So far we seem to have a North-South split in Europe, with the UK, Belgium and Germany encouraging recreational cycling during the restrictions, and the Mediterranean states banning it, although in principle they allow cycling to the shops, and the range of shops open in France is fairly large, in fact at first glance it is difficult to decide what shops may not open, probably clothes shops. (1). Apparently the minister is dithering about bookshops, which are currently on the banned list.
The French decision to ban recreational cycling was a change of original policy. (3) If there is any basis for this it is that recreational cycling in France is often a group activity. Here it is quite rare to see a chain gang.
Does look rather like a lack of moral fibre in the Latin races, and perhaps a lack of real democratic tradition, the last military coup in France was probably about 1960, although we need to watch Germany, which seems to be weakening, at least in the south. Helping to stiffen German backbones is probably the most useful thing now.
The French approach is comic, basically encouraging the police in their traditional recreation of stirring up the council estates by asking young men for their papers, by creating self certification paperwork that they can ask the respectable middle classes to produce. I suppose this could have some social calming effects by diverting the police away from stirring up council estates, but the council estates appear to be continuing their traditional recreation of setting fire to cars and then stoning the police and fire brigade, so the police might just as well have gone on stirring them up.
Interestingly, justifying its status as a national institution, the BBC has just stated that the Imperial College modelling is exaggerated, because it does not separate coronavirus predictions from the 500,000 who would have died anyway, and that the government conceded this at the Thursday press conference. (2) The modelling also underestimated NHS capacity. The BBC points out that we need to consider carefully the effect of the economic and social restrictions, which themselves put lives at risk. At the moment we are damaging the economy to create the illusion that we are saving Great Aunt Flo, who was probably going to die anyway, not necessarily of coronavirus, even if the virus is subsequently detected in her body. It seems possible that the supposed loss of a generation in Italy is merely the normal death rate of a generation that would have died now anyway. Any difficulties arise from foolish actions like banning funerals.
The real risk is popular pressure for something to be done pushing the government into taking the 'This is something, lets do it approach'.
What was interesting, but will be familiar to those who rise early to go to work and catch the regular Radio 3 bulletins, was that the title of the BBC article changed about eight in the morning. It was originally something like 'are the government figures overegged'. However the text did not change, so it has obviously been reviewed and they are sticking with it.
(1) (1)
https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTe ... rieLien=id(2) 'Coronavirus deaths: What we don't know'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654(3)
https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/ar ... 55770.html
. The wind was a persistent cold Easterly, and at times I was having trouble on my 63" single freewheel keeping above 10mph! get the miles in just in case we are banned 