remember when we bailed out the banks to the tune of half a trillion quid because they fucked up and then we raided poor peoples wages, living standards and safety nets for a decade to “pay for it”? perhaps it’s payback time...

at it’s current rate the furlough scheme would have to be extended to march 2023 to cost the same as the 2008 bank bailout did.

good morning to the “well actually that’s bollocks bc” men in my mentions who found this tweet. ~500bn was made available for the bailout. £130bn of it in cash, the rest in guarantees. not all of it was spent, and most of the cash was paid back BUT, it was all made available...

the point i’m *clearly* making in the OG is thus:

if called upon, govt is capable of devoting huge amounts of resources in an emergency. they were prepared to drop half a trill to save the banks. this should be remembered when ppl complain about comparitively tiny furlough bill

it is thrown into even more stark relief when you consider that

1) the banks fucked themselves up by greed
2) working people faced the brunt of the economic, social and physical cost of that bailout in the form of austerity