So P and O (can't use ampersand on Blogger) Ferries is under threat of collapse unless the government bails it out to the tune of £150m - despite shareholders in the groups owning the company being about to receive £260m in dividends. Is this yet another case of bailout blackmail? In a capitalist system, a private company sinks or swims by its own actions - it doesn't go to the taxpayer for a bailout, unless it's deemed strategic, which begs the question of why it is in the hands of foreign owners in the first place. That's the Darwinist orthodoxy of the free market that the Tories and the ERG espouse. Share ownership is fast becoming a no-risk proposition and a sure way of making money off the back of the taxpayer.
What with a hard Brexit looming, the UK can ill afford 15% of its trade (that being P and O's share of our trade transportation) being put at risk. Mind you, EU ferry companies will receive a welcome boost, which will have Brexiteers foaming at the mouth.
I wonder how the uber-optimistit, free market Boris will handle this one. The evidence from the covid experience is demonstrably showing that left-leaning governments have responded to the pandemic much better than right-wing, populist governments, and part of this is because they're not using ill-placed over-optimism in place of action (if only we'd been more optimistic about The Charge of the Light Brigade, or the Gallipoli camaign)....
That said, it remains to be seen what the knock-on human impact of the covid economic impact will be - it's a delicate balance of priorities; people and economy, not either or. However, woe betide any government that obviously puts its party donors way ahead of its electorate.
I wonder whether allowing the idiots who flout the lockdown to go about their business, while the rest of us hunker down, isn't the best, overall option. The idiots can keep the economy running, till they keel over - but they shouldn't be allowed access to the NHS - and the rest of us simply pick up the economy when the idiots have all been decimated. It's a win-win scenario and solves a number of problems simultaneously, not least improving the national IQ.
There is one place where the lockdown is total and has been in operation for hundreds of years. It's North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal. No-one goes there for the simple reason that the indigenous population has a habit of topping anyone who steps on the beach.
That said, it remains to be seen what the knock-on human impact of the covid economic impact will be - it's a delicate balance of priorities; people and economy, not either or. However, woe betide any government that obviously puts its party donors way ahead of its electorate.
I wonder whether allowing the idiots who flout the lockdown to go about their business, while the rest of us hunker down, isn't the best, overall option. The idiots can keep the economy running, till they keel over - but they shouldn't be allowed access to the NHS - and the rest of us simply pick up the economy when the idiots have all been decimated. It's a win-win scenario and solves a number of problems simultaneously, not least improving the national IQ.
There is one place where the lockdown is total and has been in operation for hundreds of years. It's North Sentinel Island in the Bay of Bengal. No-one goes there for the simple reason that the indigenous population has a habit of topping anyone who steps on the beach.
2 comments:
Use "&" instead of the ampersand character.. (it's an HTML thing)
Ha! the browser translated the characters in my comment into an ampersand, let's try a different approach.. Use an ampersand character followed by the letters "amp" followed by a semicolon where you want the ampersand to appear.. (if you get my drift!)
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