Speaking to Times Radio this morning, Professor Calum Semple, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), said that businesses would be well within their rights to refuse to serve customers without face masks after July 19.
Semple, a professor of child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Liverpool, was speaking in a personal capacity. He said:
“There’s no reason why businesses which have made their own assessments cannot say actually If you come in here we still want you to wear a mask.
They can’t mandate it, but neither are businesses mandated to have to serve you, so if you run a nail bar and you want the clients to wear a face mask, you simply say ‘You have to wear a face mask if you want to get your nails done.
That’s a good example of some direct, personal, face-to-face contact for a good 40 minutes where you don’t want your staff breathing in what Joe Public is breathing on to you.
There’s no reason why many businesses can’t actually just say Hang on a minute, in this setting we want you to wear a face mask. I don’t see why public transport companies couldn’t make the same assessment.”
I’m not optimistic, but I hope that some business owners will see the glaring opportunity here. If I owned a shop, I’d be shouting from the rooftops that you would not be required to wear a mask or distance, or sanitise your hands, or any other such bollox when you entered my premises.
I’d declare my shop, bar or restaurant to be a covidiot free zone. If you show some backbone and declare your pub or restaurant to be a place of normality and sanity, I’ll eat and drink you dry. And I’ll bring my friends too.
