Let’s clap for business and help UK workers win Covid war – Sir Andrew Cook

AFTER 75 years of relative peace, Britain is once again at war. In 1939 we faced a visible foe with destructive weaponry and hostile intent. Then, though unprepared, we had weapons and money.
Read More
These coronavirus corporate villains won’t get my support – Andrew Vine

This time, the enemy is invisible and potentially fatal. We have few weapons to defeat it, and little money.

In 1939, Britain was put on a war footing.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad
Chancellor Rishi Sunak has been leading the Government's response to the coronavirus crisis.Chancellor Rishi Sunak has been leading the Government's response to the coronavirus crisis.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak has been leading the Government's response to the coronavirus crisis.

Frivolous activities, such as horse racing, were curtailed. Hospitals were made ready for the many expected civilian casualties from the bombing of cities.

The fire brigade was reinforced. Volunteer forces were recruited. Men of military age were conscripted into the Armed Forces; that is men who were not in ‘‘reserved occupations’’ making the myriad machines, weapons and equipment required to fight the war, or growing the crops to feed the nation and mining the coal to fuel it.

Without these ‘‘reserved occupations’’, it would not have been possible to fight the war, let alone win it.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In this war of 2020 – this ‘‘Covid war’’, I shall call it – there is one big difference. We do not need military equipment, but there is one big thing we do need, and it’s called wealth.

Yorkshire industrialist Sir Andrew Cook.Yorkshire industrialist Sir Andrew Cook.
Yorkshire industrialist Sir Andrew Cook. | Other 3rd Party

Governments do not create wealth. The Chancellor’s promise of £350bn has to come from somewhere.

Yes, he can borrow it, if he can find someone to lend it to him. Yes, he can print it, but printing money is a fast track to economic catastrophe.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The only safe way for a government to create sound money is by encouraging private businesses to work profitably, and to tax them.

Neither the media, nor the public sector, nor indeed it seems the government itself, seem to understand this properly.

Undated handout photo issued by Dyson of their CoVent ventilator on a hosptal bed. Billionaire entrepreneur James Dyson has said "the race is on" to get a new ventilator created specifically for the coronavirus pandemic into production. PA Photo. Issue date: Wednesday March 25, 2020. In an email to staff, the inventor said his eponymous company had designed the "CoVent" at the request of Boris Johnson, and promised to donate 5,000 to the international relief effort. Mr Dyson said teams of engineers had been working solidly on the design since receiving the call from the Prime Minister earlier this month.Undated handout photo issued by Dyson of their CoVent ventilator on a hosptal bed. Billionaire entrepreneur James Dyson has said "the race is on" to get a new ventilator created specifically for the coronavirus pandemic into production. PA Photo. Issue date: Wednesday March 25, 2020. In an email to staff, the inventor said his eponymous company had designed the "CoVent" at the request of Boris Johnson, and promised to donate 5,000 to the international relief effort. Mr Dyson said teams of engineers had been working solidly on the design since receiving the call from the Prime Minister earlier this month.
Undated handout photo issued by Dyson of their CoVent ventilator on a hosptal bed. Billionaire entrepreneur James Dyson has said "the race is on" to get a new ventilator created specifically for the coronavirus pandemic into production. PA Photo. Issue date: Wednesday March 25, 2020. In an email to staff, the inventor said his eponymous company had designed the "CoVent" at the request of Boris Johnson, and promised to donate 5,000 to the international relief effort. Mr Dyson said teams of engineers had been working solidly on the design since receiving the call from the Prime Minister earlier this month.

They should all be encouraging people to safely go to work, not hindering 
them.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

There is a perception that most people can ‘‘work from home’’. Maybe true, if 
you are a clerk, media type or software geek.

I am bound to question whether the lack of discipline, peer interaction and personal dialogue which working from home necessitates cannot but damage the efficiency of any business, but we’ll leave that for the time being.

However, many people can’t work from home. Those who work in factories making things to sell, in the process paying the taxes that fund the government, the NHS, and the police, have to travel to work.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In this essential function, they should be helped by the authorities. Instead, they are being hindered.

There are disturbing reports of the South Yorkshire Police stopping car-sharing workers travelling to their factories because ‘‘they are not two metres apart’’.

Public bus services are being cut 
back to discourage people from leaving their homes. Similarly, from London come announcements that the Tube service is being reduced, just at the time when extra trains should be put on, especially at rush-hour times, to ease overcrowding.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

I quite agree that the NHS should be protected from avoidable pressures. But for the public services to hinder the very people who create the tax revenues to keep the NHS going is not only stupid, it is unlawful and also contrary to government guidance.

Think also beyond Covid. For more than 20 years, British manufacturing has been ravaged by the great stampede to buy from China.

This has brought the consumer an abundance of cheap goods. But it has also brought about a great imbalance in the British economy, with an over-dependence on financial services.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Now it has brought us Covid. Is it not time for the tide to turn and a ‘‘Made in Britain’’ recovery to begin?

So yes, let’s have a clap for the NHS, 
but let’s have another for those heroes 
of the private sector who are still 
working in our factories, creating 
the wealth that keeps the country 
going.

Instead of treating them as social pariahs, cheer them as they drive along the deserted roads late at night and in the small hours.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Give them extra commuter buses 
and trains. Help them do their jobs, because without them, there will be another crisis to follow: an economic crisis, and this one could be 
irreversible.

Sir Andrew Cook is chairman 
of William Cook Holdings.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

Postal subscription copies can be ordered by calling 0330 4030066 or by emailing [email protected]. Vouchers, to be exchanged at retail sales outlets - our newsagents need you, too - can be subscribed to by contacting subscriptions on 0330 1235950 or by visiting www.localsubsplus.co.uk where you should select The Yorkshire Post from the list of titles available.

If you want to help right now, download our tablet app from the App / Play Stores. Every contribution you make helps to provide this county with the best regional journalism in the country.

Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor