 lockdowns aren't the same if you're rich. We've always known it, but it became almost hilariously obvious in a tweet thread posted by Kim Kardashian this week. It's gone absolutely viral for good reason, but it does raise, I mean, some important realities when it comes to how people of different classes and different backgrounds experience a global pandemic. So let's go straight to this tweet thread. It's ridiculous. So she says, 40 and feeling so humbled and blessed. There is not a single day that I take for granted, especially during these times when we are all reminded of the things that truly matter. For my birthday this year, I couldn't think of a better way to spend it than with some of the people who have helped shape me into the woman I am today. Before COVID, I don't think any of us truly appreciated what a simple luxury it was to be able to travel and be together with family and friends in a safe environment. After two weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time. I mean, there's so many, the thing I love about this is how it's all of this sort of like, like sort of cheesy card, sort of slogans, the kind of thing you get in a hallmark card, the things that really matter, and you think she's going to say spending some time with your family, the things that really matter is just being able to have a lie and be with the person you love. The things that really, she literally flew in a private jet to a private island. Most people, it's not like they're, what are the things that really matter? It's the people like, no, it's completely bananas. Anyway, if you were worrying that Kim Kardashian didn't have self-awareness, never fret, this was the tweet that ended the fret. We danced, road bikes, swam near Wales, kayaked, watched a movie on the beach and so much more. I realized that for most people, this is something that is so far out of reach right now. So in moments like these, I am humbly reminded of how privileged my life is. Hashtag, this is 40. It's not 40 for many people, Kim. There is an obvious point here though, which is that lockdowns are very different if you're rich. You don't have to be as mega rich as Kim Kardashian for them to be very different, but they are very different if you're as rich as a, but also if you're just middle-class, right? And there are some obvious points to make here. So working from home is much comfortier, much easier if you've got a big house and if you're renting in the inner city, if you live in a small home with a large family, lockdown is going to be much more stressful than if you have a studio or a sort of spare, what do they call the room where you can a study? We're going to go through some other stories this week that came out about them because it's also travel, which is affected. So this is a story that was in city AM, high-flying city figures to be exempt from quarantine rules. This is the story that city dealmakers, hedge fund managers and executives flying into the UK are set to be exempt from the current 14-day quarantine period in a bid to promote global Britain. And the Sunday Times got a really good quote on this. So the quote says, it seems ridiculous that people who are coming to the UK for five or six meetings in a day and then flying out are forced to quarantine, especially when most of them come in private jets and have a chauffeur-driven car. That's a government source in the Sunday Times. I'm going to go to you, Aaron. I want your thoughts on the government source saying, why would we apply the same rules to people who are in chauffeur-driven cars and private jets? Why should they have to follow the same rules as everyone else? And Kim Kardashian thinking that she was humbly aware of her privilege when she tweeted that hashtag, this is 40, meant that she got to spend a time on a private island with all her loved ones for her 40th birthday. See, if you're trying to be generous with Kim Kardashian, the point she's trying to make is that the really valuable things in life are personal connections, friends, family, which you can't buy, which is true, right? And I do think there's an element of COVID maybe being something of a kind of values reset for a lot of people. Now, you know, obviously not her. Obviously, not these people who are coming to the country, reported in city AM in the Sunday Times. But I do think, you know, I do think it's triggering a sort of broader mind shift. I remember at the start of this pandemic, there was a billionaire who had a private boat and he said, I'm just going to see this out on my private yacht. I don't know if you remember this. And the point is, well, when you come back, what do you think is going to happen? It's magically disappeared. The world is going to be the same as before. No, this is a really big event. This is like a major war, or the discovery of a terrible new invention, like the atom bomb. We don't go back to before COVID, right? This is a new world. And so I think that can be positive in terms of people's values. There was a positive truth content there, which I think we should acknowledge. At the same time, it's a really important point, which is that COVID is here, but it's not evenly distributed. And I think in that respect, the story about, oh, the five or six meetings in one day, while you're on quarantine, just do it online. You're so rich, get a good internet connection, get a good mic, get a good camera. What's the problem? Everyone else is doing it on Zoom. This idea of, well, if they get a private jet and they get the show, who are they going to come in? It doesn't fucking matter. If everyone is doing meetings on Zoom, if everyone is meeting their grandkids on Zoom, then this rich motherfucker should have his business meeting on Zoom. And also, all these huge multinational businesses, they're all the one post everybody's recruiting now is head of remote. This is like the new thing. This is like a C-suite job, right? You get the chief technology officer, chief executive officer, financial officer, and now they're like, yeah, the CRO, chief remote officer. And it's understandable if you have a staff of 20, 30,000 people, it's a huge challenge. So you kind of on the one hand say, yeah, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank and General Electric are looking at how to work remotely, but this executive guy, he has to meet people face to face. Why should he need quarantine? Yeah, he's meeting five or six people face to face. That's why he needs quarantine. Right? Exactly. He might meet less people than if he took the tube, but he's not meeting less people than if he used Zoom. And I think part of this is interesting, is that one of the reasons why you have so much global business travel isn't because it's necessary. It doesn't actually add any economic output to society. It is basically that people who have these incredibly well-paid jobs, quite like having meals with other people who have incredibly well-paid jobs. We have our next piece of evidence, which is about how socializing is felt differently by different sections of society. I like this one because this was forwarded to us by a Tiske Sauer viewer. So it's a mail out from a fancy London restaurant reassuring you that you shouldn't let COVID-19 restrictions affect your life. Now, any eagle-eyed people might notice this as March 2020 there, but I saw it when the email was sent by Caprice restaurants. It was definitely a week ago, so presumably they haven't updated their image. This was from a week ago in October. So they write, we are receiving a multitude of calls and emails from people regarding some confusion with government guidelines relating to restaurants. We wish to make it clear, when the topic is business, you can still meet over a fabulous working lunch or dinner without the restriction of the six household rule, i.e. mixed households are permitted up to six guests. And it goes on. We can host up to 30 people with our private dining spaces for business meetings. Finally, guests are allowed to dine with mixed households on our outside terrace of up to six people. We hope this clears up any confusion. We very much look forward to seeing you soon. Now, this company owns sort of restaurants such as the Ivy famous one where celebrities are often seen dining with each other. And I think what you can see here is this is, you know, if what needs to happen is business people so desperately need to be in the same room that they can, you know, come up with some weird ass productive decision which couldn't have been made on. It doesn't make any sense to begin with. But if you took the assumption at face value that it's really important for top businessmen to be in the same room as each other, why does it have to be in a fancy restaurant? You know, if what these people are doing is economically necessary and so necessary they can break the same rules that everyone else is following, why can't they do it in a in a normal ventilated room that isn't serving lobster? Do you know what I mean? There's just there's no justification for this. And I mean, it's within the rules. I'm not claiming these people are breaking the rules. It's perfectly within the rules, which is precisely the problem here. It's to say if you want to call your meeting a business meeting, you go ahead and do it. And who has business meetings? Very wealthy people. Who has business meetings in fancy restaurants? Not most of the population, right? Also a lot of serious people just don't like wasting time. I don't know if you've noticed this. Like often people are, yeah, let's talk about it. Let's go make for coffee. And nine times out of ten, it's bullshit. You don't need to do it. It's a complete waste of everyone's time. They just want to have a chat and hang out. And he's like, look, I've got five minutes. Let's talk over the phone. Let's talk over Zoom. A lot of people are actually doing Zoom now and they're saying, this is so much better. I could actually, that hour I spent traveling around London to go from A to B to have a stupid meeting with someone. I can now go to the gym or be on my partner. Well, not on the gym because the gym's a shut, but well, they should be shut. I can be with my partner. I can watch a film or I can learn a language. You know, people did sourdough last time. Maybe next time we'll just think a bit more interesting. You know, it's a really important point. You know, we were wasting a lot of time. Why do that? Well, these technologies have allowed us to be a lot more efficient, productive. So stop wasting time to be unproductive. And I don't say that some sort of, you know, just a can of ideas productive as you can. After this, we need to talk about moving to a four, even maybe a three day working week, which means not having stupid fraffy meetings where people don't do anything and where it's all performative. My fear is that this is mainly men who don't like their families. So business travel and sort of the business meeting that happens in the restaurant is men who want an excuse to get away from their family so they can get drunk and I don't know, maybe sleep with prostitutes. I'm not saying that happens in that restaurant. That would be libelous. I'm just saying in general, you know, cocaine in the toilets, that kind of vibe. Does that still happen? Yeah, well, that's what drives these. That's why you get so much business travel. Do you think there's a nexus around like pure hedonism, which presents itself as, that's a different analysis. Mine is this is like a mindset which is completely out of sync with the technological possibilities. You're like, actually, this is just a license to get drunk as much as possible. It's going to be a very interesting sociological question because I think in some ways sort of like how we live as a society is determined by how elites want to live and what they see as consistent. And I think there's going to be a big division between bosses, people high up in industries that sort of like their family who are sort of suggesting actually maybe we should all start working from home most of the days of the week. Maybe we could go to a four-day week. They're people who have discovered during this lockdown period that they quite like having some time out of work. That's going to be some firms and then other firms are run by people who they love going to work because they don't like their family and they don't have any friends and they like to be in a room where people have to speak to them respect like that's true where people have to look up and brown nose them and they like having a free meal of lobster. So we're going to have the future of our work-life balance determined by whether there are more kind of sociopaths in the top of these industries or people who are you know quite nice parents and like their friends. Very quickly we're going to do health. So this is how the strain on the NHS is unevenly felt. Fears of two-tier system as NHS waiting lists prompt more people to go private. Compare the market so there have been an average 40% increase in year on year. Private health insurance sales over the past seven months people are also going into so they spoke to someone who was going into their savings and to get cancelled operations done privately. I should you know the person in this article was not a morally abject person it's just that if people who have savings they want the operation they get it but if you don't have 12,000 in savings and your operation has been cancelled due to COVID you can't get it so you're seeing a massive health inequality here which could also outlive the pandemic if lots of people are getting private health insurance their buy-in to the NHS decreases. How would we resolve this? We would have an NHS which doesn't usually reach full capacity in a normal winter so that when we have a pandemic hospitals don't collapse. They haven't collapsed in Germany it doesn't have to be this way.