Billions of pounds

This will answer most of your questions

www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/09/bank-of-england-to-finance-uk-government-covid-19-crisis-spending

They have said it is from the emergency fund - but they did say taxes would have to go up after this is over in order to replenish it. I am hoping they will cancel the HS2 - if anything good has come out of this lockdown it is the fact that many people can quite happily manage to work from home - even conferencing calls can be done. Yet another reason to cancel the HS2 - many people don't need to commute

Would it perhaps be helpful if everyone got given£5000 as they have done in other countries?

JacquiG and those thieves with their boats moored at Monaco are asking for a government handout.

Rosina The country has run a debt since the Bank of England was started in 1694 to raise money to finance wars at that time. The amount borrowed has fluctuated ever since.

The reason why people are going to have to work longer is because we live longer. When the state pension was introduced it was thought that people wouldn't live for more than a year to two after retiring. But the introduction of the Health Service and better treatment for everyone is partly responsible for longevity, as well as shorter working hours, improved safety standards etc etc.

Here here ??? JacquiG maybe we should all look at our own behaviour too, but I somehow doubt it will make much difference to government behaviour in the long term

Deed5y The Labour Party didn't spend all the money, the banks crashed and had to be bailed out with our, tax payers', money. Even the Labour Party couldn't cause a global crash.

Gordon Brown found a way to stabilise the system. He's getting a group of G20 economies experts to sort this problem out.

Might we consider it an opportunity? New ways of working? Better ways of working. Less use of transport. And that is just the start.

Time to go green before everything is lost.

Very true Maisie. If more people knew about this trick, they might be more angry at the unwarrantedness of austerity.

What we need to do is make sure the rich pay their fair share. Not just the footballers, but for example those who have three boats parked in Monaco, after ripping off the BHS Pension fund. They are thieves and pirates IMO.

The other big problem is those who squirrel the money offshore and don't let it circulate to increase wealth for the ordinary person.

Things need to change.

Thought provoking thread. My thoughts are maybe Richard Branson will start paying taxes instead of trying claim money and seeing the NHS. We found money in the past to bail out the banks, give MPS payrises while making a hit on us ordinary folk. Those with money will make money out of all this, read somewhere that JRMogg was busy a pile.
The other morbid thought is if enough of over 65 pop our clogs they are saving our pensions to go in the pot.
I have a feeling its going to hit us hard when this is all over.

MasieD, NotSpaghetti, Growstuff - you're all very astute. Now, perhaps, we can convince supporters of the current government that Austerity was a political, not an economic choice. And who bore the brunt of it? Not wealthy Tories, their donors or chums, but the people who could least afford it. IDS, who tore into them so gleefully, would have many suicides on his conscience if he had one. I draw attention again to Tories defeating a pay rise for nurses, firefighters and other frontline workers in 2017 and then cheering. Not so sneery about them now, are you? Rishi Sunak may be a competent economist and politician. But don't forget he was a hedge fund manager and, together with Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and Dominic Raab - along with the rest of their ghoulish mob, was amongst the hand clappers and cheerers. They're clapping their hands for a different reason now - I hope. Thank whatever is out there that we now have an inspired, experienced, intelligent and compassionate Opposition Leader who will hold the entire grisly collection of them to account.

tanith Great question! I wondered when they announced the £330Bn where it was coming from and why we had to suffer years of 'austerity'.

MaizieD Thank you for explaining so clearly. Creating more money out of thin air will have a cost, risk of inflation, currency devaluation or such. But we're definitely in an emergency bite-the bullet situation. And the best thing to do is to support the rapid growth of GDP when things get back to 'normal' - which, as I understand it, is what gov is doing now, keeping the cogs oiled so to speak, ready for workers to leap back into action when possible.

YES, they were lying all the time. So that their maties could get rich asset-stripping we-the-people (and provide them with jobs once out of office). This has cost us more than money. It's wrecked families, our communities, our industries, our quality of life, it's made the differences between people greater and horribly vitriolic, it's made our public services a pathetic joke at best, it's killed people. Meanwhile, the Tory myth of Labour spendthriftery lives on! And the 'Nudge Office' meme of 'benefit scroungers' refuses to die as it should. People on benefits don't take from the rest of us - unscrupulous gvts do!

This is the first period in the 20th &21st centuries where life expectancy has actually dropped. With all the advances in medicine, technology and nutrition, that should NEVER have happened. And we can see the effects of that on the NHS right now - it was predicted by Operation Cygnus in 2016 (ref article, see below). It was bad enough when we had to wait 4, 5, 6 weeks for a GP appt, now we're going to end up with the highest CV death rate in Europe apparently. It's utterly hypocritical and grossly disingenuous for the gvt to now lead the country in Clapping for Carers.

Excellent article at mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2020/04/
Thank you. We really should stop believing anything the mainstream media tells us. And gvts - until they hold themselves to higher standards.

growstuff What if we created new jobs in rekindled and new industries? Making and selling stuff - real things - has always been the most reliable way to earn money. Make things that people need! Encourage cottage industries! (I'm sure Prince Charles could help with this...LOL!) IMHO, we absolutely need to stop outsourcing most manufacturing to China and other 3rd world countries. We have the tech/knowhow to negate pollution and to provide good working conditions etc now. Globalism is a failed ideology, especially as it's created armies of poor people who work in sweatshops in slave-like conditions.

The alternative could be, as I see it, Universal Basic Income coxed and boxed with a gig economy. Because there simply won't be enough full-time jobs for people - especially with AI breathing down our necks and ready to roll.

lovingpeace Completely agree. Isn't this a great opportunity to really rethink our way of organising ourselves? With the aim of improving quality of life for all - in a natural way (perhaps we have to unlearn that 'quality of life = more new gadgets, more new cars, more holidays abroad, more imbecilic celebs etc').

Nannan2 Thank you for your rant!
I too object to the £10K handout for MPs too! If anything it's cheaper working from home, and you get tax relief. (Been there, done that;-)

So, so agree with you, and others here, on stopping purchasing from China. Bring back our jobs! It's bad enough that we know most of their goods are made in sweatshops but now we don't know whatever it might be infected by. OK, CV is only supposed to be 'active', whatever that means, on surfaces for up to 1day, 2days, 3days, 9days, 14 days or 2yrs in the freezer, depending on which expert you listen to. But why do we want to even subject ourselves to that anxiety? Plus, their propensity to regularly come up with new, exportable pandemics is too dangerous for them to continue being global!!
And they eat dogs

Altissimma Thank you for reminding us so clearly of this heinous crime against a huge number of women. I'm in this cohort too. It's yet one more way that the gvt AND the loyal opposition have shafted and alienated me at least- and likely many more. I honestly don't feel British anymore. I don't know where I actually belong now but I don't recognise this country as 'mine' anymore. And thank you Grannygrumps1

red1 Aye, all designed to keep us anxious and needy. Whilst, in fact, there is plenty of money washing around for all of us to live comfortably - not riotously so, but so that no one has to be homeless, hungry, without proper medical care, struggling from pay day to pay day etc.

dirgni Do you think they're still covertly hanging on to their 'herd immunity' obsession? What if there's another, economic or power agenda at play in all this?

Marjgran Oh yes! What a good idea. As I started reading this thread the first thing that came to mind was 'why aren't we taught about the economy at school?!'
Thatcher introduced that erroneous 'same as a household' concept. I took an economics course at college decades ago but something a wise lady once said to me has always made sense: "Money is simply energy - you have to keep it moving round so that it can do any good."

3nanny6 I worked with gvt in some fascinating roles (to me at least;-) From that I know that there has never been a shortage of money. There has always been plenty to go round.

Tillybelle You may well be onto something there. "Never let a good crisis go to waste"~attributed to Winston Churchill.

fluttERBY123 WW2 loans finally paid off in 2006...and yet somehow we certainly prospered in those years since 1945...!
It's all a game.

@ALL Thank you for such thought provoking comments and inspiration, you've definitely given my brain a much-needed workout today!

Niucla97. Your words really make the situation real. I am so sorry to hear of your son's friend's death. That must be terrible for his family and friends. Also the plight of Farmers is always a concern close to my heart. They never have a day off. As you have said, what are they to do with the stock they are raising when there is no market for them? It is a terrible time for them which puts some of our more mundane predicaments into perspective.

dirgni says "if the government spent more on mass testing the we could all get back to work".

It's been said before:weighing a pig five times a day will not make it any heavier. I think some people are confusing tests with cures or vaccines. I could test negative today and go out and get infected tomorrow.

I expect that everything safe to be reused is being re-used kaylydia - presumably anything that can be autoclaved will be if it’s safe and economic to do so. Ordinary scrubs will probably be washed and re-used (perhaps someone knows about this to comment)? But so much just has to be got rid of. I read the other day that often the intubation tubes are left in the bodies as the viral escape is too great to risk removal.
And then of course there are more people involved if things do need processing for re-use so maybe those people are better used elsewhere and not exposed to the virus through re-use.

I don’t think we should be rude to kaylydia just because they are thinking about the waste.

It is a fraction of the money used during the second world was...

I think quizqueen means that charity should begin at home.

I don’t understand the link quizqueen
unless you prefer that ventilators are sent abroad instead of using them for any of your loved ones here who may catch coronavirus
- what do you mean by this?

I'm sure it cost £137 billion for the banks. I wonder how much this will cost in the end?

It is certainly true that the poorest and those in insecure jobs, which can't be done at home, especially those paying private rents, are losing out the most.

The government must be judged on the way it supports those who are losing most.

I thought that everyone knew that the 'no money' note was a joke - and that austerity was never needed. Crikey, I'm surprised people still believe these rumours. We managed to bail out the banks so we will recover from this, given time.

This crisis has hit people so differently. People like delivery drivers have suddenly become in the greatest demand, whereas people who had steady jobs as restaurant workers, for example, are unable to work with no warning.
It would have been fairer to have given a basic income to everyone, so that everyone could pay for food and rent, and then reclaim it in tax later from those who had not lost out.

AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhh! The last Labour government did not leave the country bankrupt. It's impossible for a country which issues its own currency, such as the UK, to go bankrupt. In any case, the Labour government was not responsible for the collapse of Lehman and the US sub-prime mortgage market.

There was no economic necessity for austerity - it was a con, which was told to people for ideological reasons.

There's an excellent video explanation of how national finances work here:

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2020/04/09/the-millennials-money-2/

It's about 30 mins long, easy to understand. Made by an economist. It would be so helpful if people would watch it. We've plenty of time on our hands at the moment so it shouldn't be too much of a chore.

BTW The video is from a US economist, just substitute UK terms for US terms... The principle is exactly the same.

@ kaylydia. It DANGEROUS to reuse PPE dummy.

Hahaha! Brexit will cost much more than £55,000,000 a day. It's peanuts compared with the amount which needs pumping into the economy anyway.

The Bank of England is going to lend the Treasury money, so that it can issue bonds. In effect, the country will be lending itself money and is being created out of thin air.