Here we go again Woman arrested for sitting on a bench.

[MercyBooth]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9130133/Police-told-fine-Covid-rule-breakers-just-ONE-verbal-warning.html

If this is the Bournemouth one then I believe she was part of an Anti Mask Demo in the town and so wasn't an 'innocent' walking along the beach. The person videoing it has been visiting local hospitals and videoing empty service corridors and saying they are lying to au about hospitals being full....: I believe it we a planned situation

I believed it at first too....

It was the bit about her being at an illegal protest and not complying with polite requests from the cops that was disrespecting others

Interesting to see this focus on the woman having been part of a protest ... I wonder if those who feel this way thought the same about the BLM events earlier last year?

@nicky7654

We will be like China soon!! Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought the Police would act so aggressively to the general Public. Shameful !!!!! And no they can't use the Covid excuse to be so vile.

I'd suggest RTFT and finding out what actually happened rather than believing just the first thing you read.

You may change your mind!

@Balhammom

Is it just me or does anyone else find the stupidity exhibited on this thread rather depressing (and probably the best explanation for why we’re in this crisis in the first place)?

No, we are not like China. We have some pretty sensible rules to protect public health. We have a very professional and liberal police, who will only take action if you either massively break the rules or are an utter d*ck when they offer you sensible advice. If you are law abiding and do as the authorities reasonably ask, you have nothing to worry about.

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

I said way up thread all this thread was doing was highlighting how embarrassingly bad some of our nation are at critical thinking and finding out the facts.

At the very least it was a failure to prioritise police time and resources and counter productive as was this event metro.co.uk/2021/01/09/lockdown-penalties-reviewed-by-police-force-after-women-fined-on-walk-13876233/

In the light of the Cummings affair it does make the rules and the police look stupid and unfairly applied and as a result people will be less not more likely to follow them.

I cannot have faith in a system which fines two women going for a walk but does not fine Cummings or which tells me I am safe to work in school one day but not the next. Or that it's ok for me to work in close proximity with others in one setting but not meet a friend outside in another.

@nostaples read the thread.

She had been part of an organised protest/ this was all a set up.

@poshme that was not the charge.

She was charged with breaking the Covid rules, which is dubious.

In fact, she wasn't charged with anything. It was a fixed penalty notice.

Interesting to see this focus on the woman having been part of a protest ... I wonder if those who feel this way thought the same about the BLM events earlier last year?

There are no BLM protests right now are there?

If there were the police would have to clamp down hard on them due to the risk to public health.

During the summer there were BLM protests. There were also huge anti-lockdown CT themed protests.

Throughout all of this the police walked a tightrope of public opinion, damned if they do, damned if they don't (take a knee, clapm down on protests, not claimp down on protests)

Now we are in an unprecidented situaiton and our collective backs are gainst the wall. The NHS is facng severe challenged and people are dying every day.

There are vaccines just around the corner, this is not going to last forever.

We arre at a delicate, crucial stage in the pandemic where we all have a duty to be considerate of others and delay our selfish needs and prioritise the greater good.

What kind of person thinks it is appropriate to protest right now given the risks to public health?

The BLM protests had no impact on the spread of Covid interestingly.

I mean really as a police officer I would be quaking in my boots by the individual sitting on benches organised protest and then failure to provide addresses.

Really, a grip needs to be got.

@PusheenLove Yes Adam Wagner on Twitter

twitter.com/AdamWagner1/status/1348219271260876802?s=20

And those two women with the temerity to drink coffee as they walked.

Good lord I'm surprised the entire UK police force wasn't needed to tackle them!

They thought there had been a murder!

The BLM protests had no impact on the spread of Covid interestingly.

I would be genuninely interested to see your evidence for this claim

And those two women with the temerity to drink coffee as they walked.

Unless there is more to that story than meets the eye the response of the cops on that occasion does seem completely over the top

@hoodathunkit

Here:

www.healthline.com/health-news/black-lives-matter-protests-didnt-contribute-to-covid19-surge

And that's the problem. The response to Covid has not been consistent, strategic or evidence based.

The focus on the insignificant behaviour of individuals is a distraction. Especially outdoors.

In the first lockdown I was told to "move along and go home" by two police officers" because I was sitting on a wall.

I was sitting on a wall in a small public garden, which only had two other people in it, on the opposite side to us, and I was sitting on the wall while I watched my DC climb a tree - which I maintain was a perfectly legitimate form of exercise for an 8 and 6 year old.

Ironically, walking home as instructed took us through much busier areas than the one we'd be told to leave.

'Unless there is more to that story than meets the eye the response of the cops on that occasion does seem completely over the top'

Oh yes, we should definitely give the police the benefit of the doubt (and of course Dominic Cummings) as opposed to the two ordinary women having a walk and a coffee.

They were probably actually international spies.

Some people are just plain stupid.

Oh bloody hell, this bollocks again. Arresting people, or even issuing warnings or fixed penalties for sitting on park benches is utterly ridiculous.

I used to sit on park benches during the nice weather in the first lockdown. I would read my book and there would be nobody near me at all. I half hoped that someone might call the police on me but thankfully nobody gave a shit.

Yesterday I did briefly sit on a park bench while I was out. It wasn't the police who moved me on though, it was the fact that it was a metal bench and I nearly froze my arse off, so I moved on sharpish anyway.

There is nothing in the legislation that forbids sitting on park benches.

@Topseyt have you even read any of the comments? They were not just sat on a bench 🙄🙄

Thanks for the link nostaples

I read a lot of health related media and am unfamiliar with the website you linked to

Wikipedia has this to say about it

Controversy
Questions have been raised about the quality and neutrality of the articles in Healthline. One critic noted that a Healthline article about a new drug used promotional language, copied from the drug-maker's press release, neglected to cite adverse side effects, and framed the drugs claimed benefits in misleading language not correctly representing the evidence reported in a classical peer-reviewed medical journal.[16][17]

Other critics have noted:

headlines that exaggerate the substance of the article;[18]
inadequate journalistic and scientific skepticism, when reporting "news";[19]
failure to balance quotes from vested interests with quotes from interviews of independent sources;[19]
reported medical "news" that had not yet validated by publication in a peer-reviewed journal;[20]
implied clinical applicability for developments not yet so scientifically validated;[20]
failure to balance reports of claimed theoretical benefits, of a new treatment, with a corresponding report of the associated cost or required frequency of treatment;[19]
failure to cite sources;[20]
failure to link to source of studies cited in the article;[20]
In a 2019 interview with AdExchanger.com, Healthline Media CEO David Kopp claimed that his site had received, out of 40,000 comments, "a few hundred" critiques from consumers -- triggering changes to "several hundred articles" on Healthline.[6]

He further noted that Healthline provided advertisers with ads matched to "content... relevant to the product."[6]

source:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthline#Controversy

FFS @hoodathunkit you can take your pick of other sources:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/22/black-lives-matter-protests-have-not-caused-spike-coronavirus/

metro.co.uk/2020/06/23/black-lives-matter-protests-havent-led-spike-coronavirus-cases-us-12889993/

www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/06/30/black-lives-matter-protests-did-not-cause-an-uptick-in-covid-19-cases

[quote dogsaremypeople]@Topseyt have you even read any of the comments? They were not just sat on a bench 🙄🙄[/quote]
Yes. I've read them. All hysteria.

Contrary to popular paranoia it is very rare to spread the disease outdoors (and the whole picking it up from a park bench scenario is a nonsense). It is sharing facilities indoors e.g. toilets and changing rooms at a football match where it is much more likely to be transmitted.

The BLM protests had no impact on the spread of Covid interestingly

Fascinating wasn't it? Though it's also intriguing that I can find no such reassurance about lack of Covid spread following anti-lockdown protests

To be clear I certainly don't support these, but even given the "new strain" it does seem a little odd that thousands congregating turn out to present no risk, and yet two ladies walking or someone sitting on a bench are accosted