospitals in the UK. The PM's volte-face from someone who shakes hands with everyone and eschews wearing a mask to a compliant follower of rules after his recovery from Covid helped convince even some of the non-believers. 

With the lockdown over and only a minority of people commuting back to work, there was a pent-up demand to meet families and friends and to travel. There remains a reticence from the majority to socialise or return to work if homeworking is pssible. The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has devised a scheme to get people out and about, 'Eat Out to Help Out'. It is primarily intended to give the Hospitality sector more customers with the government paying half the cost of the meals. Two months ago you could get arrested for going more than 5 miles from your house and now the government are encouraging us to fill restaurants and pubs when we are still months away from a vaccine. 

There is every chance according to the epidemiologists for a new variant of Covid and another spike in the number of cases. Despite this, the government have decided that they will endorse Rishi Sunak's half-baked scheme. We might have expected such a crass scheme from Matt Hancock or Dido Harding but I would have expected better from the Chancellor, he must have been exposed to the PM's mindless optimism.