Bournemouth beach - “Major incident”

[BebeGlazer]

The local police and council have now declared that Bournemouth beach is scene of “major incident” because people will not stay away. Overcrowding, littering, desperately dangerous parking.

www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/18541911.bournemouth-beach-bcp-council-declares-major-incident/

Please, please, think kindly before travelling to small seaside towns at the moment. We cannot cope.

@squirtlesquad

Is there any evidence that the council erected the car park full sign? I suspect it may have been out there by NIMBY locals tbh!

What is the point of a sign like that anyway? People will find out for themselves the car park is full and park elsewhere. It feels like an attempt to dissuade visitors.

SquirleSquad, you may not have noticed, but London, or at least my part of it, was full to bursting with people coming in to join BLM demonstrations over several weekends. Really disruptive with the sound of helicopters, ambulances and police cars till well into the night. Given there were fights outside Waterloo Station there is a fair chance at least some came from Bournemouth on a day trip.

So why cant Londoners come to Dorset.

I wonder how much is about race/class.

So OK if you are heading off to eat at Rick Steins or belong to the Royal Motor or Parkstone Golf Club. Not OK if you have a knotted handkerchief on your head.

Overreaching much?

Stay away from tourist towns until tourist facilities reopen otherwise you're putting a strain on local resources and causing incidents like that seen yesterday. It's not hard.

@Needmoresleep are you suggesting that the BLM protests are comparable to a day out at the beach?

@BostonCheers yes they were proper BCP council signs, they have also erected proper signage to further away car parks to try and avoid congestion on the residential roads around the main beach car parks. You don't live here so you have no idea. You forgot to say not ideal, minor issue, regrettable or unfortunate.

@Needmoresleep I don't agree with people coming to London for that reason, there were large demonstrations in Bournemouth too with a lot of people again coming from out of town and we also had mass gatherings on the beaches that weekend too. Ridiculous. It's not okay for people to come to London from here or vice versa like I said.

I mean the gatherings are ridiculous not the cause..

Both day trips. Those that felt strongly about BLM, or indeed about the Churchill statue, headed for London. Those who felt their children needed a break from lockdown and a day by the sea, headed for the beach.

Lockdown is getting to me, as it is to many others. Stuck indoors, no outside space, neighbours have decamped as they have the builders in for six months. It's hot and awful. I want to go to the beach.

@Needmoresleep I read that last bit in the same tantrum voice my eldest son made when he couldn't go to the beach when it rained when he was 2. I want to go to the beach tantrum tantrum.

You may well want to go but you are (presumably) an adult and can comprehend why you shouldn't right now. The council have repeatedly said that the facilities aren't available to cope with mass visitors during a fucking pandemic and it's not unreasonable to expect people who live hours away to just wait a couple of weeks for the town to appropriately prepare for that.

@SirVixofVixHall

Public toilets....read up on viral plume and how the virus can be sprayed over a large area in toilets when someone flushes. Toilets ideally need to be cleaned after each person, which obviously wouldn’t happen, and anyone cleaning a public loo would need full PPE.

And yet the loos are open at National Trust properties. They’re one in, one out with just one cubicle open. Every hour the open cubicle is changed. All the loos are open at two local reservoirs and they never closed at a local non NT stately home which kept its grounds open throughout.

You are charming SquirtleSquad. Really charming.

1. I bet you have a garden
2. I bet you start complaining as soon as Londoners start buying coastal property and push up the prices.
3. I bet you dont wear a mask when you go out for a walk, because no one in Bournemouth seems to do that. In huge contrast to London where people on the whole have taken lockdown very seriously.

I have been taking part in an Imperial College survey. Early conclusions are that a lot of people are finding lockdown very difficult indeed and it is affecting physical and mental health.

Adults that is. Not your wingy toddler.

But no it is clear that Dorset people don't understand. They also don't seem to understand lockdown itself and that it applies to them And that their R rate was rising fast, even before the hot weather, because locals were too relaxed.

Selfish prats all.

Our small flat is on the market, as my mother, who I used to care for, has passed away. We are still paying council tax. Do you thi k BCP would give me a discount if I am not allowed to visit.

I'm not sure if part of the problem people are having is understanding the scale of rubbish and unsanitary waste that was happening.

Isn't 33 tonnes really just few bad eggs spoiling it for everyone?

Half a million people turned up in Bournemouth yesterday. If even 1 out of every hundred visitors got caught short and failed to eliminate their waste in a toilet, that's 5000 public acts of urination/defecation.

Stretched along a 7 mile beach, you'd only have to dodge maybe 714 shits per mile.

Plus the odd, light stabbing. Fine Family fun.

Yes I have a lovely garden.
No I don't moan when Londoners invest in Dorset, I work in property..
Yes I do wear a mask. We are extremely careful.

Yes lockdown is extremely stressful for most people, obviously and we could do without the added stress from roads being blocked for emergency vehicles, inconsiderate people parking over driveways, transport links being cancelled, mass over flows of litter, people shitting and pissing everywhere, London gangs fighting and stabbings in the middle of our town and our police being so busy dealing with the aftermath of the influx of visitors that all other crimes are not being dealt with effectively, the council are all but "closed" for dealing with any other enquiries and issues which is extremely frustrating and our NHS workers don't need another thing adding to the extreme pressures they are under.

We do understand. For weeks and weeks most of our beaches lay completely empty when people were only having daily exercise from their own homes. It was great to see that even though we had great weather and so many people live just a short walk away - they respected the lock down.

You've told us plenty that you used to care for your mother, do you think that makes any difference? I help care for my nephew - lots of his treatments are in London does that mean it's okay for me to pop up for a day trip because I'm bored and the sun is shining?

And no that's not how council tax works, obviously.

@forgetthehousework I should take DH and DC to Crank Caverns and leave 'em there

Can't remember if knew they existed or not! Certainly never been there, so thanks for the mention!

@MrsSpenserGregson "I'm delighted to tell you that, just before you arrive at your holiday location, you will drive though a village/hamlet called ... wait for it ... Shitterton grin grin grin"

I shall inform DH who will take the piss even more. He's a proper city boy, grew up in the shadow of Anfield. He once thought the noise of a wood pigeon was an owl and got all excited.

A quick google will give you the current stats for the virus in Dorset - we're not smug we're bloody lucky and grateful that it hasn't been worse.

This town has been obediently quiet and mindful of the virus since lockdown began, which I can testify to because I live here and have seen the empty streets, mask wearing and social distancing, only relaxing in the last couple of weeks.

Residents on this thread have repeatedly spelled out what happened yesterday - it's not that we don't welcome visitors, it's the current situation and we were overwhelmed. Why is that so hard to grasp?

Nobody is saying all of the half million who turned up were behaving anti-socially but enough were to create a large scale problem that put themselves and others at risk.

It was a unique situation - we're shocked and dismayed is all, and this is a public forum for discussion.

If you are a responsible person who visited - fantastic - thank you - you are not the problem. If you are determined to take personal offence at every comment and observation on behalf of those who did behave badly, then I'm baffled as to what you want from us.

We want you to have a nice time in our town and be safe - and we want the same for us as residents.

Which part of unprecedented doesn't make sense to you?

Some fucking arsehole interviewed on Channel 4 news tonight said that "these beach stories make good headlines, zoom lens blah blah, not worried too much about outside., etc , and then went on to say he was more worried about ppl meeting up indoors. FFS. The pissheads put first as usual

So there you go. The green light given to what happened in Bournemouth

Well not only did people bring bags of food to dump on the beach, some absolutely crazy fuckers brought their kitten!

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8464261/RSPCA-blasts-family-dragging-kitten-200-mile-round-trip-Bournemouth-beach-92F-temperatures.html

@OldQueen1969

A quick google will give you the current stats for the virus in Dorset - we're not smug we're bloody lucky and grateful that it hasn't been worse.

This town has been obediently quiet and mindful of the virus since lockdown began, which I can testify to because I live here and have seen the empty streets, mask wearing and social distancing, only relaxing in the last couple of weeks.

Residents on this thread have repeatedly spelled out what happened yesterday - it's not that we don't welcome visitors, it's the current situation and we were overwhelmed. Why is that so hard to grasp?

Nobody is saying all of the half million who turned up were behaving anti-socially but enough were to create a large scale problem that put themselves and others at risk.

It was a unique situation - we're shocked and dismayed is all, and this is a public forum for discussion.

If you are a responsible person who visited - fantastic - thank you - you are not the problem. If you are determined to take personal offence at every comment and observation on behalf of those who did behave badly, then I'm baffled as to what you want from us.

We want you to have a nice time in our town and be safe - and we want the same for us as residents.

Which part of unprecedented doesn't make sense to you?

Well said OldQueen - still can't believe there are some people on this thread believing that this behaviour is acceptable. The people that left all that litter, defecated in people's gardens etc, were just animals.

SquitleSquad, the story of your nephew is bizarre.

Really weirdly, at least to you, is that I regularly made day trips to Bournemouth to help care for my mother. Dentist appointment, flu vaccine, anything, and I went down. Not because I was bored, not because the sun was shining, but because she bloody did not know where she lived, was not sure who I was, and totally lacked the capacity to go on her own. Your nephew does not sound nearly as disabled.

Gardens would make a huge difference but are a real rarity in my part of London.

Which agent do you work for, so I can avoid? I met too many of the Branksome Park/Canford Cliffs matrons, with their personalised number plates and their Marbella times shares and their gruesome children in their posh private schools. Yes look down on London all you want, but having overheard more than my share of dull boasty conversations between
peroxide blonds in the Jazzy or Mark Bennett to know that for all their snobbery, Bournemouth/Poole is dullsville, albeit attached to a decent beach.

Most of us don't live in nor aspire to the "Glitterati" you mention in Canford Cliffs / Branksome Park. Most of us are pretty average and just living unassumingly. I'm part of the alternative / creative crowd. please don't tar us all with the same brush, just as we have painstakingly not tarred all visitors with the same brush.

if you don't like Bournemouth don't come.

You may not be but I bet SquitleSquad is. Just from the way she talks about London and Londoners.

I met plenty of good people in my decade of shuttling back and forth between London and Bournemouth - and like most carers the duties were something that was imposed on me, not chosen.

However, and I was managing my mothers property so met quite a lot of people, Bournemouth/Poole snobbery is of a different league. It matters what car you drive, what golf club you belong to, where you went on holiday, how close you live to Harry Rednapp, and, let's be honest, what colour your skin is.

Nah. Cant be doing with it. People like Sqitlesquad are not better. They just think they are.

@rosinavera

I haven't seen anyone saying that the defecation in gardens and littering is acceptable. I have said on numerous occasions that it is regrettable and disappointing.

However, what people have pointed out is that a few minor incidents can't be allowed to overshadow the overwhelmingly positive economic effect of tourism.

We also need to cut some slack to people who have even trapped in flats for 3 months- they are not going to be saints.

@Needmoresleep no you're missing my point entirely. You keep going on about how you cared for your mother in Bournemouth so you have links and bla bla like that makes you "more worthy" to visit, you keep on bringing it up and it's completely irrelevant, the fact is you don't live here and at the moment it's not very sensible to go on day jaunts across the country because the sun is shining and you fancy the beach. Just like me caring for my nephew and having links to London wouldn't make it any more sensible for me to go for a day trip to London.

You have plenty of outdoor spaces and parks in and around London. There is no way that Bournemouth is the closest suitable outdoor space, it's just the one you fancy.

I don't work for any agency, working in property doesn't mean estate agent. Christ. No one is looking down on London. The only person grouping people together and being a bitch about them is you. You hate the people here so much so why do you even care?

And what exactly have I said about London and Londoners? Other than they (not even specifically London.. anywhere) should stay local for the time being because the chaos caused is not fair.
I don't know what Glitteratti is, I don't even wear make up. I live in Christchurch.. as I've said repeatedly.