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.

The company could of used furlough though thays the help the government was giving to businesses to help keep people's jobs. So they did provide help, if the company decided it couldn't or didn't that isn't the fault of the government ..what qas the alternative keep everything open and people died in more numbers than they did, would you have been okay going to work everyday taking that risk?

@LumiB the point I was making was that furlough was great if you could get it. Lots of people couldn't for various reasons. It created a huge divide.

When I eventually got a job I went to a seminar and sat at a table where one woman was from the care sector and had worked throughout lockdown. She was still struggling to get over what she'd experienced. Another woman worked for a company that had given everyone full pay to stay at home. She moaned about being bored during lockdown and how she'd had to wait sooo long for her new company car to arrive. I very nearly lost my home during lockdown.

Then we get the stories of what the Tories were actually doing during lockdown. Partying, not following the rules... wasting millions on unusable equipment and setting up nightingale hospitals... and the furlough scheme is being held up as a wonderful thing we should be thankful for? The way the government behaved during lockdown was appalling. It's the last thing they should be using to make themselves look good.

The government could have made it compulsory for employers to use the furlough scheme! They could have put in more logical rules for as to who qualified for furlough rather than a stupid "if you weren't paid in February you don't get it". If a government is going to spunk hundreds of billions of pounds on millions of people, they have a duty to at least be fair as to who gets it and NOT exclude over 3 million workers (10% of the workforce) from their schemes!

The Americans gave everyone earning under $75000 a cash payout to help.

I think most people agree furlough was needed, but many think it should have been a long term loan (as with student loans).

The people that think this are the ones who weren’t entitled to it🙄

I disagree that Covid is not an election issue: if anybody knocks on my door, I will be grilling them mercilessly about what they would do differently. While we very much hope nothing like that ever happens again in our lifetimes, the government's actions set several massive precedents, in particular:

• Frightening the pants off their public (their words, not mine), with an orchestrated campaign of fear porn. To me, this is the worst thing the government did, even worse than lockdown itself, or Partygate. I never want to see a government doing this again. It has made me and probably many others totally desensitised to any future government fear propaganda. Such tactics should only be used extremely sparingly, if at all.
• Giving an insanely low priority to children's education.
• Locking down with no exit plan: it was almost an afterthought that it might have to end one day.
• Completely bypassing democratic process, such as Parliamentary scrutiny.
• Bringing us dangerously close to vaccine passports for everyday activities.
• Making impossible promises to "do whatever it takes to beat the virus", which made easing or ending lockdowns politically impossible, which I think is one reason they dragged on for as long as they did. They resorted to the lie "vaccines prevent transmission" to justify an end to lockdowns. I think that expecting our saintly government to save us from the nasty virus with magic lockdowns and furlough, both of which came at a tremendous cost, was part of the problem. If they had said instead "we cannot beat the virus, we can only lessen the harms", things might have been very different.

Labour provided little or no scrutiny to the damage caused by lockdowns. They jumped on Partygate all right, but the only thing they said about lockdown was that it didn't go far enough, or ended much too soon. Not a word about the legacy of the lockdowns which they failed to oppose.

I cant help wondering if election canvassers have got a list of people who are still paying off lockdown fines so that they accidentally on purpose dont knock on their doors!! And i mean all parties! I bet they havent canvassed the pub Starmer got thrown out of back in April 2021!

This is very much an election issue. Im still hearing about people who lost jobs homes and marriages. The anger hasnt dissipated as much as those in power would like to think.

As I understand it, furlough was and is a standard part of disaster planning that is in place and kept up to date regularly. Unsurprisingly, over the years governments have recognised that something like this would be vital to keep the country going. In practice what happened was that civil servants got the files out and the cabinet rubber-stamped the plan, as it was always going to have to do. A Labour government would have done the same, and of course the plan was in existence during the Blair/Brown government.

Unfortunately, what the plans couldn't militate against was a government too idle to deal with furlough fraud, probably because they were too busy partying and creaming off money through useless PPE contracts with their friends.

I was working a zero hours contract while getting a small business off the ground. There was no furlough despite no work and no small business support as I had no accounts then.

Dh did get furlough, but 80% of one wage wasn't enough to pay the bills. We ended up owing money for utilities.
When work came back, we both worked overtime to pay off the debts and thought that we were clear in October last year.
We were then hit with a bill as they had overpaid us tax credits due to us working extra hours so we are now repaying them. Due to them ending our credits due to a clerical error, we also missed out on the fuel allowance payments as they were stopped through the qualifying period.

Furlough was no help to us, or others in our situation.

So if furlough was no help to you what would have happened if dh didn't get it? He would of lost his jo b menaing no money coming in at all meaning your debts even higher.

Had there been no furlough, it would have been unpaid leave. He would then have been able to take another job, something which wasn't allowed under furlough rules.

I thought furlough rules said you could take another job unless your employment contract prohibited that? So it was down to the employer that he couldn’t earn elsewhere - I thought that was how people who were on furlough were able to take jobs as delivery drivers to earn extra ££ to top up their wages. My SIL was a temp for an agency in London and they furloughed her and she was able to do the odd job for another agency WFH so could keep her income up to nearly normal.

Labour now wanting to tackle "benefits Britain" They have got a fucking cheek after calling for longer harder lockdowns

This in spades. We must keep reminding our Labour candidates that the only shred of opposition the Labour party gave to the extremely damaging lockdowns was that they ever ended. There is clearly a pact between Labour and the Conservatives "Don't mention the lockdowns!!!!"

@scalt i dont know whether to laugh or cry. They cant dont want to see the situation that they are moaning about would be even worse if they had got the longer harder lockdowns that they wanted.

And they seem to have forgotten that the essential key workers they were lauding not so long ago are IN WORK but on low pay so have to claim top up benefits. So those who worked these jobs during those lockdowns woke up this morning to hear this crap!

Here is what i REALLY objected to. Disabled and ill people being used as a tool to emotionally blackmail others into following lockdowns and restrictions when the Gov. and most people couldnt give a fuck about them under normal circumstances. I dont like users! I said it would be back to the default setting soon enough................and here we are Both Tory and Labour talking about people on benefits in a derogatory way and touting the idea of giving PIP claimants vouchers. Not vulnerable now eh!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/06/30/when-it-comes-discussing-lockdown-politicians-are-on-mute/?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1719729025-1

@scalt Someone was finally stupid enough to do this

https://x.com/craig_smithUK/status/1807307651082051931