People coming to the UK from France and the Netherlands will be forced to quarantine for 14 days from Saturday. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the measure - which also applies to people travelling from Monaco, Malta, Turks and Caicos, and Aruba, would kick in from 04:00 BST.
Great news We have English people here until 10am Saturday ... ... the news came through as we were having dinner with them. We have more English arriving, from Skipton, who now have a big decision to make. Edit: They've been advised that it's not essential travel so they've had to cancel.
Ok. So a Dutch geezer lands at a British airport. What does he have to do ? Who controls that in fact he quaratines himself and WHERE does he do his quarantine time?
Shameful all of this, it's just making decent people jump through hoops. Two of our guests, with young kids, heard the 'France/quarantine' news at 11pm on Thursday as we were all eating and drinking. They were too drunk to drive so set off on Friday morning, probably still intoxicated. They drove all day and managed to book a ferry, en route, from Dieppe. They sat in the ferry port then, boarded, slept on the floor and arrived exhausted just after 3am. They then had to drive to Hereford with 3 shattered kids, one of whom is autistic and has panic attacks. Setting a 4am deadline was barbaric, this government stinks.
Those are unfortunate circumstances, but . . . . a while ago the government were wrong to do things too slowly, but now that they're doing things quicker (to help towards protecting us all) it's shameful, barbaric, and it stinks I wonder what they could do to 'win'
Maybe announce it officially and at a reasonable time of day? You suggesting they weren’t aware of a spike in France and then got an urgent email and rushed it out? Whilst I’m the first to agree that whoever was in power would have made similar mistakes, there’s absolutely no question that folk have been treated like roadkill throughout this.
Or you could argue they were not to bright for booking a holiday abroad in the middle of a pandemic which is killing people in there 1000s and it’s got bugger all to do with the government if you are thick you are thick.
But didn’t the government give advice that it was on to do so? I certainly wouldn’t call people ‘not to bright’ for having the audacity to have a little bit of normality back in their lives when advised it’s safe to do so. ‘Not to bright’ is having 6 weeks warning of an oncoming pandemic, not closing the borders until it reaches your shores, then closing the borders, but not introducing face coverings for a further 8-10 weeks, then restricting your borders again, but not wholly so people can still come in as long as they take the risk of a connecting flight through another country as there are no checks in the airports see when you were last in a heavily affected country. That, all of that, is undeniably ‘not to bright’. I also edited ‘not to bright’ from ‘thick’
That’s your opinion no problems with that personally I think anyone going abroad with young children in the middle of a pandemic to get a bit of sun when it’s 30+ here is how did I put it thick
Aye, I’m not gonna slate you for your opinion either, if I had kids I’d certainly think long and hard before I went overseas. It’s more just the way they are bringing things in, not giving notice surely is a bigger issue. I mean, look at the scenes at the french airports and the tunnel etc, absolutely packed full of folk desperate for tickets. Now, let’s say a handful of them have picked up Covid, surely having a matter of hours to sort and return is going to increase the risk of transmission at said places and therefore increase the risk of them bringing it back to the UK? I’d say a staggered approach to folk returning would minimise rather than maximise this risk, surely? I will say this, I think the government here have done, overall, a very good job on the ‘way out’ of lockdown etc after botching it to pieces on the way in, I won’t slate them without thought, we’ve generally moved back to ‘normal’ in a far better controlled way than most, evidenced in the numbers. It’s just that snap decisions are being made and that’s a concern. If folk are looking to the countries ‘leaders’ for advice and whether they should travel, then surely that’s then a 2 way thing? Airport bottlenecks are not the way to keep our recovery going, that’s without question.
As Gordon said above they can’t win mate so you just have to hope people engage their brain instead of losing one of their family and then blaming somebody else just to get a tan.
I can see why it irks folk though mate. For example ‘you’re gonna have to wear a face mask, we will be implementing this in 3 weeks time’. No logic, but ok. ‘we told you it was on to travel, you’ve 4 mins to get back’. I’m all for keeping it out, like I say seeing only isolated and relatively small rises here is great, but it’s got to be managed without the appearance of panic decisions. We are in a bit of a haven in the North East at the minute, it isn’t spreading or growing despite increased testing. Crazy that a packed airport for example could start a spike.
I agree again with you but either I’m the only person who listens or I have some sort of hidden power but they also repeated over and over again a new lock down could happen at any time if there’s a spike but the only people who can’t hear this is them who go abroad, strange that.
Yes, they said a new lockdown could start (but it hasn’t), and that restrictions could be brought in at short notice, the point in making is rushing people back creates the panic and scenes and crowds together in a limited space which are the absolute key breeding ground for the virus. There needs to be some controlled measures for those abroad when a quarantine is imposed, it would be far less harmful that way. Even if it’s enforced approved leave from employers and pay cover, the cost of that would be far less than a spike caused by panic at the airports and borders potentially. Like I said we’ve done a good job recently and have plummeted down the tables for numbers etc, why risk it by creating bottlenecks to get home? And why are they still letting folk fly out, surely that is the prevention measure of obvious choice? You’re quite right in that folk should make an educated decision, but isn’t part of that education checking before they go, and being told ‘no problem’? We only know what we are told.
Im sure the logical way would simply be testing folk on arrival in the UK, we know they can now get results in 3 hours. Well, allegedly they can. Far less harmful than someone potentially losing 2 weeks salary etc you’d have thought?
