English hotelier Sir Rocco Forte has written a scathing piece in the Mail about the Government’s ban on foreign travel. Covid rules which come into force today mean that it is illegal to go to an airport without a “reasonable excuse”, with rule-breakers facing fines of £5,000. Sir Rocco says that “this holiday ban is yet another kick in the teeth for my industry, hospitality, and for the whole economy, which relies heavily on international trade and tourism”.
The past year has seen countless erosions of our once-cherished freedoms to deal with Covid. The latest is an incomprehensible ban on foreign travel. …
So-called “non-essential” foreign travel will be banned until at least June 30th – although, given the Government’s fondness for repeatedly extending restrictions into our freedoms, some doubt that even that date will be met. Former Government adviser Professor Neil Ferguson said last week: “I think we should be planning on summer holidays in the UK, not overseas.”
This holiday ban is yet another kick in the teeth for my industry, hospitality, and for the whole economy, which relies heavily on international trade and tourism. The UK is on course to have a tourism industry worth over £257 billion by 2025 – almost 10% of GDP and supporting almost 3.8 million jobs, about 11% of all the employment in this country.
Frankly, the Government’s approach makes no sense. In January, Health Secretary Matt Hancock told us we would be able to “cry freedom” when the most vulnerable in society had been vaccinated. In a great success story for the NHS, we have now inoculated more than 30 million people, giving protection to the groups that account for 99% of Covid deaths.
All our most vulnerable will have had the option of taking a second jab by the end of April – and we know the vaccines work.
But now the doom-mongers scare us with talks of “new variants” of the virus, even though viruses mutate all the time and most scientists say our existing vaccines could be tweaked to deal with them.
Exemptions to the Government’s travel restrictions are permitted for work, medical needs, education, weddings and funerals.
Sir Rocco points out that the cost of prioritising “beating” Covid above all else is greater than the cost of Covid itself.
The political calculation seems to be that the damage to the economy, the harm caused to mental health, a record NHS waiting list of 4.6 million (with the missed cancer diagnoses and other serious problems that brings), a huge surge in unemployment and bankruptcy can all be excused as long as ministers are seen to be doing everything they can to fight the virus. These are skewed priorities.
Instead, what we are going through now and will face in the near future is thanks entirely to Government decisions – and is an unmitigated disaster.
His concerns about the damage being done by Government regulations to the hospitality sector have been echoed by nine Conservative MPs who have written in today’s Times that “kneejerk demands to sacrifice an industry carry costs”.
Failing to reopen air travel would be devastating to exporters, as well as our tourism and hospitality sectors.
Sir Rocco’s piece is very much worth reading in full.
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Very simple – shut the bloody place down. All tax payer derived funds to be returned to HMRC who can redistribute them to an alphabet group. Their premises will be confiscated and Shadjareh must be put on a non-returnable flight to Iran.
I think it is important that we are ‘firm but fair.’
Are there any other charities who issue death threats and receive government funding?
Hmm … the Tony Blair Institute, perhaps?
At least in Germany, any muslim mass murderer invariably turns into the heavily traumatized victim of a hostile society while even the most seriously deranged Germans committing similar crimes must be secretly organized right-wing terrorists justifying a new round of repressions against other Germans. They haven’t yet made it a crime to be killed by a member of the progressive forces of society but that’s probably eventually going to happen.
Chatting this morning to my oh, we were wondering what will happen if the population finally wakes up and actually starts demonstrating and protesting en-masse about the fuel cap rises etc (which seems to go up every day, today posited to be 6k). The police would not have sufficient manpower, so the army could be called out. But actually, our army isn’t that strong on manpower either, but look, we have all these healthy young men who have been fed and watered in warm and comfortable hotels, any ailments have been treated by our caring NHS, they are fit and ready to go. Give them a few weeks training, with the carrot of citizenship in return for service, hand them some rubber bullets and bob’s your uncle. They hate us as much as the government so they would be the perfect servants in this situation.
These conversations usually start in jest, but usually end in a thoughtful silence. I think however mad and/or bad TPTB are, I don’t think we know the half of it, and you can give your imagination free rein because the reality is probably going to be much worse than one could ever think.
There’s no need for that. They just need to bring out a few machine gun squads to suppress
(that’s the proper technical term) a real lot of people effectively.
What it will do is make people even more dependent on the ‘government’, reminds me of Ronald Reagan who said’ the 9 most scariest words in the English language are ‘This is your government and we’re here to help’. Ramping everything up and then coming to the rescue would do it.
I have held this opinion since the scale of the invasion became obvious.
The possibility that our army might be turned on the population is, I think, remote and I do not believe ordinary squaddies would fall for this. The thousands of retired forces personnel won’t stand for this either. Remember when statues were being attacked in London, retired forces personnel mobilised and stood guard.
The BLM nutters, or whoever were soon stood down by Bozo because he knew that was a battle he couldn’t win.
The British army is BLM nutters with assault guns or in the process being transferred into that. It is – after all – just another government department managed by the same civil service, outsourcers and big 4 EDI activists.
^^
Should have been transformed into that.
The MSM seem to be actively wanting Rushdie to go away.
(I wrote to the BBC asking if they’d consider doing a broadcast of their adaptation of Midnight’s Children, given the recent attack on the author. it was done in 2017 so it is fairly recent. I’ve not had a response yet.)
This certainly challenges one’s belief in free speech.
To be honest, the headline seems to imply that the man was in favour of harm coming to Rushdie, but then I don’t really see that in the direct quotes.
Let’s be honest, the whole inotion of incitement to violence is a bloody tricky minefield.
Is saying you admire the Ayatollah incitement to violence. Certainly not.
Is saying you can understand why a Fatwah was issued on Rushdie? I don’t think so.
Is saying you agree with it incitement. Pufff.. maybe. But then isn’t suggesting that it wouldn’t be a bad thing if Putin were taken out by someone in Russia also incitement to violence?
Very, very tricky.
Mr Shadjareh should be invited to condemn the fatwa and attack on Mr Rushdie and if he refuses, then the IHRC should be closed down.