Nottingham has the highest rate of COVID-19 infections in the country. We were put on Tier 2 this week, and it looks very much like it has been decided that we go to Tier 3 on Monday. That’s serious. More serious than Tier 2. And it was already serious before that.
The biggest cause of COVID-19 spread is people not following the rules (at the very least, it is people carrying on like nothing is wrong, which is what happened during summer and well into the early part of Autumn). Certain neighbourhoods in Nottingham are unfortunately populated by people of limited general intelligence (some are populated by people of limited actual intelligence, but this isn’t just about Broxtowe). I’m talking about the kind of people who, for whatever reason, think they know better than a world filled with genuine, qualified experts on infectious diseases and treatment.
One of the biggest contributors to this group is students.
Every year – without fail – Nottingham has huge problems at the start of the university term as students arrive and immediately blow huge amounts of money getting pissed and going around in childish costumes for freshers’ week. The streets where they live are literally paved with… broken glass. And, if you’re lucky, full bin bags of garbage that get ripped and kicked everywhere. And fast food packaging. And gas canisters and discarded sharps. And no matter how anyone might try to deny it, all this is true of many student areas. I see it with my own eyes when I pick pupils up there. It isn’t all of them, of course. But it is a hell of a lot of them.
A couple of years ago now, a house with a maximum occupancy of (if I remember) ten held a party which 250 people attended. As a result, a wall collapsed – pretty much exploded from the pressure of people – which could have been much more serious than it fortunately was. The event was typical, even if the outcome was more extreme than usual.
Nottingham University is currently bigging up the fact that its number of COVID-19 cases is falling. Yes, any fall in new cases is good, but when the University still has three times more cases than the county as a whole, let’s not kid ourselves that there isn’t really a problem. Because since the term began, there have been numerous reports of students crowding on to trams with no face masks and no distancing when the pubs shut at 10pm. There have been numerous reports of students holding house parties – the most publicised one being the one where the organiser was fined £10,000. When three times as many of these people is infected, there is a serious problem. And still they keep saying ‘the majority are behaving’. Stop that! It doesn’t matter if it is technically ‘the majority’ who are behaving. What’s far more important is the size of the very large minority who are behaving like arrogant prats. And that is why we have the damned problem!
That brings me on to the latest story illustrating how ‘the majority’ is behaving itself. Bear in mind this is on top of all the other stories about partying, boozing at weekends, crowding trams, and the idiot a couple of months ago who was also fined for holding a party.
In this case, four complete wankers/wankerettes were each fined £10,000. When police turned up to a reported party, despite being initially told no one was there, 30 people were found hiding in a house. That was when these four came out with the immortal lines that police were ‘spoiling their fun’, and that they should be having ‘the time of their lives’.
THIS is why we have a problem. I only hope they are on Mickey Mouse courses, because God help us if they’re medical students, or ones studying proper subjects. Fortunately (in a way), they’re Nottingham Trent University students – albeit third year – so the likelihood of them being on serious courses is somewhat less. But you can’t be certain – this is the same University whose biology students killed a hedgehog several years ago by attaching so many tracking devices to it it couldn’t move. And Nottingham Trent University refuses to reveal how many positive cases it has ‘to protect’ the reputation of these morons.
In another report on the same story, NUT says it is ‘investigating’, and the outcome of that means the students involved could ‘face a range of sanctions, up to and including expulsion.’ Frankly, the only acceptable outcome IS expulsion. They lied to police and engaged in an act which will inevitably result in further deaths (although those deaths won’t be able to be pinned on these twats, and NTU will defend them to the hilt if it keeps them).
Expel them now.