Drones intone 'you must stay home,' eliciting moans from those in the zone: Flying gizmos corral Brits amid coronavirus lockdown Authorities in the UK have begun using drones to direct the public to comply with public health measures announced on Monday to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus. On Thursday, the Neath Port Talbot Council, which serves the Welsh towns of Neath and Port Talbot, said it is working with local police and the Safer Neath …
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In their eagerness to use powers they’ve been given, police forces are making up their own rules by misquoting the guidance.
“...traveling to and from essential work” is NOT in the government’s directives or guidance. Travel is allowed to a workplace even if it is for work that could be deemed non-essential, if it cannot be done remotely. Obviously measures must be in place at the workplace to prevent transmission of the virus.
'In their eagerness to misuse powers they’ve been given..'
FTFY..
Still, we should cut them some slack...after all, they're just a bunch of weans wi a new toy to play with..hopefully someone will remember to buy them their 'my little hitler' costumes to go with it.
Give them an inch, eh?
Indeed, after the Referendum they even seemed to get the fact they were published from the most Yes city in Scotland and hired none other than Alex Salmond as a columnist. Which didn’t last long. That experiment in trying to meet the half of their readership halfway seems to have come to an end.
As for expecting anyone to actually fund proper newsgathering, spare me. They seem to want their readership to supply them with stories. Actually not seem, are looking for them.
I hardly ever bother with them.
I have a vague memory of one of the annuals, way back probably either in the late 60's or the 70's, where him and his gang were playing 'sodgers' with at least one of them in German uniform, maybe not dressed as Hitler, but still, by modern sensibilites it would be regarded as a bit 'wrong'.
The closer back in time you get to the second world war, the more acceptable this sort of thing was...Anyhoo, as I was bored ....
More like a fingerman badge....
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fgndn.files.wordpress.com%2F2015%2F11%2Fhd-cap-7gb-src-retouch-crop.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
Stay home its for your own protection....same lines as used in V for Vendetta...soon enough reports will come out of cops giving someone a kicking for "defying the lockdown"
NOWHERE IS IT LIMITED TO ONE TRIP/EXERCISE. Police need reigning in.
Actual legislation:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/made
Restrictions on movement
6.—(1) During the emergency period, no person may leave the place where they are living without reasonable excuse.
(2) For the purposes of paragraph (1), a reasonable excuse includes the need—
(a)to obtain basic necessities, including food and medical supplies for those in the same household (including any pets or animals in the household) or for vulnerable persons and supplies for the essential upkeep, maintenance and functioning of the household, or the household of a vulnerable person, or to obtain money, including from any business listed in Part 3 of Schedule 2;
(b)to take exercise either alone or with other members of their household;
(c)to seek medical assistance, including to access any of the services referred to in paragraph 37 or 38 of Schedule 2;
(d)to provide care or assistance, including relevant personal care within the meaning of paragraph 7(3B) of Schedule 4 to the Safeguarding of Vulnerable Groups Act 2006(3), to a vulnerable person, or to provide emergency assistance;
(e)to donate blood;
(f)to travel for the purposes of work or to provide voluntary or charitable services, where it is not reasonably possible for that person to work, or to provide those services, from the place where they are living;
(g)to attend a funeral of—
(i)a member of the person’s household,
(ii)a close family member, or
(iii)if no-one within sub-paragraphs (i) or (ii) are attending, a friend;
(h)to fulfil a legal obligation, including attending court or satisfying bail conditions, or to participate in legal proceedings;
(i)to access critical public services, including—
(i)childcare or educational facilities (where these are still available to a child in relation to whom that person is the parent, or has parental responsibility for, or care of the child);
(ii)social services;
(iii)services provided by the Department of Work and Pensions;
(iv)services provided to victims (such as victims of crime);
(j)in relation to children who do not live in the same household as their parents, or one of their parents, to continue existing arrangements for access to, and contact between, parents and children, and for the purposes of this paragraph, “parent” includes a person who is not a parent of the child, but who has parental responsibility for, or who has care of, the child;
(k)in the case of a minister of religion or worship leader, to go to their place of worship;
(l)to move house where reasonably necessary;
(m)to avoid injury or illness or to escape a risk of harm.
(3) For the purposes of paragraph (1), the place where a person is living includes the premises where they live together with any garden, yard, passage, stair, garage, outhouse or other appurtenance of such premises.
(4) Paragraph (1) does not apply to any person who is homeless.
Not if you are over seventy.
I am O Rh-. I am a blood donor and I am also 71 years old. I had a donor appointment for next week but got a snotty letter telling me that my appointment had been cancelled. It also threatened me with summary expulsion if I ignored the letter and turned up anyway. NHS Blood and Transplant are always telling people with O- blood how vital their contributions are but now because of my age I am persona non grata. I am fit, a non-smoker and I have no underlying medical conditions so why tell me my services are no longer required? An obese, fifty year old smoker is apparently welcome to donate but I am not.
Don't forget blood donors do it out of sense of duty not for reward or praise. NHSBT seem to have forgotten that. We do get a drink and a biscuit after donating though.
It's not that your services aren't required, mate... it's that you're in a high-risk group, and they'd much prefer to not be instrumental in your death if you acquire Teh Pneumonias from your donation visit.
That would seriously outweigh any benefit of your donation.
I know being fit it seems like your age shouldn't be a factor, but it is.
Is it? Do we have statistically-significant evidence, corrected for other factors, that age beyond X significantly increases risk? Or is that just a supposition?
The last I looked, cases and fatalities were pretty well distributed - certainly enough so that once corrected for other factors it seems plausible that age itself is not a significant risk contributor.
I also note at least some of the preliminary papers I've seen attribute a significant portion of fatalities to cytokine storms, which generally hit younger adults harder, as in the 1918 influenza pandemic.
I'm not claiming age isn't an independent risk factor, or that it's not prudent to assume it is one at this point. I'm simply questioning your claim that it is one, as a matter of fact.
OK, so granted you may be in a lower-risk group than your age alone suggests... but (a) how does the NHSB&T org. know that (they do know your age), and (b) it's not unreasonable to note that people of your age tend to have greater notions of social obligation than people in theie 20s and 30s, and even if you are good to go, what about people who may take your acts as encouragement to put themselves (and people with whom they live) at higher risk?
Setting an example works by, err, setting an example. So please stay home and hoard that luverly O- stuff, so that when the worst of the peak is over, you are in a position to drop off a pint...
Fine, I know what I have to do. I'm old but yet senile, though that may be on its way.
No, what I object to is the way the whole bloody letter was phrased. As I said donors do it because they want to. I don't need to be threatened or treated as if I am an imbecile. A reasonable request would have been sufficient. Instead, some jobsworth decided to lecture me and put me in my place. I will go and donate when given the all clear but I'll tell you this it will be through gritted teeth. Its too important not to.
"A reasonable request would have been sufficient. Instead, some jobsworth decided to lecture me and put me in my place."
I would suggest then that you write back informing them of their faux pas and making your feelings clear on the matter. Send copies to whoever think need it.
"I would suggest then that you write back informing them of their faux pas..."
That was the first thing that I did. I tried to get through on the 'phone but gave up after 30 minutes, so I e-mailed them. I haven't heard back from them although I did also ask why I was getting so many mixed messages some asking me to come to the session while the letter expressly told me not to. Now I can accept that the various systems do not talk to each other but the IT involved seems to be right mess. Run by Capita, do you think?
Since then I posted here on El Reg and have also written to the Editor of the Guardian as they ran a piece by Nick Cohen in which he stated that "The alternative to confining the ill is to hide away the over-70s".
Seems to me as if that is exactly what NHSBT are doing.
Most official letters have got a lot ruder and curter the last dozen years.
.
No more: Dear Sir, Please be advised we wish to to contact you regarding a matter of importance -- with best wishes, your obedient servants, xxx
Now: We need you to act on this immediately ! You MUST be home when we call, and you are required to show your current dog license when we arrive. And five forms of identification
PASSPORTS and Utility Bills are no longer accepted
.
I blame the strange death of Commercial English.
.
.
.
DO NOT IGNORE THIS LETTER !
Its because the belief that public SERVANTS are to serve has disappeared to be replaced by the idea that they, rather like the SS in Germany in the 30s and 40s, the Stasi and KGB, are there to tell you what to do, of course not for their own power trip but for your good.
Clearly we recruit exactly the wrong type of people in to these positions.
Exactly.
I could well be be over the time limit that over 65s are subject to. I last donated in January and by the time that NHSBT give me the all clear I may be passed the six month cut-off point.
If O negative is so important to the NHS why can't they go that little bit further and actually find out what your circumstance are instead of using a blanket ban?
NOWHERE IS IT LIMITED TO ONE TRIP/EXERCISE. Police need reigning in.
Not just the police but Boris Johnson and everyone else who have been telling the public "the rules" are different to what the actual legislation says. That's just lying.
The police are punishing people when there clearly is no actual harm being done. Shaming people for not obeying non-existent legislation is becoming a national sport.
This is what that slippery slope looks like.
Official Government guidance is 'one form of exercise a day', and that's what "Boris Johnson and everyone else have been telling the public".
That the specific regulation is more flexible than the guidance does not make them all liars. The guidance is separate to the regulation, and it's entirely appropriate that the legal mandate is less stringent than the polite request.
But having said that, whatever the guidance says, when it comes to enforcement by the Police, the legislation and the law is what matters. I'm not sure you could be fined for going out for a morning and evening run every day even if the guidance says you should only go out once and the Police will be trying to enforce the guidance with the law.
So it's perfectly fine for me to go out on 20 seperate cycle trips in the day, being just the one form of exercise.
Besides, where are all these enforcement cops going to appear from?
Aside from a major event with crowd control, when did you last see a Police Officer in person? I rotate my shopping round 3 town centres and cant recall ever seeing one, for years.
You know where they are...
a) buying doughnuts
b) in the gym
c) in an 'interview' room giving someone a good 'going over'
d) framing people by faking evidence
e) working out how to blame newspaper salesmen for repeatedly smacking their heads on an innocent police truncheon or perhaps how to blame crowds for burning themselves to death at football grounds
f) manning speed cameras (their least dangerous, but also least useful occupation as they always do this on safe roads where they can rack up maximum crime clear up statistics)
g) going through the internet, your emails and where you visit checking in case they can find any porn images they havent found before
What you can totally guarantee they wont be doing is something actually related to solving or preventing real crime
m) to avoid injury or illness or to escape a risk of harm
I would argue that my risk of harm, by remaining indoors in close proximity to potentially asymptomatic carriers in my household, is orders of magnitude greater than if I isolated myself outdoors in a remote spot. I am sure I could find the necessary expert or scientific testimony to prove this.
6.—(1) During the emergency period, no person may leave the place where they are living without reasonable excuse.(2) For the purposes of paragraph (1), a reasonable excuse includes the need—
The includes means this isn't even an exhaustive list, but the things that have occurred to the authors of the act, and so are completely exempt from having to argue about to the plod or the magistrate. There are loads of other things that could plausibly be exceptions. Just off the top of my head, is it permissible to leave the place you are living to post an important letter, or to take your car to a garage to be repaired, or to visit a field or livery yard to check if your horse is OK?
Just off the top of my head, is it permissible to leave the place you are living to post an important letter, or to take your car to a garage to be repaired...
I'm glad you asked that question; the day the restrictions were annouced I received a letter from the manufacturer of my car informing me of a recall to fix a possible problem that could (according to the letter) result in a fuel fire if ignored. I made the necessary 'phone call and the car is booked in for remedial action next Thursday.
I am (almost) hoping that plod stops me and asks where I am going and why. Given that I will have the recall notice with me it would be interesting to see what reaction I got.
Oh and the saintly* Mrs Commswonk will pick me up in her car to come home while the work is done, taking me back to the garage later in the day.
* Actually I'm joking there...
No-one has been able to explain to me what it wrong with getting into your car and travelling any practicable distance to a place where you can walk or cycle in the open air while keeping a good distance from others. Does it make sense to force most of the population to take their exercise in the urban spaces where they live? If you are stupid enough to disobey the basic distance rules, you can do it more easily in a town or city than in a national park.
I suppose you might have a motor accident and put additional strain on the NHS. But if that is the concern they should ban use of motorcycles and reduce all speed limits by 10 mph.
Dont assume our police are the only out of control moronic thugs in the western world... appears being a black schoolgirl is enough to get you cuffed and dragged out of class in America, basically almost everywhere in western europe is made more dangerous by the presence of the police service...if they arent beating you to death for selling newspapers they are as you say wasting thousands on helicopters and drones to chase innocent and sensible people around. The whole of western europe would be better off getting rid of the whole lot
Amazing that an above 50, white, male with post degree qualification, a home owner and director of a business should write this sort of thing, if the police ever wondered just how low their reputation has sunk I would rather spend an evening with a group of estate agents and bankers... more likely they are honest
One person doing it; not a problem.
Thousands, as seen last weekend, big problem. Not just opportunity to spread virus, but to tie up emergency services dealing with everything from sprains to major road accidents. There will be plenty of time to get out in the country later.
True, but we don't get hysterical about the thousands of annual deaths or hundred of thousands of injuries from road accident in a normal year. And yet those could be reduced if people only made 'essential' journeys. While I'm all for people exercising some judgement about their actions at the moment, the emergency-services-tidied-up argument stinks heavily of, "I don't like what you're doing so I'm going to find a reason it's bad." The aim is to keep distance from other people right? The police using their new powers to target people doing just that seems like a great way to use up goodwill they probably need.
The point is to reduce the rate at which the virus is spreading. Taking a trip out of one place and spreading it around another place does not help with this aim. Even if the other place might already have some infection it might not be the same strain or in the same quantities. And don't forget the in between places such as garages. We spread disease everywhere we go irrespective of how careful we might think we are being. Staying close to home limits the local of this gift.
> Of all the things governments could do, this seems rather innocuous and a bit silly. I suppose we should be grateful that that's all it is.
It's more a case of "We've paid for this expensive toy drone out the equipment budget so now we have to justify that by getting whatever use out of it that we can."
Necessity is the mother of invention. Give someone a good reason, and they will invent a drone with an attachment for a remotely firable airsoft gun. Give them more good reasons, and they'll augment the same with autonomy and computer vision and police-drone object recognition capability. And with even more reasons, they'll perhaps start teaching their neural nets how to dogfight, develop mass production and widely disseminate such plans, designs, code and weights. This is a battle the government should probably not kick off.
Oh yes the government should. Big Money Defence plc buys the most successful drone kit manufacturer, develops damage-tolerant upgrade with greater firepower and sells assembled horror to gov't for 1,000 times the old kit price. Pass along quietly please, nothing to see here, kids.
Thankfully they are too busy right now streaming videos of their streaming noses to act on the opportunity. (And I do honestly hope they get better soon, I wouldn't wish this covid shit on anybody).
Give them more good reasons, and they'll augment the same with autonomy and computer vision and police-drone object recognition capability. And with even more reasons, they'll perhaps start teaching their neural nets how to dogfight, develop mass production and widely disseminate such plans, designs, code and weights.
So, hunter killer drones. And I guess the control system is called Skynet?
"Give someone a good reason, and they will invent a drone with an attachment for a remotely fireable airsoft gun"
I'm pretty sure all the reason I'd need would be "I have a drone and a BB gun", although now I think about it, a water-pistol might be more amusing.
Alas I have no drone.
Maybe they could send them to B&M to sort out the massive cluserfuck their store is. ASDA - Limited number of people in store with queue system outside, arrows for direction of travel in an aisle, distances from tills marked on floor, security at tills making sure people stick to the distances. Iceland - Queue system outside and limited numbers. I don't know about inside because after 8 hours of running around like an idiot at work I wasn't waiting. B&M - Queues? Sure we've heard of them but fuck we'll just let everyone in regardless. Black tape near tills that everyone ignores and a security guard that couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery getting people to swap tills in close proximity and queue side ways rather than the common sense approach of up the aisles confusing the already brain dead shoppers. I had two people stood on top me as I was paying and packing what I bought. 0/10 would not recommend. Also if you plan to buy any Easter eggs give it a few days as everywhere is going to be marking them down due to low sales and too much stock.
"That Port Toilet video has a very unconvincing .........................."
Maybe but according to the council it is equipped with speakers;
https://www.npt.gov.uk/1410?pr_id=6443
"Neath Port Talbot Council has teamed up with South Wales Police to survey hotspots where people are not following government measures on social distancing.
The drones are equipped with speakers that will transmit messages directly to the public."
Will they give up these new powers when the crisis is over?
Because I can see a lot of home office types/police cheifs/council busybodies going "lets keep these laws on the statue books.... just in case"
And before you know it , it will be "You there : Cockroach 565422 Boris , you have exceded your exercise distance by 100 yrds , you are fined 200 quid, stand still and wait to be collected"
hahahaha and Secondary Legislation used to maintain it by the backdoor, or just order the CMO not to ever declare this over / keep finding new reasons...
Just like the court decision to delete everyone not convicted of a crime's fingerprints and DNA, instead Jackboots Jacqui decides 12 years and then they'll look at deleting it....so much for the govt being answerable to the courts...
Just build an RF jammer on the R/C bands. If the audio is not recorded, I suspect it will be uploaded to the drone via a separate channel. Crack that, and you can use a more powerful transmitter to replace the audio with something entirely different.
Good DIY projects while self-isolating ...
with a good 5g network in place all these drones can be controlled from a central point and can be used to check your papers,
with face re-cog track and control your movements , of course govt drones can be armed of instant delivery of punishments.
it's coming and we are helping.
.... given drones must be operated withing Line of Sight of the operator, and should not be flown over populated / built up areas, not within 50m of people and buildings etc, for safety concerns,... they are throwing drone safety out, when as mentioned, they could just use a megaphone. That is a rather poor example to set. Can we revisit the word 'Essential',.. is it 'Essential' to be flying a drone to get the message over. No. So, stop please.
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