Margaret Thatchers children come home to roost

Subject: Margaret Thatchers children come home to roost

One of the unknown consequences of the lock down and the dislocation of business is the effect of so many people being placed out of work by business's not returning.
Of course it a disaster for the entrepreneur who had a thriving business and was forced to close because of the restrictions. This part of the small business community has been the backbone of keeping the nation alive since we allowed industry to go to the wall and encourage the population to buy everything from China. Tax revenues and importantly employment shifted from the industrial sector to the thrifty service sector where the businesses could come and go but as a collective the new employers were encouraged, through a employee top up system to pay as little as they could get away with whilst providing few if any terms of employment. We have teetered along now for 10 years accepting the insecurity of so many in the workforce, we have brushed over the stress caused by not having any statutory rights of employment and now, with the pandemic closing so many businesses and making others incapable of making much of a profit, laying of staff will create wholesale unemployment such as we have never seen since the 1930s Great Depression. In times of depression the stoicism of the people is the only guarantee that society will continue to function and the rule of law be upheld. That implicit stoicism is no longer a trait of a multicultural society, the dangers of unrest will be amplified as the chronically sick battle  for their lives in hospital and we of course won't have many pubs open to wash away our troubles.

As a society we are cut from a different cloth to the one who lived through the 1930s. Much more compliment, much more used to real hardship, the stoicism of the workers and their families allowed them to tighten their belts and get on with what they had. Today in a society gifted with the concept of 'rights', where the second car and the annual holiday abroad is deemed a right having to downsize their aspirations is manifest in the suicidal race to the beach last weekend, a nation epitomised by, me first and to hell with everyone else, Margaret Thatchers children have indeed come home to roost.