UKH

Some excuses being given for breaches of lockdown rules are really  unbelievable:

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=excuses+for+breachin...

I do wonder if these sort of people give any thought as to why "going to look at a beach" or visiting a given number of football grounds(must be on a par with train spotting) gives them a valid reason for breaching the rules. There was even a case that recently came to court as a result of somebody flying an aircraft from the south of England to Anglesey "to see the beach". This happened on August Bank Holiday. The police did him for breaching lockdown and the CAA did him for unauthorised landing at RAF Valley. The airfield was closed that day with presumably no ATC cover.

There have also been cases where motorists have been stopped for suspected breaches of lockdown and subsequently found to have no tax or insurance and, in some cases, no licence.

Are these people so stupid? Are they capable of intelligent thought?

Must be pretty awful if you live in the middle of a City though. I'd go mental.

I understand what you are saying but I don't think that counts as a valid reason and there have been notable cases of people driving several hundred miles to "escape" the "middle of a city".

As Chris Whitty has pointed out, one of the biggest issues is people are always looking at other people as the problem and not concentrating on their own behaviour - for example finger pointing at the minority of clowns rather than trying to cut down their own "essential" number of visits to the local shop. 

Agreed and ultimately it is those of us with the common sense to do what is asked of us who bear the brunt of the impositions upon our lives. On a positive note my annual car mileage has almost halved with a relative saving in petrol costs. 

But there is probably a link with those - if some rules don't apply to you why would any?

Seems that some people are just so stupid as to not realise that they are almost begging for the book to be thrown at them.

Yes we have seen the same, in fact this time last year we were looking at replacements for our 2nd car, have felt no need to press ahead and will go electric when the time comes as we realise we only need one car capable of long distances

Not quite on topic, but relevant - have you seen this thread on twitter, by a Sky News reporter, looking at lockdown compliance and concluding that it has actually been very good overall, apart from on one very important matter?

https://twitter.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/1349459843833352192

People making illegal trips like these appear to be a small minority, and many of them are also not actually very high risk when it comes to spreading or catching the disease - it's social contact that's the critical thing for that (although distance makes it easier for the disease to seed itself into new circles, so it does matter too).

None of that excuses such behaviour, but we'd probably do well to focus on more serious problems first - such as actually giving people the financial and legal support needed for them to isolate when they have symptoms, and creating more social pressure for them to do so, to err on the side of caution. I think there's a bit of a tendency for people to shout about the wrong things, when it comes to people breaking the rules.

Your mileage halved? Last year I went from 30,000km a year to less than 5k - the majority of that in Jan/Feb. I hate working form home too.

If the UK imposed the fines more widely (as they have in France) then perhaps people would take more notice?

my car stays on the drive most of the year, my insurance went up !

I live in one of the most densely populated local authorities in the UK and it is still easy to find somewhere to get out and about within the current rules.

I would prefer to be elsewhere but given it took seven months to have 50,000 COVID19 deaths but only two further months to have another 50,000 now is definitely not the time to try and find reasons to get around the rules

There is no excuse for the behaviours and reasons for the behaviours in the links in the first post.

Dave

A double-prong attack blaming not just the people breaking the rules but those sticking to them too. Daily press releases on rule-breakers do more than reinforce the message of compliance. As death continue to rise our "done the best we can" Government need to make sure, at all times, there is someone else to blame. 

I was working next to Whitby Abbey in the first lock down.  

There were a few  passers by, mostly local folk who'd simply walked up from town because it was nice and quiet.

But one chap turned out to be from Leeds.  He told me he, "was on a pilgrimage", and explained that he'd proposed to his wife in the Abbey grounds and had recently got divorced and his decree had arrived that morning.  So he decided to come back to the abbey and throw his wedding ring over the cliff.  "Its been a great day out", he said as he walked away.  

I should have spoiled his day by wishing he'd thrown himself over the cliff too.  But I was speechless.

If everyone obeyed all the rules we have in society then there would be practically no need for prisons, courts, a police force or traffic wardens. Burglar alarms, security lights, speed cameras, FPN's and traffic calming measures would be unnecessary.

With so many different rules being bent or broken by so many people everyday, what on earth made us think the new Covid rules wouldn't also be broken?

To be fair, the response to the lockdown rules has been much better than I thought it would be. I honestly thought we'd be seeing riots similar to the Netherland's when the first lockdown was announced. But I understand your sentiment, I'm getting increasingly annoyed when I keep reading about these breaches, especially things like the large wedding last week.

I've not been in the office since 23rd March last year, apart from one trip to pick up some IT equipment that couldn't be posted. I've filled the car up twice, maybe 3 times in the last year and I've actually had to charge the battery more times than that!

All this kind of crap does is divert attention away from 2 really important things:

1. The overwhelming majority are doing the right things and following the rules.

2. It's the government, not the British public who are to blame for our appalling situation.

Well said. Of course the government won't properly fund self isolation, so because of a risk of a small minority of fraudulent claims we all must suffer more cases, more deaths and a longer lockdown. There was no such nervousness  on business covid cover schemes,  where large scale fraud occurred, yet the lowest paid on the most insecure contracts still get no help.

Corrected that for you.

No you didn't.

That's just childish idiocy. All those eastern countries seem to be doing OK with their government responses in terms of minimising deaths, illness and economic damage. Japan had a wobble with a new peak (looking to top out at 100 deaths a day ... in the context of roughly double the UK population).  Those countries have a relatively normal life we are locked down and unlike our EU neighbours our hospitals are on their knees.

From what I have read and heard the Japanese people seem to have a much more society orientated attitude, its case of us, not I. They have accepted social isolation and and mask wearing for the greater good, as opposed to our more individualistic view.

Not really.  There is plenty of 'blame' to share around if you want to play that game.  The press, trolls, people who voted in this government  ....

Pointing the finger at the "government " is just an easy cop out.

Over the Christmas break I cycled to Donna Nook where a seal colony lives (they give birth to thousands of baby seals on the beach between Oct and Dec) and had a chat with one of the wardens there. The viewing area and carpark were closed but apparently they had still had a family drive from Birmingham to look during the November lockdown (250 mile round-trip). 

The thing is, you can compare to one country, or another, and point out why they've done better than us.

But the UK has the worst coronavirus death rate, per capita, in the world at present. You're going to have to make a lot of excuses.

We probably won't end up worst - but we're going to be among the worst, with the 'head start' we have now. That can't all be circumstance and luck, you can't get to the very bottom of the league without some serious mistakes and mismanagement. Especially as we're one of the richest countries - we should have been able to cope better than most.

Come off it, the government are in charge and make by far the biggest difference. We had massive advantages over the hardest hit in continental  Europe as we had an extra two weeks notice and saw what happened in Lombardy yet we still messed up more than anyone except Belgium then we did it again and again. The right wing press didn't help for the first six months with anti lockdown propaganda but are much better now... I watch the paper reviews most nights and the Fail, Excess and Torygraph representatives say mostly the right things.

Blaming the people is cheap, lockdown compliance is said to be very good apart from poor people who can't self isolate. 

https://twitter.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/1349459843833352192

The progressives let in Boris, (especially centrist liberals) as they were the majority of voters and couldn't hold their nose to vote tactically, despite the cabinet being a blustering ego surrounded by acolytes, crooks and incompetents. When progessives were in power, or shared it, for two consecutive decades (Blair, Brown and the coalition) too little was done to help people in the 'red wall', enabling the tory popularist support. I'm still furious that more Lib Dems didn't support the moderate Labour MP Vernon Coaker in my next door constituency. It was easy to get the tory majority down to around 30 with tactical voting and mathematically possible to block it altogether (even ignoring large scale shifts of moderate torys in the south who should have voted Lib Dem). Boris was an obvious real and present danger with high risk of getting a working majority and had gutted the parliamentary party of most of the sensible true one nation tories.  Jeremy was a real and present danger with zero chance of implementing his half baked policies in any progressive coalition.

Belgium is officially the worst, ignoring tiny countries. We are third behind Slovenia on UK official deaths but 2nd on ONS covid deaths. Belgium classify the widest range for possible covid deaths so we may be ahead of them on a true like-for-like basis. If you look at profiles in the most affected countries we will certainly overtake all the sizable nations to become top in a month and could well become the very top (above Gibraltar and San Marino).

Click deaths per million

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

I am not here to make excuses, just try and understand why something has happened, and our country, state, government is a system created over the years and just turning around and blaming "the government" is far too simplistic approach for what is at the end of the day a collective action problem.

The other day a friend of mine, a consultant in the NHS was going ape shit about people not obeying lock down and the like, and fair point.

I asked him if his neighbours had a few people round for drinks would he report them to the Police?
To be honest, I was not sure what he would do, but it was not a clear yes he would phone the police.

This is just a cultural thing we have in Britain, maybe in Germany or Japan they would phone the police, and the neighbours know they would phone the police.

 

Ah, sorry - I've gone out of date. We were reported as being worst last week.

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-uk-records-599-more-coronavirus-deaths-...

https://www.itv.com/news/2021-01-19/covid-uk-has-worst-daily-death-rate-in-...

The relative positions of the top few seem to depend on which measures are being used, but we are amongst the very worst.

I'd be a wee bit careful about worldometers, by the way - it's not always clear that their data is the most accurate.

I'm sure culture has plenty to do with it, yes - but it's the government's job to deal with the crisis, and they have done a terrible job of it, time and again delaying the necessary measures while cases grew exponentially, failing to protect the borders, and failing to get track and trace working adequately (and it probably just can't work while cases are high). It's not all the government's fault, sure, but it definitely has a lot to do with them.

The UK might be doing a good job of the vaccination programme, it has certainly started well. That has the potential to make a big difference - but even so, we're not getting those 100,000 lives back.

Edit - and, so I can't be accused of being partisan, the Scottish track and trace system has been a miserable failure too.

I think Oxford tried to fairly compare like with like (and must have ignored the tiny countries). I'm aware of the worldometer issues but the interface is very user friendly and the problems are tiny.

Dumb British anti-exceptionalism. Spain and Italy did better than us due to much stricter lockdowns. That we are top is little to do with the people. The government was too late in calling restrictions in September and December and deaths doubled in those two phases as a direct result. That's a few tens of thousands of avoidable deaths ignoring the first lockdown (when SAGE called it wrong).  Public compliance is broadly very good except people who can't afford to self isolate due to irresponsible government action on their financial support.

https://twitter.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/1349459843833352192

(You need to open the second internally linked  thread to see where compliance is failing)

Absolutely, of course the Government has a responsibility, but so to do the people, us. Have the government made mistakes, I would be amazed if they did not, but a lot of the blame game goes down partisan lines and point scoring, but thats the system we have.

For example IMHO, and its only an opinion, not a fact, Cummings was way out of order and should have been sacked, however this error is not a justification for me to not follow the guidelines and rules, as some people seem to have chosen to do.

Sure - but it seems that most people are following most of the rules very well, apart from the bit many simply haven't been given enough support to be able to do:

https://twitter.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/1349459843833352192

You do realise it was the government who were told by their behavioural scientists what would happen if Cummings wasn't sacked and they chose to ignore that. It's still irrelevant overall as in a very strict lockdown all people can do is secretly meet indoors at the risk of being fined. The government control the lockdown restrictions and right now we face the most dangerous variant yet (with worse known about in other countries) and restrictions are less than in the first lockdown and our new international quarentine measures are a joke if we were serious about keeping those variants out..

From what I have observed people do seem to be following the rules/guidelines much more at the moment, but this seems to go up and down over time.

I know my own attitude has changed over time.

Early last March I flew back from Alicante and because I had shared an apartment with some one with links to Italy I was much more switched on to Covid than most.

First lockdown strict adherence to the rules, to the extent I was criticised in some quarters.

As we left the first lockdown, strict to the guidelines.

After a couple of weeks of observing my peers, mainly in the climbing community, it was bollocks to this, I will make my own rules, and anyway I thought a vaccine would be years off, got that wrong.

Last lockdown, fairly strict adherence.

This Lockdown, super strict adherence, mainly for selfish reasons, I am 58, I am slightly more vulnerable and I should get the vaccine within 3 months, why blow it in the final mile.

Or alternatively, those labour voters who wouldn't hold their nose tt vote tactically for the only major pro EU party.

Of course the current government carry a lot of the blame for our relatively poor Covid response (and must also, therefore, take credit for a relatively fast vaccine roll out), but to turn a blind eye to the behaviour of large groups of the public is naive (imo).  For once, we actually are all in it together. 

We know now that outdoor transmission is very unlikely, we didn't in March. Your friends are almost certainly negligible risk. Look at the hard evidence linked in that twitter thread. Where it matters most compliance is good except in a few areas the most serious of which is low paid workers with no financial support who cant afford to self isolate. The government know about this but are worried about fraud, the levels of which even if it were widespread would be trivial compared to the financial damage of lockdown, that is only just good enough to keep our hospitals functioning.

Those Labour votes who didn't vote Lib Dem in many constituencies in the south are part of what I include in the progressive failure. Plus Labour in some Scottish and Welsh seats and Plaid voters on Ynes Mon. Yet most of the marginals are Labour-Tory so Lib Dems are the most often at fault.

Again on compliance read the twitter link. The most serious problem is a result of a failure of government to support poor workers to self isolate.

 https://twitter.com/rowlsmanthorpe/status/1349459843833352192 

When people like Boris launch their campaigns to become 'Prime Minister', surely it's someone's job to ask them; "You do realise that this job is more involved then being milk monitor in primary school, don't you - that it might involve you needing to show real leadership at a time of national crisis?"

So for me, leadership is the measure by which Boris must be judged. I've no doubt there will be endless debates about which measures might have been taken and when, but what has been totally inadequate has been Boris's leadership of the country in the implementation of these measures at every stage. Any textbook on leadership emphasises the importance of clarity of message, consistency of approach, fairness in implementation, the ability to learn from mistakes, etc.

Boris has been scared to take difficult decisions until it's been too late. He has been the epitome of the 'Country club style manager' where decisions based on popularity have always held sway over doing the right thing. Others might have to take a share of the blame, but he's the Prime Minister. Whatever happened to Harry S Truman's clarity of vision about where the buck stops?

Now thats idiocy. People meeting from all corners of the UK, sharing cars, crossing into Wales and back and forwards, your problem is you are so associated  with the climbing community that you are blinkered.

so it is not the outdoor activity that spreads it but the manner of the social contact involved?

I have had no social contact with anyone outside the household apart from our sons who were sent back by universities for Christmas since last Christmas (as I was pretty ill with a chest infection between 1st December 19 and mid March 20.  I've not been further away than Keswick in the entire year apart from student drop/pickup and haven't had a night away from home since Sept 19.  I'm 64.

I'd say I am adhering to the law.  When I've been on the local mountains it has been the closest ones and I've avoided all contact with other people to the point of misanthropy.  I've even timed my arrival to go for a walk to be very early in the morning.

And you say that I'm risking spreading Covid?

Bollox to that ! Voting for one Brexit part as opposed to the other brexshit party isn't tactical voting.  Its voting pro brexshit.

Then car sharing from different households was the issue, not climbing or walking. It was simply not allowed during restrictions outside bubbles. 

You are entitled to your opinion but I see that as blatant foot shooting. The only chance to stop the Boris hard brexit in such Tory Labour marginal seats was to vote Labour. Any subsequent coalition with the SNP or Lib Dems would never agree a Brexit. Even if Labour pulled off a miracle some of their backbenchers said they would never vote for brexit.

It was jaw-dropping in my local pubs to listen to well educated Liberals calling working-class, red-wall, ex-Labour voters who switched "stupid racists", when they gifted a seat to Boris instead of voting for Vernon.