I want to be able to take my kids to the beach this summer with out it being unnecessarily packed with people who don’t need to be there.
That’s convenient, isn’t it – you want to be able to take your kids to the beach, but people who live in built-up/inland areas don’t need to be there.
the Qs for supermarkets and no children advice means your son wouldn’t be in the supermarket.
No, there are no children at all in supermarkets at the moment, because there’s no such thing as single parents or two-parent families with one having to be at work – and anyway, you can just tie up young children on the dog hooks outside whilst you do your shopping and queue to pay….
the devastation a massive influx of tourists that bring covid with them?
You’d think that Devon and Cornwall were an isolated island somewhere like Rockall and nobody had travelled in or out at all since the start of the pandemic.
Do people really care about a holiday more than protecting people from dying?
It’s about the balance of probabilities. As I said before, 5 people die every day in the UK in road accidents, so does that mean that everybody who ever takes any vehicle out on the road cares more about whatever it is they have to do that day than people dying?
And what if those businesses’ polite messages were blatantly ignored. They would get even a teensy bit pissed off? Because that’s what’s happening in Devon and Cornwall. People were asked repeatedly not to come but they still did.
I’m talking about polite but firm messages, making it very clear – but using words and phrases like ‘please’, ‘unfortunately’ and ‘we regret that we will not be able to serve you’ rather than ‘go back home’ 'We don't want you' or just painting up a bed sheet calling non-locals ‘rats’.
There are a lot of buisnesses in the South West that don't rely on tourism, by the way.
I’m not sure I agree with that, actually. Even if you sell goods or services that would only ever be used by locals, many of your customers will be paying you with money that has ultimately come into the county via tourism. Supposing that you make a living as a piano tutor, so nobody who is just passing through on holiday would be coming to you. One of your customers is a local who lays block paving drives, so again, only serving locals. One of their customers works as a painter and decorator (and refuses work on principle for holiday lets). Even though the decorator only accepts jobs in houses owned and lived in by locals, some of those locals may work in very busy cafes or gift shops of the sort that would have no or insufficient trade to keep going without tourists. Without all of the tourist money from endless cream teas, ice creams and novelty t-shirts, there might be no money in the system for anybody to pay you for piano lessons.
I live in the West Midlands, where we have lots of motorways, and I don’t tend to stop at the numerous local service stations, as they’re close to where I live and thus I’m not ready for a break when I pass them. That doesn’t mean that our wider regional economy (which includes me) doesn’t rely on the income that they bring in. Just because I don’t stop there, I could theoretically own any number of businesses which could get valuable custom from the people who work there – who wouldn’t be able to buy my goods or services without their earnings from serving people who, by definition, don’t live in the area. It could even be mundane businesses that I want/need to use myself, which might not be there for me if they didn’t get enough trade to keep going, including that from folk who work at service stations.