What was that all about?
I’m talking about the large number of people who were allowed to gather on Westminster Bridge on Thursday night to ‘Clap the NHS’.
More galling than that though was the sight of all those police officers standing by, also applauding.
One of them was Metropolitan Police chief Cressida Dick. When the entire country is being urged to socially distance what on earth did she think she was doing?
In the middle of the bridge sat a long line of police cars, blue lights flashing for maximum effect.
If anything was designed to attract a crowd it was this ostentatious display of crowd-pleasing, virtue signalling exhibitionism.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure it was well-intentioned and I suspect that the risk to anyone’s health on the bridge and surrounding areas was probably very small.
Nonetheless, compare the scenes on Westminster Bridge to the over-reaction of police officers to people sunbathing or strolling, while still socially distancing, in parks and beaches.
Or the infamous use of a drone to target isolated couples walking in the Peak District, miles from anywhere.
In one clip that went viral this week, a journalist filming someone being forcibly escorted from a park was repeatedly told by police officers to stop filming and ‘Go home!’
Another uniformed officer then approached him and screamed, “You’re killing people!”
As someone on Twitter commented last night:
Cafes are closed, but 15,000 fly in unchecked every day. Police arrest lone people sunbathing in the park, but gather with large crowds on Westminster Bridge to 'Clap the NHS'. This lockdown is a farce - it is no longer about protecting people; it is about controlling people.
I’m not yet at the stage of calling the lockdown a farce because I appreciate the reasons for it and I don’t think it helps to criticise government policy when ministers are clearly doing their best, guided by ‘experts’ whose advice may in hindsight prove to be wrong but no-one currently knows so we just have to get on with it.
That said, I had my own very minor and very brief brush with authority this week.
My daughter and I had driven to the small market town of St Ives in Cambridgeshire.
It was an essential journey because we were taking her bike to a bicycle shop to get the front tyre repaired following a puncture that happened during her daily exercise regime.
We rang the shop in advance to check it was open. It was.
When we arrived my daughter went in and they said it would take 20 minutes to fix.
We decided to wait outside because the shop was quite small and there were several people inside.
At this point I need to paint a picture of The Broadway in St Ives.
In the middle of the street, with the cycle shop on one side and Chicken Licking on the other, sits what is effectively a mini roundabout.
In the middle of the mini roundabout stands a small monument called Queen Victoria's Jubilee Memorial.
No-one was there so we went over and sat on the low wall at the base of the monument. We were at least 15 yards from the nearest person.
From this position we watched as a number of customers went in and out of the cycle shop.
Several other people walked past the shop on the pavement. One or two stopped to look in the window.
Sitting in the middle of the road by the Memorial seemed a good way to socially distance ourselves.
But then a police community support officer appeared.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
I explained.
“You can’t sit there,” she said, “otherwise it looks like you’re chilling and other people might start to gather.”
Chilling?
She pointed to the cycle shop. “You need to stand in the shop or outside it,” she said.
I said there were other people in the shop and if we stood outside we would be much closer to other pedestrians.
To be clear, as with the Westminster Bridge debacle, I don’t think anyone would have been put at significant risk of infection had we stood there, but it seemed a bit silly to be told to move closer to people when we were already sitting in splendid isolation, minding our own business.
She then said something about the need to keep on the move. Sitting isn’t allowed because it’s not exercise.
I protested in the mildest possible way and explained that it was because my daughter wanted to exercise that we were momentarily sitting while waiting for her bicycle to be repaired.
“I’m only doing my job,” she said, which was true and I felt sorry for her.
She plainly knew it was ridiculous to ask us to move from our socially isolated position in the middle of the road to stand outside the shop where we would be in much closer proximity to anyone entering or leaving, or walking past, but she had her instructions and rules are rules.
It was a very minor incident (hardly worth writing about!) but it left me feeling very uncomfortable.
I had no wish to argue with her (PCSOs and police officers have a difficult enough job as it is - but the scenes on Westminster Bridge suggest there’s one law for Cressida Dick and her happy clapping officers, and another for the millions of people who are doing their best to observe lockdown regulations and just want some flexibility regarding the enforcement of guidelines - the same flexibility that was given to those who gathered on Westminster Bridge to ‘Clap the NHS’.
Update: Coronavirus: Met Police criticised for allowing clapping crowds to break lockdown rules on Westminster Bridge (Sky News)