£400BN BILL CAN WAIT...
Rishi puts off Covid payback pain…for now
RISHI Sunak will resist clawing back the £400billion spent on Covid-19 in Wednesday’s Budget, despite UK debt hitting £2.1trillion.
Instead, the Chancellor will give 700,000 shops, pubs, clubs, hotels, restaurants, gyms and salons ‘Restart Grants’ of up to £18,000 to kickstart their businesses post-lockdown.
Mr Sunak said of his £5billion scheme: “The extra cash will ensure our high street can open their doors with optimism.”
Another £425million will go to local authorities to help firms not eligible for grants.
Other support has been signalled, with the Chancellor boosting the housing market with 95% Help to Buy mortgages on properties up to £600,000 from April. He will also extend the Stamp Duty holiday for properties under £500,000 until June. The furlough scheme paying six million workers 80% of wages will also continue for three months.
Furlough has helped keep the unemployment rate level at 5.1% since December. Axing it could see more than a million people lose their jobs. The £20-a-week Universal Credit uplift will also stay for another six months.
And the low-paid will receive a boost when the minimum wage rises from £8.72 an hour to £8.91 in April.
The Chancellor is expected to wait until March 23 – when a raft of long-term moneyraising measures will be unveiled – to outline a consultation on a wealth tax for millionaire couples that could raise £260billion. But Labour Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds demanded more be done to help families in the meantime.
She called for an end to the public sector pay freeze and for 5% rises in council tax to be axed. Ms Dodds said: “We need a progressive tax system but now is not the time to do it.”
HE may be the world’s bestknown boy wizard – but Daniel Radcliffe can’t wave a magic wand to stop being mistaken for Elijah Wood.
The Harry Potter star says fans always confuse him with Elijah, who played Frodo in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Star-struck autograph hunters have even handed him photographs of 40-yearold Elijah to sign. Daniel, 31, told how he had been mistaken for his counterpart “hundreds of times”.
He said: “Though we are both short, pale, blue-eyed and brown-haired, I would say we don’t actually look alike. But the idea of us is exactly the same.”
Daniel, who was interviewed alongside Elijah for the April edition of Empire magazine, also said he was once asked to autograph a photo of the American actor in Japan.
He recalled: “My first instinct was to say, ‘Oh, I’m not, so I can’t…’ but the language barrier would be too much.
“So the quickest way to deal with it was to just write, ‘I am not Elijah Wood, signed Daniel Radcliffe’ and then hope someone translated that for him later.”
Elijah also told how he had “on multiple occasions been applauded for my bravery on stage in Equus” – when in fact the role, which involved a nude scene, belonged to Daniel.
DOPPELGANGERS: Elijah and Daniel