People have finally started wearing masks in the shops round here.
Apparently the law has more effect than relying on people's
common sense. Who would have guessed? (People living in Newquay. Or
Bournemouth. Or Southend.) I don't suppose it'll last, but it made a
pleasant change: everyone in both Lidl and Morrison's was wearing a
mask.
Except for the staff, who didn't bother. (To be fair, one of
Morrison's staff was masked, but looking quite furtive.)
Morrison's actually had a choice of green vegetables, which is more
than Lidl has managed for a while. Not much loose, though, nor any
bags for it.
Most of the masks I saw appeared to be the standard disposable paper
medical sort, so apparently there's now a supply of these available.
(I trust the right firm, run by relatives of people in government, got
the contract.) Presumably people who would voluntarily wear masks and
might have washable ones… weren't shopping in those shops in the first
place.
It does seem to me that a large part of this government's electoral
campaign partook of the memeplex "those so-called experts are wrong,
and your selfish impulses are the most important thing". So I can't
help feeling a certain schadenfreude that their strongest supporters
are the people most likely not to obey them on the rare occasions they
actually give good advice.
- Posted by RogerBW at
10:34am on
29 July 2020
Turns out masks are explicitly not required for shop staff. (Though it took a fair bit of digging to find a formal confirmation of that.) Well, that makes a nonsense of the whole thing…
- Posted by John Dallman at
10:50am on
29 July 2020
I continue to be amazed at the way all modern politicians fail to realize how their methods can backfire on them. Maybe that's what distinguishes the actually skilled ones?
- Posted by Owen Smith at
08:47pm on
29 July 2020
I'm one of the people avoiding going into shops now masks are required. I've tried and I just can't wear one, I'm coughing like crazy in under half an hour. I suppose I could rush in, buy one thing, pay. rush out and recover, repeat. But it's such a performance.
Work don't want us back in the office until 4 Jan. Anyone returning before then has to wear a face mask all the time, which I can't do. This is like one long unending mightmare.
- Posted by John P at
09:45pm on
29 July 2020
Three quotes spring to mind:
Sir Ernest Benn: "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."
Groucho Marx: "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member."
That's how I feel about politicians. I don't really want politicians who want to be politicians. But then again, it's such a c*** job and people complain whatever they do, so maybe they are the only people we could get.
Joseph de Maistre: "Every nation gets the government it deserves."
Note the use of "deserves" rather than "wants" or "needs".
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