School ski trip cancelled due to chaos in Dover - fuck the tories

[TheColourofspring]

My 15 year old son has just spent 17 hours in a coach in dover waiting to go on a much anticipated ski trip. It’s cost us over £1500 over a year and we hoped, given everything our kids lost over covid, it would be a positive experience.

The school just notified us to say that now- due to health and safety, drivers hours etc- the trip needs to be cancelled and the kids are on their way back from dover.

Absolutely FUCK the lying Tory cunts - they ruin everything. They try and blame the French yet all of this lies at their door. Fuck them all for ruining 100 kids trip (and probably thousands more) and ruining everything they touch with their stinking corrupt lies and their lies about brexit.

My son was in tears.

Or… the journey not be sufficient long to warrant two drivers!

Binary, toxic, spiteful, divisive

Just like all "political discussion" has become.

@myoldmansatrendydustman that's really interesting about how and why ships are loaded. Thank you for sharing that.

Look

you said the public should have done research

my point is the “public” has enormous variations in their ability to research

Just as you think the barrel has been scraped... 🙄

I posted two upthread.

the rest I think I can leave you to Google. I have even given you the Google term!

@Villssev has a point. I’ve been travelling to France twice a year, for the past 30 years. I remember queuing for hours and hours when I was a kid to get through Dover. And many times since, years before Brexit. I remember many times being stuck on the motorway, in a long queue waiting to get into the port. This situation was bad anyway - it’s always been risky to get through Dover at the opening of a holiday period.

I do think Brexit has made a difficult situation harder but queues through Dover were almost the norm 30 years ago!!!

When did you have your empathy bypass?

@Villssev that is so true. Earlier in this thread there was a poster making rather outlandish claim that every single year tha thte UK was a member of the EU there were horredous delays at the Port of Dover at Easter. Yet the same poster is incapable of reseaching the evidence for that claim.

Oh sweet Jesus 😂

Yeah Happy Easter to you too!

That’s all very well for you to be smug about it when it’s “only” a holiday at stake. (And I imagine it’s much more than just an optional trip for teens going abroad with a school who otherwise would never have that opportunity. Or for hard working families who have saved up for a rare holiday abroad.) But some of us don’t have your flexibility when it comes to holidays.

And anyway you cannot apply that view to British businesses and farmers trying to export and import goods across the borders every week of the year. Imagine the hassle and stress and loss of time and money x 1000 day in day out?

What if you have elderly family members in poor health, as I do, living on the other side of the border (either way) who are waiting for you?

Bravo for making the decision to stay put but please have some consideration for those of us who, for financial and family reasons, have no choice but to confront the post-Brexit UK border on a regular basis.

@Scyla

You sound nice.

I have provided TWO links covering two years

and I have provided the exact google term for you to insert with the years.

good grief, we’re you like this at school?!

It might not be all unicorns farting rainbows, but this specific problem wouldn’t exist.
It also wouldn’t exist if the Tories had accepted the money from the French to expand capacity to make up for passport checking taking longer. Obviously if labour had never left power then they wouldn’t have needed to make a decision on that either.

This is one of the problems that the Tories openly admitted was going to happen because of Brexit. It’s not even inthe long list of things they deny are due to Brexit.

Many years ago our ferry was held up outside Calais because of French dock strikers, nothing new. The French have frequently caused chaos at peak holiday times so as to maximise the impact and damage.

No this is purely down to Brexit. Which is mainly down to the self serving government and the people stupid or racist or selfish (if very rich) who voted for Brexit despite everyone vaguely decent telling them it would be shite

If you're getting this angry just because it's YOUR son who's been affected, than YABU.

If you're this angry about Brexit and the mess the Tories have made of this country, then YANBU.

It's very late for a ski trip, where were they going?

Not sure of the relevance of any of the above to the situation at Dover this weekend but well done for shoehorning it into the discussion.

@Villssev I am concerned that some posters might think that the abscence of evidence to support the claim that every year the UK was in the EU there were delays at Port of Dover at Easter that perhaps the claim is shall we say exaggerated.

There are French dock workers on strike at the moment?

Yeah. Bit rich to blame this one on the French when they tried to provide a solution and the Tories turned it down.

I don't know why you've got a bee in your bonnet arguing with me. I have organised many school trips from the UK to France and we always favoured a company that provides two drivers. A single driver means a cheaper quote but if they were an experienced company they would have known to expect delays during the Easter holidays. The law says they need to rest for 45 minutes every four hours, which with a single driver adds a lot of delay to the journey for the kids.
Pegasus is just one example of a coach company serving the uk-alps route that offers two drivers.
This thread is insane.

Cringe. Wonder how popular you are at the school gates ;-)

We are staying home for Easter too but zero schadenfreude from me. These poor kids and their disappointed parents who has so hoped to give their children a holiday to remember.