Britons have today been trying to deal with the government’s three-week coronavirus lockdown with some good humour.
Hundreds of thousands of employees are this morning sitting in their living rooms, wearing shorts with optional socks on day one of the lockdown.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson last night announced that only key workers should be commuting and said the vast majority of citizens should remain at home.
One twitter user decided to take Boris Johnson’s decision to go for a single walk a day by posting a photograph of The Proclaimers are famous for their 1980s anthem 500 Miles
Others made fun about ‘being caught going for a run’ for the second time in a day by police
Boris Johnson’s address to the public was viewed by more than 21m people last night
The government last night banned all non-essential travel after members of the public were criticised for heading to the beach and beauty spots over the weekend and treating the lockdown as a holiday
According to the latest coronavirus advice, all non-essential travel is not permitted, while people have been asked to restrict their trips to the shops and limit their exercise.
One wag, taking the government’s advice of taking a single stroll decided to post an image of The Proclaimers, who shot to fame in the 1980s with their song 500 miles, where they pledged to walk that distance and then do it again.
There has been confusion this morning about who should be continuing to commute to work following last night’s television address by Mr Johnson, which was viewed by 21 million people.
Housebuilder Taylor Wimpey said it has closed its construction sites, show homes and sale sites due to coronavirus.
The company said it has a ‘large order-book and quality long-term landbank’ which provides it with increased resilience.
It said UK operations have ‘only been meaningfully impacted in very recent days’ while its smaller Spanish operations have been disrupted by a nationwide shutdown.
Earlier on Tuesday, competitor Redrow said its sites remain open with ‘strict precautions in place including enhanced levels of cleaning, additional hygiene facilities and social distancing’.
Twitter users have suggested that normal working attire is not being worn during the crisis
Some workers were sent home by their employers a week ago so are going stir crazy
The success of the new measures relies heavily on the support and acceptance from the public in order to work, according to former GMP chief constable Sir Peter Fahy.
He told BBC Breakfast: ‘If you compare us to Italy, we have about half the number of police officers that they have. We don’t have a paramilitary police force like the Carabinieri. Our police officers are already very stretched.
‘It will require a huge amount of public support, public acceptance and public compliance because if officers are going to be dispersing groups they are going to be asking about things like ‘is there a power of arrest?’ and that will then tie up more and more officers.
‘So, really, there is no way that this can be achieved through enforcement alone. It will have to be that the public hugely accept it and the government continues to issue clarification and reinforces the message.’
Sir Peter said greater clarity is needed on a range of practical issues like people moving house and students coming back from university.
It is not only workers and families who have seen their activities curtailed by the lockdown
Some twitter users have warned about the dangers of continuing their lives as normal
Others have warned about the dangers of snacking constantly while not exercising fully
Dog owners have asked their pets to remain silent if questioned by police about the number of walks they’ve been on during the lockdown period
Others have questioned the rules surrounding exercising during the coronavirus crisis
He told BBC Breakfast: ‘I think the Government needs to continue to close down businesses and other parts of operations to limit the places that people can be going, but absolutely at the same time reinforcing the message and clarifying as far as possible all those individual issues.
‘We don’t really want 43 separate police forces in England and Wales interpreting this in different ways and individual officers being faced with real dilemmas about whether to allow this or not to allow it.’
Asked how social distancing rules would be enforced by police, Martin Hewitt, chairman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, told LBC it is ‘not turning into a position that everyone on the streets is immediately dealt with in an enforcement way’.
But he said that, instead, officers will seek to ‘talk to people, explain the rules and, if people do not listen to that, then clearly we have to take action’.
Construction workers are still going to their sites although the rules could soon change
Some people have been dealing with the use of protective equipment in a lighthearted manner