Furlough was the minimum they had to do

[Justkeepswiimming]

I hear this being touted around by Tory politicians. And with distance it's perhaps easy to forget. But furlough was the absolute minimum they HAD to do to prop up an economy they had told to stay at home. They DID NOT do this out of the kindness of their hearts like they are trying to say. Consider what would have happened to the economy had they not. And they were not unique in the decision they made, most governments had to offer something similar.

However it's important to remember how poorly the scheme was managed. Fraud was enormous under this scheme. So to use this scheme as an attempt to show how fantastic they are is so misleading. They had to do something to keep the economy moving.

There was no help for the self-employed and the scheme generated a large amount of Fraud that Sunak just decided to write off...

Any UK government would have put a similar scheme in place (maybe minus the fraud...) so I really don't see why the Tories are congratulating themselves over this.

They way I see it is it's something that no country has ever faced before. They did the vest they could at the time, not always right but I agree furlough was a good thing. We all kew it'd cost us as it would have to be paid back but better than making millions of people jobless and the stress that would of caused people.

It'd easy to play the hindsight game but there has to be a level of understanding that this is the first time this ever happened. If this happened again I will most certainly be more harsh with my views because they should learn the lessons and make sure mistakes aren't repeated.

I think any government in power would have had difficulty at the time of covid. Who knows who would have handled it better. Boris Johnson immediate approach which resembled Sweden would have in my view been better but he was forced in to being more proactive. Covid in my view isn't something that is important for the election as its in the past - of course the damage isn't, huge number of young people who are suffering the issues that it brought but we cannot go back in time.

Wouldn't need such a stupid scheme if lockdowns weren't instituted. You can't shut down and respool the economy over and over without damage. It was a stupid, insane and criminal thing to do.

When the hair and beauty industry was brought up in the Commons they found it funny. Just wimmins things innit! It was the reason for Caroline Hirons Beauty Backed campaign She did her pieces on Twitter when she saw pics of barbers plucking mens nose hairs while beauty salons were still not allowed to open. (after all you could wax legs without going anywhere near the face) Men first as usual.

Agree with this. Eat Out to Help Out could only ever come from the mind of an absolute idiot.

Also getting grumpy now with the tactic of them labelling furlough as generous as if they personally gave their money out.

They started a scheme to give tax money back to selected tax payers.

Johnson failed to turn up to early Cobra meetings. The fact the government were caught so unaware of what was coming was an absolute failure on their part and led to the unmitigated disaster we ended up with. They acted very slow, bearing in mind the catastrophe we could see unfolding in Italy who were few weeks ahead. Another occasion where distance has change our memory.

The kids who were born in that time are going into school this September. Schools are well aware the impacts of lockdown are long from over. This year's receptions classes are already needing huge levels of intervention. Covid, combined with CoL crisis has absolutely hammered this generation of kids. So it may not be a huge factor, but by God its not history. We will live with the consequences of this for decades.

Prompt action in early March and September and no 'eat out to help out' scheme would have reduced the length of so-called lockdowns by at least a third if not more.

Furlough was, in my mind, sensible and necessary.

But it’s the sort of thing that a large section of the Tories would be ideologically opposed to.

Indeed, those "let them eat cake" type of twats have been posting ever since, calling Rishi a communist. It's ridiculous.

I suspect a considerable motivation was the risk of civil unrest.

at the time, I’d have thought that free money, keeping people in their jobs, £££ from the state to fund people sitting in the sunshine and making sourdough, could only have come from Labour.

Anyone who loathed it and found it offensive and disgusting behaviour from a Tory government may absolutely give that money back.

OP

With respect, you do spout some total BS

Name other countries that came up with this idea??

There may be a couple at best

It was a bold move and because it was, posters like you would never admit to it

No, I'm not voting Tory

There would have been NO "civil untrest"

What was being touted about in the gutter press/media was that what happened in china, ie the lock down "would never be accepted in England. The rest is history

People were shook to their core

We were on hols in Asai and return one day before lockdown in England. I was telling family and friends I feared something like we never witnessed before - they all lol - I was saying to our kids in England "get some masks.." they all took it with a pinch of salt - this was 4 weeks before lockdown

The Tories did well re lockdown - it cost me and my family and other taxpayers billions but it was worth it. Otherwise, England could have easily been like a failed nation

I still have the, “We can’t help everyone”, ringing in my ears from Sunak. I will never vote Tory again after the millions of people they left to suffer without help.

And if we hadn't locked down how many of those kids would no longer have parents or how many parents would no longer have their children

It was never going to be an easy decision, crucified either way.

Could you really say hand on heart you would gambled people's lives that way...

@DistinguishedSocialCommentator

There would have been NO "civil untrest[sic]"

You do make me laugh. It would be lovely to spend a day thinking I know 100% how things are, but I prefer being realistic to delusional.

Actually many European countries have less than 80 percent of salary. So no, it wasn't the minimum they could do as they could have done less and in the long run we are all paying the cost down the line. Conservatives in their hurry to hand over tax payer money allowed a lot of fraud during the COVID pandemic.

This is not true at all. My BiL is self employed and got government grants he didn't have to repay as any self employed person with accounts could do.

I disagree. I cannot stand the Tories. Happily refer to them as Tory Scum. But I was impressed with their furlough scheme, as the very notion of supporting the public in that way was very un-Tory like. And not only that, it was generous and went on for a long time. So it is the one thing they do deserve credit for, as they put aside their ideals and focussed on what’s best for the country as a whole.

I mean, they did then also hand out multi million pound contracts to their friends, and break the rules many times, but they got the furlough scheme right.

None of the three self employed people I know received a penny - it was very much dependent on setup and previous earnings. One of them was me. I used some savings and then got a regular job in order to get by. I'd happily have traded no support for the government not destroying my sector with the last lot of IR35 changes but in fcat they did both. Every year since then HMRC has had less tax from me and I have been struggling.

Furlough saved jobs in my employers business (hospitality business). Literally took people off the planned redundancy list overnight in our case.

It was a huge scheme rolled out very quickly. The detail was very hard to implement and gave some unfortunate loopholes or exclusions. However I think those
problems were better than the alternatives. It saved those workers. Plus mass unemployment in a existing crisis would have done more damage to the whole economy

however it's not enough to offset other policy decisions across the 14 yrs of Conservative government for me. I will be voting elsewhere.

Actually I agree it was a bold move. Nothing I have said is BS though. This is how the Tories see those they deem lower than themselves. You just need to listen to what they are saying and doing it really isn't difficult.
They had no choice but to compensate for telling people to stop working but, they SHOULD have handled it better but they are happy to waste money.

All I am saying is that, if that is all they have achieved in 14 years, they are long overdue to leave. Any other party would have done the same.

So how should they have handled it better at a time where there is so much uncertainty, unknowns nothing to look back on as an example...it's so easy to say this with hindsight and if it was you as prime minister eveb you could not say if you would of handled it better.

Don't forget lots of civil service would of been on furlough you habe pretty much every company going from bums on seats in desks to scrambling to equip their people to work from home. I work in IT we have 30,000 ppl suddenly working from home, grtting laptops, PCs to them and then having to train them to use Teams, Zoom whatever it was...on top of that everyone at a personal level is going through an unprecented situation, the stress, anxiety, fear and everyone went through it differently

Come off it they did the best they could of. I don't care if it was labour, greens, lib dems in charge I still say the same