The ‘New Normal’ workplace
[continued from Part 1, here]
“New Normal”? Tell that to the queue at the food bank, or those struggling to exist as their often low-paid job ceases to exist. Ask them how they feel about the ‘new normal,’ when they will have the right to ‘work from home’ or they should ‘get on a bike’ as a previous generation’s politician Norman Tebbit was incorrectly quoted as saying, by a press even then hardly worthy of a mention, and cycle to work instead of going by car.
Mr Shapps has said there had been unprecedented levels of walking and cycling during the pandemic. Well that is a surprise , whatever next! According to a BBC report, he said:
“Whilst it’s crucial that we stay at home, when the country does get back to work we need to ask those people to carry on cycling or walking and for them to be joined by many others as well.”
Pop-up bike lanes, wider pavements, safer junctions, and cycle and bus-only corridors will be created in England within weeks as part of a £250m emergency fund. It is the first part a £2bn package for cycling and walking, which was part of a £5bn investment announced in February, by the Department for Transport.
Hang on a minute, has someone ‘let slip’ that this health emergency is not just actually about the health emergency but about green issues and presumably climate change as well?
Regarding working from home, who will pay then for the correct seating arrangements lighting and health & safety surveys and risk assessments, not to mention security and high-quality interconnectivity? It may be that perching on the kitchen table is fine for a couple of weeks but doing that for a length of time may not, in practice, be as good as many may like, neck, back and other aches and pains notwithstanding. I can see lawyers and unions having a field day. Also, I’m not particularly happy with my personal or financial data ending up on a p.c in somebody’s kitchen. Is this all part of a plan? Maybe it is, but it would be nice to hear Boris say something about it.
People are now being told that the ‘new normal’ will bring with it many changes. By whom, what and why is not clear. Who are these people who are hatching plans that will affect us all, certainly if this is true, the government needs to ‘get a grip’ and communicate in a way that is clear and concise, leaving no room for ‘sources’ to put forward the sort of inconsistent mutterings that we have heard over the last few weeks, either way poor communication, mixed messages and more government by decree is not going wash for very much longer.
In the new normal are we going to see that productivity will suddenly take off in the UK? That manufacturing of products now sourced worldwide will suddenly be made in new green field factories with staff all working at social distance of course? All trained by a rejuvenated and highly motivated army of educationalists free from the political dogma that has been allowed to grow in the educational sector for many years! Has Boris got a ‘Beaverbrook’ hiding somewhere in the cabinet office able – and with the authority – to galvanise all this? To be honest I’m not holding my breath.
Would the ‘new normal’ proponents please come out of academic wonderland and tell us, preferably not using models designed and kept in their head or made with a commodore 64 computer circa 1990, how all this is going to be paid for? Are we, for example, looking at the model used in Cyprus by the EU when it gave bank accounts a ‘haircut’ and restricted ATM withdrawals? Is a ‘purchase tax’ being considered? When introduced the last time there was a real national emergency: in 1940, purchase tax was levied at 33% of manufacturing price, raising to 100% before dropping to 33%. Older readers will remember the effects of this and the anomalies it created with various goods. It was still at 25% when V.A.T was introduced in 1972.
Now we seem to have a Conservative Party with, at the last time I looked, a 50% poll rating and the trust and goodwill of the population together with all that implies. Could they, or is it just too much to ask, decide, without the help of sources leaking to the mainstream broadcast and print media, where we are going and how we are going to get there? Because I’m getting the distinct feeling that the part of the country that actually drives the economy and, to match another world war 2 phrase, has the ‘tools to do the job’, is getting just a wee bit fed up with the obvious games that, even after the warning given to Westminster, the media, and the political elite, post-Brexit, are still being played.
The ‘New Normal’ whatever that is supposed to mean, sounds like something dreamt up in the behavioural change unit in the cabinet office to condition the masses to accept the present status quo with a little relaxing of the restrictions. Good luck with that, people are starting to notice. Goodwill, patience and compliance does not pay the mortgage or put food on the table.
Photo by clubjuggler 
NORMAN, this piece of yours is mighty depressing. – Understand that I don’t discount it, but there is such a thing as individualism, and a wish to do better. – I have a roll model with my late Father. – He was finally out of the RAF in late 1945 and we lived with my Mother’s parents. – He then had to do battle for a new built house that he paid rent for. – Some years later we moved to a better house and he took a mortgage on it. – Again, years later, we moved to a house with ‘grounds’, oak panelling and a billiard room, and he had me present with the selling agent as he wrote a cheque to purchase outright ! ….. He called himself a businessman, but I knew him to be a most able Grocer, with immense determination and drive, even to his retirement to a cottage in Bournemouth at the head of a chine down to the beach ! ….. By super hard work and graft, he was able to do all this within 30 years, and from taking on the family business that was owned by the Bank, and instead of customers he had multiple debt, he made good in his own inimitable way ! ….. I tried to emulate his ability, but with only some minimal success. – What this shouts loudly, is that knowing your business, allied to hard work with determination will win through, because I have witnessed it with my own eyes ! ….. and Yes, I miss him !
Part 2 is depressing yes. But arguing with a Green not so long ago, when she said Britain had nothing to offer, to trade, I said we have BRAINS. She thought I was talking about the so called Unis. I wasn’t of course, I was thinking more of that determination – guts – even sometimes bloody mindedness. The entrepreneurial spirit is it? That has always been part of our character. After all we were the best pirates in the world in Elizabethan times. Then the Shopkeepers were the only ones that stood up to Napoleon!
We led the Industrial Revolution. Now we have to lead in new ways, developing new technologies and methods. Meanwhile it is mainland Europe tangled in the Napoleonic Code and it’s Bureaucracy.
I think we CAN still do it.
I remember getting with purchase tax and charging 22.5 % max on luxuries involved. Most stuff never got taxed at all . Although when Wilson and his lot got in, all sorts of apalling things happened. His government was maniac and shambles mainly memorable for Sandwiches and breakfast with ignorant union leaders.whose main intellectual ability was to shout for more money. Nothing changes. and nothing else matters to them.
When Blaire said Education, education education, etc he wasn’t saying make it better, He was saying destroy it finally… Improve on Crossland and Wilson.
”Older readers will remember . . . when V.A.T was introduced in 1972”.
My memory is ‘luxury tax’ was renamed VAT in preparation of rule by Common Market.
(At the same time TVA (guess what?) was introduced in France).
Introduction of VATwas a precondition of DeGaulleof allowing Heath to join the common market. Its acknowledged purpose being further distruction of British firms,To whom it was extra costs of government interference and a straight jacket on trade, with the retail sector..It has to be the first thing to go.Freeing up thousands and thousands of civil servants etc.for proper jobs..
TGS That is how I remember introduction of VAT. It was the opening shots of the ‘Common Market’s’ war to destroy Britain’s economy! All those civil servants though, are probably too indoctrinated to do any proper job.
Bicycles, Obviously dreamt up by someone who inhabits flatland. Try cycling when there’s a few hills mate. Not to mention rain and snow plus lunatics in other vehicles. It was hard enough when I was a teenager.
But then I suppose whoever it was intends this for others, not themselves.
I ‘spect all the extra bikes can come from China. (Sanitised of course).
The actual problem is too many people. Natures (or Chinese) virus might solve this problem even yet.
“too many people”
From what I see every day the “too many” are certainly not real native Brits, and not evenly distributed throughout our nation. But never mind, we will soon be culled if government continues its subservience to the globalists and their mouthpieces such as the UN in pursuit of its various agendas; all published if one cares to look but outside the field of vision of far too many.
Could CVD just be a trial run or the start of it? Certainly it must give government confidence in their ability to exert control over many of us.
Yeah well, I seem to remember Boris cycling to work in the HoC. Didn’t a copper try to stop him getting in or something like that?
Yes, Too many People. Certainly true of London and other big cities. Apparently they are STILL getting across the channel in small boats. Britain is TOO CROWDED. I’m blowed if I’m going to let a Chinese Virus kill us off though.
Tell you what all those Civil Servants TGS mentioned could be sent fruit picking this year. That’s flat land and plenty of room for social distancing !!