Dear LPG,

 I totally agree that they are not comfortable, they steam up your glasses and they make breathing more difficult but they must offer some element of protection or else the governments of the world would never have hinted at their importance in the first place, but now that we are braving the world beyond our front doors again, and after all the fuss and bother that our government has gone to to inform us of how important they are, a surprisingly large proportion of people that I have seen are still not wearing them. 

Do you remember the last week of July when we all heard the news that they would become compulsory in shops in the UK?  Well that is what I thought, but we are a month on, and I cannot see that anything has really changed. I went into a local branch of Holland and Barrett earlier this week, with my mask well and truly on, only to find the staff ‘mask-less’, even though I passed one staff member who was stacking shelves.   As I was about to leave, an unmasked customer entered the shop and was reminded about her mask.  She made a ‘so what are you going to do about it’ gesture before continuing her walk around the shelves and was allowed to proceed unchallenged. I remember hearing that failure to comply would be punished, but no one appears to be worrying and I cannot see any policing. What are the government really saying? It appears that the authorities are happy to get the police to fine and punish you if you are a driver caught speeding  (►►►) but they don’t have the time to protect the nation from a virus which we all know is still very  deadly and still very much out there. 

On the same day, I went to my hairdressers only to find the staff and customers all unmasked while the former continued to hover above the latter.

Half the people that are wearing them are doing it to protect their chins rather than passers-by from their breath and bodily fluids, and the discarded paper ones are as common a sight as cigarette butts and chewing gum were not so long ago. 

I know I am now talking about the other end of the age scale, but the arguments rage on about whether school children are required to wear them.   Now we have the school mask row; do teachers have to wear them or students for that matter.   There was recently the ‘pubs or schools’ debate and no one is taking on board that being able to leave your home again officially is the government’s way of saying we have to learn to live with this virus, and not that we are all safe and the virus has gone for good.

LS, Hither Green

LS, asked LPG to share the following links which have relevance to her argument…

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