In a new column for Biddulph Nub News, town and district councillor Connor Brady has weighed in on the current state of the Coronavirus pandemic in the UK - and who should be to blame for a second wave.

Read what he has to say below:

The Government wants to blame the second wave on us. However, we have all done everything that has been asked of us. We stayed away from our families for months. We stayed inside for months.

Then we did what they said and ate out, went back to work, went back to school, so how on earth can we be to blame?

On the 3rd August the Government's "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme was launched giving people 50% off meals Monday to Wednesday up to a £10 discount. In the first three weeks of the scheme it was used for 64million meals. I certainly used it whilst on holiday and I'm sure most other people used the scheme at least once.

A report by the University of Oxford said the scheme led to an "extravagant" surge in people dining out. By the start of August, restaurant attendance had already bounced back to near 2019 levels, so the half price discount scheme didn't encourage a "return to normal"; it encouraged extravagant levels of eating out.

Ironically the latest government data shows that "leisure" (which includes bars, restaurants, and any entertainment or sports venues) is the third most-common exposure category for the virus. Perfect for a 50% off campaign getting people into those same venues.

At the end of August, the Government started a campaign to encourage people to go back to the workplace. They asked employers to reassure staff that it was safe to return. One case of this is Barclays bank who had brought 1,000 employees back to the office.

The former government adviser, Professor Neil Ferguson, said that people should "hesitate" at the "headlong rush to get everybody back into offices" as cases were already rising. He was right as just three weeks later the government has moved to a work-from-home advice.

Businesses have been bending over backwards to make their workplaces Covid-secure, just to send their employees home again.

Back in July the Government announced that schools would reopen full time in September with few restrictions. The guidance told schools to divide pupils into bubbles of entire classes or year groups.

It laid out that teachers should "distance from each other and older students where possible" but that they are allowed to move freely between classes and year groups. The general secretary of the Association of Schools and College Leaders said "It will be immediately apparent to anyone reading this that it is enormously challenging to implement. The logistics of keeping apart many different bubbles of children in a full school, is mind-boggling."

So it has proved locally and nationally with Biddulph High School sending all of Year 9 home because of a student having Covid-19, and at least 90 schools having to close partially or fully with cases of coronavirus after just the first week of teaching.

Throughout the lockdown there have been so many mixed messages. Now we are at the current "Rule of Six", although this doesn't apply to groups that go hunting. We started with a very clear message of stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives, and then moved to stay alert, control the virus, save lives, and now to the rule of six.

On face masks in schools in July: "Public Health England does not currently recommend the use of face coverings in schools" to this in August: "While the Government is not recommending face coverings are necessary, schools will have the discretion to require face coverings in communal areas if they believe that is right".

On wearing a mask in a takeaway, Matt Hancock said "If there is table service, then it is not necessary to have a mask. But in any shop you do need the mask. So, if you are going up to the counter in Pret, that is a shop. Then the Prime Ministers spokesman said "My understanding is that it wouldn't be mandatory if you went in, for example, to a sandwich shop in order to get a takeaway to wear a face covering".

Now Matt Hancock has been briefing that the UK could see a second spike in coronavirus cases if young people don't follow social distancing rules. "The really important message is that younger people spread the disease even if they don't have symptoms. Don't kill your gran by catching coronavirus and then passing it on".

It's astonishing really. I couldn't tell you every part of the guidance around social distancing, the size of groups, all of the rules and regulations, a week ago, or a month ago, or 3 months ago, never mind now.

Just over the last month we have been given 50% off to eat out. We've been told to go to work then not, go to school then be sent home. Now university students after being encouraged to go to their new university halls are catching coronavirus from each other and are told they will be stuck there over Christmas.

The reality is that the Government's messaging has been all over the place, their plans hardly last a week, different leading politicians are saying the opposite and as the public we don't have any real idea of what is going on.

At some point you should have to take responsibility for your own actions. At some point you have to be honest about what has gone on, hold your hands up and say we got some things wrong.

It's so typical that instead all the Government wants to do is put the blame on different sections of the public so we blame each other and not those who set the rules.

When we inevitably have a second national lockdown it will not be you or I at fault. It will be the decisions taken by the government which has put us into that position.

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