Name my pup we just cancelled our proposed Scottish holiday, we reckoned people on the remote isles might be as keen to see Norfolk folk as we are to welcome those from the big city! When this is over, we'll rebook and bring the tourist ££, which I know from experience helps the local economy. And we'll try and show the same respect for local people as we hope to receive from visitors to Norfolk.
I really don't regard all people from London as the problem, I have friends and family members with second homes in Norfolk. They like to think of themselves as locals, but they head off back to London as soon as they need health care, even our opticians aren't good enough for them. So not doing much to raise the standards of the local area, but boy have they changed the character of the sleepy little town they've moved into! It's beyond recognition for most locals now, but no matter, they can't afford to live there anyway.
Nevertheless, my friends are kind generous people who would really like to be part of the local community and the problem is not their fault as individuals, it's to do with economics - who has money and who doesn't. There are many many Londoners who will never afford houses at those prices and probably can't even come up here for a holiday. I don't have a prejudice against Londoners, but the fact remains, the second home owners who are creating these issues are almost all from London and there is a groundswell if ill feeling among priced out locals.
That's the underlying issue, but the burning issue right now is that by travelling around, people will spread the virus, it's happened in Italy. So while I understand and sympathise with those who are afraid and looking for an escape route, it's human nature after all, maybe people can also understand the fear that we have when we think of their imminent arrival.
I suspect that the government is still pursuing a watered down version of their original 'herd immunity' strategy (prioritising the economy by letting nature take its course) because they can see what happened in Italy as well as we can, but they aren't preventing people from mixing or travelling. And before you say they can't stop people on the motorways, they did during the miners' strike when it suited their political agenda, so I suppose not doing it now also suits their agenda.