I can see a lot of businesses not surviving this, not just restaurants.
Here we keep being told food supplies are OK etc..
Maybe now but since we import 70% of our food, most from the EU, and Spain is in lockdown how long will this continue?
Farmers here are not going to get their produce picked - the harvest starts soon - since there is no free movement so how are all the pickers going to arrive? Who is going to do it? Up to now Eastern European migratory workers have been doing it.
I suppose we have plenty of newly unemployed who could do it but I see no reason for economic optimism in the short or long term.
I am OK since I am retired. I am only allowed out to walk the dog but I have plenty to do at home. OTOH my pension has lost ⅓ of its value already and it will probably, no certainly, get worse money has lost ~95% of its value since 1970.
It may well take decades to get back to where we were financially, but that, IMO, is not the important thing.
If this has taught us anything it has shown how very, very important a lot of very badly paid people are to our way of life and how very, very superficial and unimportant "celebrities" really are!
As far as horticulture and migrant workers go this has been a big problem for a few years now. Unfortunately British nationals are not capable of doing this work, they are too soft. The youth of the UK are incapable when it comes to manual work. Not only do they lack the desire to work hard they lack the mental capacity and fortitude needed too.
Double whammy is the competition in Holland and Poland etc have invested a lot more in automation. Lack of inward investment over the last 20 or so years is the real problem for us we were just ' getting away with it' before now.
The economic decimation that's coming will be far reaching and profound, best case scenario we will get back to work with some loosening of restrictions around may or June.
Can you imagine the cost of these restrictions, can you imagine people eating out like they did before ? The psychological effect of all this?
There's going to be less wealth, governments are going to be buried in debt for half a century. Then there's the introspection, endless and imo will end up damaging us even more. Confidence will be totally shattered , in time this will destroy some of the social/economic pillars our way of life's been built on .
Or I guess you can see it as a ' controlled burn ' , the resulting land has room to grow and opportunity is abound. Maybe we will get to this point in , 5 years , 10 years ..
It will be what it will be , I'm sure humanity would of had it worse before now . Our life's will continue to be as easy as they've almost ever been in human history. Unless there's a WW on the way.
