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?

Should have booked it in the pub. Would be ok then

Justified.....of course!

Draconian.

Madness. As I have said before I would rather catch Covid than have a cobbled together vaccine in a year or two. My risk is 0.004 or something so basically zero. Pensioners need to cocoon and be offered every safety net available. No risk people need to get on with our lives or there will be no economy/health care system to fall back on. Lockdown was to give the government time to prepare. We gave them that and sacrificed our children’s education, mental health services, cancer screening and basically any other health care issue besides Covid. You can be beaten to death by your partner during lockdown but that is ok. It seems anything other than a Covid death is ok. You decide your own risk, take precautions and move on.

Perhaps they could break up the parties with 60,100, more first. I manage buildings and the amount of people who tried to tell me that "there's no limit on wedding numbers" is driving me mad, every day and they accuse me of racism when I refuse the booking, no I would refuse everyone. Local lockdown is horrible and it's caused by the people who didn't think the rules applied to them

@Sunnydayhere

Child’s party one week, Granny’s funeral the next.

Oh, please! The hyperbole has really gone too far.

@SebandAlice you dont need to have a vaccine, no one will make you and no one will give a shit. Equally, you're very welcome to COVID, go out, fill your boots.

What you are not entitled to do is carelessly pass it to others and or risk putting an area already under restriction into hard lockdown.

@InDeoEstMeaFiducia but it does really work like that. Have a look in the media for the US. Plenty of family reunions leading to family funerals on there.

Trustthegeniegenie - you shouldn’t need an incentive to do the right thing, just a few morals and some basic humanity should be enough🤷🏼‍♀️

It’s a lockdown area. Lots of kids missed birthday parties. It’s the parents’ fault this happened.

I personally have followed the rules and tried to take reasonable precautions all along.

But this is clearly completely fucking insane.

These families could have each booked their own table at a restaurant and sat in the same room together, at the same time, and it would have been completely legal.

That's not the fault of the police. But surely there were more serious crimes occurring at the time than a little kids birthday garden party. 😂

Personally I'd tear up the fine, throw it in the bin and tell the arseholes I'd see them in court if the reckon they can get a prosecution out of it.

In the US, a country of 300 million people, yes, some family gatherings resulted in fatalities, especially at the beginning of this when people were being ventilated early and often.

This is a disease that has killed 1/5th the number of people that dementia has in recent weeks. Even in "high risk areas" the percentage of people who are contagious is miniscule. Besides which, as many people have noted, plenty of larger gatherings and anything in restaurants and pubs can be allowed to continue.

This is just a way to show everyone with theatrics that they're Really Very Serious.

twitter.com/karlho13/status/1296921124077555718?s=20

@Whatelsecouldibecalled

Should have booked it in the pub. Would be ok then

Is it not still 2 households allowed to meet up in a pub?

Dumplingsandstew yep, correct, still not OK to have three households meeting up in the pub so still wouldn't be allowed

"You should not: socialise with people you do not live with in other indoor public venues – such as pubs, restaurants, cafes, shops, places of worship, community centres, leisure and entertainment venues, or visitor attractions. You may attend these venues with people you live with (or are in a support bubble with), but should avoid interaction with individuals or groups from other households. "

www.gov.uk/guidance/north-west-of-england-local-restrictions-what-you-can-and-cannot-do

@Quaagars

Dumplingsandstew yep, correct, still not OK to have three households meeting up in the pub so still wouldn't be allowed

There won't just be one household in a pub at any one time though, there will be different households in regardless of whether they know each other or not. Especially in a local pub your bound to know somebody else in there at the same time. I cant imagine the landlord saying to the Smith family they can't come in because the Jones family is already in and he knows they are friends, but the West family can go in because they don't know the Jones family. Its a stupid illogical unenforceable rule. If you turned up at the pub and your friend happened to be there at the same time, would you turn around and go home because you can't meet someone you know in a pub now its against the rules? Or would go in anyway but not talk to your friend because its against the rules ? Would you bollocks!

What uhoh2000 said.

I'm in Greater Manchester unfortunately. The rules here don't make sense. Our local pub has tables outside and is heaving.

I can meet friends at the pub and sit outside together at a table with a £6 G&T each but cannot have a similar drink in one of our gardens sitting 2m apart, nor across the road at a park bench together (£100 fine).

It's as if Covid doesn't hang around outside pubs and restaurants, just in private gardens.

@whiteroseredrose Crazy isn't it. Hopefully the restrictions will be lifted soon so I can actually sit inside a pub with friends rather than huddling under an umbrella in the beer garden.

My nephews and nieces had no party at all due to lockdown. This is undoubtedly true for thousands if not millions of people this year.

We should be blaming the selfish fuckwits who threw parties indoors putting greater Manchester back into lockdown instead of enjoying the freedoms the rest of the country still have including that to have kids parties in their gardens.

The police have to do something because people have blatantly ignored guidance and will continue to do so without some kind of enforcement. Let's not forget Oldham promised more enforcement to avoid a Leicester type lockdown.

And if this was "like North Korea" we'd have the army on the streets shooting people or throwing them in prison for breaking the rules instead of an under resourced and undermanned police force unable to do anything about hundreds of people at raves

@Sunnydayhere

Child’s party one week, Granny’s funeral the next.

@SebandAlice

Draconian.

Madness. As I have said before I would rather catch Covid than have a cobbled together vaccine in a year or two. My risk is 0.004 or something so basically zero. Pensioners need to cocoon and be offered every safety net available. No risk people need to get on with our lives or there will be no economy/health care system to fall back on. Lockdown was to give the government time to prepare. We gave them that and sacrificed our children’s education, mental health services, cancer screening and basically any other health care issue besides Covid. You can be beaten to death by your partner during lockdown but that is ok. It seems anything other than a Covid death is ok. You decide your own risk, take precautions and move on.

Basic fundamental failure to Understand. The virus will destroy the economy without measures in place to stop the spread. There are NO ‘no risk’ people. It has killed and maimed all age groups, including people with no underlying health conditions. I have a 13 year old pupil who has been left with lungs so scarred they can’t climb a single flight of stairs, another who is nearly as bad, another who’s 15 and has lost her hearing, and another who’s now her mums carer after her mother lost her leg. None of these people are dead. All are listed as recovered. But may need care and support and be economically inactive for the rest of their lives

What a shame GMP we're not so robust on Wilmslow rd last week, probably a bit easier for them a kids party.

No one is celebrating that fact that a birthday party was stopped, it’s shit. Many many children have had to miss birthday parties this year, also shit. However, in a place with extra restrictions such as this it is not the right thing to do and as such stopping it was the right thing to do. Everyone who flouts the restrictions seems to think they’re the only one, or their reason is exceptional. Neither is true and the cumulative effect is why further restrictions in GM look likely.

On the pub thing, it’s not different or ok for groups from different households to meet in the pub. The vast majority of places I’ve seen are managing this well, distanced seating, controlled bookings, table service only etc. So if you see someone you know in there it’s a quick distanced hello and get on with what you were doing. It’s frustrating so many places seem to not be being as responsible and I wish the police/local authorities were stepping in and sorting it.

The real news has been littered with people who had no pre-existing conditions and have died. Babies. Children. Teenagers. Men. Women. Every age group. By April, they were already 5% of the COVID death toll :(

Do you not think data from April is a bit out of date now? Saying it was "already" 5% implies it continued going up which is not necessarily true.

I hope you're also making a sad face about the many people (babies, teenagers, men, women) who have died from other causes since April? Some directly or indirectly caused by continuing lockdown. Or are only covid deaths important?

@bingbong1970

Are the people on here who are happy with this elderly or very unwell? If not, you do know it won't kill you? The police are breaking up a childs birthday party and fining people. It's too much.

Nope I’m in my 30’s. I know it’s unlikely to kill me but I’m not so selfish as to just think of me. I’m thinking of my mum and in-laws, of my friends and neighbours and of the millions of people in this country I don’t even know!