I messed up the thread so best thing to do is start from the end and you can see the whole thing https://twitter.com/AdamWagner1/status/1315711301725945856?s=20

My overall thoughts on these: better to have three sets of regulations and then apply them to areas, rather than making new ones every time you bring in new areas. But, the idea that public and police will digest and understand these hugely complex rules is I think farcical...

And these regulations read as if, and I’m pretty sure this is what has happened, they have been drafted by an increasingly large but slightly random committee. There are so many exceptions, they become almost impossible to know or enforce...

I am not anti-lockdown, or even anti using criminal laws to enforce parts of a lockdown, but I don’t see in reality how these will encourage people to behave in specific ways, rather than confusing and overwhelming them

Another thought: these regulations, even the “very high” tier ones, are far far less onerous than the original lockdown regulations from 26th March which closed most businesses and told us we couldn’t leave the house without a very limited list of reasonable excuses

They may not even really be called lockdown regulations, they are more like “encouraging social distance” regulations. A number of parts demonstrate, to me having followed these closely, a loss of nerve and belief that regulations really work.

You can just sense, with 17 (now) detailed exceptions to the gatherings restrictions, and the pretty ridiculous pubs are closed not closed table meal exception, that the government no longer believes these really work, or cannot agree if they do. So what, really, is the point?

One thing that I am fairly certain of is that these will be in large part ignored by most people, including police, except perhaps the most important or well communicated messages. They are not “laws“ in the sense that other laws are laws, but may degrade trust in law generally

Problem with making everything law is you lose the opportunity to give people discretion and make them think for themselves. That’s because you can’t leave it to chance someone will be criminalised for doing something which is fine, so you have to add exception after exception

Ultimately, with a society-wide need to encourage social distancing, a huge amount has to be left to people’s discretion. You can’t prescribe every intricacy of 65 million lives. At first there was a mix of carrot and stick, discretion and enforcement. Now it’s all law

As any parent knows, it’s only by giving discretion and focusing on values/principles, that you prompt consistently good behaviour. Setting rules has its place but is only a small part of influencing behaviour. I feel values have receded, replaced with ever more intricate laws