Primrose Hill during lockdown

• NOTHING is causing more public disquiet about police conduct during the lockdown than their claim that if you sit on a beach or in a park you are no longer taking exercise and are therefore unlawfully away from home, (Don’t let the authorities make us prisoners in our own homes, April 16).

The police definition of “exercise” is apparently unbroken and continuous movement of your body from the moment you leave home until you arrive back.

Taking exercise in the normal accepted meaning of the words does not mean that at all. Most exercise involves stopping from time to time.

Runners halt for a bit, footballers stop between bouts of competition, walkers halt and rest.

I don’t think any court in the land would support the artificial definition of exercise employed by the police which appears more a pretext for a cat and mouse game with the public than about protecting health.

The New Journal quotes one policeman as applying another test as to whether exercise is being taken. The suitability of clothes. There is nothing about clothing in section 6 of the regulations.

We urgently need a test case as to the legal definition of taking “exercise”.

MICHAEL NEWLAND
NW5