The Month That Was......July 2021

What a funny old month July was. There was plenty of ‘potential’ opportunities to celebrate a wonderful month……but it all fell a little short and disappointed.

We came so close in the football……but those street wise Italians just teased us into thinking it was coming home. To be honest though, I’m just not sure we should be entering these footie tournaments ….it just doesn’t bring out the best in people.

More players than not are simply cheating to win. And when that fails, they have a bloody good spit and a decent swear at the ref. Supporters can’t have a pre-match beer without putting firecrackers up their……(you know where I mean……you’ve seen the pictures), breaking into the stadium and beating each other up. If we can’t watch a teenage kid miss one shot without turning to racist abuse, then clearly we need the FA to do the one thing that can stop this awful chain of events……simply don’t enter in the first place. Nobody says we have to. There’s no law that forces us to take part in these competitions. Nobody is complaining that the Vatican City football team doesn’t enter and they have won the Euros as many times as England.

And don’t get me start on Formular One (or F1 for the nerds). A tiny gust of wind at turn four can determine the outcome of a grand prix. We were told the other day that Mercedes had failed to win because there had been a light shower an hour or so before the race began. I’m sorry but it can hardly be classified as a sport if the winner is determined by a weather event that happened before everyone set off. Hamilton won but nobody seemed to celebrate given that he caused a brutal crash on lap 1, presumably because his car wasn’t set up for the correct weather. It’s difficult to celebrate that to be fair.

Then there was this year’s Tour de France. Hilarious. It’s impossible to work out what’s going on. You have a leader who’s hurtling towards the line, and then all of a sudden, he gives up and everyone swarms past in a jumble of sinew and socialism until eventually they all crash into one another and fall off. Behind the endless accidents you now have tactics that mean it’s no longer a sport in which a group of men pedal as fast as possible over a very great distance to see which one is the best. Instead, you have mathematicians in dark rooms deciding who should be in the lead at any given moment, how fast they should be going, what isotonic drink they should be drinking and in what order they should ride when the wind blows from the East. Anyway, the British mathematician wasn’t quite as good as the UAE mathematician, so Team UAE won. Terrific.

Andy Murray offered hope of celebration in Wimbledon as the BBC informed us every 10 minutes. What is it with people dressed in white, wiping their hands on a towel every 20 seconds and then sitting down. I just don’t get it. These guys and girls are at the peak of physical fitness, but after serving one ball in 13C they somehow develop such sweaty palms that they must stroll to the back of the court and stand there for a few moments to wipe away the rivers of perspiration. Then, after several minutes of doing this, they amble to a comfy chair at the side of the court where they chew idly on 4 grams of protein bar. Then it’s back to the hand-wiping, and so on, until one of them falls over and the other is declared the winner. My goodness it’s dreary, especially when Team Murray is knocked out early doors by a random we’ve never heard of.

At least Judy Murray had much to celebrate……winning the WTA Mother award for nurturing tennis players. Seriously! I’ve never heard of this award. Wouldn’t she just win it every year? Who the hell won it in 2016? I’m certainly not celebrating this.

The sport of politics had cause to celebrate though. When Rishi and BoJo were ‘pinged’ to self-isolate, the Government set about establishing a random pilot study that BoJo and Rishi were chosen  randomly which allowed them to avoid self-isolation. Amazing……just how lucky was that! This had to be a personal best in setting up such an experimental study in such short time. World leading British science at its best.

Labour also achieved a personal best in getting Rishi and BoJo to U-turn in under 2 hours and isolate like the rest of the great unwashed. A quite remarkable performance by Labour.

Imagine living in a time when the leaders of this country have to be shamed into doing the right thing. Imagine that!

The Numbers

BoJo celebrated reaching 2 years as PM (whilst isolating in Chequers). Plenty of time to reflect on a tumultuous 2 years even by the standards of his rollercoaster life. A 2nd divorce, a 3rd marriage, the arrival of child 6 (with number 7 enroute), 3 national lockdowns and 57 coronavirus news conferences. That's after a Brexit war of attrition in his first year in which he shut down parliament illegally, kicked out 21 rebel Conservative MPs and won the Tories' biggest election victory since Thatcher with an "oven-ready" deal on Brexit that yielded an 80 seat majority. Even by BoJo’s standards, that is quite a set of numbers.

Elsewhere……

Furlough reached a new low with just 5% of workers on the scheme (1.3 million), considerably smaller than last summer’s peak of 33%.

The increase in the employment rate has increased consumer confidence, edging above pre-Covid levels for the first time. The GFK consumer confidence barometer (I know, I need to get out more) has delivered a main reading of -7 for July, up from -9 in June and a two-point improvement on the score in March 2020.

This has led to the UK’s economy growing at the fastest pace in 80 years and is expected to recover to pre-pandemic levels by the end of this year. The economy is now expected to grow by 7.6% this year (the fastest rate since 1941) and higher than the 6.8% predicted in April. It is the second consecutive upgrade to this year’s economic prospects and means that the UK is forecast to recover from the coronavirus crisis almost 3 years earlier than had been feared last summer.

The speed bump to be wary of is the number of people self-isolating and a rise in Covid-19 infection rates, which could create a slowdown in the UK’s economic recovery. As many as 1 million people a week were asked to self-isolate during July meaning that businesses are grappling with absent staff on top of raw material shortages and disruption to supply chains.

Nissan announced great news for the North East, with a major expansion of electric vehicle production at its car plant in Sunderland. A £1 billion investment will support 4,500 of jobs across the supply chain.

US recovery has also accelerated as the economy has grown by 6.4%. America’s recovery is accelerating at a rapid rate with Joe B saying that the world’s largest economy is “ready for take-off”, initiating what is widely forecast to be the US economy’s best year in almost 4 decades.

July also saw my biggest double-take moment in a long time. A reminder that we know even less about what’s going on than we thought. It came from the European Union settlement scheme, under which EU migrants can apply to remain in the UK permanently. During the Brexit negotiations, the plight of the 3 million EU citizens in the UK was front page news. When the deadline closed this month, 5.2 million of those 3 million had been granted the right to stay and another 500,000 were being processed.

That’s right. It turns out there are 2.7 million more non-Irish EU migrants in the UK than was thought during the referendum and 2.2 million more than the Office for National Statistics’ estimate last year. Measurement matters. Policy is guided by data. I’m still shaking my head at this one.

According to Greenpeace, 2 billion disposable plastic masks have ended up in our oceans since the pandemic began. 53 million masks are thrown away each day in the UK.

510 days of working from home……and counting.

Trump of the Month

I’m not messing about this month. Nobody came anywhere near close to BoJo’s level of lunacy and he is a very worthy winner of the Trump of the Month.

I didn’t think I would ever see a worse piece of political messaging than “Eat Out To Help Out”. But “Freedom Day” might have just topped it.

We have been advised by BoJo that “personal responsibility” is to be the maxim of the next phase of the coronavirus pandemic and that we must “exercise judgment”.

How, though? Take your guy in the supermarket with his mask on his chin. You know the one. Might have a medical exemption but probably doesn’t, on account of the way he looks like a weightlifter. At present he is definitely doing the wrong thing……BoJo confirms as much. But is he “exercising judgment” and based on what? 

Is the Government trusting him, say, to have pondered the latest study published in The Lancet on airborne transmission (Greenhalgh, Jimenez, Prather et al), while bearing in mind the inconclusive nature of the 2020 Danish DANMASK-19 study into the efficacy of masks at protecting the wearer, while also weighing up the latest, promising, if not yet peer-reviewed paper from Public Health England (PHE), “Effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against hospital admission with the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant”? Is this what he should have done, before leaving the house and breathing all over the royal galas?

This is not a flippant question……it is a deadly serious one. Nor, by the way, is it an argument for continuing controls. Personally I have never minded masks, not least because they allow me to covertly mouth obscenities at people who annoy me, but the logic behind many Covid rules does indeed seem to be ebbing away as vaccines keep deaths low. Although the government isn’t quite saying that either, is it? Rather, it is saying that it is all now up to us. Without quite saying what is.

When we speak of personal responsibility in the age of Covid, we are actually talking about two very different things. The first is responsibility for ourselves, and the second is for everybody else.

For me and I’m sure many others, the greatest anxieties of Covid have been all about being the link between whoever I’ve just seen and whoever I’m about to, whether it’s small children or elderly relatives.

If the last 18 months or so have taught us anything it's that sense is far from common. It is practically a super power. This is the country that panicked and phoned the police when KFC ran out of chicken……and panic bought loo roll for a pandemic that was not bowel related.  

The amount of people not listening when the restrictions are there is crazy, yet we need to trust them to show common sense when restrictions are lifted. Now that is lunacy.

The Grand Reopening feels like an experiment. Freedom Day arrived and it was celebrated with a bonfire of Covid regulations. After 16 months, 130,000 deaths and several very long lockdowns…… BoJo’s great gamble begins.

BoJo’s announcement pretty much said……“I'm bored of this now……you lot figure it out" approach to pandemic. It lacks leadership. It lacks confidence. It’s madness.

Trump Lunacy Rating: 10 / 10

And Finally……

“You get what you settle for.”

Thelma and Louise

The Month That Was……June 2021

From hail and heating ‘back on’ in May, to sun burn and way too much British flesh on show in June. What a difference a month makes.  

 

June has split the UK in two very distinct groups……those that trotted out the classic British line of “it’s too hot” (they clearly should be washed in public with a hedgehog)…..and those that seemed to go a little ‘loco’ in the heat. There were fine examples of madness everywhere:

 

- The Government updated its guidance on lifting lockdown restrictions……you can’t dance at a wedding but you can stuff strawberries and champagne down your neck at The All England Club packed with tens of thousands crammed like sardines in a tin. Madness. I can’t argue with banning me from going anywhere near a dancefloor being a sound idea from a health and safety perspective though (I’m a risk assessment nightmare).  

 

- A ‘catch up’ fund to help children get back up to speed academically was announced. Someone we employ at Westminster thought that about 12p per child was sufficient. Why bother? Every so often the Government goes to war with children for having the audacity to want to “learn things” and “eat”. Honestly, can't everyone just send their kids to Eton and stop moaning.

 

- Having made a monumental mess of Track & Trace and burnt through £37 billion, Dido Harding believed that this was a sufficient apprenticeship to apply to become head of NHS England! She declared that “there can be no return to pre-Covid business as usual”. I think we can all say with total confidence that the NHS will not return to “business as usual” under her stewardship!

 

- Andrew Lloyd Webber lost the plot when reacting to the delay of ‘freedom day’ by saying: “You will have to arrest me to stop theatres reopening fully”. To be honest, I'm terrified that they might send Andy to prison because you just know he'd write yet another musical about it…..probably called 'Cell By Date' where hardened prison wardens find joy in the expression of song and dance for no reason at all other than to make Andy wealthier.  

 

- Then the BBC entered the delusion club by commissioning Vanilla Ice to present a seven part podcast regarding the unsolved mystery of the disappearance of Shergar. Someone at the BBC thought……take an American one-hit wonder, add the intrigue of sport’s most famous kidnapping, throw in a dash of Clare Balding and you could have a hit on your hands. I kid you not. What next…… MC Hammer investigates Lord Lucan?

 

- Peter Andre believed that he is so ‘relevant’ that he should release a new album. Wow. Stay alert. Stay at home. Stay safe people. Complete insania.

 

- Then there’s the football. Where to start. Fully grown adults flying the England flag from their bedroom window doesn't automatically make them an idiot, but it's a really strong start. Then there are the Germans booing the French during La Marseillaise. The English managed to boo themselves during the taking of the knee. A whole nation celebrated not winning against England. Cristiano Ronaldo rejected a strategically placed bottle of Coca-Cola in a press conference in favour of a healthy bottle of water and knocked £2.8 billion off Coke’s share price in the process. The beautiful game you say? The crazy game.

 

- Washington State Government felt it appropriate to offer all adults free marijuana when they receive a Covid-19 vaccine. The promotion is called “Joints for Jabs” and is part of the state’s push to increase vaccinations. Truly absurd.

 

I’d love to say that I was part of the “it’s too hot” club, but the heat got to me as well. It started off innocently enough when I blew a chewing gum bubble whilst wearing a mask (the mask is no more – it was ‘box fresh’ as well) but then things escalated to me spraining my index finger scrolling down to the year I was born on my phone. Three days of pain. The suffering was real.

 

But as the temperature gauge went up, so did the lunacy. I tried to turn up the volume on a subtitled film for my father-in-law to make the writing bigger and I ‘googled’ taking someone to court for using their lawnmower before 8:00am. Clearly a worthy cause but, disappointedly, I never found the appropriate legal representation to take it on. Such a shame.

 

It’s also such a shame that all of the above is true!

 

 

The Numbers

The heat has got to the economic numbers also……with some elements hot under the collar and some close to catching fire.

 

The UK economy is growing at an ‘eye-popping rate’ (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) with growth at its fastest pace since the Second World War as households spend their savings and businesses ramp up investment. The UK growth forecast for this year was lifted to 7.2% (up from previous forecasts of 5.1%) and 5.5% next year.

 

The pound hit a 3 year high as reports showed that British manufacturing grew at its fastest rate in at least 29 years.

 

The UK economy has recovered almost all the ground lost since the outbreak of coronavirus last year. Compared with April 2020, the economy grew 27.6% - a record annual rate. Most of the growth came from the services sector which accounts for 80% of national output.

 

There was a record rise in the number of workers on payrolls as the jobs market continues to thrive.  The number of employees on payroll grew strongly by almost 200,000, although it is still around 500,000 down since the pandemic struck.

 

One of the key issues currently is that there is an acute shortage of workers. In hospitality and catering, average salaries have risen 18% since last year, 10% in retail and 4% across the whole market. Quite simply, it is driven by the shortage of people and a premium has to be paid to get staff.

 

Rishi’s furlough scheme is still paying the wages of 1.8 million workers, which is contributing to the worker shortage. There are also an estimated 500,000 EU nationals no longer on payrolls……an unintended consequence of Brexit.

 

UK house prices are soaring. Official figures show they have been increasing at their fastest rate for more than 14 years at an annual rate of 10.2%.

 

Oil prices rose above $71 briefly and hit the highest value in more than 2 years.

 

The price of goods leaving factories in China increased last month at the fastest pace in almost 13 years.

 

And when you throw all of the above in the mix, it can only lead to one thing……inflation……and potentially lots of it. Too much inflation will see interest rates rise……personal and business debt will cost more and threaten to strangle the economy.

 

Inflation has now breached the Bank of England’s target (2.0%) to hit 2.1% as lockdown is eased. Inflation has now trebled since March.  

 

Inflation fears are mounting as prices are rising at their fastest pace in 22 years. All 14 sectors of the economy reported an increase in input costs.

 

Yet households have £200 billion of excess savings and businesses £100 billion of firepower to spend. If demand meets shrinking or static supply, the laws of economic gravity mean persistent price pressures will be hard to escape. And that is the inflation issue and it will dominate the economic conversation for the second half of this year.

 

The first post Brexit trade has now been done……with Australia. Despite much bunting and celebration at Westminster, the devil in the detail is, well, underwhelming. The trade deal will add somewhere between 0.01% and 0.02% of GDP over 15 years……whilst harming British farmers and increasing our import / export carbon emissions. Great deal, BoJo. Great deal.

 

478 days of working from home……and counting.

 

 

Trump of the Month

The heat has certainly greased the stupidity wheel this month……many of which would be funny if they weren’t true.

 

Who in their right mind would sanction £7.8 million of tax payer money being spent on lengthening Newquay airport’s runway to accommodate Air Force One for the G7 summit?

 

Why did Priti Patel pledge "wholesale reform" of the UK's "broken" immigration system in a major speech that seemed to forget that her political party has governed this for the past 11 years?

 

What prompted Ian Duncan Smith to take to media channels to state “we should listen to the science just not the scientist”?

 

What made The Trump hit out at his two year Facebook suspension to declare that “it is an insult to the record-setting 75 million voters in the 2020 rigged Presidential Election” when all he is missing is countless pictures of grandchildren and unimportant pictures of what people are eating in restaurants?

 

What made BoJo take a private plane to Cornwall for the G7 and declare on landing that “I’ve arrived in Cornwall for this year’s G7 where I’ll be asking my fellow leaders to rise to the challenge of beating the pandemic and building back better, fairer and greener?” Yeah, good one BoJo. Nothing says “a greener future” quite like taking a private jet from London to Cornwall.

 

What made the Government spend more money on lawyers defending its unlawful award of a contract to a firm run by Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings than the value of the actual contract itself? Extraordinary stuff.

 

Whilst all of the above are absolutely crackers, it doesn’t even come close to the shenanigans revealed about Matt Hancock. It’s been a long time since I have been this impressed with such craziness……take a bow Matthew.

 

Where to start with Matthew. How do you describe him?

 

He is the sort of guy that would list the Highway Code as his favourite novel and get his glade plug-ins pat tested every 12 months. He seems to have landed the position of Secretary of State for Health and Social Care by accident given how surprised he looks by any statement he reads in public. He seems to deludedly congratulate himself constantly and his titanic self-belief is simply obnoxious. Despite so much Government and personal failure to weigh him down, he takes any NHS / science success and pretends it’s his.

 

Fancy living in a world where you can preside over total chaos, cost tax payers billions through sheer incompetence, allow Covid to rip through care homes that killed thousands of pensioners, not supply adequate PPE for healthcare workers to the point where bin bags were being worn, hand contracts to a mate from the pub……but you have to resign for being caught snogging your ‘bit on the side’ and it landed in the newspapers. You couldn’t make it up. It is sooooo Matt Hancock.

 

I wonder how close he got to releasing a statement along the lines of……“On Thursday evening after a successful day of saving lives and protecting the NHS, I walked in to my office to see Gina choking on a throat swab from our world beating test and trace kits. I immediately tried to dislodge it with my tongue to save her life. Chalk it up as another life I have saved.”

 

To be crystal clear, the CCTV was taken when 2 meter social distancing rules were still in place at workplaces. The issue that toppled him was his world-beating hypocrisy. Write the rules……tell the little people to obey……then break them without regret.

 

Initially, Matthew reluctantly accepted he’d “broken the rules” and BoJo considered “the matter closed” and he continued to have “complete confidence” in him. Complete confidence? Yeah, good one BoJo. I find it dismal beyond belief that he clung on as long as he could and that BoJo saw no reason to make him go. Neither man has a shred of integrity. No honour, no decency, no respect for the public.

 

Why is personal character now so irrelevant when it used to be all that really mattered? Read the ministerial code and nearly all of it is a joke. Seven principles of public life and Hancock has breached all in this incident alone.

 

No “high standards of behaviour”……no being “professional” with colleagues……no being transparent about the people who are working for you when you’re shipping in your old Oxford mates……no effort to make sure “no conflict arises”.

 

Matthew is replaced as Health Secretary by Sajid Javid who said the “immediate priority is ending the coronavirus pandemic”. Why did Matthew never think of this!

 

What an utter mess of sex, lies and video tapes. The Trump could only be impressed by such a performance.  

 

Trump Lunacy Rating: 10 / 10

 

 

And Finally……

“Learn from the mistakes of others as you can never live long enough to make them all yourself”

 

Groucho Marx