Today Sees the Lockdown Reckoning
Today’s Autumn Statement of tax hikes, giving the U.K. the highest tax burden in 70 years (at 35.5% of GDP), is a direct consequence of the disastrous decisions taken during the pandemic to borrow and spend so much on lockdowns and other measures, the Telegraph has said in a leading article today.
This time last year, the country was still in the grip of a Covid pandemic panic. Despite the vaccination of much of the country, a surge in cases and a rise in hospitalisations caused by new variants led to the reimposition of mask wearing and other controls. At one point, it appeared that Christmas would be cancelled again until the Cabinet pushed back against scientific pressure for a new lockdown.
Rishi Sunak, then chancellor of the Exchequer, was among the strongest voices opposing further mandatory restrictions because of the impact on the public finances. But even so the Treasury had to dig deep into the national coffers again.
A year ago, Mr. Sunak may have had his doubts about the wisdom of yet more spending but he had already presided over the biggest peacetime accumulation of debt, ostensibly to sustain the economy through the pandemic shock. His difficulty now that he is in No 10 is that the bills must be paid. Today’s Autumn Statement, likely to be the most painful fiscal retrenchment for decades, is at least in part the consequence of a series of wrong decisions that has left the U.K. in a worse position than most other similar countries.
The war in Ukraine and its knock-on effects on energy and inflation add to the woes, the Telegraph says. “But the real context for his statement and for the country’s – and the world’s – economic woes is the pandemic and specifically the lockdowns it engendered.”
Ministers became “excessively cautious when it became clear that the risk to the wider population was smaller than feared” and “this continued even after vaccines were available”.
The goal of protecting the NHS was misplaced as it was “operating at well under capacity throughout”.
Yet now the growing backlog of routine treatments is “hindering the economic recovery because so many are off work” while “much younger people are dying as a result of late diagnoses of conditions that might have been treatable had they been caught earlier”. With excess deaths running high despite the expected mortality displacement of the pandemic, the aim of protecting the NHS has “engineered a health crisis whose long-term impact will be greater than Covid”.
Some attempt should have been made to “carry out a cost-benefit analysis of lockdowns”, the Telegraph says, as “no Government had ever planned for putting the economy into a coma and then expecting it to wake up raring to go”.
Yet the opposition would have “locked down for longer and borrowed more” so has no grounds to criticise.
Today’s Autumn Statement is thus the “reckoning” for lockdowns, the Telegraph says.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Isabel Oakeshott made the same point on TalkTV earlier.
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No. Today sees the Economy-Wrecking reckoning.
In two years’ time the CON Party will get the Lockdown reckoning. The steamroller is just gathering speed.
“In two years’ time the CON Party will get the Lockdown reckoning”
Sadly to be replaced by lockdown-loving Labour.
Labour will be even worse. They say they have a 7-point plan for the economy, which will no doubt be: tax, spend, tax, spend, tax, spend, bust.
I really, really resent that I (we) are having to foot the bill for the government’s profligacy. Lockdown, for us, was hell on earth and we are being forced to pay for it. At this rate I am going to be angry for the rest of my life.
You and millions of others.
Indeed, but I have to confess that I’ve always been cross about the uselessness of UK government.
When people ask me why I’m angry I just tell them that I’m not angry, I’m incandescent with rage.
I’m not sure there were “millions of others” who were opposed to lockdowns, thanks to the highly successful propaganda operations of the Government and the MSM. But I have little sympathy with the vast majority who were supportive of lockdowns, including the ridiculously “generous” (with whose money?) furlough and related schemes.
First thoughts – I smell a rat. This stinks.
“even so the Treasury had to dig deep into the national coffers again.”
even so the Treasury had to dig deep into the nation’s pockets once again.
😀 😀 😀 .
Let’s have it right.
A reckoning for whom?
For most ordinary people perhaps.
For the oligarchs of our society, it’s been a boon. They’re richer, they’re more powerful and they’ve run a population control test that has passed with flying colours.
No reckoning for them, quite the opposite.
Klaus will be pleased. Another step towards us owning nothing. UBI and CBDCs next, just wait…
“Anger is an energy.”
Never forget. Never forgive.
It is better to be violent if there is violence in our hearts, than to wear the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence.
Gandhi
jus’ sayin’
Violence is what they want. Peaceful non-compliance is harder for them to counter. CBDC in Nigeria has been rejected by the population, not what TPTB expected. By slowing things down for them with this type of resistance over the past couple of years, they’re forcing the pace & showing their hand more overtly. This greater visibility is beginning to cause questioning by some previously asleep folk. The awakening is slow, too slow for my liking & that of many others here, but there is hope. The more we can plant seeds of doubt about the digital control over reach, the more folk will wake up. They’re too captured by the bioweapon injection narrative & too frightened of the health consequences to go there, but the tangible harms of losing control of their money, spending & ability to save & provide for their family is something that most folk don’t want to endanger.
Much harder to quell a peaceful uprising, pitch forks & torches give legitamacy to a violent response. Violent government response to a peaceful protest is much harder to sell, unless the MSM continue to do the hatchet job on reality.
Good for the Nigerians. I am not convinced the British people as a whole realise the value of freedom and most are likely to support CBDC if it is presented as necessary to rescue the country from its various predicaments, as well as being convenient and being accompanied by bribes and/or UBI payments.
I tend to agree with you about the state of the British public’s intelligence & compliance.
The UK state has inflicted almost three years of torture on all of us and it continues, because the possibility of lockdowns is a Sword of Damocles hanging over all our heads now. They almost destroyed my business, caused horrendous levels of stress, made my relatively-young-outlook 80-year-old dad psychologically and physically age a decade and left him so ill that he can barely walk and is now devoid of all hope. What hope can I give him? Everything aspiration he had for the country as a child born two years before WWII began has been smashed. What was the point of fighting Nazism when Nazism and communism are now the basis of how the present world is run. What’s different in this era is that we are all trapped in our countries by bureaucracy and passports. This isn’t the England I was born into. I’m in a repressive foreign country that now denies objective reality and half a millennium of history and philosophy. In the past, whole populations would move to new lands and start their own countries if they hated the place where they lived. Now the entire planet is being turned into a digital surveillance prison camp. We… Read more »
Well said. Terrific.
Brilliant post. Well said.
From the article (emphasis mine):
“Throughout the pandemic, we urged the government to consider whether the measures it was taking might turn out to cause greater damage than the disease itself. ”
I read the Telegraph semi-regularly … I guess I missed the urging pleas from the editors regarding quantifying the costs of lockdowns …. strange.
It wasn’t just you HD. I’m a regular reader and the Telegraph was singing from the approved narrative song sheet until very recently
The minute I was given proof the DT was taking Bill Gates Covid money was the minute I swore never to buy that rag ever again – and I haven’t, nor will I. How any lockdown sceptic can buy the DT after all we have gone through is beyond me.
“ “much younger people are dying as a result of late diagnoses of conditions that might have been treatable had they been caught earlier”. With excess deaths running high despite the expected mortality displacement of the pandemic, the aim of protecting the NHS has “engineered a health crisis whose long-term impact will be greater than Covid”.”
A glaring view of the establishment narrowing the Overton window to keep jab deaths out of the conversation.
Rishi put us in this mess, Rishi was put back in charge to “solve” it. You couldn’t get a better glimpse of Problem, Reaction Solution embodied in a single robotic parasite than Rishi Sunak.
Seconded.
The original version of Andersen’s Naked Emperor already described and predicted how the Emperor and his courtiers would react when called out.
Whether on lockdowns, vaccines or Ukraine. https://www.rubikon.news/artikel/nackte-wahrheit
https://www.gbnews.uk/news/petrol-and-diesel-to-go-up-by-12p-a-litre-secret-plan-to-raise-nearly-6-billion-buried-in-official-budget-documents/392018
Hat tip JohnK just now in the NR.
Devious firkers.
And according to documents I have seen Manchester is going to implement a £10 daily climate charge on ALL diesel vehicles crossing in to the Clean Air Zone next July; basically the whole of Greater Manchester.
It looks like TPTB are revving up.
If we’d not shut down the world a few more people may or may not have died over a shorter period of time.
What has ended up happening is we’ve transferred the death burden to the same and other causes and spread it out over a longer period of time, plus all the colateral damage and cost to boot.
I think that deserves some pot banging on a Thursday night, don’t you?
Only if I could bang them on the heads of Sunak and all the others too numerous to mention
Amongst the courses I did at Uni was Public Economics. It was my best subject, but I have come to realise all is not as it seems. Margaret Thatcher’s analogy that gov spending was like a housewife’s spending is no longer true (perhaps it never was). Now governments are not in the slightest bit interested in the economic effects of taxing / spending / debt or surplus. It is completely and totally about politics and the short term appeal. And there is another reason, the higher the tax (and inflation), the lower our freedoms. Prepare for the continuation of lots of tax rises and gov / local authority stealth charges.
Un-elected Sunak is the Lord Haw Haw of Conservative politicians. He’s renauged on all of his Husting promises. He’s a globalist liar.
The Government was effectively run by Whitty, Vallance and Co for nearly two years. Lockdown sceptics like ourselves were voices in the wilderness. We hear now that many Ministers were among the doubters but not a single one of them resigned over the policy. All of the outcomes highlighted by the DT were predicted from the very beginning.
In summary, the lockdowns & shutting down the economy is responsible for the borrowing/debt and so cost-of-living crisis, and the Net Zero policy is responsible for the energy supply and so cost crisis. Neither of these policies were necessary, and the govt had a plethora of (non-vested interest) expert advice and evidence against them, but ignored it.