No. There's literally a list in law of exemptions. If your circumstances dictate that you cannot adhere to a "should" despite your best efforts, you may be allowed to not adhere to it.
Going to a family member's funeral was one such exemption in law, so this argument that people couldn't go to funerals I've seen everywhere today is a non-starter.
Again, there's a list of exemptions in law, and the guidelines are guidelines, not law.
That isn't what the guidelines or law said. He, at least by the judgment of attending officers, does not appear to have broken any law and his actions are consistent with the guidelines.
@Famine, I want to thank you for being patient and helping the rest of us see how the discussion (not argument!) develop, as it is important to show many different view and how life is not simple at all.
The first bit about not going to funerals and so on, it kind of feels like a gotcha, as a lot of burials or ashes production (I forgot the word now) would have to occur, but as its only immediate family and not extended family, that's harsh on cousins and so on, unless it was livestreamed. It just feels a bit weird if the funeral parlours weren't open to people about what they could do and couldn't do, due to Covid-19. Should those business be dobbed in?
That's incorrect. The person with the symptoms should isolate immediately for seven days, while anyone living with them should isolate immediately for 14, while vulnerable people can be removed to other friends or family members.
Cummings wasn't able to stay at home and not leave under any circumstances, as the guidelines say you should because of the child's particular special needs. He removed the vulnerable child to family members (appropriate to the condition, satisfying the child's safeguarding needs) and isolated for seven days. Like the guidelines say.
You would have expected a reasonable person to drop off the vunerable child to a trusted person and then gone back to the original home, as insane as it sounds to do so. But if you want to follow the rules and guidelines that is what you are expected to do so, as I read what you have written.
The word "can" always leaves it to interpretation to be abused for transportation of a vulnerable person. So does that mean the police,the social services or the medical authority are the right people to talk to at that time?
The issue is and this is going on privacy concerns so I am not keen to ask this, does it show whether Dominic Cummings dropped off the kid and went back to his wife, or he stayed with the child? It isn't even the point, but it if he did stay at that place with Covid-19 symptoms, which he apparently was feeling then, why would he had stayed there?
None of this makes any sense.
Why do the general public need to know the medical details of any four-year old? This guy isn't even an elected official that the public could expect to hold to account. He's satisfied the police and his boss with the information he provided.
I'm vaguely aware that the details are in fact reasonably well known in Fleet Street - Mary Wakefield, Cummings' wife, is an editor at the Spectator - and it appears pretty repellent that newspapers have chosen to go to press with this story in the full knowledge that a four-year old's health and wellbeing, something which quite rightly should be private, is the heart of the situation and it cannot be defended adequately without revealing these details to the general public.
The general public doesn't care fo the son's medical issues. The issue is, it is, to a reasonable person following the guidedance of the government, that Dominic Cummings went against the guidedance he put in place and made it one for the rich and another for everyone else.
If Mary Wakefield is well known to Fleet Street, it surprises me that they broke on this, as they are normally pretty good at not actually breaking on another journo unless something had happened to flip it around.
I suspect it might be the case that some people don't think it is fair that others can just travel miles and miles for whatever legal reason it is, when it was quite clear that they couldn't, as said the following:
The prime minister said that Mr Cummings was within the guidelines, because of the severe challenges of finding childcare, he seemed almost to be praising him for following his "instinct" as a good father.
The problem with that, is that millions of parents were told they couldn't follow their instincts, the government's lockdown rules were "instructions", in the words of Cabinet ministers.
Many of the public would have loved to have relied on family members if they were unlucky enough to fall ill. Many of the public would have loved to have followed their instincts in going to visit relatives who were suffering, or far away.
But instead they followed the daily exhortations from the government, the prime minister's appeal to the nation, and stayed home instead - however hard it was.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52793376
The above as shown, with the link. It just doesn't make sense and it only makes sense when you have money, have other properities you had or was given or had the ability to go into and pay for it.
My main frustration is that it just seems underhanded when it first came out and going on about whether it was legal or not, it shys away from what the government was trying to tell the population to do, which was "Stay at home, don't do anything stupid, please don't!".
Yet some people go out and do that.
Sorry, I'm crap at history.
