The Times - UK (2020-08-07)

24 1GM Friday August 7 2020 | the times

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Crop circle

enthusiasts

were having

a field day

M

y friend Judy and I

headed out early on

Sunday to walk to

Barbury Castle along

the ancient path that is

the Ridgeway in Wiltshire. We

parked at Hackpen Hill and

immediately spotted a sign that said

“Access to Crop Circle, 400m”. Wait,

I thought, aren’t crop circles made by

Martians? When did they learn to

type? Or go metric?

Even the words “crop circle” made

me feel nostalgic for the days when

the summers were full of alien

madness stories. We couldn’t resist. It

was actually quite hard to avoid the

circle, given the signs, not to mention

the park-and-ride. The circle was,

indeed, outstanding in its field,

manned by two guys who had set

up a little info table and hand

sanitiser station.

It was all in aid of charity

(Martians are public-spirited). One

Banks are using the

crisis as a cover to

shut more branches

Andrew Ellson

W

alk down any high

street and the only

place you are likely

to see a queue now is

outside a bank.

Thankfully, this is not because

lenders are on the brink of collapse,

as in 2007. And it’s certainly not

because any of them are offering

attractive savings rates.

Customers are queuing for the

simple reason that banks are still

operating with dramatically reduced

opening hours. And it is not as if

their opening hours were known for

convenience in the first place.

Santander, for example, is not

opening any branches before 10am,

and they are all closed by 3pm.

Many shut at 2pm. Lloyds is doing

little better, shutting most of its

branches at 3.30pm. It’s a similar

pattern at Barclays, HSBC, Natwest

and Nationwide.

Although most shops are

managing to return to normal

hours, banks claim that their hours

remain reduced because of a lack

of resources. They say staff have

been shielding, have childcare

responsibilities or are needed in

other parts of the business. How

these problems disproportionately

affect banks is unclear.

The reality is that another agenda

is at play. The chief executive of

Barclays hinted at it last week when

he said: “The more we can get

consumers migrating to our digital

offering and using our banking app

and online to manage their

transaction volumes, the better for

us.” In short, banks want to

encourage customers online by

making it harder to use their

branches, and the pandemic has

provided the perfect cover.

By limiting capacity and serving

fewer customers, they are creating a

ready-made excuse for closing more

branches by saying that the numbers

of people using them are down. Even

before Covid-19, banks were making

this argument, which is strange

because my closest Santander has

always been incredibly busy. No

wonder, when it is the only branch

serving a huge area of London.

The industry’s cynical approach to

opening hours and closures is a

betrayal not only of customers but

of communities. Many people,

particularly the elderly and small

business owners, rely on their local

bank. A third of branches have shut

in the past five years and many high

streets cannot afford more closures.

Banks are being disingenuous

about their ability to serve their

customers and are trying to expedite

further closures to boost their

bottom lines. All the while they run

sickly-sweet advertising claiming to

be by our side. If banks really had

their customers at heart, they would

be back working nine to five.

Andrew Ellson is consumer affairs

correspondent

Recent advances against Covid-19 offer hope that we can return to something like normality

Faith in the future is winning out over fear

Somerset council. “Why are you

dumping rubbish here?” it asks. The

list of answers begins with: “I am an

idiot”. The next one is “I don’t care

about this community” followed by

“I think other people should pay to

clean up after me”. The final words?

“Don’t be a tosser”. Love it.

Special K

Last week I wrote about my travails

with the wonky letter “K” on my

keyboard. Thank you to all readers

who got in touch and especially to

the one who sent me an actual “K”

key. I have now ordered a whole

keyboard from Hong Kong. Sigh. I

continue to be alert to all K-heavy

words and note that TikTok has been

in the news. Happily I have only the

vaguest idea of what that is. There,

I’ve said it. Sometimes it is liberating

to remain ignorant.

Perfect O

W

ord of the week is

“ekphrasis” as in poetry that

vividly describes a scene or

a work of art. When I heard that

poetry had become optional in

GCSEs, I put my hands over my ears

while my mouth formed into a

perfect “O” as I raced away from the

flaming sky and sea towards the

painter Edvard Munch.

Covid-19 dashboard, alongside

another dodgy measure: Public

Health England’s count of deaths,

which includes anyone who once

tested positive for the disease, even if

they recovered and were then run

over by a bus. In reality, the death

numbers in England are running at

about half the official number.

In the face of all this muddle and

confusion who can blame anyone for

erring on the side of caution, for

staying in rather than going out? Yet

this goes to the heart of the

forthcoming crisis, the one we’ll be

living with for the next year or so.

For the more this lack of confidence

prevents us from going about our

lives with some degree of normality,

the longer and deeper the recession.

Yesterday the Bank of England

unveiled its first economic forecasts

of the pandemic and they were

actually a bit more optimistic than

expected. Why? Well, one could

single out this or that sector but

ultimately it comes down to faith

and fear. Faith that consumers will

start shopping again slightly

outweighing the fear of stepping

back out into the open.

“Never confuse faith, or belief —

of any kind — with something even

remotely intellectual,” wrote John

Irving in A Prayer for Owen Meany.

And economic models are only so

much use in these kinds of moments

when fear and faith rule the roost.

Fear of the virus; faith in the

institutions protecting us from the

virus. The good news is that the case

for faith is strengthening.

Ed Conway is economics editor

of Sky News

was worth remembering, but it plays

havoc with decision-making at times

like this.

The early weeks of the pandemic

were a tidal wave of bad news. The

death rate was horribly high; the

testing system was a disaster. Things

have improved since but the good

news simply hasn’t sunk in yet. The

other day the government said it was

planning a big advertising campaign

to remind people that they are

entitled to a test — a policy that has

been in place for months.

Another issue is that this is as

much a data story as a health story

and sometimes the most telling data

gets buried out of sight. In the case

of the aforementioned numbers on

ICU outcomes, they are deep in a

spreadsheet produced by the

Intensive Care National Audit and

Research Centre, which prefers to

show them only as cumulative

figures, including all outcomes since

Covid-19 first hit hospitals. This

makes sense with most conditions

for which survival rates are relatively

constant over the years but in the

case of a fast-moving pandemic like

this it underplays changes over time.

Economists sometimes call such

things “biased estimators” and you

don’t have to look far to find others.

As Carl Heneghan, professor of

evidence-based medicine at Oxford

University, pointed out this week,

part of the reason Covid-19 cases

seem to have been rising recently is

that we are testing more people.

Adjust for that and the proportion of

people testing positive is about the

same as it was a month ago. Yet

those scary case numbers are front

and centre of the government’s

F

irst, some good news. If there

is another surge of Covid-19

we are much better placed to

confront it than last time.

Make no mistake: this is still

a disease no one would want to

catch. But if you do, your chances of

surviving are far greater than they

were back in the spring.

When Boris Johnson was admitted

to intensive care in early April the

proportion of ICU patients dying

from the coronavirus in England,

Wales and Northern Ireland in the

previous 30 days was more than

42 per cent. That rate has dropped

dramatically since then: in the 30

days to mid-July it fell to just over 20

per cent. It’s worth dwelling on those

numbers for a moment, if only

because good news is in such short

supply: the probability of ICU

patients dying of Covid-19 has pretty

much halved in the space of a few

months.

There are some important

provisos: that recent data is based on

a smallish number of cases during a

quiet period; some patients are still

in critical care and some of them,

sadly, will die. And those low rates

are unlikely to persist if hospitals are

overwhelmed by the disease. Even

so, as things stand, the critical care

survival rate for those with the

disease is now approaching the same

rate as typical pneumonia.

That is a testament to the hard

work, ingenuity and determination

of Britain’s medical workers and

researchers. We do not know how to

cure Covid-19 but thanks to

experience, improved techniques and

new treatments such

dexamethasone, we are getting

better at helping people to survive it.

We are better placed too because,

for all the ridicule rightly piled on

Britain’s testing system in recent

months, it has improved enormously.

Anyone with symptoms can get a

free test, which was not the case

back in April. True: there are still

some big problems with the track

and trace system designed to catch

cases in their early stages. Too few of

the contacts of those who get the

disease are being contacted and

asked to isolate, though again the

numbers are not quite as disastrous

as you might have guessed — about

75 per cent instead of the 80 per cent

the government would like to see.

In short, if there is another wave of

infections then we are actually pretty

well placed to confront it. Why

hasn’t this sunk in yet? One problem

is that we humans tend to internalise

bad news more readily than good

news. “Negativity bias”, as

psychologists call it, is probably a

remnant of our hunter-gatherer past,

when an encounter with a predator

If there is another wave

of infections we are

well placed to fight it

of the men explained that the design

included a double pentagram that

was linked to the planet Venus. We

must have looked sceptical. “It’s not

just someone on a quad bike, you

know,” he insisted. Of course not.

Queen of the castle

A

key fact about staycations is

that they are 50 per cent more

likely to involve three

generations than other holidays. I

made up that statistic but am sure

it’s true. Few attractions pass my

3-Gen test but I can report

that the “water maze” at Hever

Castle in Kent has

accomplished just that. The

maze is made up of

swirls of reed beds

dividing circular

walkways that

contain pressure

squares which,

when walked

upon, send spray

into the air.

Never has

“walking in

circles”

been so

exciting.

It brought shouts of

glee from my daughter,

grandson and me. It

made me want to rejoin

the socially distanced

queue and do it all over again.

Wings and a prayer

A

nother untested but surely

true theory of mine is that at

least 30 per cent of people are

in the wrong job and prone to

incompetence. The classics are the

shop assistants who

refuse to assist and

bartenders who cannot

add up. I have now

extended this theory to

animals after, over

the weekend,

watching a pair of

wood pigeons

attempt to build a

nest. Oh dear. The

male flapped

around, bringing

unsatisfactory twigs.

Only a few were

accepted by the

female, who clearly

had no clue either. The

result was a rickety and

unsafe quasi-nest

contraption. There was a

last-minute flurry (when

isn’t there?). We await

the eggs with

trepidation.

Giving a toss

W

hat a joy

to see

this sign

from North

Ann Treneman Notebook

@anntreneman

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Ed Conway

@edconwaysky