The Government is in for a well deserved kicking once this is all over and i will be there with my sharpest stilettos on when that times comes but as bad as they have been, they got some things exactly right.
The Job Retention Scheme (JRS) where they pay 80% of employees wages was a pleasant surprise, when it was first mooted as a way to save massive redundancies i thought they would never go for that but a big tick in the plus column for that.
The JRS was also made an easy, straight forward online process which seems to have been delivered ahead of time and with none of the hiccups that generally come with HMRC processes.
The Self Employment Scheme where they pay 80% based on the last three years Tax Returns was also a good idea although that process has not yet come into being but as it is based on the same process as the JRS, it should be fine.
Another thumbs up for the decision to close schools to all except the children of key-workers, it allowed the parents of key-workers deemed essential to the running of the country to carry on essentially running the country while allowing social distancing in the radically reduced classroom.
I liked the 5pm daily briefings with unfiltered questions from journalists which has kept us all informed of the latest developments and the refusal, so far, to buckle to demands from some businesses to open up the lock-down quickly for the economies sake shows that they are willing to take a massive hit financially to keep the population, and the NHS, from being overrun.
All this does not begin to make up for the massive amounts they got, and continue to get, horribly wrong and the consequences for that will be rightly damning but that's for another day.
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