i have read that

it says

"You can exercise outside as often as you wish and from Wednesday 13 May, you can also sit and rest outside – exercise or recreation can be alone, with members of your household, or with one other person from outside your household, while keeping two metres apart at all times."

and

"It is still not permitted to leave your house to visit friends and family in their home. The government is looking at how to facilitate greater contact with close family or friends, and will explain how this can be done safely in the coming weeks."

From Wednesday I am allowed (thinking in my case as a non resident parent) to visit one member of another household in a park. If in that setting I socially distance from them, sitting or standing two metres away, why not two or three members of another but in the same household?

It's a weird one.

Presumably you're allowed to sit 2 metres away from strangers?

This is completely anecdotal but I've just been to the supermarket. Same time, same day that I do every week. It was much busier. No queue outside everyone just allowed in. Social distancing out of the window.

One point there was a group of 8 people (2 to a trolley so only 1 allowed in seems to be gone) stood at the edges of 4 aisles talking to each other about how hard it is to social distance in a supermarket whilst people are having to walk past them. No awareness whatsoever.

What with the magic Monday headlines, the Government's lack of talking back hard against them before the bank holiday, the Government's new confused messaging, it's hard to see how this doesn't explode again. So lockdown for longer, more deaths, and more long term damage to the economy.

[Just figure it out for yourself and do what is sensible for you and the community - why do people need a precise instruction - seems to be a badge of honour to not be able to think for oneself.]

I mean even something as simple as driving is clearly shambolic? We can now drive to take our exercise. Fine. But why isn't this limited to something like "you can drive up to 5 miles". Instead I now have permission to drive to the other side of the country. How's that responsible in a pandemic?

Government already back tracking on things Raab is clarifying. They don't even know the new measures themselves. How are we supposed to?

Yep, should definitely wait, proof read, make sure there is absolutely no ambiguity, delay and then blame someone if it causes an issue. This is the approach that leads to the NHS being unable to source PPE fast enough.

Just figure it out for yourself and do what is sensible for you and the community - why do people need a precise instruction - seems to be a badge of honour to not be able to think for oneself.

I'm sorry that's just nonsense. For many of this is going to be the biggest global disaster we live through and it will shape the rest of our lives. I expect competent leadership to manage the situation not just let everyone to work it out for themselves and hope it will be fine.

Haha, harsh. Let's ask another way, what will you actually do as a result of this announcement ?

Nothing will change for me in terms of my actions. I can work from home and will continue to do so. My company have already announced nothing is changing. We're software development so we're lucky.

No doubt and me too, what about privately though, will you drive to the other side of the country for a walk ?

No. I think that irresponsible. But I'm allowed to if I want to.

I mean even something as simple as driving is clearly shambolic? We can now drive to take our exercise. Fine. But why isn't this limited to something like "you can drive up to 5 miles". Instead I now have permission to drive to the other side of the country. How's that responsible in a pandemic?

Government already back tracking on things Raab is clarifying. They don't even know the new measures themselves. How are we supposed to?

The message on driving for exercise is pretty clear. If the drive lasts longer than the exercise don’t do it.

Hasn't that changed?  You can sit in a park now, so you can drive an hour to the beach and sit for 2?   Maybe it is clearer now and I just misunderstood what was said early doors last night. 

Exactly. The messaging is anything but clear.

Every time the Government starts a sentence with "we are clear on this" you know what they mean is "we're not clear on this, because otherwise you wouldn't be asking, but..."

[Just figure it out for yourself and do what is sensible for you and the community - why do people need a precise instruction - seems to be a badge of honour to not be able to think for oneself.]

I mean even something as simple as driving is clearly shambolic? We can now drive to take our exercise. Fine. But why isn't this limited to something like "you can drive up to 5 miles". Instead I now have permission to drive to the other side of the country. How's that responsible in a pandemic?

Government already back tracking on things Raab is clarifying. They don't even know the new measures themselves. How are we supposed to?

Yep, should definitely wait, proof read, make sure there is absolutely no ambiguity, delay and then blame someone if it causes an issue. This is the approach that leads to the NHS being unable to source PPE fast enough.

Just figure it out for yourself and do what is sensible for you and the community - why do people need a precise instruction - seems to be a badge of honour to not be able to think for oneself.

I'm sorry that's just nonsense. For many of this is going to be the biggest global disaster we live through and it will shape the rest of our lives. I expect competent leadership to manage the situation not just let everyone to work it out for themselves and hope it will be fine.

Haha, harsh. Let's ask another way, what will you actually do as a result of this announcement ?

Nothing will change for me in terms of my actions. I can work from home and will continue to do so. My company have already announced nothing is changing. We're software development so we're lucky.

... and it will shape the rest of our lives....

Might be a bit hyperbolic. I expect in 5 years time for this to have had very little impact on day to day life. In 10 years I'd increase that to an almost certainty.

Might bookmark post to compare in 5 and 10 years

Maybe it is a bit hyperbolic. Maybe it isn't. But everyone will have their own view on that. So quite how we can look to rely on common sense is beyond me when there's no consensus of what common sense is in this situation.

So when the Government relax restrictions on driving my common sense says don't drive for miles even though it's now allowed (my common sense also says why allow it if I'm not supposed to) but others who don't think this is such a big deal may think that absolutely fine.

[Just figure it out for yourself and do what is sensible for you and the community - why do people need a precise instruction - seems to be a badge of honour to not be able to think for oneself.]

I mean even something as simple as driving is clearly shambolic? We can now drive to take our exercise. Fine. But why isn't this limited to something like "you can drive up to 5 miles". Instead I now have permission to drive to the other side of the country. How's that responsible in a pandemic?

Government already back tracking on things Raab is clarifying. They don't even know the new measures themselves. How are we supposed to?

Yep, should definitely wait, proof read, make sure there is absolutely no ambiguity, delay and then blame someone if it causes an issue. This is the approach that leads to the NHS being unable to source PPE fast enough.

Just figure it out for yourself and do what is sensible for you and the community - why do people need a precise instruction - seems to be a badge of honour to not be able to think for oneself.

I'm sorry that's just nonsense. For many of this is going to be the biggest global disaster we live through and it will shape the rest of our lives. I expect competent leadership to manage the situation not just let everyone to work it out for themselves and hope it will be fine.

[nstead I now have permission to drive to the other side of the country. How's that responsible in a pandemic?]

I mean even something as simple as driving is clearly shambolic? We can now drive to take our exercise. Fine. But why isn't this limited to something like "you can drive up to 5 miles". Instead I now have permission to drive to the other side of the country. How's that responsible in a pandemic?

Government already back tracking on things Raab is clarifying. They don't even know the new measures themselves. How are we supposed to?

Do you think it might be that when they considered what message to give they thought that perhaps people were not incredibly stupid?

Whereas twitter and the media are now overwhelmingly sending the message, "yes we really are that stupid, if you don't tell us exactly what we can or can't do we are definitely going to do the worst and most impractical things possible".

It's not about whether people are stupid or not. The general public are not experts in how pandemics work. All we have heard is the restriction on driving for exercise has been removed and the only rules around it are to stay in the country you're in. So based on that absolutely it's ok to drive to the other side of the country. If it wasn't they'd have told us not to.

You can't just put out some vague guidelines and say "oh but what we actually meant is this which you'd realise if you had some common sense". The Government themselves don't even understand the rules.

I mean even something as simple as driving is clearly shambolic? We can now drive to take our exercise. Fine. But why isn't this limited to something like "you can drive up to 5 miles". Instead I now have permission to drive to the other side of the country. How's that responsible in a pandemic?

Government already back tracking on things Raab is clarifying. They don't even know the new measures themselves. How are we supposed to?

Sky news to their credit kept refering to it as "Johnson's pre recorded speech" every time they brought it up.

A ridiculous quiz. "you'll have to take my word for it" on questions we can't possibly know. Love it.

Scoring is all wrong though. You've not done incorrect answers correctly. On question 1 for instance all the wrong answers should score 2.

Highest scoring answer: 1
Number of unique correct answers: 2

1 + (0.5 * 2) = 2

In.

Nice spread of questions there. Took a few punts. Let's see

Haha that question where loads of people scored 5 figures was absolute comedy.

Did enjoy being given a low scoring answer where I hadn't submitted one and no-one complaining

Does it need to be made public? It said I need to request access.

p.s. I won't know any of them

The lies and incompetence on show about the involvement in the EU procurement scheme are quite something. Nearly every time someone from the government speaks on the matter they say something entirely different to the last ‘official’ line. It says a lot about what a shambles they are that the lost e-mail is their best excuse, even though they were present at the face to face meetings.

This is an interesting thread about the retraction from Simon McDonald:

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1252901009627721729?s=21

 ;

The Government not doing themselves any favours with this one.

If the reason they don't/didn't want to join is Brexit then why not just say so? Not only do they make themselves sound grossy incompetent (missing out on a Europe wide scheme because of a misplaced email just lol) they're also clearly lying as they do it. And doing so during the daily national addresses to the nation. That's not acceptable surely whichever way you lean politically?