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.

Why didn't you or 3 others you know have at least 1 year of verified accounts filed showing you paying income tax on the amount earned?

@caringcarer because some of us were newly self employed. I set up April 2019, I was ten days away from being able to file a tax return for my first year of trading. As soon as I was eligible in April 2020, I hit send on the return - yet was still excluded from any further loans/support

But surely you can understand if you haven't got a history of trading accounts the government couldn't give you grants. It would have been impossible to try to work out grants for those without a history of trading accounts due to scammers.

So deadly that they partied through it

They could have easily said get your SA in by middle of May/June rather than wait till Jan 2021 and have some figures to work from. That's what I did, so despite immediately filing accounts for 2019/2020 and therefore unable to alter any figures, I was still excluded 2 years later.

They had ways to sort things out. I absolutely agreed with being discounted from the first grant for that exact reason. But failing to solve the issue for the second/third/fourth grant was a slap in the face for the self employed.

You know that, I know that and we are not even running a business and millions of other people know that but some just want an argument. IMO, you have tried to educate them really well but they have chosen to ignore the fundamental facts of how the system works. IMO!!

The point was a PP was extrapolating the experience of their BIL as if it applied to everyone who was self-employed and making a thinly veiled implication that people who were not helped were in some way crooked.
That was ignorant bollocks as several subsequent posters have attested with their details.

You have literally no idea about self-employment but you think you are an expert as your posts have amply demonstrated.

We lost a lot of taxi drivers due to them leaving the job. One co. here had fifty before the lockdowns After................19 And yet when someone on here mentions going to A&E a, its Get a taxi. Cos ambulances are busy. They dont see the connection. or b. its do you really need to go to A&E. People didnt/dont give a shit about others, only when they are worried about catching Covid off them

They had no problem handing out "loans" to fake businesses with no trading history!

Local councils had no problem handing out grants to properties registered for business rates even if they weren't trading and hadn't traded for years, or for those premises owners who suddenly decided to register for business rates having not been registered previously!

There are other ways of "evidence" besides annual tax returns for new businesses, such as VAT returns or payroll returns which prove the existence of a business. They could have given grants "pending" the submission of the yearly tax returns.

Re limited company directors who were excluded from furlough because they submitted annual payroll returns every March (which the rules allowed them to do). Because they weren't paid a wage in February, they were excluded - despite often years of "evidence" that they were paid yearly every March. Ample "evidence" they weren't scammers, but they were still excluded for no reason at all, just laziness and lack of understanding on the part of HMRC/Treasury and Sunak!

But ultimately, they (Sunak) screwed up and because he didn't want to accept his mistakes, he lied and made out that it was the businesses' own fault if they were excluded.

Exactly. This government doesn't want small businesses. It's obviously a total coincidence that one of the major alternatives to individual small businesses and small contracting companies in, for example IT, is a massive corporation called Infosys.

To be fair a few million did but most did not get caught but nor did they make the rules

They had no problem handing out "loans" to fake businesses with no trading history!

I agree with @MuseKira

I've never understood why there's been no media outcry or demand for those fake businesses to pay back the money they stole during covid. Let's face it, Rishi knows who they are - he signed the fucking cheques!

£21 BILLION was lost due to fraud. Even if they clawed back just 10% of that cash, that would be a HUGE injection of tax payer money.

Link please

Could make very interesting telly if while canvassing they knock on the door of someone still paying off a lockdown fine

@JenniferBooth when it was the local elections, I actually had our local councillor knock on my door canvassing for the police and crime commissioner election.

I'm PRAYING that my Tory MP decides to do some door-to-door canvassing. I'd love to have the opportunity to tell him to his face how fucking useless he is.

Agree with this completely. As I have said previously, I know someone who is a multimillionaire who owned a cafe which she was about to closes down in Feb 2020. When it became likely that grant help might be available, she kept it 'open' with a 'closed due to holiday' sign on the door specifically to get any grants that might be handed out. To make it worse, her partner and three sons all had 'hobby businesses' that would turn over £5,000 a year if they were lucky. When the grants started flowing, they all (5 of them) got £10,000 each, then they did it again each time the grants were released. I think they got three lots of £10k each, or it might have been two. However many tranches there were, they got them. The cafe has never opened again and her three sons have gone back to living their best lives on mum and dad's money, playing at being bakers, hobby farmers etc, as a cost of about £150,000 to the taxpayers. It was - and still is - a disgrace.
Edited to add: I think the fact that all of the 'businesses' were registered at the cafe, they were entitled to the money because business rates were paid (mum charged the other three about £5 a month towards the rates, so they were regarded as business ratepayers)

I'm still cross because I was working full time on a zero hours contract in the NHS, caught covid badly at work at the start of the pandemic while looking after a very poorly covid patient 1:1 for several hours in a poorly ventilated single room with only a surgical mask, and struggled to even get statutory sick pay for the months I was then too ill to work a very physical job. Furlough felt very unfair to see others getting so much for nothing while I was eating up savings to pay bills.

What happened to you is shit but would you have preferred those furloughed to go to work instead. Have you forgotten that people were told by LAW to stay at home. Do i need to link the "stay the fuck at home" threads? The criticism that people got if they didnt. Anyone remember the guy fined for opening his gym and now we are back to moaning about obesity! What were people supossed to pay for food and rent with? Buttons?

In April 2020 i remember saying in RL and posting on here "whatever we do it will never be enough" and ive been proved right over and over

Everyone sensible realises there would be unfairness and winners and losers in a scheme that had to get done so quickly.
It does stick in the craw a bit when Tory election propaganda wangs on about how wonderful it was though.
It would be much more honest to recognise the all the fraud and unfairness rather than trying to pretend it was all done perfectly.
Of course there's no guarantee it would have been better under Labour or that they wouldn't have tried to claim the credit.
One thing for certain is posters like @DistinguishedSocialCommentator would have been droning on about "Labour spent all the money"

I don't disagree with you @frankentall when you say "Everyone sensible realises there would be unfairness and winners and losers in a scheme that had to get done so quickly.
It does stick in the craw a bit when Tory election propaganda wangs on about how wonderful it was though."

As someone who was excluded, I absolutely understand why I wasn't eligible for support for the first grant. But I do think they could have TRIED to find ways for subsequent support, especially when the likes of Martin Lewis were actively pointing out the issues and flaws, and campaign groups drew their attention to it.

The absolute refusal to offer support a year on when we were back in lockdown in 2021 (after which we would have all had to submit our self assessments) was where Rishi showed he couldnt' care less.

By that time, he had deliberately chosen to continue excluding 3 million people. So he can't then seem surprised that those 3 million (like myself) have remembered this and will refuse to vote for him

What I do think should be mandated however, is that pandemics should always be a cross party response.

I was also one of the 3 million +
I didn't vote Tory (and am not about to start).
As I said upthread I would have accepted the exclusion if they'd left IR35 alone too - happy to take the rough with the smooth but they hit me with both.

No matter, I am PAYE now and paying much less to HMRC each year overall, their loss (and partly mine but hey ho). This is what they wanted, everyone PAYE and my old work done in India with no UK tax payable

Yes, I do understand that but it didn't put food on our table.
There were thousands in our position.
We survived on my pip and credit cards

@itsnotabouthepasta

By that time, he had deliberately chosen to continue excluding 3 million people. So he can't then seem surprised that those 3 million (like myself) have remembered this and will refuse to vote for him

Nail on the head. Everyone accepted that things had to be done quickly at the start. What was not acceptable was that months passed and Rishi just ignored the excluded, even lied about it in Parliament. There was plenty of time to deal with some of the flaws in the schemes, as months passed, but he made no effort at all. Just continued to peddle lies and mistruths to give the impression that those excluded were fraudsters (and as this thread shows, some people fell for it).

Furlough was great for those that could get it. The company I worked for just made us all redundant. It was horrific. Nothing to apply for. No help. I'll never forget it. Worst time of my life.

So no... Tories going on about how marvellous they were during lockdown doesn't cut it with me.