Wigan Borough has overtaken the City of Manchester, Bolton and even Oldham to have the second highest number of positive Covid-19 tests in Greater Manchester. Rochdale is leading with a figure approaching five hundred positive tests per hundred thousand.
The figures keep rocketing up no matter how strict the lockdown. Bolton had all of its pubs, cafes and restaurants closed along with a series of other small businesses and they are in the same position as the City of Salford which had them all open.
More people are doubting that this approach is working but the Mayor of Greater Manchester, along with all ten Greater Manchester Borough leaders, has just negotiated a Tier 3 lockdown with the Government. This has a wide variety of new restrictions which includes the closure of ‘wet’ pubs.
Obviously, having a group of politicians talk about anything will result in argument but the Government has given us a lockdown deal in line with that in Liverpool and Lancashire County Council.
I have been pressing for there to be a retrospective element of this deal and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, has listened and our Council is going to receive a surprise boost which should help us all. Local councils have had an incredibly tough time in recent years and Covid-19 has really stretched them to their limit so any support like this is welcome news.
One of the impacts of having different restrictions in different areas was that people pop over the boundary for a pint. I know that many local taxi drivers were frustrated at pub closing time to be getting a fare over to Bolton when they had the highest rates of positive tests and their pubs were closed. We all have about the same rate now and our pubs are all being closed but I am not sure that this is the solution many want.
It is a relief that cafes, restaurants and pubs that serve food will still be open. This means that we should all be able to enjoy good food as we see the nights draw in earlier in the approach to Christmas. Let us hope that normality resumes in good time for Christmas as this lockdown is going to knock us down even further.
There is an increasing range of voices, especially including those of professors and other academics from some of the world’s best universities, who are now setting out an alternative to a cycle of damaging lockdowns.
Having been told, by my constituents, how great an impact this lockdown has done I resigned my ministerial assistant position so that I could speak out more openly on their behalf. A potential vaccination may be years away from being delivered and I believe that it would be wrong to carry out this cycle of lockdowns until that time.
The debate is changing and we have to change our default position to Covid-19 lockdowns as they do not work and they do cause immense damage.
