Would you kill your granny for a haircut?

As economists just will keep on insisting revealed preferences beat expressed every time. As a source of information about what people truly desire that is.

Backstreet barbers are operating despite social distancing rules, causing the hairdressing industry body to issue a warning.

Hairdressers have been advised that they can show customers how to cut their hair via phone calls and social media, but cannot make home visits.

Hairdressers across the UK are taking calls and allowing clients to book home visits, to fix their lockdown hair. To do this would be flouting the coronavirus social distancing guidelines.

Hilary Hall, from the National Hair and Beauty Federation (NHBF), said hairdressers and barbers had been "besieged" with calls from clients wanting home visits.

No one would ever say that a haircut is more important than the health of the nation’s grannies. But some goodly number of people will act so. Something which is just another example of that problem planners face - how to find out what it is that the populace actually desires to be planned.

We’ve also agreed, along the way, with that gentleman in Sweden. Who keeps saying that yes, lockdowns are an important part of the fight but they must be reserved for the right moment. For they’ll only be effective as long as the majority obey them and the majority won’t for any great length of time. That’s just people for you.

So we’ve been - mildly, you understand - wondering what it is that will be that sign of the closure of society fracturing. We did think of haircuts but rejected it as being unlikely - see, planning is a difficult thing.