Furlough misunderstood

ToxicWomble

There seems to be a massive misunderstanding amongst people that furlough doesn’t cost anything.
When all this is done and dusted there will be a massive financial bill to be paid the likes of which we have never seen
Someone is going to have to pay for it in one way or another.

DoaM

Maybe the banks will weigh in to help out, seeing as they received a massive bail-out 12 years ago. Maybe they'll feel a moral obligation to do so.

Oh .. wait ... was that Porcine Air going past my window?

KatrinaWaves

That plus the grants of 10k going out to businesses that don’t make that in a year. I just dealt with a lady with three holidays let’s on her property, annexes, outbuildings. She’s getting 30k, and she hasn’t made that total in all her time letting them out... 

the money has gotta come from somewhere... 

[Deleted User]

ToxicWomble said:

When all this is done and dusted there will be a massive financial bill to be paid the likes of which we have never seen

Indeed, the "Austerity" measures until recently adopted by the government will seem very mild by comparison with what will be coming in the near future. 

The damage to the economy will also be both devastating and long lasting. 

Regardless, not having the furlough scheme would have forced people back into work and so allow the virus to run rampant in the population..

ToxicWomble

Totally agree - any government were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t.
Personally, I think ours have actually done a reasonable job so far.
The problem is that the lockdown is already causing deaths from compromised treatment so at what point do we return to some semblance of normality - again, damned if they do,damned if they don’t.

JJ_Egan

Normal ??  in a virus that is not going away in a few months  or possibly years .

Japan ended lockdown then where hit very very hard with a second wave .

[Deleted User]

JJ_Egan said:

Japan ended lockdown then where hit very very hard with a second wave .

This is what will impact most heavily on the economy. The current furlough payments are simply not sustainable for any extended period of time, but what is the alternative? 

travis-powers

I’m sub contracting to a builder at the moment perfectly safe as on my own or working at safe distance, his workers are sitting at home on 80% of wages no one will work! If the company goes under they will lose their jobs! 

 Yeah be safe but think of the future!

DoaM

We need to get this right else we'll end up repeating what happened with Spanish Flu in 1918 ... ~4m people died in the first wave, but it was the second wave that was devastating, resulting in ~50m dead in total.

ToxicWomble

numbers are a weird thing - 20,000 deaths is a hell of a lot of people but bearing in mind that this is a tiny % of the UK population.
In reality, a large proportion of us have already had it and recovered- the percentage that actually require hospitalisation is again a fraction of that, sadly small percentages of 60million can still overwhelm our ability to deal with them and that is the only determining factor in how we move ahead. 

Interestingly - statistically you are 15 times more likely to die in a car crash than from Covid and yet we are still allowed to go out of our houses and drive.
Stats really are a funny beast 

Jack_Cork

DoaM said:

We need to get this right else we'll end up repeating what happened with Spanish Flu in 1918 ... ~4m people died in the first wave, but it was the second wave that was devastating, resulting in ~50m dead in total.

Different dynamics in they way it spread, its not a like for like situation