It is lunacy because tiers/lockdown strategy has been an unmitigated disaster: a continued assault on basic rights & freedoms which has caused misery for millions. Yet it has done nothing to help control the virus, leaving us in a never-ending cycle of destructive restrictions. https://twitter.com/Northernbred1/status/1340334141334827008

Remember, Leicester has been in lockdown restrictions the whole way through with little long term effect on infections. Same with Greater Manchester (especially Bolton) from July.

In other areas where positive test rates increased rapidly, numbers have come down without even further restrictions (e.g. Nottingham whilst in tier 1, Liverpool whilst in tier 2).

The recent increase in infections in new T4 areas started in the middle of the national lockdown, yet remarkably, the Government thinks putting those areas back into lockdown is the solution.

Many of the specific restrictions (curfew, substantial meal, rule of 6, mask laws, shutting churches, shutting schools) have little or no evidence to suggest they are effective. All of them, however, create huge costs to the economy, to business and to individuals.

The UK Governments have months of evidence that tiers/lockdowns are not effective in the long run. Doubling down and persisting is indeed #lockdownlunacy but I would go further.

In much of the country, @BorisJohnson has made it a *criminal* offence for people to visit their own family for Christmas.

Done with a stroke of his pen, without even allowing elected representatives the vote they were promised.

It is a despicable act.

I do not say this lightly but the imposition by all four UK Governments of unprecedented, long term restrictions on our basic rights and freedoms is not just lunacy, it is criminal.