No restriction? You will have a nasty surprise if you return from a red list country. Plus mandatory covid tests before and after returning to the UK. Plus mandatory face masks in public transports. Plus mandatory self-quarantine if you are pinged by the NHS app. Many companies have not returned to the office. We are not back to normal.

> Plus mandatory face masks in public transports.

Not true. There is no national requirement to wear a mask on public transport. London Underground and the Manchester Metro have used mayoral powers to require mask wearing - with variable compliance. Elsewhere its down to individual choice.

> Plus mandatory self-quarantine if you are pinged by the NHS app.

Not true. The app gives a recommendation. Only the NHS test and trace service can legally require you to self isolate. And for that you need to test positive (pcr) and not be fully vaccinated.

> with variable compliance

Anecdotally, it seems to me that around 70-80% of people on the London Underground are still wearing masks. Which is to say that the "mandate" is a joke (like so many of our restrictions have been) and clearly isn't being enforced.

The percentage of people wearing masks on the tube, where masks are "compulsory", doesn't seem much higher than the percentage of people who are voluntarily wearing masks in other public places which have no mandate, so the fact that most people are still wearing masks on the Tube is probably less because of the mandate and more because of people's general sense of precaution/paranoia. I suspect if the mask mandate were lifted then most people would continue to wear masks voluntarily anyway, just as they're still doing at the supermarket.

> Plus mandatory self-quarantine if you are pinged by the NHS app.

I think you're poorly informed - it has never been mandatory to self-quarantine if pinged by the app.

And government mandated face masks on public transport went away on the 19th of July - but people are still encouraged and I think required by some individual institutions not by Her Majesty's Government.

And I don't think jet-setting around is 'daily life' so that's disingenuous.

self quarantine through the app couldn't be mandatory seeing as the app isn't mandatory

The only thing OP has a point on is travel abroad, which yeh as you say isn't really daily life for the majority of people and probably isn't too big a pill to swallow temporarily, and continued working from home, which to my knowledge is the choice of companies, not the government (though either way, I'm not complaining)

> Many companies have not returned to the office. We are not back to normal.

This is the new normal (thankfully). Government regulations or not, management will not be able to force people back in the office. Office culture was a quirk of the 20th century. A halfway house between the assembly line and the internet. Covid just forced its inevitable collapse.

Yeah my team will meet in the office for an hour once a week otherwise WFH.

I suspect once the bean counters discover that the office is only used for an hour once a week also after corona there will be pressure to remove a lot of the seats.

The only one really resisting at my company is the "office manager" for some reason ;)

I hesitate to feed the trolls, but this is a well documented worldwide phenomenon. Hardly just my personal experience.

Yeah, well, on the other side of the coin, people are being forced back in the office, some have never even been able to work from home and many actually like the work/home separation.

Not to mention the millions of jobs that can't be done remotely no matter how hard you try, but that's on a whole 'nother planet.

> Plus mandatory face masks in public transports.

I really hope this will stay forever, or at least until people don't learn to stay home when they get a cold

"or at least until people don't learn to stay home when they get a cold "

Not everyone can afford that, with a fear of losing their jobs.

Then we need better labor laws.

Possible, but it is hard to implement in a failsave way.

How can the new employee proof he was fired, because he was sick too often?

last time i tried to stay home [from a public facing food service position] due to the flu i was fired over Christmas. until you change the culture around working through illness and the punitive nature of sick days, especially for those with children, people are not gonna stay home if they think they can tough it out.

No mandatory face masks on public transport, and only advisory quarantine if you are pinged by the app. I don't want to go back to the office.

Sure it may differ If I travel but that's one restriction not a multitude as you suggest.

We're better than normal. My employer already decided to allow up to 60% time remote, no questions asked, forever. You can still come 100% of the time to the office if you want. Some restrictions are still in place, but the future seems brighter for the workplace.

Enforcement is a total joke though.

Well in the UK we've had three separate scandals where major government officials (including the fucking HEALTH SECRETARY) were caught flagrantly violating their own rules with minimal consequence, so you can hardly blame the public for taking things no more seriously than our leadership does.

Same for Denmark. We are at 85% first dose and 78% second dose for the 5.1m people a vaccine was offered, so we are at 75% of the population with at least one dose [1]. Everything is open, there is a suggestion to wear masks in metro, no idea about buses or trains.

[1] https://www.sst.dk/en/english/corona-eng/status-of-the-epide...