Covid-19 : 2nd Lockdown 2020 : 3rd Lockdown 2021

[thirdcrank]

One filling station shut is hardly representative of the national picture.

[Cowsham]

on my way home from work tonight about 7.30pm there was a petrol station closed but a couple of fast food takeaways open! what makes a fast food takeaway essential but petrol station not ?

If you are meant to stay in your local area, you don't need petrol. You do, however, still need food.

Depends where you live surely? In cities and big towns maybe. But if you live in the rural parts of somewhere like Cornwall, a vehicle and therefore fuel, are essential.

Dave B

you got it right Dave ... I said fast food not supermarkets or grocer stores.. bloody queued up to get into Chicken Friers r us and Tesco literally 100 yards away.

[Vorpal]

If you are meant to stay in your local area, you don't need petrol. You do, however, still need food.

Depends where you live surely? In cities and big towns maybe. But if you live in the rural parts of somewhere like Cornwall, a vehicle and therefore fuel, are essential.

Dave B

you got it right Dave ... I said fast food not supermarkets or grocer stores.. bloody queued up to get into Chicken Friers r us and Tesco literally 100 yards away.

I meant that at least partly as a joke, but that beside the point, not everyone can cook, or maybe cannot cook all of the time. And folks who may have depended on friends and family for some of their cooked meals may be more limited now.

[reohn2]

When did it become a crime to sell food*?


*however much one may dislike food of the fast variety

[Oldjohnw]

on my way home from work tonight about 7.30pm there was a petrol station closed but a couple of fast food takeaways open! what makes a fast food takeaway essential but petrol station not ?

If you are meant to stay in your local area, you don't need petrol. You do, however, still need food.

That would depend on your local area having food shops.

[Cowsham]

I don't see fast food as essential but fuel certainly is.

[Postboxer]

I was thinking earlier what the furthest I've been from home is since March. I haven't been doing much cycling the last 6 months but still think I've been further away from my house by bike than I've been by car. I haven't been out much at all, I was thinking I'd barely been 2 miles from home but thinking about it the furthest I can remember driving is 3.6 miles to go to a school uniform shop back in August. The furthest away I've been from home cycling is about 18 miles.

So we've barely been doing anything, very few journeys to shops, hardly any of them during lockdowns. We haven't visited family or had any days out further afield, as, living in Greater Manchester, every time we were about to start planning days out or visiting family, local lockdown rules or high tiers or various other lockdowns were brought in, giving the impression that we were in a bad area, so we didn't want to travel t another area. The best time we could have visited family was in July, the rates were, compared to now and every time since, very low in Manchester, the kids were off school and my wife had two weeks off work, so the plan was to isolate ourselves as much as possible for as many days as possible, before going to visit family, then the local lockdown rules were announced so we thought we had better not.

My car is also subject to a recall to replace an airbag that might go off like a bomb, it was booked to go into the garage in March 2019, the week lockdown began, but I thought why take the risk so cancelled it, not knowing it would still not be done. Nissan then arranged for the RAC to fix them on the driveway, but I couldn't get it done because of Manchester's local lockdown, which seemed a bit silly as it was during the summer holidays and my car could have been sat there a week with no-one going near it, so there would be very low risk, compared to during term time when the longest it could be empty is 2 1/2 days.

[Pebble]

My car is also subject to a recall to replace an airbag that might go off like a bomb, it was booked to go into the garage in March 2019, the week lockdown began, but I thought why take the risk so cancelled it, not knowing it would still not be done. Nissan then arranged for the RAC to fix them on the driveway, but I couldn't get it done because of Manchester's local lockdown, which seemed a bit silly as it was during the summer holidays and my car could have been sat there a week with no-one going near it, so there would be very low risk, compared to during term time when the longest it could be empty is 2 1/2 days.

That is a seriously long time to have your car out of action - have you had to hire during this period ?

[Pebble]

Mother lives in coastal northumberland, she loved the first lockdown as the place was deserted, hardly a soul about (most houses are either holiday lets or selfish homes)

This weekend past she says the place has been packed with car parks overflowing, folk rattling the doors of cafes wondering why they are shut. Would seem few are taking much notice of this lockdown.

Even in my own area the roads are just as busy as any weekend.

[Oldjohnw]

The government thinks about 90% are following the guidelines. I assume that the remaining 10% are the ones we see. 10% is, of course, a large number and they tend to find themselves attracted to the same places. Which is no doubt why the pollis focus on certain areas.

The police have always liked low -hanging fruit.

Possibly the same people who ignore guidance are the ones we see in supermarkets without facemasks and having parties in homes. Then crowding the buses.

Something is spreading this damned plague.

[Cowsham]

I was thinking earlier what the furthest I've been from home is since March. I haven't been doing much cycling the last 6 months but still think I've been further away from my house by bike than I've been by car. I haven't been out much at all, I was thinking I'd barely been 2 miles from home but thinking about it the furthest I can remember driving is 3.6 miles to go to a school uniform shop back in August. The furthest away I've been from home cycling is about 18 miles.

So we've barely been doing anything, very few journeys to shops, hardly any of them during lockdowns. We haven't visited family or had any days out further afield, as, living in Greater Manchester, every time we were about to start planning days out or visiting family, local lockdown rules or high tiers or various other lockdowns were brought in, giving the impression that we were in a bad area, so we didn't want to travel t another area. The best time we could have visited family was in July, the rates were, compared to now and every time since, very low in Manchester, the kids were off school and my wife had two weeks off work, so the plan was to isolate ourselves as much as possible for as many days as possible, before going to visit family, then the local lockdown rules were announced so we thought we had better not.

My car is also subject to a recall to replace an airbag that might go off like a bomb, it was booked to go into the garage in March 2019, the week lockdown began, but I thought why take the risk so cancelled it, not knowing it would still not be done. Nissan then arranged for the RAC to fix them on the driveway, but I couldn't get it done because of Manchester's local lockdown, which seemed a bit silly as it was during the summer holidays and my car could have been sat there a week with no-one going near it, so there would be very low risk, compared to during term time when the longest it could be empty is 2 1/2 days.

Roughly what age are you?

[Ben@Forest]

Mother lives in coastal northumberland, she loved the first lockdown as the place was deserted, hardly a soul about (most houses are either holiday lets or selfish homes)

This weekend past she says the place has been packed with car parks overflowing, folk rattling the doors of cafes wondering why they are shut. Would seem few are taking much notice of this lockdown.

Even in my own area the roads are just as busy as any weekend.

The first lockdown was novel, nobody was sure what impact Covid was going to have on them, and probably most importantly for most people with a garden that was a nice place to be - nearly the whole country had five weeks of glorious weather.

Now the lockdown is an irritation. The virus has been terrible for those who have died or suffered badly, but most people haven't; consciously or subconsciously people are living with it in a day to day fashion. And I expect there's no overall difference in behaviour in rule-breaking between 'yet to have Covid' and 'Covid survivors'. And of course you can't sit on a sun lounger in (or even the sofa dragged out into) the garden.

The fact is people adapt, even to suffering and death. Look at how Londoners continued with life during the V2 rocket attacks - which unlike conventional air raids and the earlier V1 flying bombs there was absolutely no warning of impact - people end up taking their chances. If we, or any species didn't, we wouldn't have evolved.

I'm not excusing any particular behaviour but taking chances is hard-wired into us.

[Oldjohnw]

Some fairly major differences with WW2.

Regulation was strict and punishment for breaches swift and severe.
People in general were making sacrifices.
They could do little to avoid danger. Today we can do a lot to keep safe.
Today, someone's carelessness affects not just themselves but everyone else they contact.

This is a plague not a war.

[mikeymo]

This is a plague not a war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_(disease)

[Ben@Forest]

Some fairly major differences with WW2.

Regulation was strict and punishment for breaches swift and severe.
People in general were making sacrifices.
They could do little to avoid danger. Today we can do a lot to keep safe.
Today, someone's carelessness affects not just themselves but everyone else they contact.

This is a plague not a war.

Human behaviour doesn't distinguish between the two. And there were many and severe infractions of rules the authorities implemented, and no drop in criminality. And of course now and 'in general' people are making sacrifices and following the rules.

This is interesting:

Perhaps the most shameful episode of the whole Blitz occurred on the evening of March 8 1941 when the Cafe de Paris in Piccadilly was hit by a German bomb. The cafe was one of the most glamorous night spots in London, the venue for off-duty officers to bring their wives and girlfriends, and within minutes of its destruction the looters moved in.

"Some of the looters in the Cafe de Paris cut off the people's fingers to get the rings," recalled Ballard Berkeley, a policeman during the Blitz who later found fame as the 'Major' in Fawlty Towers. Even the wounded in the Cafe de Paris were robbed of their jewellery amid the confusion and carnage.

Then, as now, the newspapers demanded strong action from the government to curb the looting, though not even the most right-wing papers of 2011 went as far as the Daily Mirror did in November 1940.

"Fines and imprisonment have done nothing to stop the ghouls who rob even bodies lying in the ruins of little homes. Looting is in fact on the increase," thundered its editorial. "The country demands that this crime be stamped out... hang a looter and stop this filthy crime."

That doesn't come up much in rose-tinted remembrances of WW2.