On Friday lunchtime the Mayor of Tower Hamlets tweeted this.
Apparently Tower Hamlets now has one of the highest levels of Covid-19 in London.
So, in addition to current national measures, residents are being asked to avoid visiting other households unless absolutely necessary.
At present this is advice, not an instruction or a legal obligation. It's also unexpected, and unusual.
Every UK local authority with official restrictions on socialising [map] lies north of a line drawn between Bristol and The Wash, every single one. The closest place to the capital with restrictions is Leicester, some 100 miles distant. Even Luton, which was one of the first places to be labelled an area of concern, is still only advising residents to "limit social interactions with other households." Suddenly Tower Hamlets has become (unless you know different) the odd one out in southern England.
It's debatable whether Tower Hamlets has one of the highest levels of Covid-19 in London. In the latest figures, released on Friday, Tower Hamlets had 131 new cases, a rate of 40.3 cases per 100,000 population. Eight other London boroughs had a higher rate, namely Redbridge, Newham, Hounslow, Havering, Barking & Dagenham, Ealing, Hackney and Hillingdon. Redbridge's rate was 62, which is the 64th highest rate in England. Tower Hamlets' 40.3 wouldn't even make England's top 100.
I've also seen 'latest figures' suggesting that Tower Hamlets has the fifth lowest rate in London, and elsewhere figures suggesting it has the fifth highest. Far too many differentways ofmeasuring infection are available. I am perfectly willing to believe that the Mayor knows better than me which numbers to take note of and when to get concerned. But there are no rankings in which Tower Hamlets is so near the top of the list that it should be the sole borough in London to be offering additional advice on social distancing.
Whatever, the advice has been given and we are being asked "to avoid visiting other households unless absolutely necessary". I don't have any other friends in Tower Hamlets to go and visit, so that's easy enough. But the wording of the advice also suggests I shouldn't go round to visit BestMate who lives in Newham, but he can still come round and visit me. Ditto the Mayor's advice seems to suggest I should no longer consider heading up to Norfolk to see my family, but their councils have no qualms about them travelling in the opposite direction.
Also it's not clear what "unless absolutely necessary means". BestMate has my spare front door key, so I'm sure I could go round if I accidentally locked myself out. But for the wider community is babysitting your grandchildren OK, or helping to paint the spare room, or offering to do some gardening? Guidance is all very well, but when its edges are as woolly as this it's all too easy to conclude it doesn't apply to you.
Perhaps more importantly I wonder how many of Tower Hamlets' residents have even noticed. An announcement on Twitter and Facebook couldn't even reach 10% of the borough's population, judging by the number of followers, and if a mass email did go out I never received it. The council's Instagram feed remains silent on the matter. Most hopelessly, if you visit the Tower Hamlets website the Mayor's advice isn't there.
The website's homepage includes all the usual links to council services and a scrolling carousel of featured highlights, but not the Mayor's message. Even if you click through to the dedicated coronavirus information page the most recent update is dated 23rd September. Meanwhile the most recent newsstory, from Friday, is merely about new play equipment in local parks.
The story has been covered by the BBC, the Evening Standard and several nationalnewspapers, because being the first London borough to suggest restrictions brings you to prominence. But that's not going to have made an enormous dent in the local consciousness, especially in such an ethnically diverse borough with a particularly youthful demographic. It is exceptionally difficult for a council to get its message out these days, especially when it's only advice and not advice anybody wants to hear.
I will not be popping round to see you any time soon, probably, sorry. And if this is a foretaste of what's to come eventually across a wider range of London boroughs, perhaps even a legal restriction, best get your social mixing in soon.
• three more Welsh counties face lockdown
• cases at 40 UK universities
• ban on socialising in pubs in the NE
• WHO develops quick low-cost test
• calls to end 10pm pub curfew
• global deaths pass 1 million
• PM misquotes new NE restrictions
• four more Welsh counties face lockdown
• students won't face Christmas quarantine
• Speaker demands greater Parliamentary say
• PM calls for "collective forbearance"
• growth in cases could be slowing
• new restrictions in Merseyside
• Poland and Turkey added to quarantine list
• SNP MP broke self-isolation rules
• President Trump tests positive
• "everyone got a bit, kind of complacent" (PM)
• President Trump taken to hospital
• latest Bond film postponed again, to April
• conflicting reports on Trump's health
Worldwide deaths: 990,000 → 1,030,000 Worldwide cases: 32,700,000 → 34,700,000 UK deaths: 41,971 → 42,317 UK cases: 429,277 → 480,017 FTSE: up 1% (5842 → 5902)
There have been mutterings of late about adding Thameslink to the tube map. A London Assembly member asked the Mayor if he was planning on producing a co-ordinated map and he replied...
Thameslink's been on the tube map before. It was present during most of the 1990s, initially in orange and later in white. Here it is in 1997.
Only the central section from Kentish Town to London Bridge and Elephant & Castle was shown. Also present at the time were the Northern City line out of Moorgate and the North London line from Richmond to North Woolwich. Thameslink vanished from the map in 2000, the year TfL was formed, with the North London line the sole surviving non-TfL service.
There are sound reasons for putting Thameslink back. It's the only non-tube line to cross central London, it operates a very frequent service, its fares are identical to those charged by TfL and a lot of people don't realise it exists. It might not even be too intrusive.
n.b. This is not an official map, this is me playing around by drawing lines. I'm using lime green solely because it stands out.
Thameslink now has two northern branches, one through Kentish Town and one through Finsbury Park both of which ought to appear. Fortunately most of the central section either shadows existing lines or doesn't really get in the way. The only additional station is at City Thameslink, which'd fit nicely into available white space.
But the tube map didn't have accessibility blobs in the 1990s and these could make interchanges very messy. King's Cross St Pancras is already served by six lines so might struggle with a seventh. Meanwhile Farringdon is due to get much more complex when Crossrail opens and Thameslink would only make that worse. Are we making the tube map more useful or just making it harder to follow?
And where do you stop?
Beyond Kentish Town the next station is West Hampstead, which on the map is way over to the left hence horribly impractical. Thameslink doesn't interchange with TfL services anywhere else in north London so it'd only get in the way. But it's south London which would see the greatest potential tangle, with at least four branches linking up to existing stations at Greenwich, Woolwich, Abbey Wood, Denmark Hill, Peckham Rye, Norwood Junction, East Croydon, Mitcham Junction and Wimbledon. Best not go there, I suspect.
You can see why TfL is "looking into" how Thameslink could be included on the tube map rather than committing one way or the other. Whatever they eventually decide, someone isn't going to like it.
As for whether or not the tube map is fit for purpose, here's a comments box for that: comments
