Work in Progress

This is the area of the garden I'm preparing ready to turn into a wild garden with a wildlife pond and wild flowers. Progress today was much quicker given the rain yesterday, but most of the time is spent picking out stones, large flints and some builder's rubble. I was hoping to put the pond in during Autumn - not sure that'll happen. I also packed away they garden furniture and stained glass panels in the garage for Winter given the heavy rain and strong winds due tomorrow. I attended an interesting U3A Zoom talk today on wills, tax planning and powers of attorney. It just reinforced what I knew anyway, that the UK tax system is incredibly discriminatory against single people, particularly if they don't have children. 

Day 193 / Full Day 185 of Lockdown / Day 11 of Rule of Six (for my record only)
UK deaths up 40 to 41,902 (revised basis), with new daily cases up by 6.634 (highest daily cases recorded, but more testing now) with the rolling daily average up 48% from a week ago, and with 1,542 patients in hospital. NHS Test & Trace reports a 180% increase in positive cases since the end of Aug and only 28% of in person test results are received within 24 hours. Total cases globally to date passed 32m last night, up 1m in 3 days. Iceland, Denmark and Slovakia (which is below our infection rate) have been added to England's travel quarantine list. The NHS Covid-19 app has finally been launched over 4 months after it was first mentioned, I have already downloaded it as have a million others and I encourage you to also as apart from the obvious, there's some good info there. 

The Chancellor announced a new Job Support Scheme to support 'viable' jobs from November for 6 months. Employers with depressed turnover have the option of keeping employees on at least a third of their hours with 2/3 of the remaining wages topped up half by the govt and half by employers (govt contribution capped at £697.92  per month). This is in addition to the Job Retention Bonus. In addition the self-employment income support scheme is extended; a 'pay as you grow' extension to the Bounce Back loan scheme to give businesses 10 years to repay; and the VAT cut to 5% for hospitality and tourism is extended until end Mar. There will still be lots of redundancies, but this seems a balanced and realistic package of support.