Tagged With: health
Unlocking the UK
Background.
The UK needs to have a strategy for relaxing quarantine restrictions that has elements of
- Graduated / Phased unlock -some services are less/more essential than others so we need a graduated
- Balancing simplicity with detail
- Allowing flexible/dynamic lockdown/unlock as needed
Concept
There are many types of business/organizations ( and I am sure i have missed some ) I would allocate each sector a “grade” like
- A – essential for individual life
- B – good for community health
- C – nice to have
- D – luxuries that can wait
I would also define phases of lock down.
- Red = Closed
- Orange = Partial opening ( with social distancing )
- Green = Open with social distancing
People would look up which letter “their” sector is in and each week the government says which phase the different letters are in.
At the moment the ‘A’ would be green but everything else would be red. Overtime as the unlock progressed more and more sectors would go green.
I believe that sectors can be broadly split into “Services” and “Physical Goods” and that within those groups there are different types (rows) and stages ( columns )
Services
| Collages, Research & Training | Strategy & Management | Service Delivery | |
| Health / Care Services | A | A | A |
| Emergency Services( inc Police ) | A | A | A |
| Utilities | B | A | A |
| Coroner / Undertakers | B | A | A |
| Repair / Maintenance | B | B | B |
| Transport | C | B | A |
| Governments / Courts / Prisons | C | B | A |
| Finance / Insurance | D | C | A |
| News / Public infomation | D | C | A |
| Hair Dresser / Pedicures | D | C | B |
| Remote Entertainment | D | C | B |
| Construction and property sales/moves | D | C | B |
| Leisure / Sports | D | C | C |
Physical Goods
| Manufacturing/ Generation | Logistics (Storage and Distribution) | Sales / Retail | Support /Processing (Online) | WasteDisposal | |
| Food | A | A | A | A | A |
| Pharmaceutical | A | A | B | B | A |
| Clothing ( inc PPE ) | A | A | B | B | B |
| Garden items | B | B | B | B | A |
| Education and Crafts | B | B | B | B | B |
| Business items | B | B | B | B | B |
| Household items | D | C | C | C | A |
Laws and Taxation
We need to encourage businesses and society to adopt a new normal, and we need to recoup the money that has been thrown at covid. We need to balance physical health, mental health and the economy I’d make changes to taxation as follows
- I’d have a tax on “offices” designed to have companies support remote / working from home. I’d want to encourage flexible working where people could work from home or from a local hot-desk hub.
- I’d have income tax bands based on the ABCD categories listed in the tables above
- I’d say every year somebody works in the Health/Care or emergency services that the government writes off a proportion of their ( student or credit ) debt . The goal being to encourage people to work in key services for at least a few years
- I’d abolish national insurance and roll that into income tax. I’d increase VAT but ensure it did not apply to food/clothes/utilities. That way you would be taxed on “non essentials” that you purchased
Breaking the spiral of alone
I’m not a people person and i often find myself alone. It takes effort for me to be in a crowd, I struggle with small talk. I think a LOT, about EVERYTHING, and ALL the time yet common sense is something I’ve never grasped. Sometimes I label myself with Asperger’s, but everyone is different and a single label feels like a straight jacket.
I think sometimes being alone is a spiral. You do not see anyone for a day, for two days, for three and it becomes a week. You don’t talk to family for one week then two weeks. When you realize how longs it been it feels an unnerving challenge to “make the effort”. Its easy to spiral down into a cocoon where the world is something you can ignore and switch off with a tv remote.
The thing is we are social animals. I believe there are two things that define us and set us above other animals. Firstly we communicate, more than any other species. We communicate With speech and music, and art and sculpture , with food and even scent. Secondly, we build tools to change and control our world, we see what others have done and create better tools, we combine what we learn from others to make new discoveries and creations. Even when we are alone we may keep a diary to communicate with future selves. Our need to communicate, to share, to give is what makes us human.
Depression and doubt are traps that can effect all of us to greater or lesser degrees at different points in our lives. Medications can help some but I honestly believe that the best medicine is to communicate. It is painful at first like starting to exercise, it may never become easy, but I believe communication is as important as eating and breathing. Communication is about both listening and talking, it is about sharing. Its tempting to push things down, to carry on alone and just “pull ourselves together grow a pair”. I believe that keeping everything pushed down inside ourselves feeds a time bomb that stealthy waits until we cannot contain it any more. You cant force somebody communicate, but you can show them that they can do so safely, bit by bit, day by day.
I keep this blog, to say what i think of the world, to the world. Maybe people will read it, maybe they will agree or maybe they will disagree. Writing this blog it is good for me, it is a release and so much better than letting the thoughts and opinions race around as a storm in my mind. I do not write it to garner sympathy nor praise. I write it to share.
Once or twice in my life I have found people I can fully relax with. I treasure those people. Those people inspire me to try and be that person for somebody else, to let somebody know they are not alone. I still do not like crowds, I still find it relaxing to be alone. I doubt that is ever going to change. But so long as I communicate, as long as I share, then even when I am alone, I am not.