Graffiti row in West Bay over coronavirus

West Bay has become the battleground for a graffiti row over coronavirus.

A wall in West Bay was targeted last year when someone painted the words “COVID hoax” on the wall.

It was spotted by local photographer Eddy Pearce who runs a facebook page documenting the lockdown.

He said he wasn’t sure about posting it to the page.

“Everyone does have the right to free speech, but that right only lasts as long as it doesn’t impose on the human rights of other people and there’s a very strong argument that a piece of graffiti like that does have an impact on other people and their beliefs and feelings.

“I just looked at it and thought ‘there’s going to be a lot of people who are deeply insulted by this’.

“I think it felt really insulting to anyone who’d died, or the family of anyone who’d died or anyone who works in medicine or science.”

However, Eddy did decide to post it last week. That’s when somebody else took action.

Eddy went for a cycle ride past the building last week and saw it had been covered up.

“I looked at it and the COVID hoax graffiti had been covered up and someone had painted ‘kindness’ in big white letters over the front of it, which really made me smile.

It just felt like a really nice thing to have come out of my slightly awkward dilemma of posting that picture.”

But that wasn’t the end of it. It now seems as though the second layer of paint has been rubbed off, either by natural causes or human intervention.

A friend messaged Eddy to tell him it looked as if the covering paint had been washed off or rubbed away.

“I got a message from someone I know who lives down in West Bay to say ‘the kindness is gone, it’s washed away’.

“He actually went to look closer and said actually he didn’t think it had washed away, but he thinks it has been removed which opens up a whole load of other questions as to why it was removed and who removed it.”