Originally Posted by
Noel Cleal
I think it is difficult for people to get around their own political prejudices regarding anything to do with this (or in fact any) government. The biggest example I have had recently was Brexit, the guy filling up my Facebook feed with the largest amount of anti Brexit posts was a friend that has a business in Lapland. Brexiteers were at different time, stupid, racist, ignorant, and spiteful, he was pretty unrelenting. Then a few weeks after Brexit happened my mate shared a post with some good news. He just got a six figure grant off the EU to build his business. Now I am not saying he was right/wrong with his opinion but I am sure his main motivation for it was the truck load of money on its way from Brussels. Just a small side note may friend has worked his ar*e off to build his business from the ground up and deserves every break he gets.
However, my point is that peoples opinion on what is happening now is based on their circumstances. If you work in hospitality or own a small business you want to get out there and trade and your opinion is that Covid is a bit of Flu. If you can work from home but have an illness like diabetes or asthma, you probably want the country as locked down as possible and probably get very upset if the government attempts to get you to go outside. Or maybe you just miss the pub a lot.
The bottom line is the government has to try hit a balance. They need to protect the public and the NHS while not sending the country into crippling debt or bankruptcy. One example to remember is that it took until 2006 for the UK to pay off it debt to the USA for WWII, this shows that an event like COVID could be getting paid off by our children and grand children. There isn't an unlimited pot of money and everyone is struggling.
Playing devil advocate here, if I was the government responding to Rush's letter I would make a few points.
1. Didn't the sport get a £16m loan? Where has that gone? Shouldn't that cover you for the time being?
2. Haven't you just signed a new player for next year on big money. 1 confirmed, 2 rumoured, you would assume these guys are on £100k minimum each. This isn't what a poor company looks like. If you care so much about the hospitality staff maybe you should have kept them on and not signed the Aussie International.
That being said it sounds like one of the issues are that the company is both a rugby club and hospitality business. Maybe the answer is to have two companies that can each take advantage of the two sets of rules?