AIBU to think that people should legally be required to stick to a certain travel zone around their house?

[chomalungma]

It won't stop Covid.
But it will reduce the number of people from an infected area going to another area with lower infections.
Maybe say a 10 mile zone - unless you have a really good reason (such as it's the nearest food shop, hospital, GP - or caring for someone)

It should stop people going to pubs etc, shops from areas of high infection.

Our Tier 2 city has just gone to Tier 3. We had a lot of people from other cities come to our city over December.

My daughter’s lives 4 minutes away from me in the same postal town as I do but is in a different tier (I am in tier 3 and she is in tier 4). If she wasn’t allowed to leave her tier she couldn’t walk anywhere safely as she lives in a close which opens onto an A road and the pavement in on the other side of the road. The nearest shop in her tier is over 10 miles away where as in my tier it is 3 miles away.

It isn’t always easy to keep within 10 miles of home or keep to your own tier.

People are going skiing in Swtzerland. Skiing, again with the skiing! Shall we deal with that first before severely restricting the basic movements of the less fortunate.

...everyone has got an excuse why it wouldn’t work for them...

Yes because watching the man I love fight bile duct cancer and needing major surgery, chemo and still having just a 7% chance of survival is just the excuse I was looking for

My area is now in tier four. Honestly I wish they'd just enforce a proper hard lock down for a month or whatever than keep going on like this.

We had this in Wales, it was five miles. Nobody really took any notice.

The main lockdown we weren’t supposed to leave home at all except for essential reasons and it really was policed. Police patrolled everywhere. It was effective I think but a nasty atmosphere.

The five mile thing didn’t really work. People went where they liked at that point as it couldn’t be as easily monitored.

The distance limit in France only applied to exercise (1hr max per day)/dog walking etc. It didnt apply to food shopping (nothing else was open), work if you couldnt work from home, medical appointments, helping vulnerable people, getting medication.

So basically all the reasons PP are coming up with were reasons that you were allowed to break the 1km limit. You just needed papers and something to justify it (letter from employer etc).

It was a total pain for those living inner city as we could only exercise on pavements around our flats. However in the 2nd lockdown they kept parks open and we have 3 within 1km of our flat so it was much more pleasant.

Basically the governments are trying to restrict movement where possible to keep the health system from overloading. It is a total pain and I can see why people think its weird to keep schools open for example but not allow you to exercise further than 1km from your house but they are just trying to limit the number of contacts.

And in the 2nd lockdown, after a while the exercice rule went from 1km/1hour to 20km/3 hours which we were thrilled with.

No.

My bubble lives more than 10 miles away. This would isolate me completely.

*The distance limit in France only applied to exercise (1hr max per day)/dog walking etc. It didnt apply to food shopping (nothing else was open), work if you couldnt work from home, medical appointments, helping vulnerable people, getting medication.

So basically all the reasons PP are coming up with were reasons that you were allowed to break the 1km limit. You just needed papers and something to justify it (letter from employer etc).*

Yep, and I think the task of filling in a form/latterly the app made at least some people think hard about wether they really needed to be out and about....that and the fact that man/woman power in significant numbers (?100,000) was made available to run the checks on the street....so you knew you if you went out you had a fair chance of being stopped and asked to justify your journey.

It wouldn't work.

I live in London and have loads of people within a 10 mile radius.

Also the people I know who caught Covid since October caught it at work, school or through a household member who caught it via those ways.
Apart from those in schools, hospitals, prisons etc where it isn't possible to social distance, I know a lot of them were not following their workplace Covid regulations properly.

They did this in Wales in the first lockdown. You could only travel within 5 miles of your house. Was fine in the cities but some people didn't have a shop within 5 miles.

Yes the Welsh five miles rule was stupid in a country which has sparse areas that are miles from shops and hospitals.

Now that the stay local phrase has come back again, social media has turned into a spiteful place again. It's full of people trying to police others, moaning that two cars have driven to a local beauty spot which is abhorrent, but see nothing wrong with 150 cars' worth of people turning up at Asda.

no,
bad idea
we dont need or deserve this kind of restriction

I think the key factor in making any of the restrictions work is whether people will buy in.

Nothing works unless people are willing to make it work. And the more inept the leadership is, the less people will tolerate restrictions and comply.

We’ve had 2km, 5km and county restrictions here, and while there are fines, they are a last resort. Most of the exceptions listed in the thread are allowed - essential shopping, medical, caring for vulnerable, work, farming, weddings, funerals, visiting graves. The expectation is that people curtail their non essential travel.

You can’t do an awful lot about the exceptional, entitled minority though.

Didn’t they do this in Spain and some other countries? You had to have a permit essentially to leave the house, I’m assuming it was monitored by police. I don’t know that it made much difference, but if it did then I’d be open to it if it could reduce the spread over the winter pre vaccine rollout.

I have colleagues who live in York, are they still allowed to go to work (London?), they said in the run up to xmas the number of people getting off at York after a big shopping trip in London was significant, as it was for other places on the line, such as Peterborough and Newark.

I’m a short drive into a lower tier, it’s a longer drive to do something in my own tier.

My bubble lives 30miles away.

My neighbour is a hairdresser working from home and is still working with a regular flow of clients. We are tier 4.

My other neighbour hasn’t stopped having visitors every single day since March.

I don’t think the answer is to crack down even more as I don’t think the rules aren’t working, it’s more about compliance with those rules.

In France it made a huge difference during the first lockdown. The numbers compared to the UK were much better.

We've not fared so well since the summer but schools have stayed open, restaurants open until October and non food shops only shut for a few weeks then opened for Christmas shopping.

We re not in lockdown now but do have a curfew

I don’t particularly care about the rule breakers . But I’m not taking on any more restrictions. Local Facebook is baying doe masks to be worn when people walk in our local countryside. Not a chance I’d do that even if mandated.

The problem is you need compliance and fines for non compliance. I read an article back in May with the difference in number of fines between the UK and France. It was huge. In France you get fined, a second time and its an even bigger fine. Multiple times and you end up in prison.

In the UK they were more just warning people, not fining. So its inevitable that people won't obey the rules.

They did it in France

100 000 French police are being deployed across the country for New Years Eve. Half the metro lines won't be running in Paris. There's a curfew across the country.

What is the UK doing?

@Norwayreally

How would this be enforced? We’d have to enlist the army to set up checkpoints on the motorways, A roads and back roads into and out of towns and cities all over the country. Guessing people would require a permit to bypass the checkpoint and that could be a real minefield. Say, for example, someone needs emergency childcare which is allowed but their only childcare option lives 30 miles away?

We aren’t living in an episode of Black Mirror. The restrictions are honestly fucked up enough without checkpoints into and out of your home town.

Ah, but think of the opportunities! Whilst manning the checkpoints on the roads, the military and the police (I think we'll need more than just the army to cover all the roads) will be able to carry out quick Covid tests on everyone, and inject vaccines to those eligible. We may have to insist that rule breakers requiring the Pfizer vaccine only use roads that have the new -70 degrees refrigerators installed, but I'm sure people will see it is their own best interests to comply with such a minor inconvenience on their way to the museum.

@InvincibleInvisibility

The problem is you need compliance and fines for non compliance. I read an article back in May with the difference in number of fines between the UK and France. It was huge. In France you get fined, a second time and its an even bigger fine. Multiple times and you end up in prison.

In the UK they were more just warning people, not fining. So its inevitable that people won't obey the rules.

I think that's the thing isn't it?

Putting the onus on personal responsibility instead of taking charge. They don't want to be seen to be imposing Draconian rules which would make them unpopular.

There's also such a lot of "that wouldn't work here" going on.

@InvincibleInvisibility

100 000 French police are being deployed across the country for New Years Eve. Half the metro lines won't be running in Paris. There's a curfew across the country.

What is the UK doing?

Well all hospitality is closed in London, so not sure what people will be doing unless they gather in parks, in which case they'll be noticed and the police will be there.

Not much you can do about household gatherings, even in France, as anyone that keen on breaking the rules will arrive at their friends' houses before the curfew time eg 4pm if curfew starts at 5. If there's a 24 hour curfew, well the UK hasn't got that and I've not heard of other countries being that draconian.