Forty Conservative MPs have written to Boris Johnson urging him to ease travel curbs and bring back foreign holidays as pressure grows to lift the lockdown ahead of schedule as cases, hospitalisations and deaths plummet. The Mail has more.
Boris Johnson faced calls to lift lockdown faster last night as Covid infections, hospital cases and deaths hit a six-month low.
Four NHS regions – covering 29million [sic] people across southern England – reported no deaths on Sunday. Just 23 fatalities were logged elsewhere.
The average daily death toll is now 63 – 95 per cent below January’s peak. It stands at the same level as late last June – shortly before the ban on indoor socialising ended following the first national lockdown.
However, customers must still wait a minimum of seven weeks before pubs, restaurants and hotels can fully reopen. Foreign holidays are also banned until at least May 17.
It came as forty MPs, including former Cabinet minister Karen Bradley, sent the Prime Minister a letter urging him to avoid delaying the ban on travel.
The group of cross-party MPs warned that the country would not fully recover without a thriving tourism, travel and aviation industry and told the PM that foreign holidays were essential for the country’s economic rebound.
They stressed that it was ‘paramount that the restart of international travel provides the opportunity for businesses in the aviation, travel and tourism industries to begin their long journey back to recovery’.
Worth reading in full.
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I still look at that chart of ‘cases’ and wonder.
Is there a chart which factors in excess mortality in some way? We know that during the first wave there was a noticeable increase in excess mortality. Cases were low because there wasnt a test. You only became a case if you were ill, and pretty ill at that because you needed to seek out medical attention. I was ill during that time with covid like symptoms, though not so ill that I would have taken a day off work for it. But I wasnt a case despite symptoms, whereas since last summer there have been huge numbers of cases without anyone even having any symptoms thanks to our great testing.
I don’t believe that the Great British public has an automatic right to two weeks holiday abroad no matter what.
I am reminded of a young tradesman at the beginning of ‘austerity’ complaining that his bank had refused to furnish him with yet another loan for his annual break in Ibeza and how this was against his ‘rights’.
About 15 years ago I bit the bullet (soz irony) and commissioned a private dentist to do a large amount of expensive work on my teeth. This meant I could not afford to go abroad that year but the relief from pain was well worth it (and still is).
Further I do not see how a dearth of cases/deaths in much of the UK should impact upon where and when we can go abroad.
I realise that this view will not be popular but I am beyond caring though I am prepared to look on as people vent their spleen against our vindictive and spiteful government.
It’s not a two weeks holiday for those of us who have not seen our children and grandchildren and wider family who live overseas. You stay at home if you wish, I really want to see my family and friends. My husband is 77 and wants to kiss his daughter before he dies.
The issue is about freedom to choose – dental treatment, holiday abroad, new car….etc. etc. That’s what been taken away from us, based on a pack of lies from ministers (incompetent buffoons) who cannot admit their original panicked reaction was wrong
Indeed there is no such thing as an ‘automatic right to a holiday’ – all kinds of things might stop you going on holiday. However, the government should not be one of those things. If countries want to close their borders to visitors, that is their prerogative. Making it illegal for their own citizens to leave – unacceptable in any circumstances.
That appears based on whether you believe the human has a set of inalienable rights given by God upon his birth – birth rights as it were.
Or that your rights only exist as those that are provided to you by your govt or institution. Institutions exist and formed and defined by people other humans. So you are accepting that another person has the right to decide where and what you can do and go. Where do you draw that line?
The first idea is solidified in the US constitution enshrined in the idea of man being born free. The second exists as an idea that is a form of slavery.
All these regulations are part of the blameworthy and deflection culture in this country. Politicians using successfully when the main culprits for this disaster are themselves and the NHS.