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thomas davison

PETER HITCHENS: Furlough billions? Just a giant payday loan in YOUR name

By Peter Hitchens for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 22:00, 16 May 2020 | Updated: 00:00, 17 May 2020

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Think of Chancellor Rishi Sunak as a smiling salesman of payday loans, and you will begin to get the picture.

�Yes, of course you can have the money. Happy to help!� he says as he hands over the wads of notes.

But it will not be the cheery face of Mr Sunak that you see when the time comes for repayment, but the hard and relentless agents of Her Majesty�s Revenue and Customs.
We cannot know the exact details of what lies ahead, though I would not rule out a sudden raid on savings as well as severe local and national taxation, direct and indirect, and inflation of the currency. A worker wearing a hi-vis jacket and face mask is pictured passing the London Stock Exchange
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We cannot know the exact details of what lies ahead, though I would not rule out a sudden raid on savings as well as severe local and national taxation, direct and indirect, and inflation of the currency. A worker wearing a hi-vis jacket and face mask is pictured passing the London Stock Exchange

And don�t think that the repayment boys will only be going after those who have accepted the various forms of government handout during the throttling of the economy.

Even if you have yourself kept working and stayed above water, they�ll still be after you.

It is time the media began to ask Mr Sunak exactly when he plans to announce his first emergency budget (the first of many, I fancy) to a stunned nation.

As my much-esteemed Daily Mail colleague Alex Brummer, a man who understands the national finances better than most, said last week: �The hugely expensive decision to turn an emergency measure, designed to see UK Plc through the peak of Covid-19, into a commitment that could stretch to six months suggests a public health crisis and economic meltdown far worse than first imagined.�
Think of Chancellor Rishi Sunak as a smiling salesman of payday loans, and you will begin to get the picture. �Yes, of course you can have the money. Happy to help!� he says as he hands over the wads of notes
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Think of Chancellor Rishi Sunak as a smiling salesman of payday loans, and you will begin to get the picture. �Yes, of course you can have the money. Happy to help!� he says as he hands over the wads of notes

I�ll say. Nobody has ever seen so much wild spending of non-existent money before in peacetime. Some idiots nowadays think you can do this without consequences. In wartime it was disastrous. This kind of debt really hurts.

In 1914-18 our huge spending cost us our standing as a great power. And we never repaid our First World War debts (now worth about $225billion) to the USA, and never will. We suspended repayment and interest on June 15, 1934 and never started again. And this is why we have been Washington�s poodle ever since.

In the Second World War, the entire life savings of the British Empire � from ancient gold doubloons, moidores and pieces of eight captured from Spanish treasure galleons to modern negotiable securities � were shipped to the USA in secret high-speed convoys to pay for weapons. Most of this wealth never came back. But it was still not enough.

In January 1941, hard-nosed US Senators hesitated to provide any more help to a prostrate Britain. By this time the White House had forced the UK into a humiliating audit, which an enraged Winston Churchill had to swallow without protest. The great war leader was persuaded by aides not to send a furious cable accusing President Roosevelt of being �a sheriff collecting the assets of a helpless debtor�.

Like a sort of Official Receiver, Henry Morgenthau, Roosevelt�s Treasury Secretary, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: �They (the British) have no dollar assets beyond those they have disclosed to me. Lacking a formula by which Great Britain can continue to buy supplies here, I think they will just have to stop fighting, that�s all.�

So aid came, but at a huge price. When Lend-Lease, the programme under which the US sent supplies to Britain, was cancelled in 1945, Britain was stripped bare.

To survive, we took out a giant loan from the US worth $53billion in today�s money. Even at very low interest rates the loan (eventually paid off in December 2006) was a crippling load on our economy for half a century.
In January 1941, hard-nosed US Senators hesitated to provide any more help to a prostrate Britain. By this time the White House had forced the UK into a humiliating audit, which an enraged Winston Churchill had to swallow without protest. The great war leader was persuaded by aides not to send a furious cable accusing President Roosevelt of being �a sheriff collecting the assets of a helpless debtor�. The pair are pictured above at the Yalta conference
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In January 1941, hard-nosed US Senators hesitated to provide any more help to a prostrate Britain. By this time the White House had forced the UK into a humiliating audit, which an enraged Winston Churchill had to swallow without protest. The great war leader was persuaded by aides not to send a furious cable accusing President Roosevelt of being �a sheriff collecting the assets of a helpless debtor�. The pair are pictured above at the Yalta conference

It was one of the main reasons why the post-war years in this country were for so long, grey, stripped, mean and second-rate, with high taxes for poor public services, and low real pay, as those who lived through them will recall.

This is not fairy gold we are spending now on Mr Sunak�s furloughs and emergency loans. It is our future for many years to come.

We cannot know the exact details of what lies ahead, though I would not rule out a sudden raid on savings as well as severe local and national taxation, direct and indirect, and inflation of the currency.

But here�s the difference. In 1940, we risked bankruptcy for national survival, and to keep fighting the worst tyrant in human history.

In 2020, we did it to pay for a stupid, unnecessary mistake that the Government still has not admitted making.
Has locking us up made virus worse?

It remains true that deaths from Covid-19 peaked in this country on April 8, well before the shutdown could have taken effect.

Now here�s another key fact, little mentioned in this country, which undermines the weird faith that the Government�s destructive measures have saved lives or relieved pressure on the NHS.

New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo has revealed that his own shutdown doesn�t seem to be working. In a survey of recent cases hospitalised in the state for Covid-19, 66 per cent were people who had stayed at home as instructed.
The evidence suggests that it spreads much more readily inside buildings than outside. So forcing people to stay at home probably actually increased infections [File idiot]
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The evidence suggests that it spreads much more readily inside buildings than outside. So forcing people to stay at home probably actually increased infections [File idiot]

�This is a surprise,� said the Governor. Not to me, it wasn�t. But at least he did the survey and publicised it, which is more than anyone in the UK has done. �Overwhelmingly, the people were at home,� Mr Cuomo added.

�We thought maybe they were taking public transportation, and we�ve taken special precautions on public transportation, but actually no, because these people were literally at home.� So much for mass house arrest. It didn�t just not work. It made it worse.

But there�s now evidence that the virus had already done most of its spreading long before anyone had even thought of acting.

Coronavirus in many cases has few symptoms, sometimes none. The evidence suggests that it spreads much more readily inside buildings than outside. So forcing people to stay at home probably actually increased infections.
I am threatened with being forced to wear a muzzle, or so-called �face mask� as the price of partial liberation. The idea is absurd
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I am threatened with being forced to wear a muzzle, or so-called �face mask� as the price of partial liberation. The idea is absurd
Like my muzzle?

I am threatened with being forced to wear a muzzle, or so-called �face mask� as the price of partial liberation. The idea is absurd.

The World Health Organisation says: �If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with COVID-19.�

So, if anyone insists on this silly rule, here is the mask I have obtained. I hope they like it.
Pupils pay price of Boris�s blunder

I have debated against Ms Mary Bousted, leader of the National Education Union, and was not impressed. I do not think much of her union. But its opposition to reopening the schools is entirely the Government�s fault.

The unions need only say: �You told us it was too dangerous to keep the schools open. Now you tell us it is safe. Yet the virus you told us would kill us all is still among us. Why should we believe you?� This is why it is so important that the Government is made to admit it was wrong in the first place. The danger was never that great.

Boris Johnson brewed up the great cloud of fear in this country, hugely exaggerating the danger of Covid-19. He then distilled that fear into great power.

Not since the Middle Ages has there been a government in London that interferes so markedly in our private lives and decisions, imposes curfews on us, prevents us from working or trading, that bans us from holding public meetings, restricts our travel and has shut down religious worship to an extent even Stalin never achieved.

They seem to be enjoying it. Well, I am not. They need to climb down, fast. It is bad for them. It is terrible for us.