Week 9 of lockdown: Out and about… a little more

Posted on May 17, 2020 by Chris Warburton

It seemed like this last week the world decided enough is enough and we are all ready to get back to normal… restrictions were being lifted and it felt like the lockdown pressure went down somewhat at home and work… these are the observations for the week.

  • With less car travel and no traffic, shopping is now more by foot… and with more people out, as we all dutifully waited to carefully pass each other, I was in my first official people jam this week
  • However, not everyone seemed to have the same interpretation of social distancing in the queue… 2m is 2m surely not 75cm… everyone is definitely getting nearer
  • At work, work intensity has been steadily increasing everywhere. Everyone has been super busy, especially with exit strategy planning. However, with most of the day on conference calls, school work balance has been tough this week… we still need to remember that kids at home still need attention I think

Let’s see what this week brings, hopefully, the progress continues… have a good week everyone… @chris_w_tweet

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May 16 2020: Weekly roundup

Posted on May 15, 2020 by Chris Warburton

It feels like there has been less going on this week, maybe it was just the aftermath of the various announcements easing restrictions or just in comparison with previous weeks, but it did feel like there was less happening.

Certainly, there has still been the stream of negative economic news, with job loss announcements, and economic gloom. Consumers are spending and borrowing less, all of which will gradually flow through the economy too.

In the business world they continue to thinkg about the future, with digital investment top of mind. There was even an interesting story of interest rates going negative, not notionally, but actually negative. How the financial services systems would or could have even reacted to this would have no doubt been a topic of conversation… it could have been another Year2K, albeit now less likely.

Outside of economics, the talk seems to be about returning to normal. The pandemic is still for from over, and it is likely to continue for some time (36months – and this is also the simple maths too).

However something this week switched and the narrative moved to normalization. Businesses are planning on returning and even trains running. Dentists clearly need to open too.

Maybe we have become used to the health toll, the economic impact has become too big and we have blinked, we are just getting bored, or history is simply repeating itself. Caution abounds however and we need to remain careful.

Have a good weekend everyone…. @chris_w_tweet


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Week 8 of lockdown: Waiting for normal

Posted on May 10, 2020 by Chris Warburton

With some nice weather* have been feeling the need to get out and do stuff this week…. the risk is still there of course, not much has changed, but this is going to get harder in the summer for sure. More observations for this week

  • A big news item at the start of the week was Joe Wicks broken hand. His wife Rosie gamely stepped in, resulting in all sorts of conversation in our house…. now we both can share body envy… would I, (and would I really…) have done the same (in front of 500K followers). Hats off to them both… it was really great
  • Screentime requests are already a thing, now we have Minecraft Mumbling… I am trying to reduce device dependence, but is so hard when kids are chatting with friends… it has been a struggle
  • Hosted my first webinar this week… it was fun… apparently I have a radio voice quite different from normal… was the feedback from home…
  • I discovered matrix multiplication functions in excel… I was genuinely ‘excited’…. how can I have missed this all these years!
  • Workwise… everyone is starting to think about what happens next too… open banking was mentioned a lot… I suspect it will be different flavours of the same… we will know more tonight I suspect…

Have a good week everyone… @chris_w_tweet

* weather in the UK this is…sorry to the folks in Canada where there were snow flurries….in May… what’s that all about!

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