121. Veil Of Tiers.

Tier 3 - Hell by Giotto di Bondone 1267-1337, Scrovegni Chapel Padua.

   Late in the morning of Thursday 26 November the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, announced the plans  Boris Johnson’s government had made for when England would exit the 4 week long COVID-19 ‘lockdown’. There were to be 3 Tiers as before but in the newly renamed Very High Tier 3 restaurants and hotels and public houses were to remain shut apart from the provision of takeaway meals. The precise locations of the unfortunate Tier 3 areas were to have been revealed on a government website but so great was the number of people trying to discover in which tier their own area had been placed that the site soon crashed. But the truth was soon revealed - Birmingham, Staffordshire, West Midlands and Warwickshire were all allocated a place in the Hell of Tier 3 while Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Shropshire were consigned to the Purgatory of Tier 2. Indeed of the whole of England only Cornwall, Scilly Islands and Isle Of Wight had found their way into the Heaven of Tier 1.

  This announcement was a great disappointment and cause for concern for the future of the hospitality industry in the West Midlands.  Notable Birmingham restaurants broke the news to their customers with various messages on line and The Birmingham Post headlined the threat to the industry in anticipation of the city’s allocation to Tier 3.

  Only 5 days prior to the government’s announcement, Sam Morgan, patron of Craft and 8, had been publicising that the restaurant had been putting into place more of its ‘dining pods’ which had proved to be very popular during the preceding weeks and helped to ensure heavily booked reservation lists for the restaurant.

 

So in the words of Haircut One Hundred (I have no idea why they suddenly came to mind):-

  And is that the boiling lake of Tier 3 Hell where the lost souls of restauranteurs end up? I hope not.