Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
We’re now at the stage it seems where it’s being said that Wales could have gone into a firebreak lockdown in the autumn without a furlough scheme after it was denied the money to operate such a plan by the UK Chancellor because the Government he was a member of were ignoring the advice of the SAGE committee to implement a UK lockdown.
What would’ve been the purpose of ordering a lockdown in Wales with no furlough scheme? As far as I can see it would be to show that opponents of Drakeford’s Government on a Cardiff City messageboard were right when they argued that it wasn’t a case of Welsh health policy being dictated by UK Government financial considerations.- how else would it have benefited anyone?
A lockdown without furlough would, as has already been remarked, been traumatic for those affected and it seems obvious to me that this would have led to the lockdown rules being poorly observed, thereby making the whole thing pretty pointless (by their actions over a period of almost a year, the UK Government know it would be electorally suicidal as well).
The WAG were denied the opportunity to have the lockdown they wanted to have at the time they wanted to have it, but, like so many others, they probably knew that the UK Government would have to succumb to the inevitable soon whereby they would have to announce a lockdown with furlough payments to all four nations.
What I'm taking from this is Mark Drakeford put finances over health. If Lockdown was so essential, then it should not matter whether we had furlough or not.

and for the record, since you don't know, WG has been pumping money into Welsh business since March 2020 so there was no reason why it had to rely on the furlough scheme, when it has had several rates/grant schemes of its own. The money could have been given to business just through a different mechanism.

WG chose not to enter lockdown, citing HMT as the reason, but that just does not hold up when WG has been using its own funds to support Welsh business all through lockdown