Well, yesterday Rishi Sunak appeared in the House of Commons, and you could tell by the look on his face he did not have any good news to reveal.
Things are going to get much worse before they get better, he said, and he then faced the wrath of plenty of MPs regarding financial help and support for their constituents.
I know many of you had been pinning your hopes on him announcing his next set of loan schemes that he has been hinting at for quite some time, however that was not the case and he spent well over an hour yesterday dodging and avoiding questions fired at him by MPs across the UK.
The stress was certainly beginning to show, in fact at one point in his grilling he called Madam Deputy Speaker, “Madam Deputy Support”, and bizarrely did look like he needed to urgently visit the toilet, but I digress.
As for any little corkers he did manage to bestow on us, well there was one that you need to be aware of. That is regarding Local Council Discretionary Business Grants.
Now, you will not need me to tell you those grants are not available to many of you out there running your own business, for they have been cunningly designed to only be aimed at businesses that pay business rates, thus those most of you that work from home for example or drive a cab obviously do not pay business rates.
However, some Local Councils offer “Discretionary Grants”, but those are left to employees at your Local Council to distribute, and you will not need me to tell you most councils are not very “generous” “sane” or “fair” when it comes to divvying out those grants.
Some do give them out, but most do not, in fact I know many of you have contacted your Local Council to ask about a Discretionary Business Grant for your business only to be told “computer says no” often by some youngster working for the council who does not have a clue as to the hardship you are going through.
Obviously, there is the fact many employees of councils over the year have been charged with corruption and fraud and have been found guilty of such, and one must wonder if some staff members are making available such grants to their friends and family members, nothing would surprise me these days.
But step forward Andrew Gwynne MP, he asked Rishi the following:
“Around 130,000 individuals are ineligible for any support across Greater Manchester, second only to London in numbers, many of them have been shut out of support since day one, almost a year ago now. So can the Chancellor confirm TODAY that he is looking at this important issue and confirm TODAY whether more support for this group is coming their way”
Good question Andrew, well here is Rishi’s reply, read it and digest it:
“Mister Speaker (once again he addressed Madam Deputy Speaker incorrectly, poor Rishi beginning to lose it slowly but surely), as part of the announcement made last week, half a billion Pounds of discretionary funding is being made available to local councils that comes on top of the one point one billion Pounds that was made available that was made available end of autumn last year, and some of that funding if the local councils want CAN go to support the very people that he is talking about.”
So, there you have it Rishi has said, out of his own mouth, that your Local Council CAN pay you a discretionary grant, so get onto your council today and ask them for such a grant, if they say, “no go away” or similar, and we all know many of them will do, then get in touch with your MP and urge them to visit this section of the website and watch and digest the video below to hear Rishi’s words:
Do not let some hard of thinking muppet at your Local Council deny you your right to get a Discretionary Grant, it is money that is available, and this is your livelihood we are talking about here so do not take no for an answer.