Families who lie about going on holiday to destinations such as Portugal face up to 10 years in prison – longer than the maximum sentence for sex offences with children or violent firearms crimes.
On Tuesday, Matt Hancock announced that anyone seeking to conceal their trip to a “red list” country – from which arrivals have to spend ten days in a quarantine hotel – would face a £10,000 fine or prosecution and a maximum 10-year prison sentence.
They’ll drop the specific places etc, have a list of no places where it applies, after this is all over. But they’ll not abolish the power to jail you for going somewhere they say you shouldn’t.
Because they never do drop such powers, do they?
Meanwhile, the little boats and lorry stowaways from the continent just keep on coming….
Of course Julia. The laws always apply to you not them.
Wasn’t it Solzhenitsyn who argued that the Gulag Archipeligo (etc) was only possible because the people were such cowards? If they had realised they had nothing left to lose, and fought back, instead of cowering, hoping the guards had come for next door, then the whole oppression could never have been sustained. Would make no difference in any single case, but pretty soon the secret police would have run out of gullible fools.
And so now, the penalty for lying about your travel is greater than the penalty for stabbing the oppressor?
What does that incentive structure suggest?
Alternatively, the Minster for Health has gone off his head. Time for a visit to the vet perhaps?
‘… a quarantine hotel…’
Known as Gulags in the USSR.
My thinking is, they know lockdown is a one off event. If all restrictions were lifted, and then in the autumn they said, “We’re seeing an uptick in cases, we’d better go into lockdown for a couple of weeks.” The response is going to be an unambiguous “Fuck off!” Therefore they will only relax, not remove the restrictions, because they won’t be able to reimpose them.
Roue
No. They know that they can “get away with it.” Lockdowns will happen with the slightest excuse: bad flu year, foot and mouth, verrucas.
Even the possibility of annihilation at the polls will not deter them, because the opposition ( whoever it is) will do the same.
We are fucked, the dystopia is here, get used to it.
I’m basically agreeing with Tim. Lockdowns won’t be scrapped, instead there’ll be something like a “tier 0”, no restrictions, but the tiers will stay.
But Mr Hancock, there is no law currently on the statute book that gives you the power to do this.
They’ll just introduce it via statutory instrument under the Emergency Powers Act.
No debate, no committees, no problem.
Tim the Coder
“Wasn’t it Solzhenitsyn who argued that the Gulag Archipeligo (etc) was only possible because the people were such cowards? If they had realised they had nothing left to lose, and fought back, instead of cowering, hoping the guards had come for next door, then the whole oppression could never have been sustained. Would make no difference in any single case, but pretty soon the secret police would have run out of gullible fools.”
Classic collective action problem. That’s why they went to great lengths to shut down printing presses and gatherings of people. Its also why modern authoritarian regimes are scared of the Internet and the likes of the CCP go to great lengths to build their firewalls.
I’m with Ottokring; there’s no point expecting things to get better.
If someone deliberately enters the UK knowing that they have a high risk of being an asymptotic carrier of covid-19 and lies to evade quarantine then if someone dies as a result of the infection spread through that individual (either directly or indirectly) then it is a case of manslaughter.
Proving the case of manslaughter beyond reasonable doubt is far more difficult that proving they lied.
knowing that they have a high risk of being an asymptotic carrier of covid-19
That’s interesting. Realistically, “knowing”, how? Given just how many variables (location, personal such as mixer/isolater, just at its simplest) there are all around that.
then it is a case of manslaughter.
I’m really struggling with that one…. If I feel slightly dodgy on a Friday morning and I don’t immediately go to bed but go to a meeting instead. Actually it turns into flu. And I was likely spreading presymptomatically before I was even aware of it (rather than being asymptomatic) . And then someone might die. And I knew I wasn’t 100% that Friday morning. But was I spreading death on Thursday evening down the pub or Friday on the train.
Are we even completely sure that asymptomatic spread is that prevalent. There are conflicting studies on that?
Britain apparently also has one of the higher current Covid death rates. Which means higher infection rates. Some might reasonably calculate that – wrt to the risk of becoming infectious – having been abroad confers a lower risk that having been here. Assuming we want to remain preoccupied with Covid as opposed to other infectious diseases.