Back to work, the lot of you

YOU can't have missed the headlines last week. Story after story after story detailing the dire financial straits into which we are descending.

It is a distressing and seemingly endless litany of employment woes as jobs go. All of which makes it even more baffling why so many employers have already committed to allowing staff to continue to work from home.

This despite yesterday being the day the government ditched its official guidance that you should all “work from home” if you could.

The numbers involved are dizzying. Financial consultancy KPMG has said most of its 16,000 employees will not be expected to return until 2021. RBS has similarly instructed 50,000 staff.

Coca-Cola and Vodafone are set to confirm the same directive to their staff and Google has said staff don’t need to return until next July!

In some instances, that means it will have been 16 months since some were at their actual desks. This is economic suicide.

While all the companies I’ve listed can take care of themselves, it is associated businesses that will suffer.

They’re not just the ones that rely, as suppliers, on the larger companies, but think of all the newsagents, cafes, bars, restaurants, sandwich shops, pubs, dry cleaners and other firms that will wither without any trade if no-one is going to work.

In the City of London, footfall in some areas is down to just 15% of what it was. All this as officials disclosed that one day last week there were just seven deaths from Covid 19, the lowest number since the middle of March. In reality, providing you’re not in one of the vulnerable groups, you’re highly unlikely to be struck down with Covid – but why isn’t the government getting that message across?

We will soon be drowning in more than £300billion of debt. Instead of banging on about cycling, Boris Johnson needs to grab hold of this and bosses need to be instructed to get people back to work. Otherwise coronavirus will claim yet another victim – the nation’s economy.