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Which Tier Are You In?

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Do you know the rules and can you keep to them?

I work in tier 3. I believe the R number has to fall below 1 before we can relax to tier 2. Lord knows how we get to tier 1. That means no more visits to the bookies and no mixing with another household pretty much for ever. Still, I’m still allowed to eat out at Wetherspoons. Either that, or nip down the road to Cheshire East and go on a pub crawl.

You can post a suitable tune if you like or just express yourself.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

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Comments

      • I might’ve missed this, but should Nottingham also be in Tier 3 as it is (according to the BBC News) “the most infested area of Britain”.
        Thats a Labour council too – maybe Dom and Boris flipped a coin to decide which one to make an example of

        • Apparently Nottingham (and the county as a whole) avoided tier 3 due to the hospitals having reasonable capacity at the present time, and also because the increase in infections is not largely due to older people.

          Infections have increased most in young adults, particularly students. There were 1,500 reported cases at Nottingham University the last time I looked and Trent University seems to be refusing to release figures.

    • Travelling to Witham on Wednesday for 4 days. I just hope I don’t bump into the constituency MP – she might try to deport me, citizen of nowhere, that I am.
      You tell me winter’s here
      And your days are getting long
      Tears are in your eyes tonight

      • I was there on Saturday. The MP wasn’t, but I have no idea if she has ever shown her face there since she was elected (though to be fair I do, on rare occasions, get asked for information by her office in my work).

          • To potter around the charity shops (there’s a big new YMCA close to where Oxfam used to be) and pick up a few things from the Tesco and the pound shop across the road, and the cheap food and kitchenware stall in the little open air market . And you get three hours free parking at Tesco.

            • Did you find anything? I once got a Trojan CD box set and a George Harrison memorial concert in the Hospice charity shop in the Grove, but normally it is all teen cd singles and OAP classic compilations.

              • No huge bargains, but enough so that it didn’t feel like a wasted journey – a handsome hardback history of London (to go with the others on my shelves), a few C20 Elton John CDs (interest stirred by reading his autobiography last month), and a ceramic hand soap dispenser.

            • Well, Essex is now going to be in Tier 2 from Saturday, so that much-anticipated encounter will have to wait. Unless she can squeeze me in before tomorrow night. We’re gong to the Blue Strawberry in Hatfield Peverel to enjoy the last minutes of Tier 1 freedom.

  6. I haven’t seen any clear explanation of why it is allegedly so much worse in the North West. I’m not interested in the political cheap shots, what are the facts? Apparently the rate never came down so much in the summer (did it?) So there’s a wider base for exponential growth. Presumably we at least have the facts but I haven’t seen them.

    • I blame Madchester. It’s very difficult to maintain social distancing when your jeans are more than two metres wide to start with.

      PS have the last 30 years happened at all? Nice one. Top one. Luvvin it. SHORTED.

    • As your apparent: the NW left lockdown with higher numbers to work with. No doubt the rest of the country will eventually follow,, tho’, in the way the rest of Europe have escalated into their 2nd wave almost irrespective of the earlier success of earlier, in every sense, steps taken.

    • There is a theory.

      In the first wave, London was hit hard first. Lockdown was introduced perhaps a bit too late for London. The North was 2-4 weeks behind in its wave. Lockdown was relaxed when London was very low but in the North there was more than just remnants floating about. Suddenly, people were encouraged to eat out and support local businesses. Those remnants became larger. Then, the schools were opened and a wave started to form. Thus, the North has been hit with a second wave quicker. London isn’t far behind. Those areas with fewer cities that are more rural are likely to have low numbers whatever the wave.

      How true that theory is is unknown.

      Hospitals are to be fined by NHS England if they fail to hit routine operation targets. Guess which areas will suffer most.

      • The theory makes sense. They didn’t want to lock down to start with and I remember the view was you can’t unlock London and leave other places locked down but I hadn’t seen local figures – I think I thought everywhere was low enough to unlock.

        Thankfully I’m in a low area though got shouted at yesterday in the garage when I politely pointed out to someone in the shop that he is supposed to be wearing a mask. He pulled some little tag thing out from his shirt and informed me “I’ve got one of these so I don’t fucking have to so don’t speak to me like that”.
        Tension rising…

          • There are people who are exempt from wearing masks because of verified health issues, but it seems to me that if you have a breathing-related health issue, you probably shouldn’t be out at all in a pandemic which causes further respiratory problems if you get it.
            Of course, if you’re not getting the support that enables you to stay home and be safe…

            • I have a breathing-related health issue, big time, and I wore a mask non-stop (apart from eating and drinking) for 28 hours London-Brisbane. I had no choice – I wouldn’t have been allowed on the plane without one. It really is no big deal – tiresome, of course, but I was able to breathe perfectly well – or as well as I ever can.

              I told my GP this, and I’ve now become his poster boy for the bastards who need to get their heads out of their arses, as he so colourfully put it.

          • and what is so hard about politely replying ‘I understand your concern about facemasks, but due to a medical condition, I cannot wear them’? If someone feels a need to reply to politeness with aggression, I begin to doubt their authenticity.

      • @Tiggerlion and @retropath2 as our resident experts I have to ask this question. It is out of curiosity rather than scepticism but there is a little of that too.
        Face mask wearing is widespread now and has been for a number of weeks The face mask wearing has coincided with an increase in infections – surely we should have expected the reverse to be the case?

        • Infections are increasing because more people are spending more time mixing with each other, often indoors, not because more people are wearing masks. In fact, there isn’t enough mask-wearing and there wasn’t enough emphasis on them from the very start in this country.

          • Quite. And given the tendency to associate random associations as cause and effect, isn’t it odd how the R number has gone up since there have again been Rs in the month? Has nobody spotted the humble native oyster may be a fomite ?

          • I am hearing that mask wearing isnt widespread yet in Lichfield everyone I come across is wearing them and in my office they are mandatory except when you are sitting at your own socially distanced desk.

    • Manchester has one of the highest student populations in Europe, so that’s a big factor. Students all live in shared accommodation, and they occasionally get quite ‘friendly’ with each other…

  7. I read that Liverpool is 685 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Ottawa is a million people and we have just been placed in partial lockdown, all bars and restaurants, gyms etc closed. Schools remain open, I think all universities are doing exclusively online courses. No meeting anyone even outside from anyone not in your home is recommended. We have a total of about 800 cases which works out at 80 per 100,000 inhabitants, so about 1/8th of Liverpool. We had 65 new cases yesterday, over 100 today, but it has been going up and down a lot as testing procedures have changed in the last week.

    • I have a problem with that number685 out of 100,000 – obviously higher than they want it to be but reported with the sole intent of scaring people.
      If they said 0.685 percent it would be perceived differently.

      • Of course you are correct. However, that’s just the known positive cases. There will be far more who haven’t had a test. The first wave only infected 8% of the population and look at the devastation that caused in terms of admissions, ITU use and deaths!

  12. ‘nip down the road to Cheshire East’ you say? ‘fraid we are Tier 2, so you’ll have to be drinking on your own, or be sodden in the beer garden.

    It’s hard to see why we are Tier 2, as our figures are no worse than most of London and a whole host of softie Southerner cities ( like Stoke). Further, we are entirely represented by Tory MPs, so that has not protected us. I think we are just seen as dangerously close to Manchester and Liverpool, so the worst is being expected for us.

    • The last rolling 7day figures ( to 8 October) I saw had Cheshire East at 169 cases per 100,000. The only London Boroughs with rates over 100,000 were Hackney, Harrow and Richmond, plus a handful in the outer suburbs, like Elmbridge. The majority of places in the south were below 100 cases per 100,000. Sizeable towns and cities like Swindon, Plymouth, Southampton and most of the Kent coast were below 50 cases at that point

      • Since my earlier post, London rates have increased and London ( and Essex) have been put in Tier 2. Meanwhile, I see that Mr Burnham is insisting that all of the country should be in lockdown, not just Manchester. I wonder if he would think the same if Manchester currently had fewer than 50 cases per 100,000 and it were other parts of the country that were put of control ?

        • Yes, sorry, that’s all my fault. Me and my blogging. Someone in officialdom picked up on my comment and decided, in the interests of fairness, to herd a load more authorities into Tier 2, Elmbridge included. Them clayheads down the road in StaffyCher still getting away with partying indoors.

          In confirmation of my theory above, apparently last Saturday two 21-seater minibuses turned up in Knutsford ferrying a load of scousers over for a pub crawl in territory where they could still roam in packs of 6. Thanks folks. Oswestry and Leek can now presumably look forward to being the nearest congenial drinking holes.

  15. Liverpool is in the highest possible tier, and I’m not remotely surprised. I live in Merseyside, and a simple trip into the city demonstrates exactly why there’s an issue: people don’t socially distance. Additionally, the amount of adults who seem perplexed by how to put on a face mask is, itself, perplexing. No, it doesn’t go just around your chin, nor does it just go over the mouth and not the nose.

    I feel desperately sorry for all the bars, cafes and so forth that will lose money/shut completely, and I agree the government aren’t doing enough to support them. The overriding problem, however, is the general public.

  16. I’m in the tier that isnt allowed to go to Anglesey in 10 days for our half term holiday.

    Apparently.

    And despite the efforts of our MP to convince (his) government that the virus only infects poor and/or brown people.

    (we are neither and my son has had the virus, and we are convinced my wife has too – though she had a negative test)

  17. Starting off with everyone with national lockdown, I then moved to a local lockdown, coming out of our local lockdown (though two postcodes nearby were still under a local lockdown) meant I could meet people in my garden.
    Then back into local lockdown, this meant I could meet my son on the grassed area down from the house but not in the garden.
    Today we are in tier 2 which means I can now meet him in the garden again, now I’ve heard our area may enter tier 3.
    Not sure where I am at the moment.

  18. We’ll be in Witham again on Saturday (second voluntary visit in two weeks @salwarpe ). We’re picking up a kitten from a work colleague of The Light. The colleague’s daughter has moved back in with her, and the kitten doesn’t get along with the resident dogs.

    As Essex is in tier 2 from Saturday (at the request of the council) I guess we will have to perform and exchange on the doorstep, a kitten being traded for a bunch of flowers, lie spies being swapped on a bridge in Cold War Berlin.

    A work colleague of my own is also gutted because it’s her son’s bar mitzvah at the weekend, and she now has an awful lot of fish cakes and lox to get rid of. I’m guessing her son isn’t exactly turning cartwheels about the turn of events either.

  19. Here in Thighland we don’t have Thiers. Because no covid (or as near no as makes no). We also have no Thourists, and, crucially, no money. Which we don’t need anyway, at least out in the (Thai) sticks. Lao PDR and Cambodia and Vietnam have been spared, too. So far.

    It can’t last. Somehow, the pandemic will find its way in, probably hitching a ride on Burmese border-crawlers. I’d be crawling through the jungle too if I lived in Burma.

  20. Here in NZ we had an Auckland regional lockdown in August – which wasn’t as harsh as the previous one. The rest of the country was allowed to continue operating relatively freely. The difference to the UK is that the Police blocked entry and exit points and turned people back. So people thinking they can go out on the razz in neighbouring towns Huntly or Wellsford were disappointed (you really wouldn’t want to, anyway). Someone I know was OK to proceed to Wellington for a family reason – but only because she could produce extensive written evidence.

    I acknowledge this is a small country in terms of population but Auckland has about 1.6m people – which would make it the UK’s second-largest city.

  21. In Tier 1 currently here, with a rising rate of infection. Just down the road a bit is the London Borough of Harrow, which is one of the worst two in the Metropolis (the other is Richmond). I can understand Harrow being problematic, because it’s stuffed full of low-quality multi-occupancy housing. Is that the case with Richmond too? I’ve always thought Richmond was posh.

    • Richmond reeks of money. I happen to like it there (always staying at the Travelodge), but the last time I was in Richmond we were walking past a Japanese restaurant as a group of younger people, in their mid 20s I would say, were coming out. One of them brayed to the rest, ‘It was only about £80 a head before drinks so it wasn’t really that expensive.’

    • Living in Hampton (the very edge of LBRichmond) there are two theories.
      One is that student studying in other parts of the country are giving their home address, which is artificially inflating the numbers.
      The other is that we had the lowest numbers during the first wave, so a larger number being infected this time.

  26. Currently, my postcode area is in Local Covid Alert Level “Medium” as there are recorded cases in the area. My town had 133 confirmed cases in the last week compared to 100 the previous week.
    I ventured out to the town’s main Post Office (sending off CD Swaps) in the early afternoon yesterday and there were a lot of people about in the High Street, some masked and some not. In the shopping centre it was masks compulsory and the Post Office (in the back of WHS) was pretty quiet. Got my business done quickly, with the socially-distanced aid of a pleasant, efficient member of staff and was out again in about 15 minutes.
    Supermarket shopping later today as supplies are low. I’ll compile my list before I set out and shop quickly. Mask enforcement in our local supermarkets is not very good.

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