Overseas travel appears to be just as difficult today as it was before the Government’s “Green List” was updated. That all but one of the new quarantine-free Green countries also feature on the “Green Watchlist” means they are “at risk” of being pushed back onto the “Amber List” at any time. One holiday company has already ruled out taking new bookings for July and August due to the uncertainty, and Transport Secretary Grant Shapps says that changes that occur “with quite a lot of regularity” will likely result in Green countries being demoted to Amber at short notice.
Appearing on Sky News this morning, Shapps dodged a question on whether or not he would book a foreign holiday for himself and his family given that the rules could be changed with very little notice, merely saying: “Sadly, I don’t think I’ve got time at the moment to take a holiday.”
The Guardian has more.
Grant Shapps warned anyone looking to travel abroad that the rules could change at short notice after Malta, Madeira and the Balearic islands, among others, were added to the list of countries from which travellers could return without having to quarantine.
But there was concern across the beleaguered travel sector, with one prominent figure accusing the Government of being “overly cautious”.
Shapps said: “People will have to come to their own decisions… If people are in a situation where, from next week, they wanted to get away then these are the places where you can go for the purposes of holiday, of course, being aware of all the caveats about the risk of things changing because… that happens with quite a lot of regularity.”
And he acknowledged that the ongoing pandemic meant the status of any country could change with no notice, with those on the “Green Watchlist” most likely to see harsher restrictions reimposed.
“Whoever is booking to go anywhere this summer, travel insurance, making sure your flights are changeable and making sure the accommodation is changeable – all those things are going to be very, very important this year. And I think people need to weigh up whether that is going to work for them or not,” he told Sky News…
The holiday company On the Beach said it would not be taking new bookings for July and August while so much uncertainty remained about countries on the watchlist.
Criticising ministers’ caution, the Airport Operators Association Chief Executive, Karen Dee, said: “Any extension of the Green List is welcome, however small, but we also have to be realistic: this is not yet the meaningful restart the aviation industry needs to be able to recover from the pandemic.” …
The lists are reviewed every three weeks, meaning that the next announcement will be on Thursday, July 15th.
Worth reading in full.
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Foreign travel is not an issue for me personally.
But, looking at that mug shot just reminded me : who would trust Shapps to handle even a toy train set?
Maybe a clockwork one.
Kay Burley is looking ancient in that photo.
Hope … despair … hope … despair. The psy-ops continue.
Disengage yourself from it. Discover new/other ways of enjoying life and being fulfilled. Let these entities just become background noise.
Is it me or does Grant Schapps look and sound like the love child of Peter Powell and Bruno Brooks?
Certainly some sort of failed genetic experiment (presumably the only way to achieve such an outcome from PP and BB)!
No time for a holiday? Perhaps an affair with an aide will fill the gap? I hear that’s working for a lot of folk at the moment.
I’m going to be really shallow: just look at his idiotic face. It’s like something from Hogarth: ‘Happy idiot drinking gin’ or something. And a bit too much like a rabbit with less intelligence than the average rabbit. How do these people get into power?! Just how?!
They go the right school old boy.
They are loving every moment of this – this a complete power trip – this is not about the pandemic or the virus – this is about power and control … which they are not going to give up as easily as some people think they will – jab or no jab..
‘likely result in Green countries being demoted to Amber at short notice’ –
I.e. when the parliamentary recess has ended and all the MP’s and bubble dwellers return from Barbados and Martinique planning the next lockdown for the plebs.
just because they can. Sickening.
Schnapps hasn’t time for a holiday so where did he get his tan from – a bottle? We have a fake pandemic along with a fake government and a fake tan!
He is brown because he has been up someone’s arse….
No time, eh? Doubtless his hands are as full as Hangcock’s!
Of course they can, rather than simply forbid them, they want to raise people’s hopes then dash them as often as possible.
A fair amount of anguish could be removed at fairly low risk by saying that for those already in a country they have two weeks (say) to get back to the UK under the prior rules; the rules for the new status would only apply for new travellers and those staying more than two weeks (say).
Sure, there’d be some increased risks, but they’d be rather low — it isn’t a binary where one day the country is safe and the next it is dangerous.
Increased risks? Not sure how you are determining that. Covid is pretty much everywhere in the world (though views vary as to how much of it there actually is left). Closing borders was never recommended because it simply doesn’t work. Variants can emerge anywhere. Anyway, if you believe in the magcic vaxx, we should all be OK here other than terrible people like us who have not been injected, and who cares about us?
Of course he would book an overseas holiday regardless of whether the country could be changed to Amber. He’s an Important Person. The rules don’t apply.
Hopefully this represents the heat being turned up too quickly on the frogs.
Who’s Shapps snogging in return for imposing these daft restrictions?
Giant Shatts..
Do you remember when he was Michael Green et al? Doing black hat SEO with his awful wife? Swindling Google.. selling his black hat SEO to others? The means to get high in search engines by using underhand tactics.. tactics that are and were against Google rules.
It’s not a Conservative Party. It’s a cabal of crooks. Some petty, some not so petty.
Another entitled mediocrity loving the smell of power over the people. With Johnson, Hancock and others couldn’t lie straight in bed himself, and is a proven con man. This government of grifters and sharks is sustained only by the ludicrous lack of opposition. Britain needs a big political realignment.
Talk about playing with people’s lives and livelihoods. This is just another clear example of your gov’t proving they can do as they like without an ounce of data to support it.
You are being lied to. The question is why?