Rule of Six? It's a Rule of Eight or Nine round here!

WELL, what a stroke of luck that Salisbury’s People in the Park event took place on Saturday.

Two days later and it would presumably have fallen foul of Mr Johnson’s Rule of Six, aka Recipe for Utter Confusion.

Our Transition group organised a lovely event in Lizzie Gardens, sociable and friendly but with ample space for everyone to keep their distance, and masks on sale for those like me who had left theirs at home.

Anyone wanting to do their bit for the future wellbeing of our city and the planet would have found something they could support or join in.

Followed as it was on Sunday by David Attenborough’s heartbreaking documentary (by all accounts - I didn’t watch because I find images of suffering wildlife too upsetting) about the many species facing extinction, it was a timely reminder that whether or not we get on top of Covid, we are on the brink of destroying the environment we depend on.

So, the Rule of Six.

Well, there appeared to be a Rule of At Least Eight going on in Harnham on Monday.

A keep-fit class of nine or ten in one corner of the park (I know, sports are allowed, but those same people wouldn’t be allowed to have a coffee together afterwards. How incomprehensible is that?) and a group of eight ladies on folding chairs, at what I’d consider to be a perfectly responsible distance apart, enjoying a chat further along.

Five of us dog-walkers stood in a well-spaced circle joking that we had ‘room for one more’.

But everyone I spoke to on my 90-minute walk was frankly puzzled as to the logic of this latest edict, and what they could and couldn’t do. And because of that, they were generally of the opinion that it would be widely ignored.

They told me of people still flying in from abroad without any checks. And the media have been full all weekend of horror stories about even medical professionals being told to travel hundreds of miles to get themselves tested, if tests are available at all.

If a bunch of reasonably well-educated, well-meaning residents of leafy suburbia can’t quite figure out what’s going on, what hope is there that stupid people will understand, let alone do what they’re meant to?

Oh, and the name Dominic Cummings did crop up, in terms of why the public might have lost faith.

This is not leadership in any meaningful sense of the word.