Still not strict enough. People will ignore
I'm very happy with it. It’s treating us by default like we have a modicum of common sense and responsibility. Instead of EVERYBODY having to show documents or justification for every trip out of the house, only those who wilfully ignore it will suffer the consequences.
Effectively it is no change to what sensible people have been/should have been doing for the last few weeks of social distancing - the announcement was simply to say it slowly and clearly for those who thought they were to special to change their lives too much. It is nowhere near a lockdown.
Perfectly put.
I think some people are going all drama-llama about the magic word ‘lockdown’. Why does it matter what word you call it, as long as everybody understands the rules?
As for how they could tell whether it was your only trip out for exercise for the day or your tenth, I think if people really start abusing this, they could easily go to mobile phone records for proof. Don’t forget: as long as you have your phone with you, you’re also making yourself trackable 24/7.
Also, you’ll be easily able to buy lots of non-essentials, such as clothes, flowers, tobacco, magazines, tellies, phones etc. as long as the shop also sells food and household essentials. I very much doubt they will be expecting the supermarkets to go through their entire list of stock lines and stop you buying anything that isn’t classed as essential. Maybe where the big supermarkets have separate in-house concessions for things like phones, where people are seeking advice and signing contracts, they won't open them; but anything that's just there on a shelf waiting to be put straight in a trolley and bought, why wouldn't these still be available?
In fact, I wouldn’t put it past some shops selling non-essentials to start displaying small bowls of fruit or cartons of milk to enable them to try it on and claim they are a food shop that also happens to offer a vast range of ‘other’ lines. I doubt they'll be successful, if they mysteriously never sold food until just now, but they may well try. Then again, places like B&Q often have vending machines for chocolate or drinks near the entrance, so maybe they'd qualify anyway.