Pim5 wrote:
There was an ex-plod on Radio 4 a while back admitting why women are not more often arrested – well he said, invariably you then have to organise child care so it all starts to cost a lot and become very time consuming – so you give them ‘advise’ – men you can arrest: end of story.
The children don’t have fathers who can take care of them?
Malibuflyer wrote:
The difference is that the vaccine is still a scarce resource. For yellow fever I just have to spend 150 bucks and can get the shot tomorrow. For Covid there is no legal way to get the shot. As a politician you just don’t want people to rob vaccination centers because there is a huge illegal market for the vaccine – which surely will be there if vaccinated/ non-vaccinated would make a huge difference in personal freedoms.
At the moment the argument is mute anyway as travelling is close to impossible due to the lockdowns and quarantine rules anyway. The same goes for people who have had Covid. I am talking of the time once the vaccine is readily available and the lockdown has been lifted, which will probably coincide towards May-June this year. Once Moderna is released, it will work.
By then, most airlines as well as countries will start to impose rules by which you will not be able to fly without a proven vaccine. Apart, also people who have had covid will have to be vaccined as their protection only lasts about 2 -3 months. Or, a nice way around it, countries will impose quarantine on people who can not prove vaccination on arrival. No, we will let you in, but…. same effect.
Airborne_Again wrote:
The children don’t have fathers who can take care of them?
The reality of the situation is unimportant, though of course many will involve families where the father is not around and even if they are it is trivial to engineer them being unavailable.
What happens is that the female who is aware of how the system works just exclaims “but what about my children?” and that is enough to put the Police off arresting them. At the very least it would mean a trip to their home and probably some further enquiries to establish that they don’t have any children.
It just isn’t worth trying to untangle the web of lies and half-truths that’ll be spun. It’ll be impossible to determine whether the children really are hers, who the father is, where he can be found, whether he’s actually the father of all of them, whether the children are safe with him, etc. The system refers to them as ‘people with chaotic lifestyles’.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
people who have had covid will have to be vaccined as their protection only lasts about 2 -3 months.
I’d like to see a source for this. Very few people have caught it twice. As far as I can tell, we don’t actually know how long immunity will last, but it’s certainly more than 2 or 3 months: the lower bound at present is 10 months (because that’s how long it’s been widely circulating). T-cells in patients of the original SARS (this is SARS 2) still had a detectable immune response over a decade later.
Simply from a sense of caution.
alioth wrote:
I’d like to see a source for this.
The source for this stuff is usually the media presenting an anecdote as though it were data.
The one the newspaper editors will be wetting themselves over is when someone dies of Covid-19 having previously had a vaccine, which statistically will happen eventually. They will wave their single data point around as proof that we’re all doomed and throw more 100LL on the anti-vax fire.
‘Long covid’ is going to take a bit more study. It is pretty hard to distinguish between people genuinely still suffering direct effects some time down the line, and people who, having been hospitalised for an aggressive respiratory infection that gave their body an absolute pasting, are still feeling crap 6 months later – which is to be expected regardless of cause, especially if they were not in good shape in the first place.
Malibuflyer wrote:
Fuji_Abound wrote: In a democracy when the police start interpreting the Law, we have reached a dangerous impasse, this is not their job.Obviously the police always has to do this. There are only very few laws that are so hardly “measurable” that no interpretation is required. In the first place it is always the police that makes the judgement (even if it’s only the judgment wether to prosecute a case or not). It is, however, a necessity in a democracy that these initial decisions by the police can be effectively controlled by courts/judges. That is exactly the reason why most countries have strict limits on what the police can do within their “preliminary evaluation”: In most countries, you do not have to actually pay fines issued by the police before you had the opportunity to have them checked by the courts. For measures which can not be reversed (like putting you in custody), there are typically very narrow time limits (e.g. 24h) within wich the police needs to obtain a court order even if they took you in custody for an urgent reason.
What would be (and seemingly in some countries is) a major system fault is, if the hurdles to get a preliminary police action checked by courts are so high (either perceived or real) that this is only perceived as a theoretic right and rarely actually used.
I am not convinced.
In the excercise of their judgement the police must have a realistic expectation that the fine or their charges will be upheld. Relasitic is the key word and this is the standard to which we must hold them, and to which they should hold themselves. I think they have let themselves down.
I am trying to think of some previous legislation of a non specialist nature (by that I mean complex financial fraud and the like) where the degree of interpretation that was applied here, has been applied elsewhere?
The legislation in this case is very clear. It hardly needs much more than the basic ability to read and understand the construct of the legislation to realise that prosecutions of this like are bound to fail.
At any rate what amazes me is that the troops on the ground arent given basic guidance – or, more relalistically I suspect they are, which means the legilsation has been reviewed and still appropriate guidance has not been issued.
It is one thing to saber rattle, and I dont mind this at all, quite another to actually issue fines, and then have to offer an apology and withdraw the FPNs. These were never in the gambit of any justification of being tested by the Court, never mind the case would never have been pursued by the public purse, and all that has been achieved is to make the police look very silly.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
In the excercise of their judgement the police must have a realistic expectation that the fine or their charges will be upheld. Relasitic is the key word and this is the standard to which we must hold them, and to which they should hold themselves. I think they have let themselves down.
Absolutely! It would be an abuse of power by the police if they issue fines of which they already know that they will never be upheld in a court. But does police in your country really do that?
I would not call police “lazy” in general – but typically issuing a fine is also quite some administrative process for the police so I would expect them to optimize for efficiency in some way.
I am trying to think of some previous legislation of a non specialist nature (by that I mean complex financial fraud and the like) where the degree of interpretation that was applied here, has been applied elsewhere?
Many examples: Insults, improper behavior, even minor bodily injury (if I give you a clap on the shoulder) is often not black or white. Many legislations have a limit for driving under influence under which you can only be fined if “driving abilities have been impaired” without measurable definition of what “impaired” really means.
