Lock-down

Lock-down

It’s the third day of lock-down here and everybody seems to be taking it quite calmly, even cheerfully. The pity is that it would be a beautiful day to be out and about, sunny and warm ; but that is not permitted. I have to content myself with reading on my balcony or pottering in my back gardeh. I went shopping this morning and had to tick and sign an «assertation» before going. The «assertation» is a form showing tick boxes for the legitimate reasons to be out of your house, one of which you have to tick befiore you sign and date the form. Legitimate reasons are going to work, shopping for food or medicines, going to doctors or hospitals, looking after dependent people or, briefly and locally, walking a dog or getting a little exercise. You incur a significant fine if the police catch you outside without one and the police are making a show of presence.

There weren’t many people in the shops but neither were the shops conspicuously deserted. A few of the shoppers were were wearing face masks and there were barriers or lines drawn on the ground to keep shoppers from getting too close to the cashiers. Some people have obviously been stocking up a little but there is no sign of the panic buying that has apparently been going on in the UK. There was quite enough of all the usual produce on the shelves. So life is restricted but far from unbearably so and it seems only common sense to respect the restrictions.

The UK is not yet under lock-down and I have been wondering how it would work there if imposed. There is little reason why it shouldn’t work as it does here although common sense seems to be in as short supply as toilet rolls there, similarly police presence. There is also little reason why, if and when the UK goes under lock-down, it shouldn’t impose similar restrictions to those here but I find it difficult to imagine how they could be effectively policed, so their success or failure will depend on that far from common sense, unfortunately.

I've read, incidentally, that the EU is stockpiling ventilators to be sent to any member counytry when the country experiences peak infection. Although the UK is nolonger a member of the EU the EU has geberously included the UK in this scheme. I doubt that that has been reported in The Telegraph or the rest of the right-wing press in the UK.

There have been cuts to public services here but nothing like on the scale of those in the UK. The cuts in the UK have made savings, for some, but I think the UK is about to find out the costs in terms of peoples’ lives of those savings. A Conservatives MP has been reported saying that the government will end up having to implement Corbyn’s election manifesto. If so, so much the better for the UK.