The Coronavirus Givers and Takers

The kindness and giving generosity of ordinary people in the current Coronavirus crisis has put some of my faith back in humanity. People are going out of their way to look after those that cannot get to the supermarkets and shops. People are knocking on the doors of neighbours they haven't spoken to before to check they are ok. We are finding just strangers on the street are starting up conversations with us now that wouldn't have happened a few months ago. The government put out a request for 250,000 volunteers to help ease the burden on the NHS staff, and a staggering 750,000 people registered to help, for free. Is it happening everywhere, or just here in the UK? In the UK the spirit of standing together in times of crisis is often been talked about, referred to as the 'wartime spirit', and hasn't been seen for a long time. This country has a long history of invasion, or threat of invasion, and extreme national crises where the country came together to fight the threat, knowing that we were all in it together and the only way to deal with it was to stand together, help and support each other.

Unfortunately, we also live in a world of givers and takers, and the current crisis is also exposing the takers. People panic buying shopping trolleys full of toilet rolls and hand wash. And where are all the rich in this crisis? What are they doing to help? Nothing. We have Victoria Beckham furloughing her staff so the government, that is us taxpayers, have to pay their salaries so she doesn’t have to dip into her own estimated £750 million. We have Sir Richard Branson worth an estimated £3.5 billion, and who lives overseas to avoid paying any UK tax, wants the UK taxpayers to bail out his airline during the current crisis. Then there are countless stories of traders and hedge funds making huge amounts of money out the economy crashing, buying themselves new cars out of the proceeds, and execs in their private jets trying to fly out to their villas on the Med to sit the crisis out in luxury. So where are they?

They are all hiding away in their country mansions, holiday villas, or sitting on their luxury yachts, keeping their money safe and acting like nothing is going on. For many their main concern isn't helping others, or using some of their massive fortunes, often made at our expense, or by someone else’s hard work and just handed to them, to help in the current national and worldwide crisis. For many of them their biggest worry has been selling their share holdings quick enough to beat the crash, and is now all about when and what to buy back in to make the most profit out of the crisis, while thousands die and they do nothing to help. They are the other side of life, the takers, who when the chips are down show how they only care about their selves, and how little they care about others.

We know our place, we will always choose to stand with the ordinary people of this world, the givers, who are kind, empathic and sharing, regardless of the outcome, because the power of their love and unity is a greater currency than the money the takers idolise.