Dave – the editor and Thurrock resident

As you’re no doubt aware, there’s now a choice of three tiers of restrictions that can be imposed in a bid to ‘contain’ COVID-19. At the time of writing, Thurrock and Southend which are both unitary authorities are in Tier 1. The areas coming under the authority of Essex County Council are in Tier 2. Greater London to the west is also in Tier 2.

As you can imagine, this has caused a bit of confusion. This is what we’ve written so far regarding that: It will end in tiers – October 13, 2020 and: Baffled? – October 14, 2020. When we wrote these posts, we knew that they wouldn’t be the last time we were obliged to comment on this shitshow.

Unsurprisingly, as you can see from the Tweet shown above, the esteemed leader of Basildon Council, Cllr. Gavin Callaghan has stuck his oar in, demanding that us plebs in Thurrock (and also in Southend) get dragged up to Tier 2 level restrictions pronto. We didn’t think it would be long before the differences in the level of restrictions being applied across the south of Essex sparked a bit of a turf war. As for who fired the first shots in that turf war, we are not in the least bit surprised that it turned out to be Callaghan.

You would have thought that with the Basildon town centre masterplan and servicing the needs of all the developers who want to totally transform the place, Callaghan already had enough on his plate. Oh no, he wants a bit more attention and he’s getting that by having a dig at the authorities in south Essex who are still in Tier 1.

Callaghan is ambitious. He has been a Labour parliamentary candidate in previous general elections. With the rumoured re-shaping of local government across the south of Essex – South Essex councils in ‘secretive meetings’ (non) shock – August 4, 2020 – we can’t help thinking that he has his eyes on a potential leadership role in any new authority that may emerge.

In a situation where an increasing number of us are fed up with lockdown and the new ‘normal’, that last thing we need is an over ambitious local councillor from a neighbouring authority thinking he can dictate to the rest of us what extra restrictions we’ll have to live under. Callaghan, your remit ends at Westley Heights and at the Five Bells – do us a favour, stay to the north of that border and shut the f**k up!

Meanwhile, as we’ve written previously, those of us who are suffering from lockdown/new normal fatigue will be getting as ‘creative’ as we can in order to pull through the weird dystopia that our so called rulers want to inflict upon us…