Holidays abroad are illegal from Monday

[Dugee]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9389921/Ban-leaving-UK-amid-new-coronavirus-laws-force-week.html

Along with any other unnecessary travel abroad.

Week on the Costas? Wow, snobbery or what.

@Itsalonghaul

Okay lets do it your way flinstones lets throw open the borders, protest in our thousands, party like its 1969 and then in four weeks time you will be the first to be howling when we are locked down for another four months.

Your kids will be at home again with their mental health declining by the second, your job will be gone, your house and mortgage will be next. The economy will go into free fall, and we will no longer be able to fund the NHS to help the dying and then what?

All for your week on the costas.

Most of us knew international travel was probably off the cards, most of us are grateful to simply have our kids back in school and some family parties in the garden this spring, a drink with friends in the pubs, a holiday somewhere in the UK will be 'good enough' for most of us, if it means we can avoid a third wave.

If you don't think UK holidays are good enough for you, then stay the fuck home, at least that way we won't kill another 100,00 in the process.

Goodness me your angry! You can't change my opinion with your obnoxious angry reply. As I've said before stay at home if your scared & let the rest of us out.

@WiganNorthWest

There’s always going to be new variants for many years to come. Are we just going to never see family abroad/travel again and have our airlines and international tourism crumble? I think, when everyone in the UK is vaccinated (adults) by June, there is nothing else we can realistically do so we may as well allow foreign travel this summer-or accept it will never happen again. Nothing is going to change in the next couple of years-there will still be new variants and much of the world won’t be vaccinated. We’ll have to learn to live with the risk of variants at some point, why not limit the damage to the travel industry and allow it this summer once everyone here is vaccinated.

I agree with you completely. Once all adults have had the chance to be vaccinated, what is the purpose of continuing with restrictions? It's a lift restrictions this summer or maintain them forever situation as far as I can tell.

Also wasn’t it said last year that sunlight kills the virus. So Spain, Turkey, Greece, Italy will presumably be safer than cold, wet, windy UK.

If the government did not make it illegal, everyone would ignore the 'advice' and go anyway. So of course they had to put laws in place.

People seem to be missing the point.

Some of the new variants are very dangerous, they are killing younger healthy people, they are immune to the vaccine and in some cases (like the one found in France last week) They are not even picked up with the normal testing capacity.

You have become complacent. You have forgotten what a dangerous and precarious position we are all in.

Something that stayed with me when the lead scientist in SAGE said that the one thing that keeps him awake at night is knowing that almost certainly that very dangerous variant is already out there, and is in a country without genomics testing and will arrive completely undetected.

They are completely right to take the action they have. 'One last summer' could cost us everything.

[quote Trustisamust]@Flinstones A holiday abroad isn't essential. I'm sure your children will be fine missing out on one for a year? Mine are 10 and 13 and have never been abroad and they're happy![/quote]
Firstly it won't be one year it will be two.
I'm glad your children are happy you must feel very lucky.

@Stratfordplace

With regard to the previous posters I am fully aware there is a pandemic and, no, my home is not lined with tin foil. We are, however, accepting more and more restrictions on our freedom. You may be happy with that, I’m not.

Fully agree with you.

lets throw open the borders, protest in our thousands, party like its 1969 and then in four weeks time you will be the first to be howling when we are locked down for another four months

Agree. It's disturbing how some are trying so hard to sabotage everyone's efforts

@backinthebox

I'm in Australia - we haven't been able to leave our country for the entire year. People are actually starting to appreciate their own area , taking holidays where they'd never been before. Country B+Bs are doing great business.

I notice a few Australians popping up and saying they are happy to take holidays in their own country for a while. That’s great that your population of 25 million people are enjoying their own country of 72 million square kilometres complete with ski resorts, tropical beaches and everything in between. It’s a slightly different scenario in the UK though, with over 65 million people sharing just 242000 square kilometres.

Well worth considering in this pandemic that not everyone’s experiences are the same.

The more you travel the more you will notice many communities and countries that are back to normal. I would disagree with this too. Having travelled more extensively than most people in the pandemic I would say that every community I have been to has had huge mitigation factors in place. I was an advocate of early adoption of many of those mitigation factors that I saw in other countries. Having spent every day I’ve been away at work in the last year wearing masks, being tested, temperature checked, tracked, quarantined, confined to room for days, confined to hotel or even refused entry into countries, having seen the decimation of entire countries’ tourism industries, including many less well off countries that rely heavily on tourism but do not offer state aid to those working in that industry, I would say there is not a community or country I have been to that is back to normal. @Hardcoresoftie I don’t know which communities you are talking about. Most of the world is changed, and ‘normal‘ is different to what it once was.

Excellent post. There seems to be an effort to compare our situation to that of other countries. Well folks, the grass isn’t always greener and if nothing else the past year has taught us that things can change quickly.

Funny you should mention Oz because I was thinking exactly the same too. The sheer size of that country means that you’re living on a land mass similar to the size of Europe! Of course things can get back to a semblance of normality because communities are so spread out. The cities will obviously have hotspots but there really is no comparison to the UK. Like comparing a Little Tikes Coupe with a Bus. Let’s not even start on their various climates, amazing beaches and countryside!

Having some of us go abroad spreads us out and is safer or just the same level of risk

Have you let Chris Whitty know about this? I am sure he and SAGE would change their advice if they knew.

@Flinstones Are you saying your kids will be unhappy if they don't go abroad for two years? That's kind of sad

@Stratfordplace

Also wasn’t it said last year that sunlight kills the virus. So Spain, Turkey, Greece, Italy will presumably be safer than cold, wet, windy UK.

Tell that to Brazil. It’s 95 degrees there and they’re in a Covid catastrophe.

stratford if that wast the case there would be a single case of covid in the Middle East or Africa, and we know that isn't true!

@tangerinelollipop

lets throw open the borders, protest in our thousands, party like its 1969 and then in four weeks time you will be the first to be howling when we are locked down for another four months

Agree. It's disturbing how some are trying so hard to sabotage everyone's efforts

Nobody is trying to sabotage anything!! We've done a year we've got vaccines! We have to get on with it. It's not just about being allowed to travel it's about being allowed to do anything we did before.

I don’t need/want to go on holiday abroad
It’s not missing a holiday that bothers me. It’s the fact it’s illegal

I don't understand. So you have a problem with the law basically?

[quote fromdownwest]@LemonTT

These measures were put in using some very very basic and untested modelling. The numbers have fallen well below the hard numbers that were used to introduce lockdown, yet they are being ignored in opening back up again.

We have a vaccine, the numbers are falling massively, I do not see why questioning why we are still in lockdown means I wear a tin hat.

If I have told you the following a year ago, then you would have thought I was crazy

-What I have to weat

• Whom I can see
• What I can buy in a super market (I live in Wales)
• My children will go without school for a year
• I can not see my family
• Travelling abroad is illegal
• I can not drive to a beach 9 miles away without being stopped and fined by the police
• The government can draft in theory any law they like overnight without any parlimenatary discussion or review

This is the reality of where we are, no tin foil hats, just a very very concerned citixen of a 'democratic' society.[/quote]
This.

We gave them an inch and they took a mile, and here we are a year later with no end in sight (no doubt the vaccine issue will cause them to drag their feet to open things up again)

But is there a case for saying that, by choosing to live in a different country, you've already decided to limit your own right to family life?

This wasn’t the deal when I moved as I could still hop on a plane and see my family whenever I wanted.

It’s been far too long and I’m sick of people pretending that this isn’t a big deal, the government will definitely give us our rights back, they won’t find some other reason to continue restricting our right to travel.

@Itsalonghaul

If the government did not make it illegal, everyone would ignore the 'advice' and go anyway. So of course they had to put laws in place.

People seem to be missing the point.

Some of the new variants are very dangerous, they are killing younger healthy people, they are immune to the vaccine and in some cases (like the one found in France last week) They are not even picked up with the normal testing capacity.

You have become complacent. You have forgotten what a dangerous and precarious position we are all in.

Something that stayed with me when the lead scientist in SAGE said that the one thing that keeps him awake at night is knowing that almost certainly that very dangerous variant is already out there, and is in a country without genomics testing and will arrive completely undetected.

They are completely right to take the action they have. 'One last summer' could cost us everything.

ALL OF THIS

@MaxNormal

Between that and the mandatory vaccines for carers it's all going a bit North Korea. Still, as long as we're all safe.

What a ridiculous comment.

Oh no, our freedom to spread disease so that we can have a jolly abroad is being curtailed!

@Skinnytailedsquirrel

What is wrong with people?? We're in the middle of a bloody pandemic. Get a grip if you think a holiday is the most important thing in life.

FFS it’s not about going on bloody holidays! This is really starting to piss me off. WTF is wrong with people? Whoever said ‘welcome to Gilead’ is right.

Are you saying your kids will be unhappy if they don't go abroad for two years? That's kind of sad

They will be scarred for life apparently for 'missing out'

It might be better to take this opportunity to teach your children the art of gratitude and enjoying the beauty around them, rather than raising them to be entitled spoilt brats that care more about their holidays than they do about the lives of other people!

[quote Trustisamust]@Flinstones Are you saying your kids will be unhappy if they don't go abroad for two years? That's kind of sad [/quote]
I never said anything of the sort! A lot of presuming going on about my children. I actually feel sad for those of you that need to say how happy your children are & declare how many years you've not been on holiday for.

Ok I stand corrected but I’m sure that was advice last year as to why Covid wasn’t so virulent during last summer. Then again conflicting advice is what we seem to be getting regularly.

itsalonghaul Something that stayed with me when the lead scientist in SAGE said that the one thing that keeps him awake at night is knowing that almost certainly that very dangerous variant is already out there, and is in a country without genomics testing and will arrive completely undetected.

By that reckoning, with the speed with which these new variants emerge, we will be prevented from leaving the country for the next 10 or 12 years until the whole world is vaccinated for every variant.

What concerns me about all of this is that its purposive, non-evidence based thinking. ie unelected government advisors come up with the most risk averse strategy possible based on the end goal in sight, not the current evidence.

Hence, as SAGE etc get better at effectively governing, the restrictions in the UK are growing ever tighter. The Blavanik School of Governance published a survey a couple of weeks ago that shows that the UK now has the most stringent restrictions in the world (particularly swayed by the long term internal travel ban that has been in place). But our restrictions are growing ever more draconian, despite vaccines and very low death rates/hospitalisations.

The answer in the UK now always seems to be more restrictions on human rights.