Panorama 2020 E17
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00The coronavirus has changed the way we live, putting us under pressure as never before.
00:14This is why I feel terrible. Our world is changed to a point where we're dealing with
00:21our loved ones not being around us anymore and it does make me sad.
00:28Since the crisis started, we've been following people whose lives have been turned upside
00:33down.
00:34It's difficult.
00:35It's hard.
00:36I don't know how to run anymore.
00:43Those fighting to save their livelihoods.
00:47In life sometimes you have to make tough choices and this might be one of those times.
00:55It's specimens, yeah? Covid.
00:58The workers facing new dangers.
01:02You almost feel like some sort of bomb disposal person when you've kind of got this thing
01:06on your bike and it does feel risky.
01:12And those at the sharpest end, dealing with the human cost of the virus.
01:18From Friday night to Monday morning, we had 142 bodies.
01:22I've never seen anything like this ever.
01:27This is unprecedented.
01:48Chris, can you just come back with the trolley?
01:55It's early April at the Hairy Pot Plant Company in Winchester.
01:59Lovely. That's great. I've got a bit of flour coming on that, so yeah, that's brilliant.
02:06Thanks Chris.
02:08Derek Taylor built this business from scratch.
02:16Set up, you know, 36 years ago, two tunnels this first year and then gradually got bigger
02:22and bigger.
02:25Nice crop of Campanula, their low-growing Scrambler, just about to come into flower
02:33so that would be perfect to go out next week.
02:37These plants are actually still what we call pot thick, so pots next to each other.
02:43Full, that would be 12,000 pots, potentially £60,000 worth retail.
02:57Derek's spent hundreds of thousands of pounds growing these plants.
03:03He should be selling them now.
03:06But the lockdown means Derek is facing financial ruin.
03:12Pre-lockdown, we had quite a few nice orders, quite a few of them for National Trust, which
03:18is one of our biggest customers.
03:21To lose your main customer supplying a lot of their sites in one phone call was tough.
03:33He furloughed six members of staff shortly after the lockdown started.
03:40This is the perfect storm, it just couldn't have happened at a worse time.
03:46We've gone in a month from being in an astonishingly good position
03:58with a fantastic set of staff, crops of plants ready to go, with a lovely customer base.
04:06And then it's just switched off.
04:08And you know, in life, sometimes you have to make tough choices and, you know,
04:17this might be one of those times.
04:33Coronavirus has changed life for everyone.
04:37For seven weeks, we've been told to stay at home.
04:41But not everyone's been able to.
04:45As lockdown's gone on, the streets have got more and more dead.
04:53Alex Marshall is a courier and trade union rep in London.
05:00He's one of millions of key workers who've had to continue going to work.
05:10Looks like some of the butchers are still working.
05:14So I guess they're still getting the meat out to places.
05:18Yeah, there they are.
05:21They're still just plugging away.
05:23You know, the couriers, care workers, butchers, all these people,
05:28they've always been the heartbeat for me.
05:31It is the heartbeat of London. It's the heartbeat of the UK, the world, you know.
05:37Alex collects medical samples and brings them to laboratories to be tested.
05:52Hello. I just picked up...
05:55Yeah, they did. They had a fridge full of specimens.
05:58All right, nice one. Cheers, bye.
06:06The lockdown has forced many clinics to shut.
06:10There's one delivery that's keeping Alex in work.
06:17Hey, mate. I just got some Covid.
06:19It's specimens, yeah? Covid.
06:23Alex delivers samples from people being tested for Covid-19.
06:30You almost feel like some sort of bomb disposal person
06:33when you've kind of got this thing on your bike or whatever.
06:36It's this thing that all the news, all the social media,
06:39everything's talking about at the moment, and you have that very thing on you,
06:43and you're transporting it from A to B, and it does feel risky.
06:47The country's relying on workers like Alex, and he needs to keep his job.
06:54I have a young family. I've got two little kids.
06:57So I have to be out here on the road, earning money to kind of pay my rent,
07:02where a lot of people are making the responsible choice to stay at home.
07:06Unfortunately, I don't really get to make that choice.
07:10Those who've kept working during the crisis have faced additional risk.
07:17And some are under extraordinary pressure.
07:28This is a place that knows the true horror of coronavirus.
07:32Floyd & Son Funeral Directors in Essex.
07:41They normally pick up around 10 bodies a day.
07:46It's the third week of the lockdown, and they're now picking up several times that.
07:52Good morning, everyone.
07:54Right, yesterday was obviously another busy day.
07:57From the recollection that Vina has given me this morning, we collected 94 yesterday.
08:03Dean and his staff are working round the clock to keep up.
08:08We've got Mike, who's starting his shift tomorrow,
08:11and then we've got David, who's just got his shift.
08:15That's the last day we've got the day.
08:17around the clock to keep up. We've got Mike who started at 7 o'clock yesterday
08:23morning, Jackie 7 o'clock yesterday morning and we've just finished so they're not
08:27coming in today. We've got four vans out there today and it'll be six or seven
08:31tonight so if we can arrange for the hospital removals to be done at five
08:36o'clock so it gives me all day long with house removals. Lovely, any other
08:40problems? Crack on, lovely, well done. We work for three local authorities doing
08:49coroner's removals. Between those three that would probably generate somewhere
08:53in the region of 100 bodies a week, general house calls. From Friday night to
09:00Monday morning we had 142 bodies.
09:05As well as arranging funerals they collect bodies from hospitals and homes
09:14in the local area. But there's no longer enough space in the mortuaries for all
09:21those who've died. So Dean has bought refrigerated storage containers. So what
09:30we've got coming in now is another refrigerated container. We've had to buy
09:34these, you can't rent these because they're generally left for food. Now they've been used for
09:39storage of bodies and this is the only way we can do it, this is the only way we
09:45can do it.
09:50Basically we've dropped off a 40-foot fridge container which can go from plus
09:5610, 12 right down to minus 12 and below. This is the harsh truth, this is how
10:04this is how this industry of undertaking, the NHS, the hospitals are having to deal
10:09with this problem that's going on.
10:17Dean also runs a building company. Its work has dried up because of the lockdown.
10:24So his carpenters are converting the extra containers into morgues.
10:33How many would you like me to collect? Eight today. In the office Veena is struggling to cope with the number of requests.
10:47So now we've got eight. This is since the virus so where people have passed away
10:55they're now being brought back to Floyd's because there's no room at the
11:00mortuary. Hello? Yes I know, I know but due to so many deaths happening at any one
11:19time but we're a little bit pushed so we're trying to get to you so I will
11:23give you a call as soon as I'm over there, if not they will come. I think it
11:29says it all doesn't it you know what goes on here is what is happening out
11:32there. We're getting 30 calls to collect 30 people, there's 30 people that have died out there.
11:37That's just us, what about every other funeral director?
11:48You alright? All good? Dean has converted every available space into storage. It's
11:58too distressing to show in full. So this is this is usually our garage where we
12:06store at the, we store a hearse and a limousine in here. Currently we've turned
12:12into our dispatch section so we get a phone call this morning from funeral
12:17directors saying they want to collect a person and we put them into this area so they
12:23we've got to get them out the fridges, undo containers so we've already done that by
12:26the time they arrive. And this is where our cold room is.
12:39You can see we're just stacked. And here again you can see these bodies are now
12:50up for transfer back to the funeral homes of where the families will meet
12:55them. C means Covid, that's what it stands for. So we know that the
13:01anything with a C on it is a Covid body. Most are Covid now.
13:10It's sad isn't it? I mean there's a lot of people being taken far too early.
13:16I've got all ages, it's not just old.
13:20People that just shouldn't be here. It's too early when you got people to hear it.
13:2630 years of age. That's wrong, that's just wrong.
13:33Did you ever expect to see anything like this? Never, never, never. I've never seen
13:39anything like this ever. This is unprecedented.
13:46The impact of the virus stretches far beyond those on the front line. Millions
14:06of people's livelihoods and futures are at stake too.
14:11The workshop itself is obviously not over large but we divide into sections.
14:18Some of the machinery that stands around me is as old as I am.
14:24Andy Hare and his wife Sue run a small engineering firm in Leeds. They make
14:30specialist equipment for the demolition and construction industry. They've had to
14:37furlough three staff. The lads that put it together, it's their welding, it's their
14:43fabrication skills and with what's going on these things are not going out the
14:47door. This is the last one that's going out the door at the moment and
14:50then I don't know what else.
14:54Next month should be the company's 30th anniversary but the business may not
15:00last that long. I've got a box of components there that have arrived to me.
15:07There's £7,000 sat in a box and I've got to pay for that in 30 days time and
15:12that's the pressure at the moment. It's as I look around knowing what we've
15:18actually got to pay for, what's got to go out and when there's nothing coming
15:22back in it's it's a tough time.
15:26It is, it is.
15:28Difficult.
15:30Yeah, good time.
15:32Oh honey.
15:34Getting emotional.
15:36I know, I know.
15:38Yeah, yeah, because it means so much. It means so much.
15:43At the start of the lockdown Andy and Sue applied for one of the government's
15:52emergency business loans. But it's the banks that decide who gets the cash.
16:02I had a call from the bank manager and it was probably one of the shortest
16:07phone calls I've ever had. Straight cut to the chase, no you don't qualify. We've
16:13looked at the numbers, just the basic numbers on the accounts, you don't
16:16qualify. So no, sorry we can't put you forward for this loan.
16:21I felt like somebody had kicked me in the stomach. I felt sick and I felt sick ever since because the
16:28weight of the worry on your shoulders is a horrible thing. It's a horrible thing.
16:35Andy and Sue could lose everything if they don't get help.
16:42It comes to a point where, yeah, if we don't get some finance that we can use in there,
16:47we have to make the decision that is it worth trying to carry on with the level of uncertainty
16:51and not knowing whether we can make it back from this.
16:54If we don't get that help, then who knows how long we can carry on. It may end up that
17:00we may have to wave bye bye to 30 years of hard work. This business is, it's our life.
17:07The company, Northern Track Limited, is the umbrella under which so many people sit and
17:13so many people depend upon it to maintain their lives, their security, to provide for
17:18their families, keep a roof over their heads. And if there isn't that, then we're all in trouble.
17:28It's four weeks into the lockdown and the company's final order is being collected.
17:37Friday morning and that's the last grab that we've got going out to Israel. Just been loading
17:44on the wagon and that's everything completely now ground to a halt. All done.
17:52See where we go from here.
18:00More than six million workers have been furloughed and are being paid by the government.
18:07Nobody knows how many jobs will be lost.
18:11Yeah, so you've got enough labels?
18:14I guess so.
18:15Yeah.
18:17But at the plant nursery in Winchester, Derek has come up with a plan to try to save his business.
18:25He's going to give his plants away.
18:31We've got a load of plants here that are ready for sale that normally we would be sending
18:35out to our garden centres. They have no idea what they're doing.
18:39We've got a load of plants here that are ready for sale that normally we would be sending
18:43out to our garden centres. They have all shut, so we've got nowhere for them to go other
18:48than the compost heap. So as an alternative, we're delivering batches of plants all mixed
18:53together and labelled to our local community, six pots at each household, with a little
19:00note from us explaining why they're getting a little present. And hopefully they might
19:04make a contribution to the nursery to see if we can keep going into the following months.
19:14We'll have effectively given away a quarter of a million pounds, hoping somebody will
19:18give us some money back for it. So potentially it's a bit of a gamble, but we're not doing
19:24it to make money, we're doing it to try and save the nursery.
19:34For his plan to have any chance of succeeding, Derek will have to hand out almost 90,000 plants.
19:41You've got all the King's Thornbourne lot there, so that's enough for about 700 and something houses.
19:50He's relying on teams of volunteers to drop them off on the doorstep.
19:56I heard about it on a local WhatsApp group, and it sounded such a good idea to help out
20:05the business and also to give people plants to plant in their gardens when they've got
20:08so much time at home.
20:15Oh lovely, where have they come from?
20:18It's from a local business and there's information slip in there to tell you all about it.
20:24A great idea, isn't it?
20:31They need as much help as they can. They're offering them as a donation, but if people
20:36want to donate money back to pay for the plants, then that will help them obviously in the long term.
20:42We've just dropped you off some plants from the Hairy Pots plant company.
20:48Thank you very much indeed.
20:51Oh those are lovely. Thank you very much sir, that's gorgeous.
21:01It's been a promising start for Derek's rescue plan.
21:05Some people are already sending cash.
21:09So here I've got just a couple of the emails which Derek has been receiving since we have
21:15been out delivering the plants in the community.
21:18Hi Derek, yesterday went beautifully and the Hairy Pot plant company has so much good
21:22will in Broughton.
21:24If he can just survive the crisis, he'll have some loyal customers.
21:30I know this must be such a devastatingly hard time for you. I do know that when we are through
21:35this, the name and the reputation of the Hairy Pot plant company will be synonymous with
21:40all the best things that came out of the C19 crisis and you have a loyal following waiting
21:47to support you. Thank you again and please know that you are all in our prayers. Love, Georgie.
21:54It's hard. I need to hear it.
22:03But it just reinforces what a nut situation we're in and how everything has gone so wrong
22:14for the business so quickly. I can't believe that this has happened. And then I can't believe
22:21the response either. It is heartwarming and you do feel much better.
22:28Back in Essex, Dean and his staff are doing everything they can to support the bereaved.
22:37Funerals are now more difficult because of social distancing and there are long delays.
22:44So what's the name on it?
22:47It's called the Hairy Pot plant.
22:49Funerals are now more difficult because of social distancing and there are long delays.
22:56So what's the name on it?
22:59The issue we're now coming up with is the amount of cremations or burials that the cemetery
23:05or crematorium can deal with in the course of a day or a week. And there's obviously
23:10going to be a bottleneck. Hopefully we can ride this storm, even if it means that some
23:20bodies are cared for longer than they would usually be.
23:30The whole process of arranging a funeral has changed into more like a storage space.
23:37331, so that we can check.
23:42Floyd and son are now storing almost 400 bodies.
23:47We're trying to organise it so that we know exactly where everybody is, exactly what home
23:53they're in and the paperwork is here so everything is accessible. And then when the funeral directors
23:59come in to claim the deceased, we know exactly where they are.
24:07It's quite daunting. They're not just containers, people's loved ones are in there.
24:14It makes you feel as if you're in another world really.
24:24At the end of the day we've just got to wait. This is why I feel terrible because...
24:31It's Veena's job to tell grieving relatives why they have to wait so long to bury their loved ones.
24:39Are you guys alright? We're just going to have to wait.
24:42That is a huge challenge at the moment simply because families want to put their loved ones
24:48to rest rather than it taking, say a week for instance, it's taking two weeks, three weeks.
24:55Hence the distress again on the family and the pressure on us.
25:05I'm looking at the containers which is quite difficult to comprehend really.
25:15I've got nearly 400 deceased people out there.
25:20Our world, what was our world, is changed to a point where we're dealing with our loved ones
25:29not being around us anymore and it does make me sad.
25:42If I walk downstairs I'm in a culture at the moment where we've got a lot of bodies around us.
25:49And that's not nice, that's not nice, mentally it's not nice.
25:55But it's... I'm just praying for the day that comes where all this just drops
26:00and we go back to what was normality.
26:03The quicker we get to that position the better for everyone.
26:20More than 30,000 people have already died.
26:25The lockdown is now being eased.
26:29But it will be many months before life returns to normal.
26:36Alex the courier is struggling.
26:39It looks like he's going to be made redundant.
26:42Even during a medical pandemic, as a medical courier,
26:46we're still facing the cuts that most of the country have been facing.
26:50I mean, we're called key workers but I just think of us as disposable workers.
26:55I've actually given up on...
26:59I've just given up, you know.
27:03In Leeds, Andy and Sue have had better news.
27:06The government has improved its loan scheme for small businesses.
27:11And the bank has finally offered them some money.
27:16We're a long way from being out of the woods.
27:18But hopefully this now does provide us with that little bit of a breathing space.
27:22And I'm looking forward to maybe the end of the lockdown.
27:25At the nursery, Derek's plant giveaway has also brought in much needed cash.
27:32We've got some income which we wouldn't have had otherwise.
27:35And that's going to see us through in the short term.
27:38We've got a lot of money.
27:40We've got a lot of money.
27:42We've got a lot of money.
27:44We've got a lot of money.
27:46We've got a lot of money.
27:48We've got a lot of money.
27:50We've got a lot of money.
27:52We wouldn't have had otherwise.
27:54And that's going to see us through in the short term.
27:57I've no idea at the moment whether what we've done is going to save the business.
28:05It's given us a lifeline and it's given us hope.
28:08Which, you know, you're stuffed without basically.
28:13So many lives have been upturned by the crisis.
28:18And so many people need it to end.
28:23I'm thinking what might have been.
28:27Well, what might still be.
28:53We've got a lot of money.
28:55We've got a lot of money.
28:57We've got a lot of money.
28:59We've got a lot of money.
29:01We've got a lot of money.
29:03We've got a lot of money.
29:05We've got a lot of money.
29:07We've got a lot of money.
29:09We've got a lot of money.
29:11We've got a lot of money.
29:13We've got a lot of money.
29:15We've got a lot of money.
29:17We've got a lot of money.