A little common sense would make life easier
THE frankly incredible pictures of nose-to-tail cars parking at our many beauty spots is sure to trigger another knee-jerk tightening-up of the already onerous limitations we are facing in the coronavirus war.
I am enjoying my daily walk along Cardiff Bay barrage, keeping up my mobility as I wait for an indefinitely postponed hip replacement operation. Most people I pass, in less than a second, are themselves keeping a reasonable distance from any companions.
Age, and the pills that help me deal with my worn-out joints, put me in a slightly higher-risk category. If my exercise routine, for which the risk of infection must be vanishingly small, is deemed unacceptable, it will seriously affect both my physical and mental wellbeing.
And all this might come to pass because of the prospective reaction from already frazzled ministers and advisers to silly behaviour by the public.
Consider these facts. Brecon Beacons National Park is approximately 1,340 km2 (519 sq miles) in area. That is 1.34 billion m2 overall.
That is equivalent to a square with sides of 36.6km x 36.6km. Standing the recommended social distance of 2m apart, the theoretical capacity of the park is just under 335 million people.
So all of Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the UK (if they could be persuaded to stand by all those foreigners) could easily be accommodated at the decreed spacing. Lithuania, Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta could come as well without breaching the rule.
Putting that another way, if the whole 3.06 million population of Wales descended on the park at once, each and every one of them would be able to stand more than 10m away from anyone else.
If people would only show the tiniest glimmer of imagination, and not all head lemming-like for Snowdon or the Storey Arms, there wouldn’t be a risky overcrowding issue at all.
Common sense may have got a bit of a battering to its reputation, courtesy of some particularly cloth-eared politicians, but it would be nice to see some, both in our advisers and the population at large. Huw Roberts
Penarth the only way they can to protect the rest of us. Total lockdown and if they don’t comply, arrest them, lock them up and throw away the keys.
Okay, that may seem a bit harsh, but it’s the way I feel this moment in time. The thought that I could lose a loved one or good friend because of these idiots makes me angry.
Tony McCarthy
by email