Deal or No Deal?

The news this week has been full of the Manchester deal or no deal game.

The Tier 3 rules are intended to apply for 4 weeks at a time. Apparently the disagreement was that Manchester wanted the 80% furlough payout for workers. One thing that concerned me a little was who that money went to, did it really pay the poorest, or did it support the business owners. To my surprise I discovered that the 80% rule is still in operation for another 10 days. So all this stand off on wage subsidy was about something that didn’t exist till November. The longer the stand off the longer the lower rate would apply.

In the end (just before the deadline) the request was apparently modified to around 25% more per capita than Liverpool was being given. Why should a builder in Manchester get 25% more than a builder in Liverpool? I’ve seen so many people complain about the gym closure mismatch that say nothing about the mismatch in this funding demand.

In the end I have to conclude that your views on this issue will probably be along political lines. I have seen comments on this that would make Qanon proud. We need to try to take political bias out of this, and it isn’t easy.

What I do know is that restrictions have been needed for some time to save lives. I also know that people are desperate. Over the next 6 months we are going to see more and more businesses going to the wall. And here is the hard choice – do we try to keep everybody afloat, or do we decide to cut them loose now so we can support the others for longer?

And this to me is the issue behind the deal or no deal. We still have not come to terms with the amount of economic pain we will see over the next 6 months.

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