Today, at 1pm, it will be exactly a year since the first lockdown law, the most significant restriction on our liberties in peacetime, came into force.

Laid before parliament an hour and a half later, debated and voted on many weeks later
Those laws have changed 70 or so times since, average of over once per week.

You can follow the extraordinary story through my boring-looking but actually fascinating spreadsheet!

It links, in the most right hand column, to my Twitter threads
docs.google.com/document/d/1ne…
I have written a lot on this lockdown over the past year, and the impact on human rights, you can find pretty much everything in this thread
Here is something I wrote for @NewStatesman just under a year ago which I think has held up pretty well - could even say some of it was prescient newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…
And here, just in time for the anniversary of the first lockdown law, my new long-read for @prospect_uk

prospectmagazine.co.uk/essays/adam-wa…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Adam Wagner

Adam Wagner Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @AdamWagner1

25 Mar
Sad to see this

‘Muslim media chief’ - Talk about divisive. @miqdaad is in my experience a man of integrity. He rightly calls out islamophobia in the press including @JewishChron. He made a mistake which he apologised for. /1
He also braved the cold to attend my Chanukah event in Temple.

We have regularly spoken privately when he has been concerned not to inadvertently offend the Jewish community.

A good person in a world where there are not enough. /2
Jews and Muslims have so much in common - both in our history and our present experiences. So many opportunities to work together.
Read 5 tweets
24 Mar
This sounds like a very important ruling. The first successful court challenge against the lockdown regulations, as far as I know. The rules in Scotland were different to England were communal worship has been allowed throughout the last two lockdowns bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotla…
Here is the official summary. Fascinating! Ties constitutionality to proportionality. Finds Scottish government had failed to show less restrictive measures would have achieved the public health aim judiciary.scot/home/sentences…
Read 8 tweets
22 Mar
🚨The regulations for the next few months of Covid-19 restrictions are here

The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Steps)
(England) Regulations 2021

Some big changes, including "Steps" (not tiers!) and the first proper holiday ban

(thread)

legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/364/…
First thing to say: this is another completely new system.

We have had national restrictions, local restrictions by separate regulations, the first lot of Tiers (1-3), a second national lockdown, new Tiers (1-3+) then Tier 4 added, third national lockdown

Now we have… Steps.
So, instead of being 4 tiers, there are 3 “steps”.

Step 1 is the most severe (confusingly as Tier 1 was the least severe)

Steps work like the Tiers, in that they apply to specific areas.

But at the moment, all we know is that Step 1 applies to all of England from 29 March
Read 37 tweets
21 Mar
The violence in Bristol is unacceptable.

As I have said repeatedly over recent weeks, the right to *peaceful* protest should be protected and every attempt to diminish it should be opposed - *peacefully*.
The bill which this protest is supposedly about won’t make a jot of difference to violent protest, which is already unlawful and unprotected by human rights law.

The bill is troubling because it could criminalise a wide range of *peaceful* protests.
I appreciate there has been a lot of confusion about what the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is going to do.

Key to understand is police *already* have powers to impose conditions on protests if "necessary to prevent disorder, damage, disruption or intimidation".
Read 5 tweets
21 Mar
Good thread.
Covid is almost the perfect example of where a public inquiry would be good for society:
- Hugely complex issue,
- politically charged so judicial approach an advantage
- a decade until the next (likely) pandemic so thorough process both possible and useful
- the idea that a public inquiry would be ‘too costly’ seems odd in this context where mistakes likely led to tens of thousands of lives lost *and* billions lost from economy
- Ultimately, the litmus test is whether the people who are saying “let’s move on and not rake over the coals” are the very people who are likely to be in the crosshairs from an inquiry.
- with power comes responsibility and scrutiny cannot be avoided forever
Read 4 tweets
19 Mar
Mr Justice Holgate's judgment in the @ReclaimTS Judicial Review interim hearing from last Friday has been published.

Paragraph 24 is key and couldn't be clearer.

Any police force with a policy which bans all protest would be acting unlawfully

judiciary.uk/wp-content/upl…
The Metropolitan Police statement does not reflect the judgment
The Mayor of London's statement is even worse
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!