Britain’s largest funeral services provider Dignity (DTY) has served up a trading statement on Covid-19 which contains both the quote of the day but also the stats which show just how disastrously Boris, but also everyone else in the political and media GroupThink bubble, have created this crisis.
The quote from Clive Whiley, Executive Chairman of Dignity, is hilarious. He opines:
“COVID-19 is presenting a unique set of challenges for the UK as a whole and for Dignity. I am proud to be part of a business that has such an important role to play during this crisis.”
Indeed Chris, thanks for that. But what he says about the crisis is damning of the GroupThink that has gripped those in the bubble:
“The absolute number of deaths increased by approximately one per cent to 161,000 from 159,000 in the comparative period last year. Sadly, since the end of the quarter, the UK has witnessed in excess of 20,000 deaths in a single week, the highest since the beginning of 2000. The number of possible incremental deaths as a result of COVID-19 is a matter of substantial speculation. Should 2020 witness a large number of incremental deaths, beyond the 600,000 originally anticipated by the Office for National Statistics, then it is possible that 2021 and 2022 could experience a lower number of deaths than in 2019. The Group will not speculate on the most likely outcome.”
Ends
Now for the questions that the failing MSM will not ask of a failed political class. The journalists of the deadwood press and deadwood broadcasters fret about PPE delivery because at an underlying level they share the same GroupThink on the direction of policy response. They should instead be asking if that policy response was correct.
Q1. If this was the highest weekly toll since 2000 why did we not have a lockdown then. Of course, we had no lockdown at all in 1968 when Hong Kong flu killed thrice the numbers of Covid-19 in 2020. Again we ask ourselves as the bodies do NOT pile up on convoys of death carts in Sweden why did the political and media classes agree on a course of action that has destroyed the economy and will cause many more deaths from depression, suicide and cancer sufferers denied an early diagnosis or treatment as we “fought to save the NHS”
Q2. The average life expectancy of someone entering a care home – which seems to be like death row these days – is 11 months. Nearly all Covid deaths are among those who are old, frail or unwell. Whiley speculates very sensibly that those culled by Covid 19 in recent weeks were largely short dated stocks anyway. Yes it is a tragedy for those who loved them but death is inevitable for us all and Covid largely seems to have merely brought that forward for folks who did not have long to live anyway.
Now I ask Boris to be honest and say, when he next addresses the nation, that it was worth wrecking the economy, causing mass unemployment, destroying tens of thousands of good businesses built up over many years, accelerating the death from cancer of many, causing real mental health issues, destroying the nation’s finances all to ensure that some unwell or frail folks enjoyed a few more months on this planet?
Really? In my mind it was a disastrous call, the worst political blunder since Suez or possibly much earlier. The media and political classes fell hook line and sinker for the disastrous models of Neil Ferguson, Professor Pantsdown, whose models have ALWAYS been wrong. And they did so without asking any questions. Christopher Booker’s book on GroupThink really should be updated to tell this tale.
For what it is worth Dignity’s statement is awful from an investment perspective and my colleague Chris Bailey who has called this as a sell for a good while, as have I, explains its own problems in detail HERE