Britain's Be Ready campaign aims to encourage (frighten?) citizens into preparing for disaster | First Dog on the Moon
The shovel is the giveaway. Britain telling its citizens to stockpile food, water and plastic bags is either sensible preparedness or a government quietly offloading the cost of disaster onto individuals, and the joke in the title captures the real tension. After a year of floods, heatwaves and a grid that keeps threatening to buckle, the timing tells you everything.
I think the Be Ready campaign does more than it admits. It nudges people to imagine what happens when the taps run dry or the power cuts, and that is genuinely useful. But there is a line between civic resilience and letting the state off the hook. If every household is expected to hold a fortnight of supplies, what does that say about the systems meant to keep those supplies flowing in the first place?
What I would want to know next is what sits behind the slogan. Is there real investment in flood defences, backup power and early warning, or is this the extent of it? A plastic bag will not stop a river bursting its banks. Preparedness matters, but it should never be a substitute for the hard, expensive work of making the country ready for what is coming.