Well I suspect you are in a minority - I think most people accepted the rules and followed them - they didn't take a decision as to whether an individual rule applied to them because it was inconvenient, or horrible unpalatable.
We'll have to see the surveys on how strictly the public were following the rules. There were some rules that were followed strictly - for example not visiting care homes or dying relatives as the care home or hospital staff would not allow it, but I suspect there were some rules being broken especially when it came to social distancing when going into shops or dropping off food to elderly parents and standing 2m away to chat to them or people leaving home to run errands. I have fasted during Ramadan for over 25 years, therefore I know our bodies can function well without food and water for long periods of the day - in fact I dusted, vacuumed and cleaned the whole house the day before Eid while fasting. Yet lots of people have been exercising their judgement to leave the house to buy food they could easily do without even though the rules state only leave the house to buy essential supplies. Lots of people stating they have put on weight during lockdown.
On VE day neighbours bringing chairs and sitting on other people's driveways sharing wine and food at a distance of 2m...apart from refills of food and drink. The kids and I were fasting so could not partake but we were standing on the pavement outside a neighbour's house chatting to everyone. Neighbours from the top of the road wandered down to our end to chat at a distance of 2 m (most of the time). We wandered back with them to their end of the roadto be introduced or say hello to other neighbours. Not sure - was any of that adhering to lockdown rules?
But you have said this is because your mother in law was genuinely vulnerable (in the guidance terms) and had lost her care options, as she had been hospitalised.
I'm not sure. She was dying - carers came into the house 3 times a day for about 10 or 15 mins to see to her personal needs - they had access to a key. Possibly the only useful thing we could have done was call the District Nurse to administer morphine if she appeared to be in distress during the process of dying. Obviously we did not want her to die alone and we did not want her to die and not be discovered for hours. She was mostly sleeping and would occasionally appear to half-open her eyes and she would sometimes move her hands but was not responsive as far as I could tell - she would appear to look at us sometimes but no idea if she registered who we were. Her breathing was laboured sometimes and shallow sometimes. Were we providing care or making ourselves feel better - I don't know. We all took shifts - was it essential that we all took turns? I remember when she stopped eating and drinking while still relatively alert and responding to us, the doctor said she was not in discomfort and they would not administer IV fluids as that was just briefly prolonging the inevitable and would be for our benefit so we would feel better that she was not appearing to be starving to death before our eyes.
That eventuality is within the guidance and is entirely different from the 4-year old who had not lost his care options - both his parents were available and at no time were both of them so ill that they couldn't look after him. And they were in self isolation, not lock-down - the rules on the former are, obviously, much stricter than the latter.
The carefully crafted story according to Cummings is that they were not in self-isolation at the time of the drive to Durham. The issue hinges on whether preventative measures such as driving to Durham is reasonable. Cummings and some Tory cabinet ministers seem to think it was reasonable. I think it was reasonable if they thought there was no one in London they felt close enough to who they could reasonably ask to risk their health and disrupt their lives for 2 weeks by taking on child-care of a potentially infectious child. In a liberal Parliamentary democracy, who should determine whether it was reasonable? The Press, the public, the police?
Many more do however - have you actually seen the polling on the issue - it is vitriolic and across the political spectrum.
The most recent shows that by 80% (did) to 9% (did not) people think he did break the rules. By 82% to 9% the public think he should apologise, by 78% to 8% people don't believe he drove to Barnard Castle to check his eyesight etc etc.
So you may frequent a bubble out of touch with public opinion on the matter, but most of us here don't.
What is the percentage of those polled who think he should be investigated by the police and fined and what is the percentage that think he should resign or be sacked? Also do you have a link to the percentages who are vitriolic? What is the vitriolic?
