Charting our own path on the road ahead

From mower repairs to house removals, island businesses have plenty of catching up to do.

More than 600 signed up last week to get back to trading in stage one of the release from lockdown, despite the difficulties of operating within social distancing rules.

With hard work, long hours and a loyal, patient, client base some businesses will hope quickly to recoup a good portion of the losses of the last few weeks.

Others in less forgiving markets may have to accept that the winter trade is gone and hope for a buoyant spring and summer.

It has been a tough month for many firms, big and small, but a look across the water provided some sobering perspective as the prime minister outlined a four-stage exit for England lasting at least four months.

It will be 8 March before two people in Manchester of Milton Keynes will be allowed to meet outdoors for a park bench picnic or coffee.

If they are lucky, hairdressers and beauty salons have ‘just’ seven weeks to go before the clippers can be plugged in. The ‘personal care services’ began shutdown number three in the first week of January and, even if all is well, they will not have heard the till ring for 14 weeks.

Salons will, however, get limited sympathy from pubs and restaurants, who have to wait until the middle of May before they can open indoors.

So while the end is in sight, in the PM’s words, for many UK businesses ‘the one-way road to freedom’ leads to a distant horizon.

Guernsey, of course, has yet to sketch out its own roadmap.

The hope here has to be to set a more ambitious timetable. The number of infections is falling sharply as a quick lockdown and close adherence to the rules pay dividends.

Here too we must, like the prime minister, be humble in the face of nature and look to data not dates.

Nevertheless, the Bailiwick has shown over the last year that it can use its size, borders and strength of community to plot its own shorter path on the roadmap to return.