With both the Bank of England and the Times
newspaper predicting a long period of mass unemployment and the UK economy now
being completely ignored by both Trumps Government and the EU states, recession
in our most major employment and spending sectors now seems inevitable.
This will bring huge numbers of people in
contact with Ian Duncan Smith’s Universal Credit and Council Tax rebate schemes
for the first time. Following on from the vicious debt trap of a badly managed
Covid 19 period and Sumaks early end to his crutch of furlough schemes Autumn
2020 will be a bleak time for all.
The UK’s economic output dropped 15% in the
second quarter of this year with only the essential supermarket chains
predicting a rise in fortunes for the time being, but with the popular press
predicting anywhere between two and five million unemployed the inevitability
of the third quarter looking even worse than the early months of lockdown with Britain
falling into an official recession looking more likely than ever.
Experts from Durham business school reminded us
last month that during the 2008-9 recession the world economy contracted by
0.6% and caused untold misery to millions but they and others are predicting a
1.5% downturn with even the giant Chinese and Russian markets being caught up
in this this massive retraction of trade in which its expected to take a decade
or more to recover the lost ground economically.
The Tories only clue towards a response is to
hint towards freezing state pensions and capping public sector pay rises
including the NHS for at least two years, effectively using austerity to manage
the economy creating a three tier society of the poor, the underclass and the Tories.
Its an economy model which will sink the service sector for almost a decade.
Just to put this in perspective, Unite the union
is predicting that over a third of the 3.2M who work in the hospitality sector
will lose their jobs due to the way the Government reacted ridiculously late in
introducing safety measures putting the economy before people and allowing
massive events like the Cheltenham Festival take place also allowing the Prime
Minister to miss Cobra meetings when he should have been steering the nation
towards safety.
We laymen are sure some of Johnsons new wave MP’s do have a thought process but we would like to lay the type of odds that were found at Cheltenham that their thought process is fully engaged in worrying about the wages they will lose than bothering to think about how they can minimise the effects of their policy decisions on the electorate.
