Well, as we all know, 2020's been a hard year with Coronavirus sadly leaving its mark on people and the economy. Deaths linked to the virus (deaths from any cause within 28 days of a positive covid test) have just exceeded 100,000 in the UK and it doesn't look like letting up any time soon - although the vaccine(s) should begin to bring some hope of fighting it.
Viruses are not new - I believe the earliest recorded cases of influenza were around Europe in the twelfth century and often it's people with underlying health conditions who die from it, but, as we have seen from Coronavirus, that isn't always the case.
Then of course just around a 100 years ago we had the Spanish Flu which worldwide infected around 500 million people - and is suspected of killing 50 million - mostly the young and fit! Other than that it was similar to Coronavirus in that there was no existing vaccine and it was overwhelming hospitals and other medical services. (As a matter of interest - the UK Office of National Statistics tells us that deaths from influenza during the years 2013 to 2018 averaged around 17,000 per year -- of which 14,500 per year were in the 65+ age bracket.)
What we are also learning is that online shopping has become 'the thing', but at a cost - our towns and cities are not only losing their big department stores, but smaller businesses are failing, too. No foot-fall for weeks / months on end is having its effect on the owner's ability to pay expenses (rents, business rates, tax, salaries, etc). Whether the big stores have brought this upon themselves by not investing in online options - or whether doing that was just going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, who knows. But what it does mean is the huge corporations (Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft etc etc) are hoovering up all that trade and at some stage will have no competition whatsoever. They will become all powerful - and we know what absolute power does. It would be different if those huge organisations paid ... I was going to say 'paid their fair share of tax in each country from which they receive income', but, of course they will say they do. And, perhaps, legally, that's correct, but is it morally correct? If they side-step paying then how do we keep services like the NHS or local government departments operating? Because with the closure of big businesses comes big unemployment - and all that brings in personal and financial anguish? Governments need to up their game to ensure that these huge companies have no wriggle-room - perhaps we should make these companies advertise how much tax they've paid as a percentage of sales in those countries - maybe it could go alongside their fancy logos. Then consumers can make a choice about with whom they spend their hard earned cash.
Well, that's my rant for today. Sorry it's taken so long to get into print again, here.
Stay safe, folks.
