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“Merry Christmas! You know if I don’t see you,” yelled one of the regulars at the Jawbone Tavern in Bootle when one of his companions left Monday night.
It was a joke, but it tells you what people fear under these new restrictions.
The inhabitants of the Liverpool city region, some 1.5 million of them, are being asked to sacrifice some of the things many live for: working out in the gym after a stressful day or a pint at the gym. local.
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Yes, they ditched them along with everyone else in March, but this time the novelty factor is gone, businesses are already running in smoke after having looted their cash reserves, and dark cold winter nights are coming.
Jawbone Tavern owner Harry Sandle has been in the pub game for 35 years and says the decision is “devastating.”
“Bootle is already one of the most disadvantaged parts of Europe … people will just have to try to get over it. I don’t know how, but they will,” he said.
“We are starting to sort our bills from the last time and now it is closing again, nothing is left in the coffers.
He and his staff will be entitled to two-thirds of their salary from the government this time.
“You can’t go to Tesco and pay two-thirds, right? You can’t pay two-thirds of the gas bill or the leccy, it doesn’t work,” he said.
Pubs will struggle with the new restrictions
There are no easy answers.
Hospitals are filling up in Merseyside as the number of confirmed coronavirus Cases are increasing every day and something must be done.
But the consensus at Jawbone was not to attack the government.
“It is difficult, we are all in this and the government has to try to save lives, but we will all pay for this in some way,” Sandle added.
Mass unemployment here in the 1980s is a distant but vivid memory.
Nobody wants to go back to those dark days that tore families apart and forced some people to leave this great city in search of work.
Liverpool’s renaissance has been fought hard for the past 20 years.
People are willing to fight for their businesses to survive, but they will need help to do so. When the restrictions are imposed by the central government, it cannot release the people.
Sandle boiled it down to a simple fact that many people here are grappling with: “You can’t live outdoors, no one can.”
