MORNING SERIAL
JUST next door in the Cardiff Blues Stadium there was a rest area for staff and a reception area for relatives. It was opened by Prince Charles (who had recently recovered from the virus himself ) via video, with former Wales centre and qualified doctor Jamie Roberts hosting the ceremony.
Putting the hospital together in just thirty days was a mammoth task and a significant achievement that is well worthy of praise.
The second big opening was B&Q. With the weather unseasonably gorgeous, people queued outside Cardiff’s Culverhouse Cross branch – one of fourteen stores across the UK opened for a social distancing trial. This created a run on garden furniture much like the run on the bank in Mary Poppins as swarms of Cardiffians desperately tried to secure themselves a sun lounger for their garden, banned as they were from lying down in a park. More importantly this activity gave an insight into the retail future we would all need to get used to until there was a vaccine. Limited numbers inside the store, Perspex screens at checkouts, card payments only at tills and floor markings showing what a two-metre distance really looks like.
The final and most significant opening was the UK Government’s job retention scheme (popularly known as furlough) meaning that employers could claim cash grants worth up to 80% of wages, capped at £2,500 a month per worker.
A team of 5,000 HMRC staff were operating the scheme, which saw a huge uptake across the whole of the UK, and particularly in Wales where 78,400 employees were furloughed – a higher proportion of the workforce than in any other UK nation.
The reasons for the scheme’s popularity in Wales are obvious. Wales has a higher number of manufacturing jobs than many parts of the UK and these tend not to be conducive to home working – production lines struggle to go through living rooms.