13/01/21 "Local"

COVID again, but a reasonable amount of fresh air and exercise is also important for "mental health" and coping with myeloma. So Dr.Ch once said...

There's been a lot of very reasonable criticism of the vagueness of the Government's guidelines about staying "local" for exercise. What exactly does that mean?

(Digression which will mean little to readers outside the UK: I've just noticed that Michael GOVE is also the beginning of GOVErnment. There is significance in all things...)

In Northern Ireland, 'local' is defined as 10 miles from home. That would put Admiral's Park and Oaklands Park, both in Chelmsford, within our range.

In Scotland, the definition is five miles from your local authority boundary. We live a matter of just tens of yards from our boundary, and Admiral's Park is six miles away, Oaklands a little over seven. So they would both be outside our range. Staying inside our local authority area and a five mile limit, there's very little offering a decent distance apart from walking along a road and for all sorts of reasons we try to get off the roads whenever we can.

So if the GOVErnment decide to define "local" more precisely, I'm hoping they follow the NI model rather than the Nicola Sturgeon one. Because of the way the politics play out (Boris will not want to be seen as following the SNP), I think that's the likelier outcome.