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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
Blimey. Did they say why? Is it definitely Covid related? Seems strange when there aren't any travel restrictions nbow, let alone looking forward to February.
this is what was in the email:

As a result of further restrictions on international travel, we have reviewed our flying programme and we are very sorry to say that your flight is no longer going ahead. Please see below for your affected booking(s).

This was at 15:30, refund effectuated by 18:40

e2a: update Spymaster : the airline is still flying but they have reduced the number of flights going due to low demand and her flight was one of those cancelled so she rescheduled her surgery flight and accomodation and saved just over £200 in the process.
 
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After massive faff with LFTs and more time than surely necessary to complete the Spanish passenger locator form…everything else was a piece of piss, quick and felt pretty safe. Everyone fully masked all the way, a quick flash of our approved traveller QR codes and we were straight through. Ryanair were also unable to spend the entire flight flogging us shit. Which was nice.
 
The huge advantage of staying in the UK is that - financially aside - you're never commited: you can decide on your way there that it's not going to go well and turn around, you could even be half-way through the holiday, hear about incoming travel restrictions and bale at 4am. Once you walk up the steps to the flight, or drive onto the ferry, or get on the train, you lose any control and entirely place yourself in the hands of the whims of others.

UK holidays for us next year. If they happen they happen, but if not at least we're not risking a hotel quarantine with all the agro.

Disadvantage is you get to stay in the UK with all that entails.

Bad weather and shit trains
 
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exactly, not really a holiday in my mind
I think that the wise thing to do is - unlike our tabloid press - to stop seeing the whole thing in a childlike way, whereby holidays abroad are some sort of right that's been taken away by the Nasty Man, and accept that, right now, they're just a bit incompatible with an infectious virus sweeping the world.

I had a good deal more faith in humanity's ability to do the Right Thing before this business started; now, I can't help but wonder whether we're all a lot more like a bunch of big needy kids than I ever realised.
 
I think that the wise thing to do is - unlike our tabloid press - to stop seeing the whole thing in a childlike way, whereby holidays abroad are some sort of right that's been taken away by the Nasty Man, and accept that, right now, they're just a bit incompatible with an infectious virus sweeping the world.

I had a good deal more faith in humanity's ability to do the Right Thing before this business started; now, I can't help but wonder whether we're all a lot more like a bunch of big needy kids than I ever realised.

My holidays haven't been taken away at all. last year and the year before I cycled round France. This year I am planning to go to Egypt. If that's not possible then I will go somewhere which is possible.
 
I'm really in two minds about coming to the UK for Christmas. I've had a chronic cough for months and have to see pneumologist about it on Wednesday, I'm hoping they will tell me not to go, then at least I'll have a good excuse. Don't think flights will get cancelled like last year with Alpha but I think coming is a big risk, especially if I get Covid while I'm in the UK and have to quarantine and therefore miss my flight back to Italy - which would really suck
 
My sister is due to fly to the UK on Wednesday. She's had a nightmare finding somewhere which will do a PCR test as most are catering for tourists and people who have only been in the country fewer than 45 days. I'm just hoping they manage to fly.
 
I'm really in two minds about coming to the UK for Christmas. I've had a chronic cough for months and have to see pneumologist about it on Wednesday, I'm hoping they will tell me not to go, then at least I'll have a good excuse. Don't think flights will get cancelled like last year with Alpha but I think coming is a big risk, especially if I get Covid while I'm in the UK and have to quarantine and therefore miss my flight back to Italy - which would really suck
I know it's hard but I don't think I would if I were you. The last thing you need is to catch Covid if you've got some kind of ongoing lung issue. And if you're seeing older relatives or whatever, you wouldn't want to potentially pass it on.

(I was saying on the other thread that I've decided not to travel from London to Scotland as it doesn't feel like the right thing to do right now. :()
 
Flavour I think it's going to be a gang-fuck mate, I see a government absolutely desperate to not do restrictions, and a Sci-Med establishment absolutely desperate to slow down an exploding infection rate.

I'd heavily advise people to stay in whatever country they call home - it's not that I think the dead will be lining the streets here - or anywhere else - but that I think travel restrictions and testing/quarantine faff are going to be brought in with bugger all notice and lots of chaos.
 
I know it's hard but I don't think I would if I were you. The last thing you need is to catch Covid if you've got some kind of ongoing lung issue. And if you're seeing older relatives or whatever, you wouldn't want to potentially pass it on.

(I was saying on the other thread that I've decided not to travel from London to Scotland as it doesn't feel like the right thing to do right now. :()
Yeah, it's mainly my mum who will be upset about it -- personally I don't really care. And i know I'm likely to come into contact with Covid in Italy too it's just the faff of flying and doing all the tests, it's a massive pain
 
Flavour I think it's going to be a gang-fuck mate, I see a government absolutely desperate to not do restrictions, and a Sci-Med establishment absolutely desperate to slow down an exploding infection rate.

I'd heavily advise people to stay in whatever country they call home - it's not that I think the dead will be lining the streets here - or anywhere else - but that I think travel restrictions and testing/quarantine faff are going to be brought in with bugger all notice and lots of chaos.

This. International travel for the next few months is very risky for a number of reasons. Might be better to plan a summer trip.
 
Mt father in law died three weeks ago, and my wife is in the country abroad where our family lives.

The plan was that I would go to relatives in London and fly out there when she left this country in the last week of November.

That's sunk now, as the place our family is based in doesn't have six flights a day from the UK at the best of times.

Moreover, as Sue says above (but in reverse) somehow there's a sense of guilt associated with travelling from Scotland to London. I'm not quite resigned to signing off on Christmas on my own where I live, but recognise that the chances of travel from here to London three days before Christmas are 50:50 at best, presently. I have a car so would drive and minimise stops / human contact, but feel it's quite likely it will be banned.

Moral of the story: some international travel is absolutely essential and for very good family reasons. Not all foreign travellers are gammons in Range Rovers insisting on their "right" to a foreign holiday, whenever they want it.

What will be difficult to tolerate in the event of much steeper suppression measures, is whey-faced, hypocritical politicians wringing their hands on telly saying "we know this is tough". Fuck you. You had 20 months to get this right, and failed comprehensively. We are where we are because of the cumulative actions of politicians globally prioritising profit and "back to normal" over people's lives, and ignoring countries with much more profound challenges in rolling out vaccination programmes. As long as a large part of the developing world remains unvaccinated so too does the primoridal viral soup that progressively tougher new variants thrive in.

There's also no sign that there's any appetite amongst what's left of global governance to meet that challenge head on. Where my wife is from, vaccines are barely available and out of date / borderline out of date doses are routinely sent to salve the conscience of the Sajid Javids of this world. Oh, sorry, he's a creepy Randist weirdo and doesn't have one. I forgot.
 
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After massive faff with LFTs and more time than surely necessary to complete the Spanish passenger locator form…everything else was a piece of piss, quick and felt pretty safe. Everyone fully masked all the way, a quick flash of our approved traveller QR codes and we were straight through. Ryanair were also unable to spend the entire flight flogging us shit. Which was nice.

Returned from Norway last night. Everything went smoothly and the aircraft and airports were very quiet. I counted 28 passengers on the flight from Bergen to Heathrow. We did everything by the book and completed our return LFTs on Saturday evening. They were just self-administered in the hotel room and photos of the results uploaded to a website. You could very easily game those if you were that way inclined. Nobody asked us to show them the results at the airports anyway. In Norway the check-in woman asked if we had a Corona pass. I mistakenly showed her my NHS barcode when she was probably after the return LFT result but she waved me through anyway. There's no way that check-in staff all over the world are going to know what all the different LFT results are going to look like, and why should they care? In London we came straight through the eGates, collected our luggage and came home, without being asked for anything at all. The system doesn't work.
 
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Returned from Norway last night. Everything went smoothly and the aircraft and airports were very quiet. I counted 28 passengers on the flight from Bergen to Heathrow. We did everything by the book and completed our return PCRs on Saturday evening. They were just self-administered in the hotel room and photos of the results uploaded to a website. You could very easily game those if you were that way inclined. Nobody asked us to show them the results at the airports anyway. In Norway the check-in woman asked if we had a Corona pass. I mistakenly showed her my NHS barcode when she was probably after the return PCR result but she waved me through anyway. There's no way that check-in staff all over the world are going to know what all the different PCR results are going to look like, and why should they care? In London we came straight through the eGates, collected our luggage and came home, without being asked for anything at all. The system doesn't work.
I don't doubt it but 99pc of people will do tests and if positive won't travel.
The system works as long as that happens.
The checking by air staff is irrelevant if the other bit happens.
 
I don't doubt it but 99pc of people will do tests and if positive won't travel.
The system works as long as that happens.
The checking by air staff is irrelevant if the other bit happens.
For now but every person that returns unchallenged will tell others and ever more will do it and they will tell more and so forth, people will just disregard rules that inconvenience them and they know will not be enforced.
The rules don't have to be enforced totally and fairly just enough to make people feel that breaking them is not worthwhile (and that's true for every rule or law not just covid)
A great many other people just aren't bothering with foreign travel not because of some selfless desire to not help spread the plague it's because it's not worth the potential aggro.
The more people realise there is very little chance of any aggro, the less bothered about it they will be.
 
Anecdotally from a forum full of Bikers I frequent who have traveled in the last 2 years its been that way all through the pandemic, all of them saying no challenges coming back this end.
I haven't been out of the country since Nov 2019 so can't back that up but I don't doubt it.
 
For now but every person that returns unchallenged will tell others and ever more will do it and they will tell more and so forth, people will just disregard rules that inconvenience them and they know will not be enforced.
The rules don't have to be enforced totally and fairly just enough to make people feel that breaking them is not worthwhile (and that's true for every rule or law not just covid)
A great many other people just aren't bothering with foreign travel not because of some selfless desire to not help spread the plague it's because it's not worth the potential aggro.
The more people realise there is very little chance of any aggro, the less bothered about it they will be.
i disagree
 
For now but every person that returns unchallenged will tell others and ever more will do it and they will tell more and so forth, people will just disregard rules that inconvenience them and they know will not be enforced.
The rules don't have to be enforced totally and fairly just enough to make people feel that breaking them is not worthwhile (and that's true for every rule or law not just covid)
A great many other people just aren't bothering with foreign travel not because of some selfless desire to not help spread the plague it's because it's not worth the potential aggro.
The more people realise there is very little chance of any aggro, the less bothered about it they will be.
I think that the (hopefully quite small) proportion of the population that sees these restrictions as not relevant to infection might behave the way you describe, but I also think that most people - ie., those who "get" the idea that monitoring and restriction is a sound move to limit spread - are not going to do that...
 
i disagree
Fair enough, any particular reason or do you just have more faith in peoples inherent selflessness than I do?
I think that the (hopefully quite small) proportion of the population that sees these restrictions as not relevant to infection might behave the way you describe, but I also think that most people - ie., those who "get" the idea that monitoring and restriction is a sound move to limit spread - are not going to do that...
I would prefer you to be right and me to be wrong but I'm far from sure about that. When this all started I think there was very much a 'Spirit of the Blitz' thing going on, now I think there is a lot more cynicism.
 
Fair enough, any particular reason or do you just have more faith in peoples inherent selflessness than I do?
Yes

plus there is a risk however small if you try to blag it you get caught, waste loads of money, generally end up with shit on your plate
 
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