Latest tier restrictions are a pretty blatant attack on less wealthy areas of the country

What utter tosh!
The author's political views are blatantly apparent from his/her choice of politically inflammatory words. How sad. I thought this website's purpose was to share objective critique of property related matters, not be a mouth-piece for biased and ridiculous political propaganda, as is the case here.

The danger of statistics is that you can cut them anyway you like to prove/disprove a supposition, regardless of how arbitrary.

It could also be due to the fact that the people in the 'poorer' areas of the country are more likely to go boozing and ignore the lockdown rules. Coming from one of those areas Hynburn the number of people blatantly ignoring restrictions astounds me.

Another factor at play here is that poorer areas are more-densely populated, with neighbours in closer proximity. This is particularly relevant for high-rise blocks with confined communal areas such as lifts and corridors but also applies to a lesser extent to places with rows of small terraces and back-to-backs. Cornwall, by contrast, is a low-wage area where properties prices are high and at this time of the year the population is at its lowest.

What a load of politically biased rubbish. The only reason these areas are rated as such is because of their current Covid situation. As old Mrs Landlord says plus not sticking to the rules as shown quite clearly in the media who of course may be biased as we know. My whinge is about Keir Starmer sitting on the fence over latest moves but all to ready to criticise at every opportunity, I certainly wouldn't want to be in Boris's shoes right now, bless him.

Reply to the comment left by Old Mrs Landlord at 02/12/2020 - 11:55
I agree with this. There was an excellent documentary about this on the BBC this week about "Spanish Flu":

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0blmn5l#:~:text=Christopher%20Eccleston%20narrates%20a%20docudrama,Told%20using%20powerful%20personal%20testimony.&text=But%20soon%20a%20new%20horror,million%20people%20%2D%20the%20Spanish%20flu.

In a nutshell, very large numbers of people crammed together in a shared airspace is a recipe for respiratory disease. And if there's something out there waiting for its chance, if you wanted to deliberately create a pandemic these are the conditions that you would create. If you wanted to reduce the risk you would improve the ventilation...open the doors and windows avoid crowded areas, get outside, get some fresh air. That still wouldn't stop the spread of a virus like this. It always was going to spread. By the time the GP sentinel practices picked it up it was already probably too late.

You don't need to be a "vaccinologist" to understand this: They teach this at agricultural college.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 02/12/2020 - 15:21Indeed, that's why our lambing shed in common with all modern livestock buildings has, from waist height up, slatted boarding with draughty gaps.
I should also have mentioned in my previous post that most high-rise flats have sealed windows, for child safety reasons. The upper floors with large areas of glass become stiflingly hot in weather like we had last summer.

I'll watch thatSpanish flu documentary when I get time later.

Reply to the comment left by Old Mrs Landlord at 02/12/2020 - 17:38
It's definitely worth a watch. Great documentary by the BBC. There's an epidemiologist on there who said something like, "...it's not a successful infection that kills its host." A disease like that just keeps on spreading, modifying itself slightly so that it doesn't kill. Just spreading silently until anybody who is likely to be killed is either killed or vaccinated and everybody else just gets infected and recovers, even if that takes a bit of time.

The documentary talks about overcrowding on troop ships and elsewhere. They talked about poor ventilation. If you lock people up in a shared airspace...a ferry, or maybe a plane...then a respiratory virus will spread. It will spread in multi-generational households, on the tube. Anywhere where there is shared airspace and particularly where there is recycled air, or people locked up together. A plane is a really good place to get a respiratory infection.

And you know that you cannot stop a disease like that. So when the first data showed the virus all over the country you already knew that it was already too late; it was going to spread. It had already arrived, perhaps not just on one plane, maybe a few of them. And you already knew that unlike the expert in Scotland who said, "...our aim is to eradicate the virus", that eradication would not be possible.

Overcrowded accommodation is an issue that landlords have to think about.

But what's more important is that people who cannot work cannot pay the rent. Whether they are employed or self-employed; no work = no rent. There is nothing more important to any landlord right now than the small business sector getting back to work.

I'm really pleased to see that the Pfizer vaccine has been approved though. I'm hoping with the Astra Zeneca vaccine that that is approved too. I don't have shares in either company. And I don't know where they manufacture the vaccine; I know that some of their pharmaceuticals are manufactured in Ireland...a country with favourable corporation tax rates. I'm hoping that the vaccine is being manufactured in the UK, but I don't know. It would be a bit rough if the UK taxpayer ended up paying via the NHS for a vaccine developed using UK R&D facilities but manufactured in the Republic of Ireland.

Hopefully the vaccine plant is in the UK.

House price is not causation! People living in close proximity eg towns/cities may well be.

Whoever wrote this knows absolutely nothing about the difference between correlation and causation. Very disappointing to read this nonsense on here, this is worthy of a Shelter press release

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 02/12/2020 - 18:59
Just found out that it's not in the UK. I googled it and found "The tube that could change the world: First vial of Covid-19 vaccine 'starting material' after Australian breakthrough - with millions to be made from tomorrow. By Eliza Mcphee for Daily Mail Australia, 11 Nov 2020". I don't read the daily mail so I didn't know. So that means the Pfizer vaccine, which comes in dry ice is from Belgium, and the "Oxford" vaccine is from Oz...and you could probably put that in a stubby because it goes in the fridge 🙂

Anyway, that's drifting off topic a bit. But it remains the case that there is nothing more important to any landlord right now than seeing employed and self-employed people able to get back to work. No work means no rent.

And the whole nation needs a bit of fresh air.