Across Britain in recent weeks people have been finding all manner of ways to cope with being cooped up inside for hours on end – that is, if you are one of the majority that is stringently observing the government’s lockdown rules.
But in an interesting series of events, Challenge has received a number of examples of people taking matters into their own hands and expressing their outrage towards the governments handling of the Coronavirus crisis. At the time of writing, the John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reports that there have been 31,930 deaths in British hospitals, thousands more of which have not been included in official statistics in care homes. So far 220,449 people have tested positive for the virus.
The Government in the early days made bold claims that they would carry out 100,000 tests per day for coronavirus by the end of April, yet it was found that they have moved the goal posts by including tests that have been posted to people’s homes but haven’t yet shown a result.
The rise in incidents of graffiti documented below may point to building anger in working class communities across Britain, what is clear is that when the lockdown is eventually lifted, this government will find themselves with a lot to answer for.
Whilst Britain’s government has been particularly inept, the response of the ruling class in the Western world – whilst falling short of the Trump administrations woeful handling which saw it go as far as advising citizens to inject themselves with bleach to fight the virus – offers us some possible conclusions; either the governments of the western world, in their arrogance, thought that services subjected to decades of austerity were still capable of dealing with the virus; or more criminally, they did not deem it necessary to properly prepare to tackle a crisis which had been playing out before their very eyes for many months, and instead only saw fit to take action, not when citizens – especially the most vulnerable – were at risk of serious danger and death, but once the economy had begun to falter.
With social media showing more and more incidents of graffiti appearing further afield in Italy, the US and Canada in recent days, and with the widely anticipated long term economic effects yet to be felt, it is clear that the powers that be will have a lot of explaining to do in the post lockdown new world.
