Furlough becomes false economy if extended by Rishi Sunak – The Yorkshire Post says

Rarely, if ever, satisfied, they overlook the fact that the whole of the United Kingdom – including Scotland – have benefitted from a policy that has seen £33.8bn of public money used to support 9.6 million workers.

Always intended to be a short-term measure when the Government needed to pay people to stay at home, the county would be facing a far greater economic calamity if it was not for this measure.

And while Mr Sunak would like to be in a position to extend it beyond October’s cut-off point, he knows that it will be a false economy and the challenge is creating new opportunities for those who might, as a consequence, find themselves out of work.

On this, it would perhaps be more helpful if the Opposition parties put their more constructive ideas to the Chancellor, a politician who takes his duties very seriously indeed, rather than simply playing to the public and populist gallery by calling for more ‘blank cheques’ to be signed off by the Treasury in order to mask their own dearth of innovation and ideas.

Just as they will challenge Mr Sunak at the time of the next Budget and Comprehensive Spending Review over the scale of the country’s indebtedness, and how he intends to reduce the deficit, it is also disingenuous of Labour, the SNP and Lib Dems not to offer specifics of their own on how and where they would make savings too.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

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James Mitchinson

Editor