We need more action on face mask wearing

ANOTHER week, another (December 9) excellent edition of the Newbury Weekly News and, sadly, more misleading comments from our MP, this time about coronavirus.

I am unclear as to why the official Government website (www. coronavirus.data.gov.uk) is several days behind on some statistics, in particular the seven-day rolling average for infection rates.

It may be that the daily headline figures are subsequently marginally updated, which would explain the small discrepancies between the quoted rolling average and that derived from the reported daily figures.

As I write (December 9), the latest seven-day rolling average (infections per 100,000 population) figures are to December 3.

For the week from November 27 to that date, the figures for West Berkshire are successively 548, 542, 547, 561, 586, 628 and 626.

The corresponding UK national figures are 437, 440, 448, 459, 470, 480 and 488.

Thus the local infection rate over that week was between 22 per cent and 31 per cent, ie significantly, above the national figure.

Of course I do not know exactly on which date Mrs Farris wrote her latest column, but the first part of her assertion ‘in West Berkshire the rate of infection is below the national average, but rapidly picking up pace’ is simply wrong.

You kindly published a previous letter from me, written on

October 29, suggesting a return to compulsory mask wearing, not just in shops and public transport but also in enclosed public spaces such as cinemas.

Belatedly Johnson has woken up and, to the fury of some of his backbenchers, made the right decision.

However, public compliance is a separate matter and locally is not helped by Mrs Farris engendering complacency.

On more than one occasion, when I have asked politely, customers of the village store in Cold Ash, displaying a notice requesting masks be worn, to wear their mask, I have been told: “Our MP says it’s wrong.”

Perhaps Mrs Farris should think and check what she writes because at the moment her columns on some critical subjects do more harm than good.

As a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee it might also help

if she and her colleagues there were to suggest to the Home Secretary that police forces should do a lot more to enforce the law on mask wearing.

The level of fines is more than high enough to cover the costs of a bit of overtime, but this idea, of enforcing a law to protect everyone, might be a bit too anti-libertarian for Conservatives.

JULIAN WAGHORN

Bucklebury Alley