To think some people found lockdown really hard and it wasn't their fault

Especially when you consider how the Tories responded to Cummings and his Barnard Castle jaunt coming out in May 2020.

Of course, they'd already started breaking the rules themselves by then. April 2020 to April 2021, I think the span was?

I think the A State of Fear threads should be reinstated.

This was in last months Woman and Home. I have the print edition but for anyone who uses Readly here is the link

https://gb.readly.com/magazines/woman-and-home/2025-02-06/679d693fd01139eaa9870939?srsltid=AfmBOorgf6kr2goNVhsbSY-G_tIdyhN3vPJ7cWDSPJ-fN-WNRbJpM0HU

I can see both sides of it but you cant prevent people from filming INSIDE their own homes while the DWP is planning to look into ppls bank accounts. It reminded me of the Covid restrictions because its one rule for thee and one rule for me again.

And in the meantime those who said on SM that it was happening were deleted in the deeply strange drive against "wrongthink"

The most depressing thing about partygate, at least for me, was its sheer inevitability and I'm still quite surprised that it was ever thought it would be any different

@Feelinghurt2 * I read a lot of stories about people trapped in abusive homes, unable to escape. Whenever I hear people say that they miss lockdown, I want to scream. It was hell for a lot of people. All the small businesses that went under...all the livelihoods destroyed. A friend of my Mum STILL hasn't left her house because she is too scared to*

I feel the same as you. It makes me feel so angry

Barbaric

We know so many elderly people who deteriorated physically and mentally because they weren't getting outside for exercise or socialising, as well as those who got their AC to do all the shopping long after lockdown. They'd lost confidence and mobility.

It was a bleak and even dangerous time for so many for all sorts of reasons beyond the risk of Covid

Lockdown was awful. Trying to WFH and look after DDs who were homeschooling was just overwhelming. Also shopping alone, the masks, not being able to be near anyone. I mean for us it was better than some people, we have a large garden etc. but I can't see why anyone would enjoy it.

Never mind the long term impacts on children for losing that time out of the world, anxiety has increased etc.

I agree. In my accountancy practice, I'm only seeing 1 or 2 potential new clients each year and they're usually "low risk" start ups, such as personal trainers, you tube/tiktok influencers, gardeners, etc. Before covid, I'd typically be seeing 10-20, and they'd be starting/buying businesses like shops, cafes, guest houses, web designers, driving instructors, plumbers/electricians, etc. I can't actually remember the last potential new client I saw wanting to buy a "bricks and mortar" business or anything at all involving large investments in a vehicle or equipment or professional/trade qualifications/regulation. It's very worrying for the country that we've lost a huge proportion of our small businesses.

Another legacy of this is that people (and indeed, companies) will be reluctant to start a new business, in case the government snatches it away again, now that the precedent for this has been set. The destruction to business in general caused by the "party of business" was incredible.

The "sense of community" was just people sitting at home and writing things online. You can't have a "sense of community" when physical human interaction and contact is restricted as drastically as it was during lockdown.

Partygate was in December 2020 but it was exposed in December 2021
Journalists sat on it for a year

Now the same doctors are moaning that people have put on weight.

I loved lockdown. I was furloughed, we live in the countryside and the weather was great. We got loads of jobs at home done. But I can massively emphasise with people that weren’t so lucky. I had to go to the vets during lockdown. I remember seeing people sat on their doorsteps of terraced houses in the town that didn’t have gardens and thinking it must be so much harder. I paid for it later - lost my longterm job and my father died of covid two years later when we “just had to learn to live with it”.

I didn't find lockdown too bad,particularly the first, despite DD and I both being furloughed and then losing our jobs, DS being back from Uni and DH wfh BUT I never stopped being mindful of the fear of those on the frontline, the pain of those who suffered loss, the loneliness of those going through it on their own, the financial worries of those who lost their livelihoods. I don't think we acknowledge enough how enormous it was.
Your MIL is ignorant and self centred OP.

Selfish is an utterly meaningless word for me now.

So many people whinging with no sense of irony "you're selfish because you're not prioritising meeeee!"
Obviously not a literal quote, but no it wasn't selfish to want your children to be educated in school so they could be educated properly, have social contact with peers and protect their mental health and not be prioritising a random stranger from an illness that you didn't have to spread to them 🙄

I learned that the number of people who will and can prioritise me can be counted on one hand, so yes, I'll protect my interests.
I have largely gone back to the community things I was doing before, because they suit me. I'm harder to guilt into picking up other things than I was before though and quicker to drop what doesn't suit me rather than carrying on through duty. My relationship with the DCs' school was dented. I used to do a lot for them, but by the time they stopped treating parents like disease-ridden vermin in 2022, and finally became somewhat welcoming in 2023, I felt not-so-strangely disinclined to pick up and do what I used to do for them. DS2 was leaving soon anyway and it was for the new cohort to pick up. 2019 me would likely have carried on.

I still do more for the community than most and what I do has become harder in some organisations because chains of experience and progression were broken. People are generally more inward looking whether it's coping with life-shit, and that stretches capacity of other people, which makes picking up some load to share out less attractive and thus the cycle continues. (I could then segue into post-pandemic child behaviour and parental attitudes, but they've been covered in many threads...)

It was interesting to watch 'selfish' stop working in real time.

I think people give much less of a shit about being called that now than they did 5 years ago, even outside of a covid or illness context.

Yep. All goodwill towards the political classes completely squandered, and for me, never to return, even if Starmer (remember, one of lockdown's biggest cheerleaders) manages to turn things around. I myself will never believe, respect or trust any politician or government again, for the rest of my life. 😡 (I'm still angry about Tony Blair's war, and the expenses scandal, which they think we've forgotten while they give themselves massive pay rises.)

On MN, the phrase of choice for dissenters was "selfish arseholes", and covidiots "flocking" to the beaches. You could play MN bingo with these phrases. And the arch-lockdowners probably do likewise with what the "refuseniks" say.

@Badbadbunny and don't forget the lovely Mrs Sunak who was part of a company claiming a pretty hefty business loan -only to put it into liquidation before it was due to be started to pay back

Broadly agree with much of this, but I think it's worth pointing out that the initial sense of community always had giant great holes in it.

There were positive things to come out of that, but we were also confining abuse victims to their homes with perpetrators. We were fucking over people who relied on the existence of various services and the daily rhythms of life for their wellbeing. We had legislation that meant some people living alone were simply expected to go without face to face contact with other humans for weeks.

Part of the pendulum swinging back is because this didn't become part of the wider public discourse until later. It's hard to separate how much of it is down to the beginnings of Partygate in December 2021, and how much is down to a greater willingness to talk about who we'd fucked over with restrictions earlier in the pandemic, as they both kicked in around the same time.

I've wondered before how much the greater willingness of the Tories and some in Labour to be critical of restrictions later on was down to them knowing that there was proof of rule breaking at no 10. Starmer, in retrospect, seemed to be hinting at something in April 2021 when he did that line about misleading Parliament and leaving it there for now during PMQs.

I also feel sad that at the beginning there was a sense of community and people coming together (virtually), but by the end after the government lies and f@ck ups people were more angry and divided than ever. If the government had been honest and clear, and not partied (or snogged in corridors), and also held their hands up to admit mistakes people might have had more respect and trust in them

And yes to this. There was so much community spirit and goodwill at the start. It was all completely squandered.

The UK population was treated like naughty children who couldn't understand "the science" and who needed to be threatened with punishment if they didn't unquestioningly submit to everything. And if they questioned anything, especially here on MN and social media, they were called selfish. There was one update by Hancock I think, when he said something along the lines of "if you don't behave we will have to crack down harder" as though it was a collective punishment for the transgressions of a few. So many changing goalposts, such us being told explicitly on the Today programme on Radio 4 that the vaccine would mean life pretty much being back to normal by Easter 2021, swiftly followed by "we need to keep restrictions because vaccines don't actually mean you can't catch it, can't pass it on, can't die, can stop being selfish" etc. There was just no honesty.

And then of course it turned out that they were partying in Downing Street, and crucially, they weren't personally afraid of the virus. No wonder people lost trust.

I was never keen on the stamp duty holiday either.

Yup, it seemed they were more interested in preserving property market. Businesses paying business rates automatically got £10k whether they "needed" it or not. Businesses like holiday lets who'd wrongly not registered for business rates were allowed to back date registration to claim their £10k! Local councils also paid grants to holiday lets separately.

I had quite a few holiday let clients being based closely to a national park and seaside resorts. One guy had 3 holiday lets and got a total of £28k in grants for each of them - none of the grants depending on "need", not even requiring any proof of loss of income - just automatically paid out by ticking a box on the council website and they (hopefully) just checked against the business rate register. The guy had got away for years with not registering for business rates and not paying business rates, but the council just allowed a late registration and didn't even raise bills for all the years they knew he'd avoiding paying rates! Even in a "normal" year, he didn't make £28k from any of the 3 lets. And in fact because of covid, he had a better trading year for 2020 and 2021 due to staycations and the fact that as his lets were separate with no communal doors/hallways, he could still rent them out during the lockdowns to "key workers" so they were full anyway with NHS workers at the local hospital!

All complete nonsense as to who was given grants (often not needed) and those who were excluded and really struggled.

And that's before the fiasco of virtually no checks on rogue businesses being given loans that they just pocketed and never paid back because they were using "off the shelf" historic limited companies which weren't trading, but HMRC/Treasury didn't think to check they were genuine!

They just couldn't be bothered to administer it properly. For other people there was so much money being thrown at them. Every couple of months it seemed. I know businesses (tourism related) who expanded massively in the immediate aftermath of Covid because of the all the money they had been given. Of course it was taxed, but not if you had spent it all on capital assets. And then there was the post Covid tourism boom.

However they are suffering now because of the downturn in domestic tourism.

People like your MIL who went on about lockdown being amazing and finding time to find themselves/take up yoga/learn new skills really pissed me off at the time and still do! I can’t imagine what lockdown was like if you had a small flat or house/no garden/new baby/sick relatives you couldn’t visit/were in a bad or even abusive relationship etc.

I work for the NHS and felt a huge “imposter syndrome” on the Thursdays when everyone was clapping, I work in paediatrics and children were not hugely affected whilst adult departments were struggling. I felt so awkward coming home from work and neighbours cheerily waving and saying how great it was that I was an NHS worker (I’m admin not clinical but based on a ward). I remember the beginning when not much was known about it, going down in the lift only to find a security guard sending me back up as they’d closed the corridor to move a COVID patient from ED to a ward, corridor locked down whilst the domestic team followed behind the bed cleaning as they moved.

DH had to continue working but from home - I’d underestimated the increased amount of work he’d have to do, he had to call his customers regularly to check in and also implement the loan schemes that the government offered, he was sat at the desk from 8.30 to 19.00 most days. And whilst school offered for key worker children to go in, I felt the pressure to keep DD3 at home (as well as having to make the decision when no one really knew much about how it would be/transmission rates etc). School set online lessons but I know she often just logged in and left the computer on (no cameras allowed re safeguarding). She was year 7, it took a while to catch her up to speed by year 8. DD2 was at college and already had MH problems, one of which being OCD which was now being reinforced with the handwashing advice. 5 years on and she still has to antibacterial wipe all the post. CAMHS stopped seeing her due to lockdown, took months to sort out video appointments which she struggled with then she turned 18 during the next lockdown and was kicked out to adults. We are now trying to get seen by a specialist OCD centre as the behaviours are so ingrained.

I feel fortunate that are lucky ones as we have the income and the house to have made lockdown bearable but the lockdown after-effects are still shit. I also feel sad that at the beginning there was a sense of community and people coming together (virtually), but by the end after the government lies and f@ck ups people were more angry and divided than ever. If the government had been honest and clear, and not partied (or snogged in corridors), and also held their hands up to admit mistakes people might have had more respect and trust in them

Yeah, I think part of the picture on some of the long term effects is how much an individual actually stuck to the rules.

Obviously not with things you didn't get a choice about, like access to schools, being excluded from state support, getting seen promptly enough for your cancer to be diagnosed etc. I don't mean that. But the social impacts. I feel very lucky to have been surrounded by people who decided early on that we would not sacrifice our children's socialisation or the jobs of those amongst us who couldn't get childcare, and to have lived in a community where that was doable.