THE more you look at national Covid lockdown regulations the more you can end up astonished at the shear incoherence.

All the supermarkets are open. In these super-stores, as well as “essential food”, you can buy anything you pretty much want from clothes, books, toys, games, DIY, DVDs, mobile phones, and much more.

So, all well and good. We get everything we want, self-service, in one giant store.

Masked up and keeping distance we shouldn’t come in close contact with anyone.

On these principles why is it then we have ended with wholesale lockdown of retail in our high streets?

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Many hundreds of retail shops in BCP area, a million upwards retail shops throughout UK.

During tier level lockdowns these were open and operating responsibly.

Limited numbers in their stores, sanitising gel at the door, requirement to wear masks and keep distance.

Yet government sanction supermarkets to be open seven days a week whilst small traders are sentenced to zero trading hours, with mounting debts, for many inevitable bankruptcy.

This is surely an enormously unfair travesty. Government saying supermarkets are responsible enough to protect customers, sole traders are not.

That then is an entire mockery.

I go in supermarkets where it is open season as to whether shoppers are wearing masks, or not. Not a scrap of enforcement.

Another supermarket where door security staff, not wearing masks, or visas, are enforcing policies customers must (or should) wear masks.

For my money sole traders have, every time, been far more more responsible.

So many I know would not dream of letting anyone in their shop with no mask. But supermarkets, very hit and miss.

Yet their incomes flow into banks every week, sole traders left to claim universal credit, or try and access government loans.

JEFF WILLIAMS

Jubilee Road, Parkstone