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.

That's what I thought. Contain us in this country, get the local economy up and running but don't let us go abroad and risk bringing anything back

Quite. It's logical and not very hard to understand.

@oldegg123

I've posted this before on many threads and seen lots of other people post similar and never get an actual reply.

What does the government have to gain by preventing people going on holidays abroad and keeping restrictions in place? The economy is tanked, encouraging people back to work, booking flights, out for lunches and drinks are what's needed to get things back on track. The government reluctance isn't some big conspiracy, it's because we're in the midst of pandemic which sadly won't adhere to human timescales no matter how fed up people are.

BJ has led to this shitshow with his constant overpromising and lack of leadership despite advice from experts.

👏

For example, the UK has kept all schools closed and prevented people from leaving their local areas

And what that actually means is that kids are asked to stay home unless their parents demand they attend school, in which case they can, and people are asked to stay in their local area, but loads of people don't and oh well, stiff upper lip and all that, chaps.

Everyone bemoaning no international holiday for a year or two, the longer it is until coronavirus is controlled, the more families won’t be able to afford food and schooling, much less a holiday, much less a holiday abroad. There’s not much freedom in living and bringing up families below the poverty line.

Between that and the mandatory vaccines for carers it's all going a bit North Korea.

Erm..... no. Fucking ridiculous, offensive and uneducated comment.

@RampantIvy

Freedom is being eroded. I find it disturbing.

The virus doen't move around on its own. People move it around. Yes, it is horrible, but I would far rather be able to go out and about freely in my own country than continue in a state of yo-yo lockdowns because some people can't do without a foreign holiday.

I realise it isn't fair on people whose families live overseas, but it is pretty obvious that the countries who have been stricter about foreign travel are the ones who are enjoying more freedom now.

Couldn't agree more.

What's more shocking is that this wasn't the case a year ago.

Like Australia and like New Zealand, we are an island nation.
Let's compare the data.......

People are really losing the ability to be understanding of others who are in a different situation to them. Seeing family abroad, for many people’s mental health, is essential.

I don’t have school age kids so for me, opening schools is not essential. I don’t really see why kids with parents at home can’t continue to be home schooled. But- I understand that I don’t have experience of home schooling. And I wouldn’t tell someone who does that their and their kids’ needs are ‘not essential’.

This is getting frightening now, I agree. It is disproportionate and is eroding our rights. We are born with our rights - they are not a governments to give or take away.
What we accept without questioning, our children will have to live with.

I bet many complaining about holidays are the same ones saying look at new zealand and australia's rates

@Wellbythebloodyhell

It will be illegal to fart soon 🙄

Cork bungs for all.

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.

Ive not been abroad since 1986 I dont even have a passport. But i can sympathize with those who want to go abroad to see family.

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. There is always a silver lining. Holidays abroad are not something that we all "need".

@BackforGood

What's more shocking is that this wasn't the case a year ago.

Like Australia and like New Zealand, we are an island nation.
Let's compare the data.......

I think you're forgetting Northern Ireland.

Like Australia and like New Zealand, we are an island nation.

People constantly forget that the U.K. includes NI, which shares a soft border with a completely separate EU country

So if we had closed borders right from the start and still have them closed would people be saying our human rights had been eroded or would they be happy that we had avoided long lockdowns (Australia seem to have very heavy handed lockdowns whenever the virus rears its ugly head)

We are born with our rights

Well, some people might be. Mostly not.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz

Welcome to fucking Gilead.

Where we now say “under his chin”

@IloveJKRowling.

So many?

I have been sceptical about the Government’s piecemeal, haphazard and contradictory approach to this whole thing from the get-go, but I have largely complied with it all, as it was the right thing to do. Now though, I am starting to get really very concerned at the rapid erosion of rights and freedoms, all under the questionable banner of ‘safety’. We have had a year of this now, but we are expected to swallow more. People are very quickly reaching saturation point, and I am not clear what the Government are going to do about large scale failures to comply.

I’m not sure how much banning international travel/holidays/family visits will help. We will still have many people leaving and entering the country everyday for work (lorry drivers etc). Obviously less than if leisure travel was allowed but surely it’s only a matter of time before one of them brought in a new variant and then it would transmit locally. We are an island nation , yes, but not really comparable to Australia and New Zealand as we are very easily connected to all of Europe by road/shipping routes/short air travel and they are much more isolated. I think large amounts of tourists would be an issue but people visiting families in countries with comparable covid rates to the UK should be allowed, using testing. My elderly grandfather with cancer wants to visit his homeland/see his family for potentially the last time. It seems unfair that so many people are separated from family abroad, when if they flew to see their families they probably wouldn’t come into contact with many more people/be more likely to transmit covid than someone getting public transport to see family in a different part of the UK. And new variants can spring up anywhere. Maybe hotels/tourist attractions should stay shut across Europe to discourage tourism but allow people to visit others they know well enough to stay with? As this is essential for mental l health.

@WiganNorthWest

I’m not sure how much banning international travel/holidays/family visits will help. We will still have many people leaving and entering the country everyday for work (lorry drivers etc). Obviously less than if leisure travel was allowed but surely it’s only a matter of time before one of them brought in a new variant and then it would transmit locally. We are an island nation , yes, but not really comparable to Australia and New Zealand as we are very easily connected to all of Europe by road/shipping routes/short air travel and they are much more isolated. I think large amounts of tourists would be an issue but people visiting families in countries with comparable covid rates to the UK should be allowed, using testing. My elderly grandfather with cancer wants to visit his homeland/see his family for potentially the last time. It seems unfair that so many people are separated from family abroad, when if they flew to see their families they probably wouldn’t come into contact with many more people/be more likely to transmit covid than someone getting public transport to see family in a different part of the UK. And new variants can spring up anywhere. Maybe hotels/tourist attractions should stay shut across Europe to discourage tourism but allow people to visit others they know well enough to stay with? As this is essential for mental l health.

We are not an island nation. We have a long and complex border with Ireland. Northern Ireland is part of our nation.

I think "close borders till vax" is probably the least-bad COVID policy overall, if it can be done. I do think that it would have been tricky to do in the UK though.

1. We get a lot of lorry freight through the Channel Tunnel. We would have had to have worked out a way to quarantine or keep out huge numbers of drivers, many of whom are obviously British. It's a bit different with boat freight---container ships use few people these days, and the small staff numbers can quarantine on their boats which are fully equipped for this.

2. We are not an island and we share a soft border with RoI. Either we would have had to have turned this into a hard border, or we would need to draw a line around the island of Ireland, cutting off Northern Island (which would have enraged the Unionists). Both politically very difficult, though perhaps not impossible.

3. Back in spring 2020, overwhelming medical opinion (WHO et al) was that border controls don't work and are counter productive, and very few people would have supported it. Business interests would have fought tooth and nail. Most of the left wing press would have exploded with rage---"it's racist," "it's xenophobic," "it's unfair to immigrants and diverse families with relatives overseas," "it's insensitive towards the Irish," "Boris Johnson is only doing this to try to get the ground prepared for a hard Brexit with a hard border in Ireland" etc. etc.

Remember, right now we have a political alignment where people on the left are (for once in their lives, in most cases!) suddenly in favor of hard border controls while more conservative people are more likely to be against this. But this was not the case in spring 2020. Back then, it was Nigel Farage (!! Yes, really) howling that we should close the borders to keep the dangerous Chinese disease out. The left leaning media was full of cheery content that was airily reassuring us that we should keep open borders, that we shouldn't "blame germs on foreigners" and there was initially tut-tutting about Australia closing its borders. Everyone seems to have conveniently memory-holed this, but the reality is that closing borders would have really politically difficult at the time, and huge numbers of people would have basically refused to comply.

"Almost no one ever talks about the great covid realignment, completely forgotten to time" See this for some eye-popping tweets, including the one from dear old Nigel Farage.
twitter.com/edwest/status/1318460476901253120

Loving the people having a tantrum over their right to holiday / spread the virus.