Rachael Bletchly: Lockdown law threatens to turn easy-going Brits into telltale tits

I have always been a stickler for the rules, a Goody Two-Shoes.

Rules and regulations are the fabric of our society. They tell us all where we stand.

And since lockdown I have been ­standing slap bang on top of those big black footprints painted on escalators and shopping centre floors.

I have followed the one way arrows, queued in the grids, slathered on anti-bac and worn my face covering with an air of civic duty.

And every time some selfish, mask-less moron has barged past me with “up yours” ­abandon while going the wrong way down a supermarket aisle I seethe with indignation.

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Would you dob in your neighbours? (stock image) (Getty)

Just like when the neighbours have yet another barbecue – with the eight grown-up family members I hadn’t ­realised shared their three-bed semi. So I tut and sigh and roll my eyes from across the fence as I mentally rehearse the telling-off I’d like someone – but not me – to deliver.

What I don’t do is dob them in. Because no one likes a grass, the cops have better things to do and, in the end, we all just want to live in peace and harmony.

Yet the Government’s ­latest lockdown law is ­threatening to turn millions of easy-going Brits into a bunch of curtain-twitching, telltale tits.

It is a Nosey Neighbours charter. The Rule of Snitch.

Priti Patel reveals she would dob her neighbours to the police

At the start of lockdown we were all out on our doorsteps, ­clapping for carers and getting to know the people we’d only nodded at for years.

Then came the VE Day street parties and neighbourly WhatsApp group.

Now our leaders want us to spy on the Joneses and report if there’s a ­seventh chair round the dining room table. And plenty of people ARE happy to snitch. Research by a civil liberties group shows a record number of antisocial behaviour orders were issued last year.

Councils dished out 8,760 Community Protection Notices and fines after ­neighbours were grassed up for pitching tents on their back lawns, feeding birds or swearing.

Boris and his soundbite-obsessed c­ronies claim the Rule of Six restriction simplifies Covid regulations.

But a law that bans seven kids from gathering to feed the ducks while letting 30 posh blokes gather to shoot grouse simply baffles most people.

Even the rule sticklers and goody two-shoes.

It is time for the Government to show some direction – with rules based on a functioning test and trace system not their off target “Moonshot”.

We cannot stand for any more incompetence.