I think I said most of what I needed to say over the weekend (though there are still some on here happy to see the police act beyond their powers). However...
I note the comment from the Derbyshire "Police & Crime Commissioner":
"We recognise that errors will occur in the face of complex guidance and legislation and it is important such situations are resolved quickly and fairly, as has been the case here."
The situation should not have needed a swift resolution because it should never have arisen in the first place. There's nothing remotely complex about the legislation. It simply says you can leave home and remain out with a reasonable excuse. The legislators have even been kind enough to provide a list of the most common reasonable excuses and that list includes going for exercise. They qualify it by saying you can do so with one other person. If they wanted to qualify it further they could have done so. But they didn't. The complexity is brought on by the contradictory guidance.
The two Derbyshire ladies were doing nothing remotely to cause a spread of the virus. The only people doing that were the half dozen police officers present at a site where, apparently, there was nobody else. I have a suspicion that they were there under instructions to simply intercept the first “easy meat” they came across and get the result of their actions into the press. That is not the way to keep the public onside and fortunately their meat was not quite so easy as they’d hoped.
I just wonder what would have happened had the victims of this disgrace been a little less robust. I also wonder how it would have gone down when it was revealed that the Prime Minister was seen cycling round the Olympic Park, some seven miles from Downing Street, together with his security officers. It was not revealed whether he had cycled the seven miles or had been transported there and got his bike out of the boot. At least he wasn't sipping a coffee, I suppose.