The first thought that occurred to me as I saw the crowds queuing to get into shops yesterday morning was: Why aren’t they at work?
Some of the bargain hunters jostling outside Nike Town, on London’s Oxford Street, looked as if they’d come straight from a Black Lives Matter demo.
Queue jumpers tried to force their way to the front, desperate to get their hands on a new pair of cut-price trainers.
Primary shoppers were queuing outside the Birmingham store on Monday morning to get their fashion fix
The return of non-essential retailers caused crowds to gather and return to the shopping aisles on Monday
The two-metre social-distancing rule went straight out of the window. Elsewhere, shoppers laid siege to Primark stores throughout Britain.
At the Brighton branch, people started camping outside at 3am.
The flagship Birmingham Primark opened at 7.25am to accommodate customers, some of whom had already been waiting for two hours.
Even upmarket Bicester Village was mobbed by middle – class Middle – Englanders after cheap designer gear.
There hasn’t been this much activity in the retail sector since the frenzy of panic-buying bog rolls back in March.
Such bizarre scenes, repeated across the country, only added to the general air of insanity which has been spreading faster than coronavirus over the past few weeks.
Customers were happy with their shopping hauls as stores reopened for the first time in months
Non-essential retailers were able to reopen, prompting long queues outside shops around the country, including at Nike Town on Oxford Street
Shoppers filled the centre of the pavement as they queued to shop in Primark, Wood Green on Monday
What struck me, too, was the fact that most of those with money burning a hole in their pockets appeared to be young and able-bodied.
On any normal Monday morning they would have jobs to go to.
But, presumably, they’re all on furlough. Here’s the £300billion quesion: If it’s safe for them to flock to shopping malls, what reason is there for preventing them earning a living?
Young adults are at minimal risk from Covid-19. They’re openly ignoring lockdown restrictions, anyway, gathering in parks, going to house parties and attending anti-racism protests.
More than 6,000 turned out at all-night raves in the North of England over the weekend.
In Manchester, a 20-year-old man died of a drugs overdose and three more people were stabbed.
The police showed no more interest in shutting down these illegal gatherings than they have in confronting violent, statue toppling Black Lives Matter supporters.
Still, what else should we expect?
People with too much time on their hands and plenty of money, but nothing to spend it on, are always going to find an outlet for their boredom.
If you’d have asked any of those trying to barge their way into Nike Town yesterday, they’d have been quick to tell you they were only doing what the Government wanted.
The Prime Minister has been out and about urging people to shop until they drop, after liberating the sale of non-essential goods.
Surely an even better way of reviving our moribund national economy would be to allow thousands of other mothballed businesses to reopen now — including bars, restaurants and hairdressers.
The longer this shutdown goes on, the less likely it is that many of those out shopping yesterday will have jobs to go back to.
By recklessly extending furlough until October, the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has institutionalised idleness.
What began as an emergency measure has now become a way of life.
Company bosses who want to get back to normal find themselves unable to do so because some of their staff simply refuse to return.
In Leeds, shoppers were cordoned off from the road as they waited to visit Sports Direct
Take the case of a small scaffolding firm I heard about recently.
There’s plenty of activity in the construction industry, but half of the ten people the company employs are reluctant to resume work.
The firm can’t operate without 50 per cent of its employees and there’s a real danger it will go under. But thanks to Dishi Rishi, nor is there any incentive for the refuseniks to go back.
While the Government is picking up the bill for 80 per cent of their wages, they are content to stay home.
Surveys show that most people on furlough feel better off than they did when they were working.
With fewer overheads such as travel costs, and shops, bars and restaurants closed, the average household has been able to save around £700 a month.
Effectively, at least half the country is on a six-month summer holiday, paid for by the taxpayer with money we haven’t got. Never mind the hundreds of billions of pounds it is costing up front, what about the lost tax revenues, too?
There were yet more queues in Milton Keynes, where people waited to get inside a Primark for the first time since March
People are losing the habit of working, which is probably just as well since millions are about to discover the joys of permanent unemployment.
Those punters queuing excitedly outside Primark yesterday, or squabbling over a pair of fancy plimsolls in Nike Town, have absolutely no conception of the catastrophic scale of the carnage to come.
We now live in a country where the Government is paying people to stay away from work while at the same time pleading with them to go shopping on the taxpayers’ credit card.
This is madness. It can’t go on. Britain needs to get back to work, now. With corona in retreat, it’s time to embrace risk.
Ministers can start by reopening all the schools and threatening to sack any militant teacher who refuses to go back.
That will free up parents to resume earning their living.
Key workers have been reporting for duty throughout this crisis. It’s time for everyone else to do the same.
Unless the Government immediately jettisons ruinous restrictions like the two-metre rule and the 14-day quarantine on airline passengers, we are all going to Hell in a handcart.
More good news from Covid-19.
A couple of weeks ago, I celebrated the fact that coronavirus had sounded the death knell for all-you-can-eat hotel buffets.
Now we learn that pubs will have to turn off music and mute big-screen TVs so we can hear each other speak without having to break social distancing rules. Trebles all round!
KFC has apologised for refusing to serve a man on a horse and cart who tried to buy a party bucket of fried chicken from a drive-thru window in Carlisle.
The manager said Ian Bell’s seven-year-old Irish Cob posed an elf’n’safety risk to other customers.
Ian Bell, with his horse Jon Jon, was refused service at a KFC drive-thru in Carlisle when he tried to buy a bargain bucket while in his horse and cart
It reminded me of the classic Curb Your Enthusiasm episode in which Larry David walks up to a drive-thru window at a burger bar after locking himself out of his car.
He, too, was refused service because he was on foot. Some establishments set up to cater for motorists can be quite rigid when it comes to making the rules.
In Only Fools And Horses, Trigger wasn’t taking any chances when the chaps got stranded in Margate on their Jolly Boys’ Outing.
In the scramble for overnight accommodation, Trig struck lucky. ‘I got a room in a motel. They don’t know I ain’t got a car…’
As far-Left headbangers target statues, including Winston Churchill, a petition in Nashville, Tennessee, aims to replace a monument to a Confederate soldier with a bust of Dolly Parton.
If it’s a monumental bust you’re after, look no further than Dolly.
Back in Blighty, Boris suggests that instead of toppling dead white males, we should erect other statues of significant figures from black and other ethnic minorities.
When Mohamed Fayed owned Fulham FC, he stuck up a statue of Michael Jackson outside Craven Cottage.
I wondered at the time if this could be the start of a trend and there would soon be statues of the Four Tops at Villa Park, and Barry White at Anfield.
Still, Boris is on to something. Perhaps we might see Tottenham’s Walter Tull, the pioneering black professional footballer and World War I hero, commemorated at White Hart Lane.
Mind you, leave it to Haringey Council and we’d end up with a statue of Winston Silcott instead.
Speaking of the Confederacy, the Guardian is being accused of hypocrisy over its support for Black Lives Matter.
During the American Civil War, the now achingly right-on newspaper backed the South, opposed the abolition of slavery and called Abraham Lincoln ‘abhorrent’.
The Guardian was founded by a cotton merchant who made his fortune off the backs of slaves.
Surely it is time for the paper to shut down in shame and make reparations to the descendants of those its founder exploited. The Guardian Must Fall!