Covid bank holidays would be the shot in the arm the UK economy so badly needs Simon Jenkins
about 3 years in The guardian
During the pandemic, Britons have saved £250bn. Four extra days off this summer would encourage them to spend it
Ending lockdown, Boris Johnson once said, would be far harder than starting it. Governments prefer imposing controls to lifting them. Now he is set on what he calls “a one-way road to freedom”, he should do so with panache.
The most bizarre gesture of last summer’s brief lockdown respite was the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, halving the price of a restaurant meal in his “eat out to help out” campaign. A hundred million dinners were eaten to order, at the enormous cost of £522m. This threw a temporary lifeline to a hospitality industry that had felt unfairly persecuted by the first Covid lockdown – any food shop could sell alcohol while a pub next door was banned from even selling “off-licence”. No algorithm gave any indication of what Sunak’s gesture did for national happiness or wellbeing, but blame was placed at his feet for sparking the subsequent Covid wave and the lockdown that followed. Continue reading...
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