Actually today it was so cold I had my take away drink in my car! Too cold to even exercise! Seriously though not a soul on the street walking in the evenings, even the staff walking in the take away shops are literally sitting there doing nothing as they have no business except a few take away deliveroo riders.

So how does this work now?

I'm an EU citizen living in London and I want to leave for South Africa in the next couple of days to visit a family member. Last time during Tier 3 when I flew out of Heathrow to visit family, nobody asked or checked for reasons but I heard that now during Tier 4 things are supposed to get tougher.

Is it enough to say that I'm gonna visit family members, or do they wanna see prove, or something else to that effect?

That's not enough of a reason for travelling I'm afraid. If it's not work or other pressing matters (say the family member was on his/her deathbed) then it's an avoidable trip as far as I understand it. Besides, remember that travel to ZA is heavily restricted now due to the local strain.

...unless the household you'd visit in South Africa is your Linked Household.

I don't know whether that's allowed or not but to me it sounds a bit too much like driving 60 miles to check if I've gone blind or not.

On another note, I was reading this tale of these two ladies who have been fined for driving 5 miles to a reservoir and that got me thinking. I like to go shopping for fish at Billingsgate Market (I'm an early bird, the fish is great quality and usually cheap): assuming that the market is open, am I allowed to drive there? I'd be leaving from West London.

You are going shopping for food.

And looking for houses.

Second hand information, but a colleague told me that there were police in front of his local Sainsbury's (in Bucks) asking shoppers where they live. Everyone deemed not to be "local" was given a warning and told they can only use closest shop to their house.

Crikey, we're getting none of that here in Manc. However, there is the story of the picnic that wasn't really a picnic that got two ladies in hot water in Derbyshire...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-derbyshire-55560814

Derbyshire Police have form on that front, but TV Police are a new one on me.

As much as I'm in favour of following lockdown and associated rules, and the spirit thereof, I'm deeply uncomfortable with the police overreaching their authority.

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I really hate sounding like a broken record, I really do, but all this uncertainty could be avoided with a clearer message. For instance, my relatives in Paris were telling me that, back in the first lockdown, they had limit of movements by arrondissement. In Italy, there's yellow, orange and red regions; with each comes a comparative limitation to movement. In red regions you can't leave your municipality (unless a specific exemption applies). In Israel I'm told you have a radius of 5 (?) km and I believe in Scotland is similar. That would really make things clearer: I'll know if I can Zipcar to Billingsgate, or walk to Richmond, or whatever.

During the first lockdown in March Derbyshire Police filmed people walking in the Curbar Edge area of the Peak District and showed people walking their dogs and taking photos in a clip shot by the force’s drone unit and posted on Twitter.

https://t.co/soxWvMl0ls?ssr=true

It does appear that someone's had a word:

https://www.derbyshire.police.uk/new...ring-lockdown/

I can kind of see what's happened. The government have given little distinction between guidance and regulation - it's presented in a similar way to the Highway Code. But why? Would the guidelines be unpalatable to the CRG et al? The smiley face brigade on social media? Who knows.

Lack of clear messaging is a symptom of blame avoidance, IMO. That's probably as far as I can go on a forum I moderate.

I saw, on my morning jog, the new gov’t message “Act like you have it”. Besides reminding me of The Killers (“Smile like you mean it”) and Snoop Dogg (“Drop it like it’s hot”) I’m not too sure it’s going to work. I mean, I get the gist of it (stay home, don’t pass it on, don’t be a d*ck) but as I’ve never knowingly had Covid the next illness that comes to mind is man flu... and therefore is the government asking me to just lie on the sofa, watch re-runs of Bosch on Amazon Prime, moan incessantly to anyone within earshot, call work to announce my imminent death and rise only to cover myself with Vicks Vapo-Rub?

It might ensure social distancing is maintained ;)