It's quite cunning of the capitalists to blame COVID lockdowns for their acceleration of the wealth gap that was clearly growing faster and faster before COVID.

Never mind that the lockdowns kept people from dying, right? Kept the hospitals from being even more overwhelmed. The capitalists would rather have a bunch of dead workers than lose productivity.

Let's see if we keep falling for it. I know all the MAGA people in America and their ilk internationally have already. Next will be the people who don't really pay attention to world events.

I suppose it's unsurprising that a centre right think tank would pin the blame on lockdown not the decade+ of Tory misrule.

The social fabric was strained and people took a financial hit but the cause of the widening gap between rich and poor are the preceding years of austerity.

Not going to read some Centre right bullshit, but wouldn't be surprised if there was no mention of Austerity or Brexit in all of this.

How David Cameron is back in politics is beyond me.

Yeah, and having no lockdowns would have had an even more catastrophic effect.

Oh yeah? Did it cause Brexit?

Shit was fucked before 2020. The rot has been growing since 2010.

The lockdowns were awful, but necessary.

Many pillars of the community got fucked.

My local pub owners can't get a loan to buy the place as banks are rejecting loans because of bad numbers during COVID.

Seems ridiculous as it doesn't reflect their usual earnings as people literally weren't allowed to go.

Lots of social and hospitality places will never recover.

And the rich got a lot richer. There was a lot of money to be made by fucking normal people over.

I'm genuinely curious what the alternatives were to a lockdown.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Covid lockdowns had a “catastrophic effect” on the UK’s social fabric and the most disadvantaged are no better off now than at the time of the financial crash, a new report claims.

The country is in danger of sliding back into the divisions of the Victorian era, marked by a widening gap between the mainstream and the poorest in society, according to an inquiry by the centre-right thinktank the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ).

About 13.4 million people lead lives affected by family fragility, stagnant wages, poor housing, chronic ill health and crime, the centre says.

The CSJ’s Social Justice Commission’s report, Two Nations: the State of Poverty in the UK, argues that the most disadvantaged in Britain are no better off than 15 years ago.

“Lockdown policy poured petrol on the fire that had already been there in the most disadvantaged people’s lives, and so far no one has offered a plan to match the scale of the issues.

It also heard from more than 350 small charities, social enterprises and policy experts, and the commission travelled to three nations of the UK and to more than 20 towns and cities.

The original article contains 597 words, the summary contains 192 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Doesn't surprise me at all