May you live in interesting times...

...is both the title of a favourite book of mine and also an ancient curse (think about it). We're certainly living through uncertain times for families and businesses around the world, not just in the UK. To paraphrase a line from another book "people think they want good government and justice for all, yet what is it they really crave, deep in their hearts? Only that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today." I think never has that sentiment felt truer than it does at the moment.

For all those of us out there working from home, or who have been furloughed from work (or worse still those unlucky ones who've been made redundant), or those who are supporting the rest of us in key roles we are certainly living in "interesting times" right now.

I know this is primarily a "tax blog", but just occasionally I do like to share my musings on the wider political and economic situation. I understand that there is a great deal of negative news and rhetoric out there at the moment, and I don't want to focus on that (and I'm not trying to discount it), what I want to think about are the positives that could yet come out of this in relation to the way its affected our working lives.

The biggest positive impact (for business and employees, and probably the environment) of course has to be the proof positive that remote working, in some capacity at least, does work. This is something that some of us have known for years, indeed I've often said I can get three days of "office" work done in a single day working from home. So, perhaps we'll see some of this start to creep back in when we get back to "normal", whatever that might look like. Another that is also pretty obvious, is that it has forced almost all of us to use virtual/video meeting software. Whether that's just to call up Mum and Dad because you miss seeing their faces, or to have a meeting with a client on the other side of an ocean, more and more of us are getting comfortable with it. For business, this just makes the world smaller and therefore easier to do business in. What was usually the domain of large multinational businesses should now be able to be accessed by everyone (I do it from my small back bedroom home office all the time!).

How about the economics of our interesting times? Well, I hear a lot of talk about the world economy being put on pause, and that is really how it feels. If you read such things as the Times rich list (oh my god why?!?), or look at the stock markets, then yes, the world did take a hit, but financial markets have always gone down as well as up, what's new? Taking that into account, the markets were due a correction, and have now recovered to much more sensible levels from the original 25%+ drop in March and early April. Consider as well that the whole world has been affected, this isn't just a country or event continent isolated event, everyone really is in the same boat this time.

Times are hard, for some of us they always are, but sometimes in the darkest of times can the greatest opportunity be found...