Online voices

Government under pressure to relax twometre social distancing measure. Emma Hetherington: It's one of two options. 1. It was always 1m, but they said 2m because people were unlikely to maintain that and if they got a bit closer then they still hopefully had that 1m covered. 2. It's still 2m but they want kids back in school and by moving the goalposts it's removing schools justification for not opening.

Kathy Haq: Perhaps if they want to reduce it to 1 metre then wearing masks in shops should be compulsory. It's necessary anyway as far as I'm concerned as there are still idiots who just push past or walk in front of you anyway. I've been wearing a mask when shopping since long before lockdown.

Catherine Greenan: If people generally can't keep to two metres, what hope would we have with one? At least if they stipulate two, there's a chance those who don't seem to know how far two metres is, might manage one!

Vicky Cullen: I recently had to pop to get some shopping the other day and the amount of people in a local store I was in that wasn’t 2 metres away was unbelievable

Robert Surtees: No point u in s shop very few wear masks so any droplets from a person stays alive up to 48 hours .so really u walking in peoples droplets really .u go on public transport who sat there b4 u . 2 metre rule I think personally makes no difference

Shaun Sayers: I sometimes wonder whether the media gets paid to hound the government on various topics. This week at the briefings nearly every question was about “2 meters” - where did this come from all of a sudden and why? It just looked to me like they were lobbying on behalf of the Boozers. They are the ones for whom the 2 metre rule is causing the most hassle

Mick Palmer: I went shopping in Sainsburys near Southwick yesterday, two metres? About 75% of people have given up in there already ......

Paul Mills: It's about time people were using common sense and being responsible enough to be allowed to work on calculated risk let's get this country back to normal

Tracey Collins: I think it needs reducing to help the economy