Businesses must adapt to new future

I HAVE operated my business with success throughout the pandemic. Moving from live seminar teaching to online, from direct sales of products to online, and so on. My business did not need to use the furlough scheme, we changed our business model.

The problem with the furlough scheme was that when it was introduced it had a sound basis: a bit like the well-proven German kurzarbeitergeld scheme, the intention was to ensure that viable businesses survived the shortterm disruption and that the value contained in them, and the skills of their staff, weren’t lost.

The real problem has been what I call ‘lockdown mission-creep’, whereby what was originally supposed to be specifically to allow capacity in the NHS to be built up became an indefinite lockdown with no real end in sight.

It just isn’t possible for the state to pay everyone’s wages indefinitely.

But now, in the new future, for businesses that can’t revise their business model, it should NOT be for government to bail them out.

Moreover, the tax I pay on everything we purchase and services we use should not be wasted on failing business models.

A lot of Wales’s economic problems today go back to the fact that the

coalmines and older steelworks were kept going far longer than they should have been (because of the power of the trade unions), and as a result the opportunity to transition the economy to a more diverse industrial base while the country was still relatively prosperous was squandered.

The furlough scheme, and the endless government money tree, must end NOW. If Covid is

indeed going to be with us for the long term, then we should let the market figure out how best to redeploy people under these circumstances.

The answer is not to redeploy those in the ‘Arts’, as the government thinks is the answer. Actors, entertainers, film crews, theatre staff, dancers, etc, can all find a way through this.

We are talking about failing businesses with no

future in the new market that should have no further support.

In this new business environment we need to see innovation.

KARL-JAMES LANGFORD Gwlad Welsh Parliamentary candidate, Barry

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