Hancock hints at more curbs, while Boris is spotted driving (well, being driven) 7 miles to go to Stratford for a bit of cycling... Clarity reigns supreme!

The cycling by Boris is really a non-story. You can be certain that his security detail would not let him ride on the streets of the city where he could easily be attacked or just driven into by a "lone wolf" terrorist. They would want him to ride in a park or other non-road area where they can more easily manage his security. The routine will require that he moves around parks too.

The headline of "Obese man seen taking healthy exercise" does not give the same drama to the papers though!

I agree, it's a non-story, but then again... if one looks at the guidance it says to "stay local". Unless we define what is local (which others, see Israel or France, have done) then it's all open to debate and it begs the question of why Boris can cycle in Stratford, after driving there, and the two ladies at that reservoirs can't.

Bottom line = buy a Peloton BoJo!

The two ladies at the reservoir could - Derbyshire Police have since apologised and rescinded the fines.

There are problems with defining what is local, in that there are so very many exceptions, particularly in rural areas.

There may be difficulties defining local, but the word appears only in the guidance not in the law. The PM has not committed any offence, and the press coverage and some comments on there seem to be engaging more in virtue signalling rather than anything else. We have seen Scotland has gone for a different approach and explicitly set limits - there is no reason England couldn't have copied this approach in the law if they had wanted to similarly set limits. There is of course an underlying principle of reasonableness in the law, so as I noted before driving several hundred miles to do a walk probably will be over that line. But I can't see that a drive of 7 miles would be unreasonable whatsoever.

The problem with Derbyshire police was not just their action, but their comments after that the two ladies were breaking the spirit of the law, hence the fine. This just shows you the stupidity of those in Derbyshire who think it is appropriate to fine people based not on what is in the law, but instead there own self-defined version of the spirit of it.

Whatever the difficulties might be in defining 'local', this is a complete irrelevance in terms of fines since the guidance is not legally binding. I found the interview of Cressida Dick on Today this morning very disappointing in this respect: her interview was a masterpiece in the art of cultivating ambiguity between legislation and guidance. It was a bit rich for her to say that anything that increases clarity would be good for the public and police officers when at the same time she did absolutely nothing to clarify any possible confusion between on the one hand binding, enforceable legislation and on the other non-binding, advisory guidance and on the contrary seemed to do her utmost to be as vague and ambiguous as possible.

I quoted Boris' cycle outing as an example of the complete mindf*ck we're in at the moment. It applies to many parts of our lives, but the one that affects me the most, right now, is indeed the exercise. Prior to the shutters coming down I was training for a long distance trek and I'm still keeping it up as my body actually craves the effort. I run every other day and walk 20+ kilometres at least twice a week. Is this allowed? Is it not? It's certainly no drive to Durham, but is it "local"? In Scotland at least I'd know how far I can go. It might be that I'm way too used to follow clear, unambiguous rules ("drill a hole here"; "you must cycle this machine X number of times"; "You can't go live with a Sev 1 defect") but if I have to think at "the spirit of the law" when assessing whether I can walk to Hyde Park and back I simply go "sod it, I'm walking anyway". And I feel a lot of people are doing the same.

The answer to the question whether this is allowed is clear: yes it is allowed. There is nothing in the legislation that states that you have to exercise locally only so whether it is "local" or not is not relevant as such to determine whether it is allowed.

The guidance is purely advisory so it is up to you, in your conscience, what you make of it. I can see why they recommend exercising locally but I also know that the evidence that we have suggest that risks of transmission in uncrowded open air is negligible so I would personally have no qualms whatsoever about going for a 20km walk or on a 100km bike ride as long as I did it on my own, did not stop for a coffee or pit stop anywhere and avoided crowded areas. OTOH, I would avoid the local park on my doorstep if it was busy-ish.

Agreed absolutely with that sentiment but I would have one word of warning. If a PC stops you and tells you to go home because that officer's interpretation of the guidance (not the law) is that more than xx miles is not local, then you have to go home, or you face a charge of failing to obey a PC's reasonable orders. You could try challenging that in court - that the PC was behaving reasonably, but I don't think many would choose to go down that route. The Derbyshire constabulary (who seem particularly dim even by quite low standards) made a fatal error in charging these women when they had no basis to do so: had they instructed them to go home and had they ignored that instruction, then it would be a different matter.

As to Cressida Dick, she seems very confused. She complains that Londoners are breaking the rules by having large parties in their flats, or attending raves, or failing to wear masks in shops etc. She then says that she needs guidance as to what is local so that she can do her job. But that's nonsense: to do her job, she merely needs to nab those who are were behaving in ways that break the law and not bother with the rest.

I read the coronavirus regs slightly differently: it is not so much a matter of proving that the PC was behaving unreasonably as one of proving that it is not unreasonable for me to disregard the direction to go home (the regs state that it is an offence to contravene without reasonable excuse a direction to go home issued by a [PC] where that direction was issued in the belief that the person concerned was contravening the regs.). It is a subtle but important difference, in that it enables me to argue that it is reasonable for me to disregard the direction of the PC if the PC is in fact mistaken in his belief that I am breaching the regs.
That said, I am old enough to know that it is rarely a wise move to seek confrontation unnecessarily and, if after calmly seeking clarification from the PC, he was adamant that I needed to turn back, then I can't see myself being pig-headed about it and I would turn back, if only to take a different route. If, however, it did go to a PCN, I would not rule out a priori challenging it.

New vaccine numbers in today - 145k people vaccinated in the last 24 hours.

For any chance to ease restrictions, 14 million need to be vaccinated by mid-Feb, approx. 2.5 million per week, which is approximately 360k a day.

Where did you find these figures?

The gov.uk page shows cumulative total (1st dose): 10 Jan 2,286,572, 11 Jan 2,431,648

coronavirus.data.gov.uk - click view vaccination data for details

SkyNews are reporting that there maybe upto 250k infections a day (according to the scientists) at some points in Jan.

This would mean 6-7m a month getting some sort of immunity. With the 14m first doses by mid feb, surely a large amount of the population would have some sort of immunity soon, given the previous 10 months as well?

I was thinking the same thing. With so many people already getting the virus, along with lockdown, Covid-19 testing required before coming to the UK (from Friday) and vaccines - ideally by end of Jan you would hopefully start to see a steep drop in cases, deaths and hospitalisations. This depends on how effective vaccines are however.