SO, it has finally happened.

After weeks from warnings from health officials, we still couldn’t behave properly, so we’ve been grounded.

At least, some of us couldn’t behave properly.

However, the main outcry yesterday from our local leaders was not about the fact that we are being slapped on high alert, but that not enough of us are being slapped on high alert.

Indeed, that has been a complaint from people across the country ever since the Government rolled out its system of tiered restrictions.

Many leaders in the north of England say that trying to put individual cities on lockdown is futile when residents can go for a short walk or a short drive to an area with different rules, and go out for a meal or to the pub.

Stories abound of streets on the borders where residents are still able to go to the pub down the road.

In Oxford, from tomorrow, most of Botley Road will be on High Alert, meaning no one can meet socially outdoors, but that won’t apply to McDonald’s, because that is technically in the district of Vale of White Horse.

If this seems confusing, then be assured – it is: that's exactly what council leaders wanted one single rule.

As we have already seen in Oxford, it is impossible to force people to even follow national rules about social distancing, so to try and enforce a very specific extra restriction in a city with as fluid a population as Oxford may end up feeling like pushing water uphill.

One does not envy the officers who are supposed to police these rules for the foreseeable future.

What the Oxford Mail would advise, as we have from the start, is for all of our readers to continue to act in the sane and sensible way that we know 90 per cent of you have been from the very start of this whole mess: going out when necessary, wearing a mask, washing your hands and keeping your distance.