I went for a walk last night around sunset, to get some exercise. Being cooped up in the house all day got a bit dull, particularly as I did not trigger my Amazon Prime trial til this morning (binge watched The Boys most of today).
I walked til the McDonalds in Military Road, which had the drive thru extremely busy, with cars banked up right til the entrance from the street, the busiest I have ever noticed.
I think this was because it being Good Friday, there was nothing else open, and no other reminders of normality in this time of pandemic. So people, seeking a respite from cabin fever, got into their cars and drove to the nearest McDonalds to get some semblance of normality, in the form of comfort food.
For me, normal is eating at least once at the local Thai restaurant each week, with a bottle of decent red wine to accompany the food. That is not possible right now, and I do miss it. I grazed today on a succession of toasted cheese, tomato and onion sandwiches, and on some yoghurt. But I can see how for many people, McDonalds is a tie to the sanity and mundane stability of normal life. Especially as not only has the local fish and chip shop closed for the duration, but also the kebab caravan permanently parked at the service station.
Lost For Words! 
Rather than walk to McDonalds, I drove last week to give me recently upgraded car a bit of a run. Was happy to use the Drive through facility rather than wait inside trying to keep my distance.
It was good to get out of the house and my Quarter Pounder meal deal probably tasted better for that reason.
We are lucky in Hobsons Bay that there have been no reported cases of COVID 19. That said, the state restrictions still apply. Most of our local haunts remain open except for the local noodle shop which we found last week had closed down with a sign in the door saying “closed until further notice”
Surprised to see the sign, it made us wonder why this particular business had closed because it had been doing a roaring trade in take away, specifically phone orders.
Suspicion set in with the first thought coming to mind that perhaps they had shut down as it was financially better for them to be receiving financial support from the government than trade.
I do wonder whether all the financial support and incentives the government is providing is going to be rorted. My gut feeling is yes. At this stage, the government has not made public what checks and balances have been put in place to prevent this. I can only hope all these claims for assistance will be checked either at the point of application or during a post application audit.
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You are probably right that the assistances packages will be rorted by some people. Even at the best of times, there are people who will find loopholes in the most well thought out plans. Unfortunately when something is cobbled together this quickly, I expect that there will be plenty of loopholes which some people will exploit. To say nothing of incentives in the plans which might reward the wrong sort of behaviour.
It’s like when the Rudd government came up with all those home insulation and solar panel pump priming initiatives. Suddenly a lot of chancers entered the market to roll those out. When those initiatives ended, the chancers moved on. They did not disappear back into a crack in the ground – they moved on to the next scheme which they could exploit, such as the subsidies and poor compliance plans for dubious education courses where they aggressively marketed such courses to people with mental handicaps and then heartlessly foisted huge course related debts onto those people.
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