Matt Hancock in today’s press conference has said that the vast majority of people are keeping to the rules and not to expect any substantial changes in the social distancing rules anytime soon.
That gives me some hope.
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The police tried to do what they could to dissuade people from breaking the guidelines and took a load of flak for it.
A police presence, just asking a few people some questions, was apparently too close to “martial law” for some…
Perhaps they are already doing everything reasonable to encourage compliance. Perhaps there are still some other tricks that could be used too.
I think the wishy washy news about fines is making the whole “lockdown” thing a joke…if the police can prove you’ve broken the lockdown then fine them…none if this ask them nicely to go home
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Is it?
A few £10,000 fines would probably focus the minds.
At the minute, no one really gives a crud.
£30.00 IF and only IF you back chat to the copper who has to first see you breaking the law.
Make it £10,000 for first offence. Payable within 28 days.
That would certainly stop a lot of people from ‘inadvertently’ or ‘accidently’ or ‘sorry guv didnt realise’.
You missed my point about “reasonable”. as expected.
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Handing out fines that the vast majority of the population wouldn’t be able to pay, and especially relating them to a time of economic hardship, isn’t going to help anything.
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In Australia the fines are ranging from AUS$1000 - AUS$10000
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Still relies on the police actually catching people.
I haven’t seen any police officers anywhere but on the news since the lockdown - I have no doubt they’re horrendously busy but there still aren’t enough of them to enforce a lockdown. Even if you got the Army out, like some totally insane people are suggesting, there wouldn’t be anywhere near enough personnel to cover every likely area.
If we all just burn down our local 5G masts this will all go away… come on people!
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Ok genius. How would you punish the current bunch of selfish delinquents we have in society whilst educating others who might be tempted whilst keeping ‘freedoms’ as they are.
Some sort of community service would be a better focus than an arbitrary financial penalty, but sometimes you just have to admit that a battle is lost.
If we had a national ID card system we could come up with better, long-term sanctions.
One fear of mine is that the response to an infraction will not end up being proportionate. A barbecue with 20 people is a more significant infraction that is driving to a nice place to go for a run while maintaining social distancing. The “guidance” uses some very broad strokes.
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The legislation needs some amendments so that it’s much tighter, at the moment it has too many loopholes and is too vague. That is common in legislation and is usually sorted out by Courts creating caselaw but we don’t have time for that process.
Current issues that I can see and would want amending.
- There doesn’t on my reading of the act seem to be any punishment for Juveniles or there parents for breaking the Act. You can make them or even take them home but that’s it. I don’t see why parents can’t have an FPN for little Johnny breaking the rules.
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Don’t rely on “Reasonable” set a limit like other countries have “you can only exercise within 5km of your home for 1 hour per day.” I’ve seen people I think of as sensible are out running half marathons according to Strava.
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I would seriously like to see some sort of Documentation maybe an App to register journeys, if you are stopped out and haven’t registered you get an FPN. You could even have a second stage of verification for work trips with the employer ticking to confirm you work for them.
What I would hate to see is then having to make the guidelines tighter because people are too ignorant to do as advised, especially as this would in the most part punish those who are the vast majority and who are playing the game. (If you make the legal amendments above it’s all much clearer without actually becoming stricter.)
There seem to be too many people out there trying to find the gaps in the law rather than just abiding by the spirit of it.
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Indeed. Who defines what an “essential” journey is?
That’s the problem when you have to make legislation on the fly and everyone involved in drafting it is working like mad.
I do not like your suggestions though, particularly the app. Though I suppose the argument could be made that that discriminates against the technologically illiterate.
At the moment the individual officer has to decide and if you don’t agree you tick the box on the form that says “go to court” and ten magistrate has to arbitrate.
Not the end of the world as using judgement is what officers do, but the legislation could be clearer and having a definitive “I am allowed out chit” would just make life easier.
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Indeed, going forward I would like to see Emergency legislation like this on the books but dormant. So you write the law and enact it, but it can’t be used without parliamentary authority and you have options for different contingencies. So when a Pandemic comes along the PM says “I want to use the Emergency Legislation and I think we will need Options 1, 2 & 7 due to X, Y & Z. Parliament then gives permission needing 2/3 Majority to put it in for a set period.
I would also require it’s existence to be reviewed with 12 Months of every General Election.
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I suspect he said it on instruction to see what the response would be while the PM maintains plausible deniability.
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Yes. Yes and yes. A thousand times yes.
But then I’ve always said we need that.
Especially if combined with you cant access services without it.
Certain services perhaps, but other services need to be freely available to all at any time.
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