//The rules are really very very simple.//
Are they? Let’s try this for size. Here’s one of the “reasonable excuses” provided as justification for leaving one’s house:
"to visit a public open space for the purposes of open-air recreation to promote their physical or mental health or emotional wellbeing—
(i)alone,
(ii)with one or more members of their household, or
(iii)with one member of another household;"
So, leaving aside a police officer’s difficulty in establishing whether or not a person was out and about “to promote their physical or mental health or emotional wellbeing" (or whether, perhaps, he was on his way to commit suicide) let’s consider this. I go out with Mrs NJ to promote our physical or mental health or emotional wellbeing. (As much as we’re both dying for a pie and a pint, neither of us is yet at the stage where we’re considering jumping off the local railway bridge). Whilst we’re out we meet a neighbour doing likewise. “Would you like to join us in promoting our emotional health and wellbeing?” I suggest. He can join me, provided Mrs NJ goes elsewhere or Mrs NJ can join him provided I go home. Of course that would mean that my neighbour’s wife cannot join him if he chooses to join one of us.
If the legislation is all too much and you decide to look at the guidance instead, you will be badly misled. It says this:
"People will also be able to see one person from another household, as long as they follow social distance guidance."
The police have no powers to enforce social distancing. So to place a proviso on this newly established freedom is simply wrong. There can be no proviso and if I choose to embrace my neighbour as a long lost friend when I meet him there is nothing anybody can do about it.
The legislation is mired in superfluous legalese (“to promote their physical or mental health or emotional wellbeing”); the advice contradicts the law; the entire output is the result of a committee of civil servants and lawyers unused to dealing with anybody outside their bubble.
Of course if our exercise in promoting our respective physical or mental health or emotional wellbeing took place on the Llanymynech golf course, all bets are off:
https://inews.co.uk/sport/golf/llanymynech-golf-course-england-wales-border-coronavirus-lockdown-rules-2850489
The government has a responsibility to get economic activity moving again and it’s making a dog’s breakfast of the task even at this early stage.