Quote Originally Posted by CCFCC3PO View Post
I probably shouldn't mention football club owners on a football club messageboard, but we have an owner worth $1.6bn (£1.314bn) who recently sold £55m worth of shares in a football club in the US who was also very quick to pass on the burden of his staffs wages onto the taxpayer.

That is also a piss take.

Furlough was a good scheme, it may even have been necessary, but it is going to cost a fortune and I do wonder if a few months on unemployment benefits whilst having mortgage and loan holidays could not have been used instead.

My neighbour is currently quids in - mortgage holiday, 80% of his wage - why would he need to rush back to work?

If my neighbour was out on benefits - he would be back working now. Yes, we can argue that many people would be forced into work despite being high risk - but that is really where furlough should have gone - to people with known underlying issues.

I appreciate that furlough may have had an impact on the success of the lockdown - but in that case we are simply paying extra for the Government's tardy response, and for years of underfunding the NHS and police force.
But to give our owner a little credit, he has thousands of employees all over the world and all the businesses they work in are probably taking a hit and he may be doing more to support those that are in countries that don't have such a scheme. We don't know all the facts on it do we. The oil rich never-did-sa-days-work-in-their-lives owners of clubs like Man City are a different breed entirely.