in horsemouth's humble opinion

 ''before the ban is lifted, the government must give renters a real way out of debt. that means a lifeline of emergency grants to help pay off ‘covid-arrears’ so people can avoid the terrifying risk of eviction altogether.'

but. as a friend commented. they won't. 

'a 2020 study by health economist katharina janke of lancaster university and colleagues that found the increase in unemployment that followed the 2008 financial crisis led to 900,000 extra people with chronic illness in the UK over two years.'

and this is what feeds in to calls by the tories and others to lift lockdown. fears of economic effects, fears of health effects, fears of educational effects, fears of psychological effects. 

but of course it doesn't have to be this way. 

what followed 2008 was austerity which was a political decision around the management of capitalist debt accepted as state debt (and arguably even in capitalist terms a harmful decision). it was a decision that charged the costs of the crisis to ethnic minority, working class and the poor people. 

and of course covid has killed and harmed ethnic minority, working class and the poor people disproportionately during the pandemic and so will austerity and capitalist restructuring in pursuit of higher profits and new opportunities afterwards.  

in part it is the failure to invest in healthcare, in decent housing, etc. that prepared the poor for covid by weakening their health. 

it is the constant attempts to unlock in the interest of profits that have prevented a strategy  of virus elimination. 

but of course it doesn't have to be this way. 

has covid changed the price of human life? covid should challenge  the very notion of human life having a price,  rather than accustoming us to it. 

but of course it doesn't have to be this way. 

let's see if horsemouth can find an upside to the current situation. 

a friend remarked that clipping the wings of the city is one of the upsides of brexit. 

horsemouth replied that indeed it may be the only upside. 

there are lots of arguments as to why it's a good thing. that the money the city brings in distorts the economy of london making things (housing in particular) more expensive for us mere mortals, that it distorts the uk economy by sucking in capital and talent that could otherwise be used more productively, that it distorts the global economy by providing a complaisant place to launder your dirty money. this will probably now just go on elsewhere (amsterdam most probably). but there will also be trickle down (such as it is) and tax-take/ business rate take reductions that will make london as a whole and the country as a whole poorer (ihho - in horsemouth's humble opinion). 

the US is full of dying cities, covid and brexit together could easily be the beginning of the end for london. the flats for speculators bubble is a big one and like the dinosaurs it will take a long time to die. 

horsemouth's argument would be that there may be something worse than neo-liberalism and globalisation and that would be a neo-liberalism and anti-globalisation that channels populist and xenophobic sentiments, where our rulers get to be 'big fish in a little pond', and that was exactly where we were headed until the covid hit. and now we will be going there with tons of state debt which (in a rerun of 2008 - 2018) they will get us to pay off via lost decades of austerity.

horsemouth doesn't think brexit and covid will free us from capitalist looting instead he thinks they will intensify capitalist looting, the state (us) buying up disused office blocks for the next generation of slum housing for example (he's proposing the name jenrickvilles).