From: www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/coronavirus-green-light-for-garden-centres-on-long-road-out-of-lockdown-jq0qv3tm2
Garden centres in England will be allowed to reopen from Wednesday, Boris Johnson will say tomorrow.
In England, garden centres and nurseries will be given two days to ensure that they can operate social distancing and cleaning measures to mitigate the risk. They will not be allowed to open cafés or play areas.
Comment here: www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-public-lead-the-way-on-lockdown-lifting-dfcjqrd20
An easing of restrictions by government is imminent but many of us began doing so sensibly and cautiously weeks ago
"From Monday, fingers crossed, hardware shops may open. Great news for my local DIY store, which has never shut. Unlimited daily exercise will be allowed — how the cyclists on 80km daily jaunts will cheer. I’ll let solo sunbathers in my park know they can sunbathe, landscape gardeners and builders on my street they can work, the fruit stall guy who sold me raspberries that markets might trade again.
Tomorrow the government will announce an easing of measures that many began weeks ago, not with rash defiance but tentative caution. Just as government declared lockdown a fortnight after the public had retreated indoors, so it follows behind us as we blink into the street."
"...In its thinking and actions it must navigate two fierce ideological tribes, now lockdown is a new battleground in the culture wars. To some extent these map the old Brexit divide of Leave and Remain. Many Leave-the-housers want to quit lockdown as much as they longed to exit the EU: they include impatient British tabloids prematurely cheering we’d be free on “Happy Monday”. These are free marketeers and libertarians who find angriest voice in gun-toting, beach-swarming Trump fans with “Arbeit macht frei” signs.
Yet Leave-the-housers include second-referendum marchers, longing for their breezy open-bordered old lives of New York business trips and Eurostar weekends; who feel they are young, fit, healthy and rich enough to survive any damn virus, but are barricaded indoors by the lumpen, lazy and frit.
On the opposing side are the Remain-insiders who demand the country stays shut until a vaccine is found. Eighteen months, two years . . . who cares? Only 23 per cent of us think the economy should reopen before the virus is fully contained. Anyone muttering that the economy will by then be dust is putting profits before lives. (Lives lost to Covid, that is, not from untreated cancer, poverty or despair.)
Remain-insiders have found in lockdown a sense of purpose and identity their previous lives lacked. People who change Twitter handles to “Stay Indoors, Don’t Socialise” remind me of Jennifer Saunders saying that some of her fellow breast cancer survivors wear the disease “like a badge”. In lockdown many have enjoyed being resourceful, useful, community spirited. Those who resent the world’s ceaseless demands, frantic pace and long working hours to afford things they don’t really need, feel freer.
Others relish power to judge and rebuke others for their moral failings: at least 200,000 people have reported neighbours to the police snitch-line. Others enjoy shaming politicians not seen to clap the NHS. In lockdown the moral high ground is your own sofa: you can be noble and virtuous just by sitting on your backside.
Government was surprised that liberty-loving Britain is the most pro-lockdown nation, with 87 per cent of people polled late last month supporting its extension. We are, of course, terrified by the death toll and Covid’s caprices. But this is also because unlike Spain or Italy it isn’t punitive house arrest, just an eternal dull Seventies bank holiday. If you’re not bereaved, alone or watching your business die, but furloughed on 80 per cent salary, who — with the weather so glorious — would rush back to a job they don’t like?
Politically the Remain-insiders have the upper hand. The smallest second spike in infections would spark renewed cries that Tories want the old and vulnerable to die. Corbynites who have always sought large government and a command economy are electrified that half of us are now bankrolled by the state. Unions grasp potential for leverage. It would be a calamity if the poorest children, who lack space and parental supervision at home, lose five months’ school. Yet while all research shows child-to-adult infection is almost unknown, teaching unions cite risk.
The question now is how much risk can you endure? While Leave-the-housers merrily play odds they think they can beat, whoever else dies, Remain-insiders won’t countenance any risk at all.
Yet the rest of us make daily calculations. Parents are used to life or death gambles: you can’t imagine ever letting your five-year-old cross a road alone, until the day you know in your gut she is ready and, heart in mouth, let her go. Likewise I would take a half-empty bus now or drink outside a pub. But would I sit in a theatre audience? Not yet.
In their careful risk calculations, the public is way ahead of Sunday’s probable announcements. Lonely people are taking socially distanced walks with friends or drinking together in gardens. Roads are busier. Small traders have marked two-metre lines on shop floors with duct tape and lifted shutters. So many measures are more performative than preventive: the diligent supermarket queue that dissolves into a scrum for eggs inside, the silly idea that flights are safe with empty middle seats when you’d still squeeze out to the loo.
But we will edge forward, evaluating the odds, unrushed by business leaders or guilt-tripped by virtue-signalling fools who tell us we have blood on our hands if we visit B&Q. The government following behind us, approving the rule changes we’ve already made. As it should be"