UK lockdown-What next?

UK lockdown- What next?

Hey guys, I am back with a post that in reality even just 2 or 3 months ago I could never have predicted. At 8:30pm on March 23rd, Boris Johnson laid out what needs to happen next in the UK and although he never ever mentioned the word “lockdown,” what he outlined is basically what Italy started off with when they went into lockdown. I will be discussing as much as I can to help you guys out in these days with what to do and how to keep busy during isolation. I will be discussing mental health, issues for the self-employed and work in general, food provision and how to manage it well and lots more where possible. I also love to know what you are doing to cope, what you think of lockdown and whether you have been allowed to work at home or not. My DMs on Twitter are also always open so feel free to contact me at @PaulMcG1994. Let’s get right into the blog.

Mental Health

The first thing I will say is to make the absolute most of the 1 exercise outside a day if you are struggling with being inside during lockdown. When you are inside though the main thing I recommend is chatting to as many people as humanly possible whether it’s with your family indoor or through phone calls, texts, and social media. It will help you so much through these difficult times and a lot of us are all feeling the same right now about everything.

Self-employed and general work conditions

I think the government has made an absolute mess of things for self-employed and unemployed people in general. Self-employed people should be entitled to a solid wage that at least covers 80/85% of what they’ve earned in the previous year. Unemployed people should always be entitled to something close to at least the minimum wage too.

There aren’t enough jobs for everyone as it is in normal circumstances let alone now with more losing their jobs and with how recruitment works it’s impossible for people without experience to actually build up and to get progress in their career. I hope this situation opens up a lot of eyes to how hard it is for people to get work. I have had 2 jobs in my life yet have applied for easily 7000/8000 with around 30 interviews and loads of rejections due to a lack of experience. This should not be possible because all it does is make going to college/university utterly useless in most cases outside of the top professions.

Food provision

This has been chaos in the UK since this pandemic began. A lot of people are truly selfish and bought loads of things despite it being very clear there won’t be a shortage any time soon as deliveries are still currently operating as normal for all of the big supermarkets into their warehouses and into stores. I find it embarrassing that we have had to bring in limits to how many of an item people can buy due to the lack of common sense and consideration for others being shown out there.

Hobbies

If you struggle to find hobbies indoor I will recommend a few below:

• Card games if you have other people at home
• Board games if you have other people at home
• Console gaming if you have them
• Blogging/Other writing
• Online games like Candy Crush etc
• Cleaning as it takes time
• Relaxing in your garden if you have one
• Listening to music and singing along to it
• Learning a new language or an instrument

If you have any other suggestions I would love to know in the comments.

When will this end?

I somehow don’t think lockdown will end when Johnson mentioned in 3 weeks. I believe that the spread will only get worse due to selfish employers not looking after staff, there being such a high number of key workers anyway and people being selfish in supermarkets, parks, etc. I think we could looking well into the summer by the time the worst of this has passed the UK. I feel like we are just a week too late with every measure that is taken by those in power and it needs to speed up more. I hope I’m wrong but I am always a realist in every situation and I also believe we could end up with another recession if we aren’t careful too. People will have less disposable income to spending will dry up considerably the longer this goes on.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post and I thank you for your support. If you have anything you wish to say please comment and if you want me to cover any topic on my blog I will give it a go as soon as possible if you suggest it. Thank you for your time and stay safe and well. If you need me then contact me through DM at @PaulMcG1994 on Twitter.