Off Topic London Calling: Summer Holidays Abroad 2021 in doubt?

So to sum it up.

First lockdown to late - bad
Care homes - abomination
Not closing the borders - bad
Furlough - good
Easing lockdown - bad (hindsight is a wonderful thing)
Eat out to help out - bad
Christmas - bad
Schools - bad
Vaccine Roll Out - good
3rd lockdown - seems to be working

Now read those again and ask what did the press and TV channels piss and moan about and they are all linked.

As bad /good the government have been, the mainstream media have been there driving the fight

 

That was the biggest mistake and millions of infected people have been allowed to travel into the UK. The fact that restrictions are being imposed now shows how important it is.

However the phrase is 'border controls' not 'closure'. Of course freight, etc, should be possible but controlled and contact kept to the minimum.

And of course people should be allowed to return home from abroad but they've been allowed to go back to infected countries and return to the UK without any checks.

Allowing millions of totally unnecessary flights has cost lives, no doubt about it.

Of course it would've seemed expensive at the time but boy are we paying for it now.

 

Did anybody in Europe close their borders?

 

Is anywhere else in Europe an island as large as Great Britain ?

 

What does that have to do with anything?

 

From April onwards it was us travelling that was a bigger issue - we’ve been the country in Europe with the biggest issue. I had friends that went to Spain and in that part there were zero cases but where I live in West Yorks it had some of the highest levels in the UK. Initially it came from outsiders coming in - Cheltenham festival and the Rugby game and the Liverpool game etc but after that it’s been out of hand internally.

 

I'd say it's both mate, there's been millions of unnecessary incoming flights.

Yes we've allowed far too much travelling inside our own country, I can't deny that. Allowing PL supporters to go to games was nothing more than a publicity stunt ...

... getting a couple of thousand people into the ground must've cost more than it was worth.

What it did was make other people think 'if they can travel to a bloody football match then I'm going to see my parents'.

As for our borders we've had endless pointless trips in and out of the country. As just one example after Christmas 200 skiers skipped the enforced quarantine, in Verbier, and flew back to the UK. They'd been mixing with South African skiers who evaded the quarantine and returned home.

To my mind that's totally irresponsible.

What it shows is that people have been allowed to do what they please without any respect for other people. Their journeys weren't essential, they've mixed with all kinds of foreigners, with the possibility of all kinds of virus variants, and swanned back to the UK without any checks whatsoever.

 

A lot of people from all over the world come to the Cheltenham festival, I myself believe that it had the biggest effect on people who caught it. The other two were bad but that Cheltenham event should have been cancelled

 

Supporters of the government will claim everyone is simply using hindsight to criticise them.

But all kinds of people, from Tory MP's to scientists, were shocked when Cheltenham went ahead. It was obviously a really bad idea and in no way essential.

No one would've died if it was called off ...

... but I expect many did because it wasn't.

 

As far as I am aware, the virus cannot live in cold salt water.

 

Yeah and if a landlocked country closes it's borders the virus won't be going in or out.

 

But we are not a landlocked country.

 

I wasn't allowed to travel further than 5km from my flat for the best part of six months.

I don't know how the idea of shutting international borders is so hard to understand.

 

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I completely understand that allowing millions of people to fly in and out of this island allowed thousands of infected people to enter the country. It is not a difficult concept to grasp. I am not continuing to discuss this or anything else with someone who is being deliberately abstruse. Enjoy your day

 

I lived in Nice for a few years and we were close to the Italian border. There were endless road crossings and many people commuted between the two countries. Closing the French border there, Spain, Germany, etc, may be quite difficult.

Placing restrictions on sea and air travel is infinitely easier and apparently we have the army who would be perfect for that task.

 

If i'm correct the EU forbid their member nations and EEA nations from closing their national borders without justification and was not dicriminative.

Stopping travel and human interaction is the only real way to stop the transmission. Within Australia we went as far as closing our state borders, effectively what Europe could have done albeit on a smaller scale

 

neither is the Republic of Ireland but they have covid

 

The Lowery Institute have just released a Covid performance index which basically ranks how countries did in battling the virus. Takes a whole load of stuff into account which is way too long to try to verbalise here.

Worth looking at their website.

Seems they think 65 out of 98 governments/countries have out performed us.

 

Unless it supports the government it'll be declared false news or biased media ...

... even Tory MP's comments are dismissed if they point out where mistakes have been made.