Thousands of Brits had their holiday plans ruined when Portugal was demoted to the travel “Amber List” earlier this month. But now the Government is considering making 2,500 football officials exempt from quarantine rules so that the Euro 2020 semi-finals and final can take place in England. The Guardian has the story.
The proposal would exempt about 2,500 UEFA and FIFA officials, politicians, sponsors and broadcasters from the quarantine restrictions faced by ordinary travellers, according to the Times.
On Monday, the Government announced a four-week delay to the final easing of lockdown restrictions in England in order to allow more people to be vaccinated to combat the Delta coronavirus variant.
The only teams playing in the tournament on England’s “Green List” of countries that do not require isolation on arrival are Wales and Scotland.
All others are on the “Amber List” bar Turkey, which is on the “Red List”. Travellers arriving from Red List countries must stay in a quarantine hotel for 10 days while those from amber list countries must self-isolate at home for 10 days, although they can get released from quarantine early if they pay for a private test, at least five days after arrival, and it comes back negative.
Asked how it would be fair for VIPs to have a different set of rules from the general public, the Policing and Crime Minister, Kit Malthouse, said: “I haven’t seen the detail of that particular proposal. One of the things we are trying to do though is obviously accommodate the Euros as much as we possibly can.
“And while much of the concern around coronavirus regulations has been about whether one situation is fair compared with another situation what we’re generally trying to do is make difficult decisions about the path of a virus, at the same time as trying to enable the ordinary operation of very special events like the Euros and, no doubt, health professionals and the immigration professionals at the Home Office and then the senior ministers who make a decision will take all of that into account as we proceed.
“And look, it’s a great competition, we’re very lucky to have it, we’re trying to make it happen with as much kind of satisfaction all round as we possibly can and that will be taken into account in the decision over the next few days.”
So what about everyone else, Boris?
Worth reading in full.
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States are protection rackets. So of course their governments are going to talk up or even fabricate threats, even if they don’t really exist or need to be confronted.
But that’s not just true of external enemies or imagines climate change or exaggerated diseases. There is war against inequality, against poverty, against racism, against misogyny.
The relationship between state and population is by definition one of abuse.
The state has to be seen as a necessary evil. It sometimes does some good things, and our lives are comfortable so we have become too complacent and trusting, and lack the imagination required.
All reflective of obsession with the here and now, and inability of politicians, media and academia with ideas above its station, to take the Long View (one of the better things the BBC still does).
The Ukraine War ignores the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union and the Minsk Agreement, that NATO would not advance ever further eastward.
The War on Terror ignored history going all the way back to The Crusades, ignored that Saddam Hussain was not Osama Bin Laden, and ignored WMD gone AWOL.
The climate fallacy ignores the real inconvenient truth of a geological record going back millenia, aeons, millions and billions of years, in favour of convenient untruths like the Hockey Stick.
The deadly pandemic fallacy ignores risk-benefit in general, and in particular ignored that during the 1968-69 “Mao Flu” epidemic, none of the grotesque interventions of 2020 were even considered – my school didn’t close, my teachers focused on getting us through our “O” level examinations the following June, and the club cricket season started as per usual on the third Saturday in April, not the second Saturday in July.
So much for the Hand of History on politicians’ shoulders. All summed up by the old H.L. Mencken adage:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
Your list is okay except for the Crusades? Jesus Christ.
You mean the rather lethargic 400 year reaction to the Muslim Jihad which exterminated 30K churches from Arabia to Spain, from 630 AD to 1099, and killed and enslaved millions of Christians and completely destroyed the Christian unity around the Med, by eradicating Christian states from Syria to northern Spain. You live in the West bruv, because that is the name given to the rump that was left.
Salah-din murdered thousands of Musulmans and Christians, he was not a knight in any sense. He was a Jihadist. Walter Scott and these morons with their anti reality revisionism, all of it anti-Catholic. No CC no you. Or maybe a you with your ass in the air licking a carpet braying to the rapist Moh and his moon idol.
I know all that full well, bruv – but still better not ignored by armed forces invading the hornet’s nests of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Well done Spaniards and rump of Holy Roman Empire (among others), for repelling the Moors from Northern Iberia and Ottomans from the Gates of Vienna.
They Shall Not Pass.
And they also had the Woodstock Festival.
When everything is on a ‘war footing’ nothing is on a ‘war footing’. Perhaps the last hurrah of the Old Elite?
” and of course the management of the Covid [PLAN]demic.”
So far good reading.
I will quote Neil Oliver: “The MSM are mostly talking to themselves!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox57X2qiuEU
Climate Covid War Propaganda
Didn’t Churchill talk with Starlin and make a deal to carve up Europe post WW2. The scale of that renders Ukraine into insignificance by comparison.
Roosevelt was there too, Churchill probably had the least influence on the result.
One common theme is the tendency to exaggerate.
CO2 causes warming, but not enough to worry about.
Putin is dangerous but the threat is not difficult to deter.
Covid was unpleasant, but less dangerous than the flu for most people.
You sum up the situation perfectly and very concisely.
Climate change, Covid, War on Terror, BLM, DEI, creating conflicts around the world etc. etc. etc. are all started and cheered by “liberal” politicians and their presstitutes in the media.
There are hardly any “sceptic” politicians or main stream media to counter these “liberal” lies.
The US public have come to their senses and elected someone who has surrounded himself with sceptic sage advice.
Hungary, Slovakia and Serbia have also.
The Ukraine war was started by liberals in the US and EU meddling in Ukraine culminating in the US/EU violent Maidan coup of 2014.
Even now liberal European politicians are inflaming the situation with talk of a European Army.
When these troops start coming home in thousands of body bags hopefully the people of Europe will vote out these liberals for sceptic politicians who understand that Russia was deliberately “provoked” and that Russia’s actions were “justified”.
“Geopolitically” (stupid word) the logic of MAD (mutual assured destruction) still holds: Since nukes were constructed despite they’re only useful for committing so-called war crimes – the ultimate terror/ morale bombing weapon for killing masses of unfortunate civilians – you’ll either have so many nukes that the other guy can’t risk attacking you with his nukes without effectively committing suicide or the other guy can blackmail you into whatever he wants and there have been numerous attempts of Russian second- and third-line politicians, TV celebrities etc to do just that. Eg, ads threatening Germans with nuclear annihilation unless they vote AfD have been making rounds on Facebook. Hence, the Europeans will need to acquire more nukes if they want to maintain themselves.
This, not something like “democracy and human rights”, is the real US legacy to mankind and we’ll have to live with that despites it’s — see above — MAD.
Thanks Ben,
great article.
the fact underpinning both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the so-called ‘humanitarian interventions’ of the Blair Government and its successors on the world stage, is that might is right.
Good point. We see this doctrine played out in various parts of the world.
Fighting “Climate Change” has had several purposes, all intended to consolidate power for the Globalists.
But since Trump’s election and his policy of negotiating with Putin to end the Ukraine Proxy War, the EU now feels threatened so the tune is changing.
This is a quote from Von der Leyen, the unelected, unaccountable head of the EU “We have to put Ukraine in a position of strength so that it has the means to fortify and protect itself – from economic survival to military resistance. It’s basically about turning Ukraine into a steel porcupine that is indigestible to invaders. It is now of utmost importance to step up the defence investment for a prolonged period of time. It’s for the security of the EUROPEAN UNION (note she doesn’t say Europe). And we need, in the strategic environment in which we live, to prepare for the worst and therefore step up the defence.”
Fighting “Climate Change” will not be possible if the priority becomes “stepping up the defence” so we can expect a change in tack before very long. The public is being softened-up for that already with the emphasis now being “Trump, The Unreliable Ally and The Big Bad Putin.”
The EU will want its Defence Union PDQ and, a source of funding. Look out for EU and UK “War Bonds.”
Conspiracy theory coming up.
The war hysteria is being stoked to give governments an excuse to cancel the net zero and climate change bullshittery that they realise is falling apart around them.
A war on the horizon is a great reason to start manufacturing and go back to heavy industry. It’ll create jobs, fill the ‘black hole’ get people off benefits etc.
If my little conspiracy theory is right I say bring it on.