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WHAT about the people that work for the holiday companies? There will be no companies left to take you on holiday in 2022.
I left the travel industry (one of the bigger online travel agents) at the start of the pandemic and the general feeling is the big companies ie your booking.com, Airbnb, and Expedia will be fine and have took on massive investment and or made massive redundancies. The smaller ones likely will not survive. And the big three will just buy them up for the inventory.
If people are allowed to go I say let them go for some people its their passion like mine is riding bikes. We just have to hope the gov' put a process in place for people coming and going. Judging someone for their actions isn't helpful because no one is perfect.
I sure as hell would love something to aim for
Agreed. But if I have to spent next winter with similar restrictions to this winter... all because some people can't "live" without a holiday abroad, I'll be slightly peeved. I'm desperate to get out of this country myself... but I can't see us (as a whole, not just the UK) being so on top of this by the summer that we can start travelling the globe without proper quarantine on returning... well, not without risking another rubbish winter.
[ The other side of this... is that if we are allowed to holiday abroad this summer... I really don't think I can resist going. I so want to escape... I'm aware of the duplicity. ]
I would love to get away somewhere in the UK this year. Actually, I just want to be able to go back to Belfast for a week to see friends and family.
Actually, I just want to be able to go back to Belfast for a week to see friends and family.
None of my family are local. I've not seen most of them for over 12 months now. Not seen some since 2019. Thanks for the kick... being able to stay with, and see them, in the UK, should be my aim... abroad next year. Perspective. Priorities. Thanks. And UK riding... not from my back door.... actually, I'm buzzing thinking about it now. Thanks again.
I just want to be able to go back to Belfast for a week to see friends and family.
You'll be allowed to do this once immediate lockdown is relaxed. Son 2 is Ireland studying and we will be traveling to collect him. THE GFA helps here with travel arrangements, but staying overnight in the Republic may still be a challenge for us. He's quarantined himself twice so far. Once in September and again in January.
Agreed. But if I have to spent next winter with similar restrictions to this winter… all because some people can’t “live” without a holiday abroad, I’ll be slightly peeved.
I understand people wanting to go abroad, but I certainly think there should be proper thought (ie not by this government) about things like quarantine etc to try and make sure "we" don't undo the good work of lockdown and vaccination.
I'd sooner have the longer term freedom of movement to see friends and family and sit inside a cafe next winter rather than have a week in the sun this summer and end up back here again in 12 months time.
That's the question and message that the government, scientists and media need to be putting across.
Probably best not put it to a referendum alongside the local elections in May though, eh?
I’d sooner have the longer term freedom of movement to see friends and family and sit inside a cafe next winter rather than have a week in the sun this summer and end up back here again in 12 months time.
+1 I really want to see a couple of friends again, watched Interstellar last night which was a bad idea.
Only takes a few people to bring a variant across though, remember the graphical/animated models that were produced at the start of this that showed the effects of various measures - travel restrictions only delayed the virus getting into the country, it'll be the same with the variants. I think NZ/AUS have only been successful because of their relative isolation, the UK comparatively speaking is still seeing a lot of people coming and going for work.....I mean I'm off on Friday to go and help out with a vaccine project in NL.
I’d sooner have the longer term freedom of movement to see friends and family and sit inside a cafe next winter rather than have a week in the sun this summer and end up back here again in 12 months time.
I quite agree.
But whatever it is, people need something to look forward to.
For you, that's a coffee in a cafe this winter, for others it's a week in the sun in August, for me it's a mass start running event. There's no right or wrong, some would take another harsh winter it it meant they could travel over the summer.
At the moment, there feels like nothing at all to aim at, irrelevant of what you want to do.
So what (currently) worried me about trying to vaccinate our way out of the pandemic is that with tens of thousands of cases a day (orders of magnitude more worldwide) we have an ideal scenario for accelerated evolution of the virus into vaccine-resistant forms. The annual flu cycle is much slower and smaller, plus we have a high level of innate immunity due to previous infection, so we can keep up with (slightly ahead of) it.
I don’t have the quantitative modelling knowledge to say whether we will keep ahead of this one but it seems a far more challenging proposition.
But if I have to spent next winter with similar restrictions to this winter… all because some people can’t “live” without a holiday abroad, I’ll be slightly peeved. I’m desperate to get out of this country myself… but I can’t see us (as a whole, not just the UK) being so on top of this by the summer that we can start travelling the globe without proper quarantine on returning… well, not without risking another rubbish winter.
Change "holiday abroad" with "meeting up at christmas" and thats why we're in this current lockdown.
I don’t have the quantitative modelling knowledge to say whether we will keep ahead of this one but it seems a far more challenging proposition.
Have you considered trying anyway, it's not like either you (or TiRed) lack the aptitude to be able to teach yourself that kind of modelling? Because that's exactly the question I want to see answered.
Otherwise, all I can see are unsubstantiated maybes and the industry/policy equivalent to winging it - then again my line of work within pharma has probably just made me an overly rabid cynic.
There’s no right or wrong, some would take another harsh winter it it meant they could travel over the summer.
I accept that point. My concern is that the government and media are not being honest about the potential impact of choices we want to make. Making a sweeping generalisation but I suspect theres a big intersect between those wanting their usual party week in a Spanish beach resort and those who are unhappy at their freedoms being restricted into yet another lockdown
plus we have a high level of innate immunity due to previous infection
I view vaccination as catching up with some previous infection history. Anything else is an upside to be honest. I think there will be some cross-strain protection, possibly more than influenza, which can undergo enormous strain shift with neuraminidase and haemglutinin surface proteins. I don't think coronaviruses are subject to such rearrangement.
How many years do you envisage further lockdowns being needed TiRed?
My concern is that the government and media are not being honest about the potential impact of choices we want to make
They're being vague about everything, that's part of the problem.
If they said "do X and Y and this will happen, misbehave and it won't" it'd help everyone. But they won't, either as they can't or they don't want to.
Even if they did there would be a u-turn a few days later.
I think NZ/AUS have only been successful because of their relative isolation, the UK comparatively speaking is still seeing a lot of people coming and going for work
Some sort of watery moat type thing around the country would be really useful, wouldn't it?
Wait, what's that you say? We have one!? I had no idea!
For a government voted in specifically to control our borders, they have been pretty shit at it really.
You had one job! etc
So here’s a question for you.
I work for a major travel company in their ‘transport’ division, have been furloughed on and off till December, now on permanent furlough.
I understand the fact of variant transmission by opening up borders etc and it conflicts me greatly, on one hand I want the international travel industry to have a ‘summer’ but don’t want more series of lockdowns due to variant transmission as well, also my partner is clinically extremely vulnerable, so it has been a tough long haul for us.
I just can’t see, without state support, how our company can keep afloat if there is no ‘summer’.
Will the government offer us furlough beyond April and will it be publicly acceptable if the rest of the U.K. economy starts opening up?
How many years do you envisage further lockdowns being needed TiRed?
Lockdown is primarily driven by protection of healthcare resource. Provided the vaccination confers protection against severe disease, I don't see why they would be needed post extensive vaccination. Now had you said removal of all contact restrictions, then I would have said longer - perhaps 12 months, depending on Winter. But unlike last year, where we had 3 months effective lockdown, a significant reduction in cases, admissions and deaths, followed by reversal due to lack of any meaningful immunity (to disease), this year it looks like we will have that protection.
I am unconvinced that the strains we are seeing have zero cross-reactivity. And I was never a believer in previous T cell cross reactivity that was such a popular idea.
Will the government offer us furlough beyond April and will it be publicly acceptable if the rest of the U.K. economy starts opening up?
They will have to extend it, but probably link it to what you can do at each part of the unlocking process.
So if its:
A - Schools
B
C
...
Z - Mass indoor events
You unlock everything in group A, see what impact that has and then move onto group B, etc..
The protection should be linked to each of those activities.
The difficult bit is its not easy to separate businesses into Silos.
Supermarkets selling clothes is ok, but normal retail shops cannot open.
Tui is taking bookings (lots of them), so they must be fairly confident of overseas trips this year.
I hope so, luckily I did all my bike buying in the first lockdown, so should be able to weather any further reductions in salary.
All the major players TUI, easyJet and Jet2 have got lots of bookings but the issue is, nobody actually knows what’s round the corner, will it be June, July etc when the big padlock gets undone on the border gates. Unfortunately nobody is in possession of a crystal ball.
You can book international holidays in May at the moment but I think that is a pipedream.
I just am really worried about my employment position at the moment.
(my bold)
You may remember the tale of the jeweller from Florida and the Spanish intermediary who profited to the tune of tens of millions of pounds from vast PPE contracts, paid for with taxpayers’ money. Well, there have been developments.
Government continues to fail to publish details of contracts within the legally required timeframe, but we have learned of another contract it entered into with the jeweller Saiger, worth £36 million, for face masks.
The contract was for FFP2 masks – which protect the wearer, unlike the ones we all wear to the supermarket. But to protect the wearer they need to be adjustable - which means headstraps - and all of these masks have ‘earloops’. Earloop masks, Government has admitted in other cases, can’t be used in the NHS because they don’t give a proper fixing. We expect these £36 million of masks will also be unusable.
Not only did Government buy PPE that can’t be used. It also appears to have paid well over the odds. For one type of mask, Government paid $2.93 per unit. The prevailing price paid by Government at the time it entered into the contract was about 60p per unit: more PPE, paid for at a premium, that can’t be used by the NHS.
But that’s not all.
Saiger was awarded a contract worth £70.52 million to buy 10.2 million sterile surgical gowns. We are challenging this particular contract in court. Almost all of the gowns supplied under that £70m+ contract are unable to be used as such because they are wrapped in such a way that their sterile quality can’t be maintained.
At this stage, you might be wondering: shouldn’t a responsible Government just put up its hands and say “we got this wrong”?
Instead, it is spending, quite literally, millions in public funds trying to defend the indefensible. And what we want to know is, who is this spending for - is it in your interests? Or is it to avoid political embarrassment? If you would like to support our attempts to deliver transparency, you can donate to the legal challenge here.
Sorry I'm back "bitching" again, but this is really stunning to me and you barely hear about it in the MSM. How many lives does this type of corruption cost? We'll probably never know.
You can help fund the legal challenge here: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/the-jeweller-middleman-ppe/
Sorry I’m back “bitching” again, but this is really stunning to me and you barely hear about it in the MSM.
The exact same story is on the BBC website
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55934676
They’re being vague about everything, that’s part of the problem.
If they said “do X and Y and this will happen, misbehave and it won’t” it’d help everyone. But they won’t, either as they can’t or they don’t want to.
Even if they did there would be a u-turn a few days later.
This is the main issue, the government are untrustworthy about any restrictions for many people. Even if they came out and suddenly started giving us plain, easy to understand answers to direct questions no-one would believe them. The default position now for a lot of people is to take any announcements with a pinch of salt and essentially ignore them, there will be a u-turn in a few days or it'll even be dropped entirely. The damage by constant u-turns, acting late, the Cummings fiasco and the chaos of the christmas restrictions has already been done and I fear is irreversible.
They will have to extend it, but probably link it to what you can do at each part of the unlocking process.
So if its:
A – Schools
B
C
…
Z – Mass indoor eventsYou unlock everything in group A, see what impact that has and then move onto group B, etc..
The protection should be linked to each of those activities.The difficult bit is its not easy to separate businesses into Silos.
Supermarkets selling clothes is ok, but normal retail shops cannot open.
At least it's a better idea than the current all-or-nothing system. Businesses could plan for what is likely to happen as they would know where they stand in the pecking order and can look at data to see the likelihood of them opening soon or not, plan staffing and stock levels etc. At the moment everyone is waiting to open the second they can, all at the same time and then when infections and hospital admissions go up they all have to shut again. Phased release of restrictions with financial backing for those that have to stay shut is the only way to ease out of all of this without risking another surge in cases, similar to filling a beaker from the tap. The current system is filling it directly from mains pressure, overwhelming it instantly whereas your system of graded releases is like using a tap where you can control the flow and prevent the beaker overflowing. Worst case scenario is the water flow blows the beaker out of your hand and it smashes on the floor, if we released restrictions too early for this summer then we are at real risk of doing just that.
I'd like to say that the BBC article is shocking but it's just normal Govt behaviour nowadays
I think NZ/AUS have only been successful because of their relative isolation, the UK comparatively speaking is still seeing a lot of people coming and going for work
tRiGgErEd
I can't tell exactly what you mean (geographic isolation?) but yes, Australia and NZs response has essentially had 3 parts:
Extreme reduction in international arrivals - only citizens (and permanent visa holders are allowed in), and numbers of arrivals are strictly controlled according to the number of quarantine places available. You can leave, but your return has to be managed with quarantine capacity in mind. This was a basically the first thing Australia did in March/April 2020. Virgin Australia immediately went into administration, as did a number of other airlines - We lost about 2k on flights to Fiji because our holiday insurance doesn't cover a pandemic.
Australians don't all work at the summer bay surf-club - business trips to China, HK Singapore, Malaysia, Japan etc are as much part of our lives over here as they are for people in the UK travelling for work - more perhaps given the cultural component of face to face meetings. All of that stopped overnight.
We didn't have hotel-quarantine straight away - we started having "self isolation" but in very soon was obvious that this wasn't effective, and so hotel quarantine was put in place. Again, lessons were learned very quickly about the shortfalls in the quarantine system and these were (and still are) being addressed very rapidly - like: within a day or two. The size and speed of spread of the outbreak in Melbourne from a single quarantine leak shows that we were susceptible as much as any other less geographically isolated country I think.
The remaining two parts of our response have only been possible because of the success of the first: An effective (genuinely world beating?) test, track and trace system that was up and running if not from the very beginning, then soon afterwards, and then swift, targeted lockdowns of cluster areas (at the suburb/town level) along with a surge in testing and contact tracing in those areas. The largest of which obviously being Melbourne, but parts of Sydney were in "hard" lockdown over Christmas and new year - yes Christmas WAS cancelled for a large chunk of Sydney, and everyone spent NYE at home. The whole of Perth have just gone into a week-long lockdown because ONE of their quarantine hotel cleaners tested positive for covid (the UK variant).
But the point is, we wouldn't have been able to do these two things if we hadn't first "shut the front door" and prevented swathes of new arrivals from triggering new outbreaks (as they did in Melbourne).
I'm as cynical as the next man about politicians (unless that next man is Binners) - but hats off to the Australian national and state leadership teams - they've done a really great job at managing this crisis. They've made tough decisions that have lead to international travel being impossible for Australians for almost a year, made it impossible for peoples relatives to come and visit for the last year, locked down Australia's second largest population center for over three months (with terms hasher than any other countries lockdown I believe - certainly harsher than the UKs current one), and triggered local lockdowns at the first sign of a outbreak (risking a backlash from the residents).
It's hopefully not escaped anybody's attention that the things that have been critical to Australia's success, correspond exactly with the (some of the many) things that Boris et al. have ****ed up.
Sorry - an over-reaction to your comment perhaps, but it has previously been suggested that Australia's success is soley/primarily attributable to it's geographical isolation/populations size/pop density etc, which boils my piss. Those may well have worked to our advantage, but only in combination with a leadership who have been extremely competent throughout, made good, timely decisions (even unpopular ones: people were literally burning effigies of the Victorian premier towards the end of the Melbourne lockdown), admitted where mistakes were made (cruise ships disgorging literally hundreds of infected passengers in the center of Sydney), and worked quickly to correct and plug gaps.
Part of this is attributable to the Australians dusting-off a plan from when SARs emerged and locking the borders ASAP, but I honestly believe that the Australian public's support for Politicians taking the above measures has been boosted by looking at what a monumental ****-up the UKs leadership (and US/EU to be fair) have made of this whole thing - and what that means for their populations.
Ok sorry: rant over..... as you were.
batfink
Full MemberWe didn’t have hotel-quarantine straight away – we started having “self isolation” but in very soon was obvious that this wasn’t effective
And on that note, I think you can understand everything you need to about the UK government response from the fact that up til now, while you were required to obtain a negative covid test before you travel to the UK, if you arrive without one and get found out, you get fined £500 and then they let you in anyway. And you were still trusted to self-isolate despite having already broken the rules and proven you can't be trusted. And if you didn't self isolate and somehow got caught despite there being literally no enforcement, you got fined and then got told to go back into self-isolation and were trusted to do so with no enforcement.
Still, on the bright side it looks like we're finally bringing in most of the rules that should have been in place in about April last year.
And you were still trusted to self-isolate despite having already broken the rules and proven you can’t be trusted. And if you didn’t self isolate and somehow got caught despite there being literally no enforcement, you got fined and then got told to go back into self-isolation and were trusted to do so with no enforcement.
Yes, we found ourselves in that position too. I think it was Melbourne that did a study of "self-isolation compliance" which led to our hotel quarantine system being established, with a brief interim period whereby the army were being used to call-on people randomly at home, to check they were there (invariably they weren't).
The conversations about quarantine are really interesting actually: Hotel workers, cleaners, hotel bus drivers etc are literally at the top of the list for vaccines (above even healthcare workers). It's also driven conversations about how much the cleaners and security guards at these hotels are getting paid - with them having infected people via their second jobs.
They are now discussing whether it's particularly sensible hosting these quarantine facilities in city centres (invariably where the hotels are) - with the Northern Territories using a remote(ish by Australian terms) mining village as a quarantine station. A seemingly sensible idea, but the optics of people being bussed to the four Seasons in Circular Quay are hugely different to being transported to a remote collection of portacabins surrounded by barbed wire.
Good post Batfink. I think you could say that NZ had some extra advantages, but that really isn't the case for Australia. The direct and extremely busy traffic between Australia and East Asia almost worked to your advantage, as it focused the minds of your politicians to 'shut the front door' immediately, whereas the shower of idiots over here were more complacent. My original thought was that we wouldn't see significant case numbers until May, probably, but then Italy exploded.
As an occasional viewer of shows about Australia's border control, you can see there is an embedded culture which takes the idea of a secure border a lot more seriously than we do, in terms of biosecurity and visa issues. It's been a massive advantage.
We're now finding out that even a 'world beating track and trace' is no use when your infection baseline is 150 cases per 100,000. We will never get down to the kind of rates Australia has managed to achieve and maintain, that ship has sailed. South Korea and Australia/NZ showed what can be achieved even in high population areas.
Grant Shapps on the radio talking complete sense. I think it may have been a dream.
Did he offer to quit his position due to his inadequacy?
I’ll paraphrase … “don’t book a holiday, at home or abroad, we don’t know when travel for recreation will be possible again, it depends on lots of unknowns and we will wait ‘till we know more before planning a return to non-essential travel”.
I wonder if everyone who has booked already has read the t&cs of their 'covid guarantee' or travel insurance? Haven't seen one in the flesh, but I wonder if they cover a holiday which is still available, but you can't take because the UK government wants you to enjoy an expensive extra 10 days in a hotel near Gatwick?
I’ll paraphrase … “don’t book a holiday, at home or abroad, we don’t know when travel for recreation will be possible again, it depends on lots of unknowns and we will wait ‘till we know more before planning a return to non-essential travel”.
DO you have the actual quote please fella ? I'm struggling currently persuading Mrs Weeksy we're not going to Portimao in May as she's kinda clinging onto it. Me, i'd prefer to just say "sod it, lets forget the idea completely"... but we're at a bit of an impasse.
I’m struggling currently persuading Mrs Weeksy we’re not going to Portimao in May
I reckon Portugal will be off the menu for a while, given the Brazilian variant.
DO you have the actual quote please fella ?
Shapps interview started at 0810 on the Today Programme, Radio4. Use BBC Sounds to have a listen.
Shapps interview started at 0810 on the Today Programme, Radio4. Use BBC Sounds to have a listen.
i need typed words 🙂 but if it's an article like that i'm sure we'll find it coming on-line in the next few hours... Cheers.
I reckon Portugal will be off the menu for a while, given the Brazilian variant.
Oh i'm the first to agree with you, i think it's a bloody stupid idea. However, Mrs Weeksy like most of us is struggling with the lockdown stuff and this trip is just something she's really holding onto to give her some sanity and something to look forward to. Me, i'd say we can it and move onto an idea of Burgundy in Aug/Sep instead and have something that's a bit more realistic to look forward to.
the optics of people being bussed to the four Seasons in Circular Quay are hugely different to being transported to a remote collection of portacabins surrounded by barbed wire.
I can see how that might be a trigger for folk in a former penal colony 😉
Excellent insight from batfink again. Very envious of both your government and the support it's had from the wider population, though the two clearly follow one from the other.
I missed the Grant Shapps interview, be interesting to see if it gets any decent coverage. Was disappointed that coverage of Matt Hancock tbe other day concentrated on the opening "we hope to have vaccinated all the over 50s by May" and completely ignored the next line which was "subject to being able to expand the vaccination programmes and supply keeping up with it"
For all the governments rubbish communication, the Press seeking clickbait soundbites and dumbing it down has not helped either, and I'd like to see any inquiry looking at that aspect as well.
For all the governments rubbish communication, the Press seeking clickbait soundbites and dumbing it down has not helped either
This.
I didn’t hear that interview weeksy, it was a different one… and I advise listening rather than reading a few selected quotes stretched out to form a rushed article like that.
from the guardian with a word for word quote:
Good morning. Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, caused a row with the travel industry in April last year when he said people should not book a summer holiday and now he has done it again. In an interview on the Today programme he said that, “on the shrinking chance” that anyone was thinking about a summer holiday, he would advise them not to book anything now - not just abroad, but domestically too.
Given that dreaming about a holiday is one of the things people are most likely to be doing in lockdown, it was an odd form of words. Here is the quote in full.
First of all, I should say, people shouldn’t be booking holidays right now, not domestically or internationally ...
On the shrinking chance that there is anybody listening to this interview at this stage, and thinking of booking a holiday under the current circumstances ... and until we know the route out of lockdown, which we can’t know until we have more data, more information on vaccines as well, please don’t go ahead and book holidays for something which, at this stage, is illegal to actually go and do - whether it’s here or abroad.
And, further down the line, I simply don’t know the answer to the question of where we’ll be up to this summer; it’s too early to be able to give you that information. You would want to wait until that’s clear before booking anything. So the best advice to people is do nothing at this stage.
Shapps said that Boris Johnson would be saying more about the easing of restrictions when he publishes his roadmap out of lockdown later this month. But he said he did not know whether the plan would include guidance on holidays.
Shapp's comments seem to be a tiny footnote on the the BBC story about him defending the 10 year sentence for being a dick.
Nice one jam-bo (and the Guarniad).