To say please don't go to your second home

[Beesisabuzzin]

With talk of London going into lockdown tomorrow can I remind second home owners that Cornwall has one hospital. Devon has four hospitals. Where I live in Devon there is no food in any of the supermarkets. Please, please stay away, our communities cannot deal with an influx.

North Coast of Ireland the same. We have 1 hospital with 5 ICU beds as opposed to 4 acute hospitals in Belfast but up they come to their 2nd homes and caravans.... But they'll be locked down like the rest of us as all the cafes, bars and restaurants closed today.

Wtf has London got to do with it??! Not everyone here has a second home to go to!

I live in London. Most people I know already live in cramped accommodation, a family in a one-bed flat or a two-bed flat, often with no garden. No second homes.

Think I’ll stay in London. I’d rather take my chances with the coronavirus than risk the Yokel virus which has infected some PP.

A friend in a holiday spot told me this week a London second homer went to their local farm shop to stock his second home chest freezer with meat, for cash, and was ASTONISHED that the butcher not only told him to piss off, he refused to sell him anything.

Where I live, there are whole streets of second homes.

Like so much of rural UK , we have no local bank, chemist, post office, school or department. All those buildings are empty second homes, used a few weeks of the year while our local kids struggle or leave.

I have asked a London friend with a second home here to let a mum and her son self-isolate. Dad is a doctor, son’s uni flat mate has CV.

She was surprised they had nowhere else to go. But she let them. There is kindness still.

Think I’ll stay in London. I’d rather take my chances with the coronavirus than risk the Yokel virus which has infected some PP.

I don't think you're listening very well, perhaps it's your attitude getting in the way?

Sad to see so many people feeling justified to scapegoat all Londoners, as usual, with causing all society's ills

The message is “don’t travel”.

It is only about Londoners who have second homes and choose to take their potentially infected selves to less affected areas.

Applied equally to 2nd home owners from anywhere else. But London currently the highest infection rate, and probably, amongst the vast majority who could only dream of such wealth, a high rate of second home owners.

The hospitals everywhere are or will be totally overwhelmed. That part of it is an irrelevant argument.

It is the Italian lesson, which we learn, or not. The Italian lesson teaches us that we can choose to reduce the impact and deaths, or not.

It is about not spreading infection all over the country. Yes, Norfolk might have a few cases (compared even to my individual London borough) but there might be a chance if containing those or keeping them to a minimum if people from highly infected areas self isolate and stay put. As told.

If people just stay put, even if they live in a virus hotspot, as I do, then if they get it seriously, there may be a better chance of them being shipped out to another hospital that has bed availability. That won’t happen if all the available beds in the country are already full because ordinary people not staying put have spread it around the country.

Holiday let owner here (again). I've written to each Cornish MP asking for the PM to explicitly tell the nation that holidays at Easter are not on and to offer self catering owners compensation in line with that of pubs and restaurants if they can provide proof of bookings. I don't want to be part of the problem. And will
Unilaterally cancel my bookings if nec. But I'd rather joint action was taken.
Can I urge Cornish and Cumbrian and other remote area folk to do the same?

Because in my view it's not just about second home owners. The advice is stop all non essential travel. That's all holidays. But it's not being followed bc no one has yet cancelled my place. It's like a Mexican stand off. I want to cancel but don't want to lose income; visitors don't want to cancel and lose payment. So the gov needs to intervene.
I will cancel if need be but am taking it to the wire hoping intervention will happen.

@FenellaVelour “MMN123 spot the second homer.”

Nope, no second home. But spent much of my childhood visiting family in Devon and Cornwall so well aware of some of the unpleasant attitudes of locals (my relatives included) toward ‘outsiders’.

London is full of flats owned by people who live mostly in rural areas, but like to have somewhere various branches of the family can stay when they come to see a show or go shopping. I daresay many will be filled with country people coming into London to be nearer hospitals with more expertise.

The point is it makes no difference. The NHS everywhere will be so overwhelmed it wouldn’t matter if another thousand Londoners walked through the door of A&E or 1000 Cornwallians turned up in London. It will be overwhelmed either way. Locals only, or locals plus second home people - whether those second homes are in Cornwall or Chelsea - the hospitals will all be overwhelmed.

And what will help is community spiritness. Not everyone turning on each other and focusing (as they always do in Cornwall) on ‘blaming’ Londoners!

I'm now in discussion with the company we rent our Cornish holiday home from, to move our booking to next year. Fingers crossed the owners say yes. My brother has agreed if the owners agree to move it to a convenient date.

Will see, means I will still have it to look forward to, and we can avoid putting more pressure on a struggling Countyand mum and I can remain isolated until this situation eases.

London has more airports and train terminals than elsewhere. So of course more infections. But even if everyone stops moving there are already infections incubating throughout Devon and Cornwall. Brought back by school trips and locals going to London to see a show just as much as Londoners travelling there. If I had a second home I would have settled in there weeks ago. I don’t - but I would have. Has it occurred to any of you that having some extra young healthy people nearby might just be a good thing when this gets bad?

When we had Spanish flu, many rural areas would have taken far longer to infect were it not for the huge movement of people after the war. It was this movement that contributed to the spread of the virus.
I don’t see why it is so hard for some to grasp that this virus moves wherever we move, and that slowing this movement is the only chance for all of us to lose fewer people we love.
Saying “oh it is everywhere now” completely misses the point that each single addition case in an area might be the tipping point that causes the death of another person, due to minimal resources. Keeping numbers in rural areas as low as possible for as long as possible means that if cities where the virus is already rampant need beds, then people can be transferred out, and when the virus has burned out in that city, rural areas getting overwhelmed later will be able to transfer patients in. It is in all our interests to not allow the entire country to hit peak cases at the same time.

Just so you know the first cases of the virus were in York, Brighton & Hove, East Essex, Wirral & Surrey.

It then spread to Torbay, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Sussex (East & West) & 1 case in London.

With the density of London & people constantly travelling backwards & forwards, London is suffering as large cities do.

Perhaps the people in your communities also helped to spread it!

Either way, a lot of people are dying in London & elsewhere, a little support for London & less bashing would be appreciated.

It isn’t bashing Londoners to ask people not to travel now. Most of my friends are in London.
It is realistic to look at the age group here in my village, where well over half are retired, compared with my friend’s London community , or my friend’s Bristol community, where most people are under 50.
If we get a big surge of cases here in one go, far more of my community will die.

This is exasperating. Just drove through Swatham on way to walk on a windy beach. (Whitty did say children should get exercise in wide open spaces.)

We felt guilty for even stepping a toe out of London after all the vitriol on this thread.

What did we find? A market in full swing. Lots of locals in big groups chatting and enjoying the sun. Many over 70.

The virus is already seeded all over the country. It did not even first appear in London (wasn’t it Brighton and York?)

People every where need to social distance. No where is safe and it won’t be a case of those others bringing it in.

You mention 'my village' 'my community', perhaps that's the difference, maybe I am worried for everyone everywhere and not just my own!

I'm just outside London, lots of old people here.

Just want to second what people are saying - again. This is not about bashing Londoners. It's partly about the fact that people moving from a high risk area will spread the virus and overwhelm devices for everyone. And there is also a long standing problem in rural areas, with second homes causing real difficulties for locals. Most Londoners can't afford second homes, a lot of this is about the haves and the have-nots, but where I live it's a matter of fact that the second home owners are overwhelmingly Londoners. And there is a groundswell of ill feeling, in part caused by the arrogance of many of them. It doesn't mean they're all bad people. But just as I can understand people wanting to protect their families and jut have a more pleasant experience under isolation by coming to our area, surely they can understand the fear that it generates to know a whole horde of potential spreaders are heading our way. And we really don't have the same medical facilities as there are in the capital.

The main thing is though, this is what happened in Italy. People travelled and the virus then became completely impossible to control. We all have to look out for each other, I am controlling my behaviour to protect others - we just cancelled a holiday in the Highlands - and I would like other people to do the same.

And by the way, I live near Swaffham and yes I did go to the market this morning. Because food shopping is essential and I prefer to go out once and support local businesses and shop outside rather than visit several supermarkets to try and get what I want. If you think all the people at the market were 'the people of Swaffham' think again. There were crowds of people, more than ever are usually there, probably because the supermarket shelves are empty and probably because some are holiday makers and second home owners.

Hope you have a good walk on the beach, which may seem empty to you if you're used to city streets. We'll be staying away from the coast because of how crowded it gets.

And don't expect me to apologise for sharing a joke with my neighbours this morning. One good thing to come out of this is that people we're talking and offering support more than I've ever seen before.

This thread is doing my head in, and one suggestion is that we should avoid too much news and overdosing on the issues, so I'm signing out now.

I wish everyone the thread, rural and urban, a safe path through this crisis and hope we can all meet up for another spirited debate on the other side.

There's an article in the daily mail about the best remote places to self isolate in....

Big boss packed their family (one of their kids had fever so they were in self isolation) and drove from central London to their holiday home in Devon last week. Yep. That's what people are like.

If you are carrying on as normal and going to a market and sharing jokes with neighbours you are not social distancing or self isolating. You are all spreading the virus between you, so please don't blame other people from different areas.

You are socialising because you think the problem is London. You are just a few weeks behind, please stay in.

we are staying at home. definitely not going anywhere. working from home etc. those who aren't are utterly irresponsible no matter where they live. government needs to lock us all down now and ensure online foodshopping slots are available for everyone.