We’re publishing a guest post today by Aidan Hartley, a former war correspondent, award-winning author and the owner of a cattle ranch in Kenya. He is dismayed by the introduction of a vaccine passport scheme for travel between Kenya and the U.K. that is such a dog’s breakfast it is damaging relations between the two countries. Incredibly, even if you’ve been double jabbed in Kenya with AstraZeneca donated to the country by the U.K. Government, you still have to quarantine on arrival in the U.K., unlike those who’ve had the U.K.-administered AstraZeneca jab.
A joint statement on 21st September by Jane Marriot, Britain’s High Commissioner to Nairobi, and Kenya’s Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe, announced plans for a “system to mutually recognise each other’s vaccine certificates for a vaccine passport programme for travel”. Unfortunately, since the U.K. refuses to recognise vaccine certificates issued by Kenya, travel between the two countries is cumbersome and needlessly expensive.
In Kenya we heard with great relief that from September 22nd, my home country in East Africa was being moved off Britain’s travel red list. Since early April the travel restrictions had divided families and severely disrupted international businesses, including my own. All non-Britons from Kenya, unless they were U.K. residents, were banned from entering the U.K., while qualifying arrivals to Heathrow or Gatwick faced 11-day incarcerations in squalid quarantine hotels at a cost of £2,250.
The U.K. imposed such extreme measures with the excuse that a “significant” number of passengers arriving in the U.K. from Nairobi had tested positive for a variant of concern – from South Africa. It later transpired that, in fact, only 17 out of 2,993 passengers from Kenya in the six weeks prior to the red-listing had tested positive for the South African variant.
When the red-listing was first introduced, the measures so infuriated Nairobi’s Government that all British passport holders were banned from entry to Kenya, even if they had made their homes here. All other nations were exempted from these sanctions. Later, Kenya mirrored Britain’s measures and decreed that U.K. arrivals would have to quarantine in a Government-approved facility in which conditions were so grim that last year one woman hanged herself while incarcerated. Like other poor countries, Kenya blamed its slow progress against the pandemic on the rich world’s “vaccine apartheid”.
Stranded Britons got no help from the FCDO – known as “Fuck-Do” to its own employees here in Kenya – who told them to ask the Kenyan authorities for guidance. The GOV.UK website copied and pasted a Kenyan airport authority’s poorly drafted statement about sanctions against U.K. citizens.
During one of her elbow-bumping meetings with Nairobi officials, Jane Marriot promised that Kenya could come off the U.K.’s red list when the African country had vaccinated more people and improved its national capacity to carry out genomic sequencing in order to identify new Covid variants. In July, to coincide with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s visit to London, Britain announced that a donation of 817,000 Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines were on their way to its former colony. Uhuru and Boris also agreed a new programme to send up to 20,000 unemployed Kenyan nurses over to work for the NHS.
After several months and apparently thanks to lobbying by dozens of British mothers desperate to bring their children home for the summer holidays rather than the FCDO, Kenya announced that Britons were welcome to fly into the country without quarantine restrictions.
In the post-Brexit world, Kenya is a pillar of good relations in the Commonwealth, a key trade partner, base for dozens of MI6 agents and host for the largest British Army infantry training exercises anywhere overseas. Kenya was among the countries that took part in phase one trials of the AstraZeneca vaccine last year. Up to 30,000 Britons live in this former colony and British companies are among the top investors and taxpayers. Until Covid, the U.K. was the second most important source of tourism income to Kenya’s safaris and beach holidays. In the eyes of many Kenyans, the travel restrictions have damaged relations.
Even celebrations at Kenya’s removal from the red list – alongside Turkey, Pakistan, the Maldives, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Oman and Bangladesh – were cut short. To this day, the U.K. refuses to recognise certificates of vaccination from Kenya – even if, like me, you’ve been jabbed with one of the 817,000 AstraZeneca vaccine donated by Britain to Kenya. Passengers from Kenya to the U.K. must still take a pre-departure PCR test, then self-isolate after arrival with day two and day eight tests (unless released after a day five negative PCR).
Kenyans have understandably become suspicious, wondering whether the U.K. is dumping dodgy batches of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Africa. Why else would vaccinated Kenyans be treated differently by the British authorities to arrivals from other countries? Many Kenyans are already reluctant to submit to any type of Covid jab – and less than 2% of the population has been injected. An additional irony is that there are so many medical personnel now on their way to the U.K. that there’s a good chance the nurse who jabs you in the NHS will be a Kenyan national anyway.
The September 21st joint U.K.-Kenyan statement about plans to introduce vaccine passports was issued to “clear up any concerns on vaccine certification”. Nairobi has previously said that from 2022 all citizens will have to obtain a vaccine passport if they wish to travel overseas.
Passengers en route to the U.K., meanwhile, are at risk of incarceration on arrival due to contradictory information on the GOV.UK website – even if they’ve been double-jabbed in the U.K. I have just heard about the case of a retired British police officer who visited Kenya to work on a brief contract for the United Nations. She had an NHS double vaccination certificate and her flight home was booked via Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, timed to land at Heathrow on the morning of 22nd September, by which time Kenya would be off the red list. Despite Ethiopia still being on the red list, the woman assumed she was in the clear because the GOV.UK website advised that “transiting passengers are exempt from the current quarantine restrictions for COVID-19”.
While in transit in Ethiopia, the former police officer was thrown off her connecting flight to London and told the only way she could get home would be if she paid up front for a quarantine hotel package at Heathrow and filled out a new red list passenger locator form. On arrival at Heathrow, “border force refused to accept their own Ethiopia specific guidance… Despite having travelled from an amber country, with proof of NHS issued vaccinations, and following FCDO issued advice, I find myself facing a £2,250 hotel bill simply because FCDO cannot issue coherent advice to its nationals or ensure that border force and immigration have clear guidance”.
Welcome to the post-Covid world, where you cannot travel between countries without a vaccine passport and even if you’ve got one you’ll be incarcerated in a quarantine ‘hotel’ anyway.
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Forget travel.
These rules can change on a sixpence, and cost you time, energy, nerves and money.
…and if you manage to get there, it’s just the same dystopia as everywhere else.
Even as a dirty unvaxxed, I enjoyed a lovely trip to Portugal this year. It’s not all doom and gloom my friend
Same here, to Croatia. Now even the few crumbs we were allowed have been taken away from us, unless we simply disregard the quarantine requirement. I have resigned myself to going nowhere for quite some time.
Did you enjoy wearing your face mask for 3 hours in the airport before departure, 3 hours for the flight, and for 1 hour upon arrival?
“Dog’s Breakfast of a Vaccine Passport Scheme”
Well, yes.
But the problem is still the moronic idea of limiting travel between countries at all, for anyone, over a disease that is not of “high consequence”, and is endemic everywhere.
In other words, the criminal absurdity is the fact of a scheme at all, not the implementation.
This, 100%. I couldn’t be bothered to read for that very reason.
There are so many articles now that I cannot be bothered to read. Either because they pander in some way to the narrative, entirely missing the real point, or they are just saying what we know already and can surmise from the headline.
Indeed you and Mark are over the target. It was an overlong long article on how best to arrange deckchairs, while your ship is sinking. A not that untypical distraction?
It’s a money-making scheme, making PCR tests at your own expense obligatory. The free NHS PCR test results are not accepted for travel – which shows that either they are rubbish, or that ‘Covid’ is a scam. I’m going for scam.
Faisal the Scammer:
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/halifax-covid-test-firm-furious-21092153
The government are trying to save us. Honestly, the less people travel the less people die from micro blood clots.
They cannot come out and ban flying outright, otherwise Ashok Sharma with his 30+ private jet flights (and the CO2 that it generates) wouldn’t be able to have face to face meetings concerning COP26. Zoom is crap.
Good thinking.
The farcical thing is that international travel has little influence on coronavirus — it is everywhere now, and mixing things up isn’t going to change that.
There was only one time when it would have made sense to have had rigorous controls on international travel — right at the very start of this whole pandemic. It wouldn’t have stopped it, but might have pushed our initial wave later into the year where seasonality would have suppressed its impact somewhat.
The incredible thing is that we didn’t curtail international travel way back then because it would be ‘racist’ (apparently), but our authorities are very happy to have such racist policies now even though they’re pointless.
“ might have pushed our initial wave later into the year where seasonality would have suppressed its impact somewhat”
… and simply pushed it on to an even greater brake on herd immunity than we have had.
Boris let Indians infected with the Delta Variant travel to the UK for a week and a half. But lessons have been learned. So that’s OK, then.
“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” – Aldous Huxley Brave New World
How to stage a Coup:
1. Take over the MSM
2. Put puppets in control of 1st world power
3. Lockdown all capitals
4. Censor and punish any dissenters
5. Establish curfews
6. Severely limit travel at home and internationally
7. Ban family gatherings
8. Destroy all economic bases of potential resistance (SMEs)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWzCgXTDNQU
It was never about health folks… resist, refuse, hold the line
Indeed the travel issues seem to be more about curtailing International travel per-se rather than any attempt at disease control. Very soon we will be able to do little more travel than the 15 mile range of our electric bicycle. ”Touch your forelock and be grateful!”.
And with periodic power cuts we will need plan those journeys carefully.
Residents of Melbourne, Australia, were subjected to a 10km travel distance from their homes. Today been ‘upgraded’ to 15km.
As an aside, a roundabout that I passed last night had a homemade banner on it saying ‘HOLD THE LINE’. Made me smile.
And for your Sat night delectation I bring you Wayne the COVID Marshall….
https://twitter.com/CovidMarshall
https://twitter.com/CovidMarshall/status/1441821801147944975?s=20
Yes. It’s a shocking dog’s dinner, and a bugger for all caught in the idiocy.
But, I have to ask – did you resist at any prior point the train of obscene and idiotic measures that were pushed at you under the guise of an emergency? Governments initiate, but citizens comply and lay down the red carpet for the next assault on human rights.
Some of us never did swallow the Narrative, or were naive enough to think that the snake-oil salesmen would let up after they’d been allowed to get away with so many lies and impositions.
Sounds like you live in Guilford?
And your point is?
This isn’t a continuum of questionable policies, it’s a step-change. I could list a lot more undesirable interventions going way, way back, but they would not be part of the current general assault on civil liberty under the Tory government.
And yes, I’ve opposed many of them.
What “batch” of vaccine isn’t “dodgy?”
The only safe vaccine is one that’s gone into the incinerator.
A dog’s breakfast would be more likely to stop the spread of coronavirus. They’re insulting our intelligence with this bullshit!
Ha ha, South Africans also in the dog box precisely because we have such good genomic researchers. You find them, you own them!
My proudly vaccinated friends (for travel, of course) are fuming. Serves them right for participating in this scheme.
Your friends worries will soon be a thing of the past.
Get vaxxed if you think it is beneficial to your health
Don’t get tested
Don’t show any kind of vaxx or health passport
The government have been waging war on us
They are the enemy
They are evil
Talking of sinister bullshit, has anyone noticed the ‘Global Citizen’ concert currently being broadcast by the BBC to raise awareness of ‘climate change’? Featuring Elton John, Ed Sheeran, and other court jesters of the New World Order. They’re really rubbing it in our face aren’t they?
At some point it simply won’t be possible to keep up the pretence anymore and I expect vaccination requirements will be removed.
The bad news is that it may take a few years and the technology will remain available.
Technology + Stupidity = Suicide
Not looking forward to the future I have to say.
Thank you for providing another example of the idiocy, incoherence and inconsistency of the UK’s travel bans.
The good thing about the travel bans is that they highlight for so many people the incompetence of the Government, hopefully this spurs us all to action in forming a credible alternative to the Conservative Party.
The UK Government is far from incompetent – they are expert at stealing your money.
I have an idea for the Kenyan government – restart your tourism industry by getting rid of all covid requirements, no lists, no vax passports, no testing, no masks, no quarantine, no bullshit. I would love a holiday like that!
I believe that this issue affects pretty much all of Africa, South America and South Asia and is not specific to Kenya. I’m a British expat in Sri Lanka. The FCDO instructs all expats to get vaccinated in their country of residence and then refuses to accept the vaccination certificates as a means of avoiding quarantine on returning to the UK. My wife and I were also vaccinated here in Sri Lanka with AZ. I gather that many countries are up in arms about this and hopefully commonsense and joined up government might be established at some point! The issue (or excuse, perhaps) is that it is the conditions under which people are vaccinated rather than the type of vaccine they are given which the British government finds unacceptable. Pure tosh, of course, and arguably racist.
And a way of making money from backhanders from their mates who own the quarantine hotels.
I still don’t understand the necessity of a vaccine passport when the said vaccine’s efficacy wanes with time, significantly. CDC, and other health authorities now report. Can anyone explain the logic of a passport? How much does it cost to develop and implement such a document x 65,000,000. We can’t even get in to see a GP or get a blood test, no blood vials. Cost please for this vaccine passport scheme, that says what? You have taken something which now has minimal efficacy? Cases in the vaxxed skyrocketed in all highly vaxxed countries like the USA, U.K. and Israel.
The passport contains date of your vaccination and is going to expire, at which point you will have to vaccinate again. In other words it is an open-ended (life-long?) vaccination subscription, and in the future, who knows what other “measures” similarly prescribed by world-wide government. So there you see, there is a “return” on this investment.
Doesn’t cost very much at all. You just put 70 million names (for the UK) onto a computer database, and there you go. Those 70 million will download the ‘pass’ onto their smartphones, or have printouts made via their table top computer/laptop/computer at the library.
The ‘vaccine passport’ is to control you. You will need it for many things. If you haven’t had the latest jab, you will not be able to do those many things.