• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Local Lockdowns after Furlough ends

Status
Not open for further replies.

102 fan

Member
Joined
14 May 2007
Messages
769
The Deputy First Minister in NI is talking about a possible circuit breaker in N I over the Winter. If the Chancellor removes Furlough at the end of this month, who would pay for our, or any regions Furlough?
 
Last edited:
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

bramling

Veteran Member
Joined
5 Mar 2012
Messages
17,685
Location
Hertfordshire / Teesdale
The Deputy First Minister in NI is talking about a possible circuit breaker in N I over the Winter. If the Chancellor removes Furlough at the end of this momth, who would pay for our, or any regions Furlough?

The government need to be firm and say no.

Why on earth anyone would want a circuit breaker is beyond me, given that it was tried in Wales and was chocolate fireguard territory. Being suspicious, this feels like an attempt to being in another lockdown by the back door.
 

43066

Established Member
Joined
24 Nov 2019
Messages
9,216
Location
London
The Deputy First Minister in NI is talking about a possible circuit breaker in N I over the Winter. If the Chancellor removes Furlough at the end of this momth, who would pay for our, or any regions Furlough?

Madness. Of course highly unlikely to happen for exactly that reason: furlough (belatedly) being brought to an end this month, so lockdowns will be completely uneconomic. Sounds like empty words from another regional government trying to differentiate itself from central government for the sake of it.
 

bramling

Veteran Member
Joined
5 Mar 2012
Messages
17,685
Location
Hertfordshire / Teesdale
Madness. Of course highly unlikely to happen for exactly that reason: furlough (belatedly) being brought to an end this month, so lockdowns will be completely uneconomic. Sounds like empty words from another regional government trying to differentiate itself from central government for the sake of it.

I *so* hope we can just manage to hold out til the end of this month without anything going wrong, so we can finally rid ourselves of that dastardly scheme.

Meanwhile, at my place, there’s just been a quiet retirement for a middle-ranking manager who has been on furlough since April 2020. So much for job retention. It’s by no means the only dubious one I know of.
 

43066

Established Member
Joined
24 Nov 2019
Messages
9,216
Location
London
Meanwhile, at my place, there’s just been a quiet retirement for a middle-ranking manager who has been on furlough since April 2020. So much for job retention. It’s by no means the only dubious one I know of.

The mind boggles really!

There are also numerous reports circulating of people who have been furloughed, but unscrupulous employers have insisted on them continuing to work anyway. And you have to wonder why people are still being paid to do nothing when restrictions ended some months ago, and indeed we now have a labour shortage! I wonder how many of those on furlough this month will be training up as HGV drivers next month?

It’s difficult not to conclude that the scheme has run on for far too long and is now distorting the low end/casual employment market, causing more problems than it’s solving.
 

Smidster

Member
Joined
23 Oct 2014
Messages
561
Wow, there are people who have been on furlough all this time?

Of course - Think of people in the travel / aviation sectors who continue to be decimated by the Pandemic both because of conditions here and overseas.

Who knows what will happen for those people come October as the industry will take a long time to recover.

My guess would be that any future support schemes are much more specific and limited in scope - for example like the scheme they were going to introduce last year before it all went off the rails.
 

duncanp

Established Member
Joined
16 Aug 2012
Messages
4,856
The (UK) government needs to be firm and tell the devolved administrations that the furlough scheme is coming to an end in nine days time.

I am quite sure the devolved administrations would like furlough to continue - it is very easy to be in favour of something when someone else is picking up the bill. If they want to bring in restrictions in their countries, they must pick up any costs involved.

There a quite a number of labour shortages in the UK at the moment, so those people who are still on furlough, and have no job to go back to when the scheme ends, will have to look for alternative employment.

The travel sector should start to recover fairly soon, as there is a lot of pent up demand waiting to be satisfied.

After last weeks announcement about easing of restrictions on people returning to the UK, there was a veritable stampede to the travel agents at the weekend. Virgin Atlantic reported today that bookings have "surged" by 91% following yesterday's announcement on easing of travel restrictions to the United States.
 

StKeverne1497

Member
Joined
9 Oct 2019
Messages
140
Location
Caerphilly
The government need to be firm and say no.

Why on earth anyone would want a circuit breaker is beyond me, given that it was tried in Wales and was chocolate fireguard territory. Being suspicious, this feels like an attempt to being in another lockdown by the back door.
If you are referring to the two week lockdown in Wales last October, it did actually work - to an extent. The numbers in Wales were going up, we had a two-week lockdown and figures dropped. Then they went up again. There were two big issues. Firstly, it was Wales-only and so much less likely to have a lasting effect given the sheer amount of travel between Wales and England. Secondly, when it was announced the English government refused to fund it, so whereas three weeks was recommended by many people, Wales could only afford to self-fund two. Of course, after this the English government changed its mind.

As for the funding. If you want a diatribe about the Barnet Formula and the "West Lothian question" just ask.
 

yorksrob

Veteran Member
Joined
6 Aug 2009
Messages
38,818
Location
Yorks
I can't imagine even Sinn Fein going down the lockdown route if the Republic isn't (along with GB).
 

317 forever

Established Member
Joined
21 Aug 2010
Messages
2,544
Location
North West
While there could be local lockdowns introduced by devolved governments, I doubt the tiers or localised lockdowns like last year's tiers or Leicester lockdown will be reintroduced in England now.
 

Eyersey468

Established Member
Joined
14 Sep 2018
Messages
2,135
From the noises the government are making it sounds like they don't want to reimpose restrictions, but then there have been a number of times they have gone back on what they said.
 

102 fan

Member
Joined
14 May 2007
Messages
769
I can't imagine even Sinn Fein going down the lockdown route if the Republic isn't (along with GB).
The DUP are for easing restrictions, so Sinn Fein are against easing. That's the grim reality of NI politics, what one side are for, the other has to oppose, regardless of any logic.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top