Rishi Sunak’s £30billion spree to rescue economy will go down a treat with Sun readers
RISHI Sunak’s latest rescue is a staggering £30billion package of giveaways which will go down a treat with Sun readers.
A six-month 15 per cent cut in VAT on food from restaurants and takeaways, on hotels and caravan sites, on theme parks and cinemas.
Even more incredibly, Eat Out to Help Out vouchers for half-price restaurant meals in August.
These aren’t just good news for families’ finances, and employees who need their firms to stay afloat.
They are an attempt to encourage Britain to venture back out, to convince a public still alarmingly content to hide at home from even the tiniest risk of Covid.
We desperately hope the Chancellor succeeds, though discount dinners may not be enough, welcome as they are.
The main point of this mini-Budget, though, was to directly save as many jobs as possible.
The £1,000-a-head inducement to re-employ furloughed staff is wellintentioned, but wide open to abuse.
Many firms will pocket the bung even though they always intended to re-employ workers, or already have.
Others will do so, keep staff till the end of January as per the rules, then fire them.
'EVEN STRONGER MEASURES'
Mr Sunak’s plan to pay young people’s wages for six months hoping they will be taken on permanently is another noble idea.
Time will tell if it works.
We suspect even stronger measures — tax cuts or a reduction in employers’ National Insurance — will be needed.
The stamp duty cut will bring joy to those moving, or thinking of it.
Indeed we wonder why it isn’t scrapped permanently.
But it won’t help young renters.
Responding instantly to a Budget in the Commons is tough, especially when a Tory Chancellor treads all over your turf.
Even so, Labour’s shadow chancellor looked woefully out of her depth.
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The scale of Mr Sunak’s bailouts is monumental. That didn’t stop Annaliese Dodds furiously reciting her preprepared script demanding yet more.
It is nuts to pretend the Tories have not done their best and spent mind-blowing sums to keep people in work.
The more valid criticism, ours too, is whether it can work.
Woke-up call
CAN it be true?
Is a proper backlash building against the woke hordes, their sinister “cancellations” of those they disagree with and the “safe spaces” in which they shelter from disagreeable opinions?
We are at odds politically with many of the 150 famous names uniting in a public letter backing free speech. But we applaud them for doing so.
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When these academics and writers, including JK Rowling, say bad ideas are defeated “by exposure, argument and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away”, we couldn’t agree more.
Who will convince our feeble university chiefs — or the firms and institutions which sack staff at the first inkling of a Twitterstorm?
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