Lockdown – 24 Mar onwards

London is now officially under restrictions that equate to a lockdown. Boris didn’t call it a lockdown, but it is. You are only to leave your house for 4 very important things:

• Buying essentials – Even then minimise the amount of trips, and use delivery services. Go out once (1 time) and buy 3 weeks of food and stay in.
• Traveling to work if you must work on-site and can’t work from home.
• One form of exercise -but really can’t you exercise in the garden or at home? Don’t risk it!
• A medical need – For example you have to collect a prescription and can’t have it delivered, or you are traveling on your way to hospital

Outside of these reasons you are not allowed to leave your house. You are NOT allowed to have visitors or visit friends. The only people you may hang out with is your household, and so in the case of a shared house (HMO) it means your flatmates/housemates – so I hope you like them.

WORK & TRAVELING TO WORK

The spirit of the lockdown is that you work from home or that your employer furlough’s you. The government has stepped in and said they will pay  80% of the salary of anyone furloughed, so it won’t cost your company anything if they give you a 20% salary cut but tell you to just stay at home and don’t work at all. This is such a good deal.

If you feel your job is inessential please tell your employer to furlough you. If they don’t understand how it works I can explain it to them on the phone. It’s all over google and you can easily find out about it. There is no reason you should be putting all your flatmates, housemates, and your own health at risk just so that your employer can keep making bird seed (one factory example I read about on the Internet – so it can’t be wrong, right?).

Self employed – They are working on legislation to help self-employed people with benefits/pay similar to what they are giving employed people. Currently talking about paying you 80% of your missed income based on the average of your last 3 year’s worth of tax returns.

BUYING ESSENTIALS

ORDER ONLINE!! Send 1 housemate with a list for the house. I don’t know, just be sensible.

BOREDOM

Board games, board games, and more board games. They work if there is an Internet outage, they don’t require charging, they are social. Otherwise buy a PS5 (is it out yet? If not what a missed opportunity), buy playstation games, buy books, start a hobby, take up gardening – of course order what you need online. Take this time to improve yourself.