And yet another complete cock-up…
I confess I am getting somewhat fed up with this travel/quarantine thing
The government has been “expected” with much fanfare to make an announcement all b****y week. The government has announced the announcement, the press have announced the announcement, the press have announced that there will be a different announcement covering more countries, first on Wednesday, then today and currently tomorrow…
But no-one has actually, officially, made the effing announcement 
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It’s total chaos, devoid of any rational basis. First it’s no travel, even to places with much lower infection and death rates.then it’s a few air bridges to the safest places, then - literally within days - it’s virtually open house!
It’s not even bad politics - just total incompetence.
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Yes, this sly weasely tactic of declaring that “an announcement will follow” in due course/shortly/next week/in the Minister’s statement/when appropriate/when Nelson gets his eye back are not only tedious but intended to inflame the common passion. Because the fokkers hold the public in total contempt as a bunch of impotent losers. Their mission is to sow despair, disillusion and craven submission to whatever pigshit they want to feed us. They know we haven’t the spunk to fight back. All we want is more consumption, more mindless distraction, and something handy to HATE HATE HATE!
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Ryanair flew into Bergerac today, I hope the passengers all remembered to ring their bells and to shout “unclean! unclean!” through their masks while maintaining a suitable 1m distance from anyone else…
Brittany Ferries started passenger services on Monday - not sure how that sits with ther previous claim that they would only do so when the FCO had changed its advice from “only essential travel” which has not yet happened but there you go.
As far as 1m goes - I am much more in favour of 2m, 1m is too close to “normal interpersonal distance” that I think people will forget that they are supposed to be maintaining extra distance at all.
I suspect that there is some truth in Peter’s observation that some of the government behaviour is to distract and wear down opposition (and I don’t just mean in the parliamentary sense of opposition here) but the only way I am not coming to France in three weeks is if we lockdown and ban travel again, you close the doors to Brits, BF stops sailing or I get Covid – but it will affect whether I can get valid travel insurance and how my employer behaves should I run into problems (basically if I go out against FCO advice and get stuck or need to quarantine on return I will have to take any extra time off as annual leave or unpaid leave - if the FCO advice changes to allow travel they will consider extra time off as Covid related).
2 metres is unsustainable in the longer term - you may as well close the economy. 1 metre is more natural - you’re not yelling at people - so that makes sense - 2 metres but 1 metre is okay is just b*llocks
Air bridges - bless -that was never an option to the rest of the world except parts of the EU. I think they thought they’d get arrangements with old commonwealth countries - except UK rates dwarf places like Australia so an air bridge would be strictly one way. But it was always a dumb idea for the UK- stolen from the proposed Trans Tasman Bubble/Bridge (but thats based on we’ve eliminated/nearly eliminated Covid) when it makes sense.
Travel bans are more complex - you can’t leave Australia without an exemption as an example. Part of the “ban”/advise against is so the FCO can go you got yourself there don’t expect us to pay to bring you back… lots of countries are discouraging people from travelling overseas.
The new announcement is basically that quarantine goes in the bin on Monday for most places - but you can’t say it was a st idea to make it look like we were doing something - so you dress it up in bullst and hope no one realises its basically we’re scrapping quarantine after a month
There seems to be a favouring of local lockdowns at the moment,so you might be lucky
I am sure our trusted UK government is refining the plans to guarantee another UK covid-19 success.
(Alternatively they have cocked it all up again but wouldnt admit it)
My language might have been extreme (it was) but I have really begun to think that Dominic Cummings really does have contempt for the “common man” (and woman) whose lives consist of poorly paid work servicing the degraded material appetites of their fellows, so as to satisfy their own degraded, numbingly self-destructive life-styles and self-obsessed and increasingly neurotic ambitions, pursuits, escapisms.
Sometimes I think he is onto something, because the straws in the wind tell me something is profoundly wrong with the Western hemisphere, North Atlantic, anglophone world, and a price will have to be paid to set it right.
I am glad my wife and I are in France, where à semblance of human social ingenuity and coherence still has currency. And we have a haven here to which our children should have access if England descends into necessary chaos.
I do hope you Paul @anon88169868 find a fairvwind to get you here sooner than later. Let us know if there is anything we can do help in the meantime, whatever it is, if we can physically do it, we will.
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If the British economy is in a bad way, especially with hospitality, why don’t British people take their holidays at home?
Answer, because they haven’t the brains to think it through and they couldn’t give a damn,
Stepdaughter tried to book passage for one passenger with motorcycle at end of August and was told they were fully booked!
Seems like everyone is hoping for one last holiday before the end of the world as we have known it!
I think they have drastically reduced capacity and insisted that everyone travelling has a cabin - so crossings are going to fill up pretty quickly.
That’ll help the revenue stream, I imagine.
“Eurotunnel Le Shuttle has up to 4 shuttles per hour travelling to France. Book your ticket now from just £31 per car, each way.”
Since everyone has to sit in their cars, I guess that capacity won’t change.
Two long drives and a short crossing could begin to make sense.
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Maybe - they normally fill up on the summer weekend crossings anyway.
Not for me it didn’t - while the un-discounted price looks like a no-brainer by the time you take into account the Club Voyage discount, motorway tolls and extra fuel the two are almost identical - at which point convenience wins out - which, for me, is the ferry.
So long as you can book a passage on the day you want to travel. . . . .
I could but I took a slight gamble and booked before the pre-announcements started and I’m travelling out Thursday night and back Friday daytime which are a bit quieter.
Future crossings we’ll take on a case by case basis.
Because if you can’t publish FB or Instagram selfies of you and the kids having a great time in Florida, or Malaysia, or Dubai, or up Macchu Pichu, or at a temple in Thailand, you’ll be seen for the chav-U-R, a loser on Universal Credit, a} wa*ker who can’t make it, or a Guardian-reading prick who thinks it’s cool to go to the poncey Lake District with all the other yoghurt knitting Remoaner nonces who hate Britain and our brave boys kicking the shits out of the you-know-who bastards in Bongo-land.
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I’m a member of an ‘adventure’ motorcycle group. When I joined I expected it to be full of Harrison Ford types who’ve just come across the Gobi desert with a plastic bucket full of spare petrol, a can of WD40 and a hammer for any on the road maintenance. I’ve looked at a few of the other members’ YouTube videos, they all seem to ride very shiny BMWs, travel across Western Europe on main roads and motorways staying in very plush hotels and film everything on at least three different GoPro cameras at the same time. I’ve obviously misjudged the reality behind the lifestyle.
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Hahahaha
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