Safety first

Tracey and I watched The Assistant the other day, a film recommended by The Times as a top-10 film to stream in lockdown. I can see why. It’s enough to put you off office work for life.

Not only because the boss was a horrible sexist character (he was based on a well-known film producer), but also because it captures well the sheer boredom of the office. Don’t get me wrong, I think the message is hugely important, but this film was way too slow for me. I recommend you check out last year’s miniseries The Loudest Voice instead. Watching The Assistant was the longest 87 minutes (or maybe 87 hours) of my life in lockdown. And there is some competition – a structured training video I watched last week now seems like a multiplex action stimulant.

Of course, watching independent films is always a risk. Tracey and I have been watching many films on the Curzon Home Cinema app and most have been amazing. I highly recommend The Whistlers (Romanian gangsters) and Who You Think I Am (French older woman leads on young man thriller) in particular. Moffie is next. Will it be brilliant or pants? It’s a risk … but it’s worth taking.

As a country, the UK is in crisis, and not just of the COVID kind. This crisis is one of risk assessment. From the government down there has been a complete breakdown in contextualising risk. For instance, official advice implies that riding a bike to work in London is safer than catching the tube because of COVID-19. But that depends on your own situation. If you are a 30-year-old female with no underlying health conditions, I don’t think that assessment is cut and dried. Have you tried cycling around Parliament Square? I have – I would take my chances on the tube, thank you, and I am straying closer to the more vulnerable end of the age cohorts.

I believe the UK economy looks to be more at risk from lasting economic damage than other nations across Europe, in Asia and in North America. The UK’s current strategy is incoherent and has the dubious flexibility of allowing us to both come out of lockdown too slowly because of ponderous government planning and also too fast as the lockdown’s credibility quickly disintegrates. People are allowed to have cleaners touch all their things, yet they can’t see their families. That is just one small example of how nuts it all is.

At the moment, the exit from lockdown for households appears to be on a one-size-fits-all basis, irrespective of location, gender, health, age or domestic situation. The medical risk side of the scales is far outweighing the economic risk in terms of policy right now. Who knows, in two years’ time that may prove to be the right course. However, it might not. Many people have framed the argument as a decision weighing up “money versus people’s lives”. This is a simplistic fallacy that ignores the real and prolonged effects that financial hardship and poverty have on people’s physical and mental health. But, like the spike in the people getting injured and killed cycling around our roads during lockdown, those stats aren’t front of mind so they are ignored.

We had to make stringent and widespread restrictions to prevent COVID-19 from spreading, especially among our most vulnerable, yet it’s just as important to come out of the lockdown in a coherent and efficient manner. I’m starting to wonder how much damage will be done to the UK if the lockdown continues as it is for another month or two.

It’s not just the government’s risk assessments either. It appears the UK population is also becoming more risk averse. Lockdown was remarkably well observed. Many people now seem too frightened to return to work, even if the virus appears contained and their employers have extensive safeguards in place. Some of the practical proposals to assuage this fear are frankly absurd and could cause real anxiety. I think much of this fear is due to poor communication from the government. The messages enforcing lockdown were very clear, but now they are far too vague for many to make well-considered choices based on a mature assessment of risk.

To be fair, the UK government is in an invidious position. I don’t have to make these difficult life-and-death decisions to come up with good policies. I only have to invest according to their effects. Right now I want to have very little exposure to UK domestic earners in my multi-asset portfolio funds. Despite the higher valuations west of the Atlantic, we have lowered our UK exposure and added to the US main street, particularly the smaller-cap Russell 2000 (these are still huge companies). This reverses our decision to increase the UK in December due to more clarity on Brexit. That seems a long time ago.

So on one level I do feel sorry for Boris Johnson, even though he’s not doing himself any favours. Yet I am glad the biggest risk my household will take this week is whether The Eddy (Netflix) is brilliant or just pretentious sh…stuff.