Greater Manchester Police broke up a child’s birthday party

[Redolent]

They’ve been busy recently...

#UPDATE | Officers attended a property in #Swinton where 3 families were celebrating a child's birthday in a private garden. The homeowner has been issued with a fixed penalty notice.

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The rest of their Twitter exploits:

mobile.twitter.com/gmpolice

Draconian or justified?

Was it within a lockdown area?

I'd say justified, actually. The area is in a lockdown area as far as I can see. They have rules that say they must not meet with people out of their own households.

National guidance is 'should not' for groups of 6-30 and it is actually illegal over 30. But the local lockdown rules are more stringent.

The worst thing about this is some smug neighbour patting themselves on the back for dobbing in their neighbour and ruining a kids birthday. I bet they're really proud of themselves 👏👏👏

Swindon has had a big spike in cases so fair enough

@KitKatastrophe

The worst thing about this is some smug neighbour patting themselves on the back for dobbing in their neighbour and ruining a kids birthday. I bet they're really proud of themselves 👏👏👏

They wouldn't need to if people followed the rules....

Great to see they are taking it seriously and stopping people who break local lockdown rules. Why do people continue to break them, don’t they want to come out of lockdown??

The neighbour didn’t ruin anything, the parents ruined the child’s birthday.

Fair enough.

So many children have missed out on having a birthday party or have had to do online alternatives. Why should this child get a party?

Draconian.
Jesus what a pointless overreaction. What a waste of police resources.

FFS - the rules are pretty clear. The parents only have themselves to blame.

Good . Foolish, selfish parents,

Looking at their twitter feed, they've been quite busy breaking up gatherings. I suspect they have to be seen to do so, otherwise the local lockdown would be meaningless because many people would juts ignore it.

Fair enough . I can’t stand the arrogance of people who decide to break the rules as if it doesn’t apply to them.

Totally justified and the adults are twats. GM is under enhanced restrictions. Not allowed to meet in eachothers houses or gardens.

A household family tea party would've been more apt.

These are the arseholes who will prolong this.

There are parts of Gm that have relatively high infection rates at the moment. The local authorities are trying to avoid having to implement stricter rules.

Their child could still have had a nice birthday without so many people meeting together. Swindon is a high risk area right now. The parents are idiots.

OMG how many people and `I'm being serious have broken the rules since the start of this - probably 'EVERYONE'.

Where I live even with the strict lockdown people were socialising in their gardens.

Are we going to be like North Korea next?

It was in Swinton, not Swindon!

I live in Greater Manchester and it's really strange that the police seem to have posted about 10/15 breaches of gatherings in just one day, and they've gone and fined people under local lockdown rules but under total lockdown or other circumstances like a house party out of control with over 100 people or raves the police admitted they were outnumbered and couldn't stop it they didn't take this heavy approach.
Tensions are really rising around here at the inconsistency.

Also is it me or is it only during Covid times that there are so many house parties or gatherings going on?

Whilst I don’t object to them breaking up the party, I live in the area and am aghast that this is what they’re choosing to put their resources into. Our local online forums are inundated with CCTV footage of scumbags trying to break into cars/homes. People report the burglaries and are just given a crime number over the phone - no one will come out, even if there’s CCTV footage.

The pavements on nearby Monton high street are overflowing with drinkers every day - no distancing, no masks, but that’s ok, because money is going into the economy. If these families had met up in a crowded pavement beer garden with a load of strangers that would be absolutely fine. It makes no sense!

I live in Derbyshire, just, and have family and friends in GM. These people were blatantly ignoring the rules. It's ever likely the infection rate has increased as if there's blatant flouting of the lockdown there will be many more incidences of the rules and guidelines being ignored.

They should be fined. They’re in an area which enhanced restrictions.
I live in a council district with enhanced restrictions. Where I live there are no cases it’s so bloody annoying. If people stopped breaking the rules then maybe we’d be out of it quicker.
I hope people are fined if they’re caught breaking the law.

I think a few people here are confusing SwinDON and SwinTON. The story is about SwinTON, in Salford, Greater Manchester.

The Police would not need to break up anything if stupid selfish people actually did as they were told.