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Do you disapprove of people who are planning an overseas holiday this summer?

Is planning an overseas holiday this summer the right thing to do

  • Yes - I’m already booked and will go away regardless of the rules

    Votes: 5 3.7%
  • I’d be booked if the testing regime was more relaxed

    Votes: 7 5.1%
  • I would like a holiday abroad but not until Covid restrictions are over

    Votes: 56 41.2%
  • No they’re selfish bastards thinking only of themselves

    Votes: 32 23.5%
  • NA - I always holiday within the UK

    Votes: 11 8.1%
  • What’s a holiday? I work 400 days a year down the mines

    Votes: 25 18.4%

  • Total voters
    136
Yeah - brexit means mutual recognition of vaccine approvals cant happen. Pre-brexit any vaccine approved for use in eu would have been legal for the uk to recognise. These days the UK has to make its own assessment.
EU vaccines are recognised now it’s those people who have been vaccinated outside of the States and the EU that have to quarantine.
 
Where's that?

Coldingham Bay, and Edinburgh.

We're on holiday in Northumberland - fantastic by the way: castles, endless beaches, nice towns - and we decided to push the Boat of Recklessness out and dip the toe on Forrin waters. Coldingham is great (and the parking is free, and it's got a beach cafe), and Edinburgh was great, though very little was free....
 
Yeah - brexit means mutual recognition of vaccine approvals cant happen. Pre-brexit any vaccine approved for use in eu would have been legal for the uk to recognise. These days the UK has to make its own assessment.

Quite right too. The UK got way ahead of the EU programs so are only recognising them fully as of Monday now that most of them have more or less caught up.
 
Well, I'm at the airport. Arrived the requested 3.5 hours pre-departure, only to be through security in 5 mins.

After doing strictly no indoor pubs/restaurants all this time, I couldn't whip my FFP2 mask off fast enough at the sight of the first branch of Giraffe 😂 , where I'm currently nomming pancakes with bacon and maple syrup, accompanied by a satisfyingly large mug of tea.

I guess the fact that pretty much everybody here will have a recent negative covid test and/or is double-vaccinated should make things relatively safe (that's what I told myself on the packed coach as well. )
 
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My experience of coming back to uk on Saturday was like this:
At Zurich airport there were 3 extra staff at the gate who were there to check all the paperwork required by the Uk gov which they did really carefully in detail, looking closely at covid test result and the 4 page passenger location form, pulling aside anyone who had not completed it correctly & helping them.
Then at Heathrow just went through the electronic gates, nothing at all.
 
today is day 2 since my return and no test kit has arrived yet, not sure what if anything i'm supposed to do about that :hmm:
 
Ordered 5 days ago whilst i was away, from one of the long list of private providers on the gov.uk website.
There has been talk of the unavailability of some of the (usually lower-cost) tests. Tory privatisation at its finest, again, as it looks like the providers have been offering the lower cost tests as a kind of "loss leader" without much incentive to actually provide them in practice.
 
There has been talk of the unavailability of some of the (usually lower-cost) tests. Tory privatisation at its finest, again, as it looks like the providers have been offering the lower cost tests as a kind of "loss leader" without much incentive to actually provide them in practice.
i paid £99 which is not cheap - didnt realise that i - i think? - only need the day 2 one and not the day 8. Actually still not clear on that.
If not arrived by midday will contact them to ask whats up (they have sent plenty emails)
 
My experience of coming back to uk on Saturday was like this:
At Zurich airport there were 3 extra staff at the gate who were there to check all the paperwork required by the Uk gov which they did really carefully in detail, looking closely at covid test result and the 4 page passenger location form, pulling aside anyone who had not completed it correctly & helping them.
Then at Heathrow just went through the electronic gates, nothing at all.
I heard similar from someone who came back from Greece recently - two of their party couldn't find the ref number (?) from their tests to put on their forms so they just used the same number as someone else and changed the last two digits, and that was apparently fine.
 
It was a bit surprising (to me) that all of the work of making sure the uk's rules were enforced was completely outsourced to staff employed either by the swiss airline or zurich airport i don't know which.
 
It was a bit surprising (to me) that all of the work of making sure the uk's rules were enforced was completely outsourced to staff employed either by the swiss airline or zurich airport i don't know which.

I think that's because it's the airlines who are responsible for who they fly. I believe they get pretty heavily fined if they land passengers with incorrect documentation so those people doing the checks in Zurich will have been Swissair staff.
 
I think that's because it's the airlines who are responsible for who they fly. I believe they get pretty heavily fined if they land passengers with incorrect documentation so those people doing the checks in Zurich will have been Swissair staff.


Yes & no. That is very much the case for passports/visas. The airlines are pushing to be allowed to collect Covid info at check in (or before) to make the whole travel experience smoother. This is being trialled from certain places to the UK, Zurich being one, Athens another. For us to get to Greece we had to upload our vaccination stuff to BA's website and BB1's Covid test along with the Greek passenger locator form, at Heathrow nothing was mentioned nor at Heraklion, as it was all neatly in the system. So that is the future it seems, but as yet the onerous fines that airlines must pay for carrying people without correct passports/visas do not yet apply for Covid stuff.
 
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The whole thing has got to get better and easier from now on, it was pretty nuts, with quite a few people bringing actual A4 ringbinders with their documents in. Did feel like passing an exam. And there's no way my parents for instance could have done all the uploading of pdfs and stuff, their English is fine but like most old people they haven't got a clue how to deal with computer things.
 
There's really no need for all the tests and forms, either the vaccines work well enough or we're all in the shit.
 
I have some questions, because eventually I'm going to have to travel:
1. Are airlines putting less people on the flights? For social distancing. Tbh I cannot afford the extra costs this will cause but I looked at flights at a time of year I usually book for and they've doubled.
2. Will my children have to wear masks cause I don't think they'll be able to fully comply?
3. If I have a Ew hours stopover in a green country having come from a red country, will I have to quarantine?
Bahnhof Strasse , can I pick your brain?
My mum is in her late 80s with MS and I need to go.
 
Can only have been from the passneger locator form so must have been someone else on the plane. The 10 days from contact period they given me works back to the date of the flight too
does your whole family have to isolate then?

ps - you have my sympathy
 
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