Nobody wants a coffin for Christmas - even up north

You’d certainly be forgiven for thinking that, having seen the news this week.

After a surge in covid cases in the south of England – perhaps sparked by a mutated version of coronavirus – it was announc ed that the capital will be placed into the toughest Tier 3 lockdown level.

Cue much anguish and column inches about the ‘catastrophic’ consequences of such a move for London and it’s pubs and restaurants.

It doesn’t seem to have sunk in for many commentators that we’ve been having to deal with life in Tier 3 for some time – and I don’t recall half as much fuss being made when it was announced what was happening in Derbyshire.

I appreciate there’s an issue of scale and placing London in T3 will certainly impact a lot more people, but it does feel like there’s one rule for the first city and another for the rest of us.

Or at least the rest of us in the north and Midlands.

And whilst it’s a natural reaction to being treated (quite literally) as the poor relation , I don’t share in the schadenfreude that’s been going around.

Yes, it may have opened the eyes of those within the comforting confines of the M25 to what we've been enduring all this time – but the new restrictions will have real consequences.

Businesses will close and may not re-open. People will lose their jobs.

It’s hard to find any crumb of comfort in that knowledge.

I said before that I’m also not convinced about relaxing covid restrictions for the festive season.

It feels like the government only announced the ‘winter break’ becaus e they didn’t think people would follow the rules over Christmas and they couldn’t actually police a yuletide lockdown with millions of people breaking curfew.

Having put us all through this – especially north of Watford – it seems crazy to let us have a few days off. I’m pretty sure covid-19 will be wo rking on bank holidays too.

And peop le seem to forget lockdown is here for a reason – to keep us alive.

We all miss friends and family – but nobody wants a coffin for Christmas.