The legal rules may have gone in England, but many contexts don’t seem to have noticed. The Telegraph has compiled a list of the places stuck in a neverendemic where Covid rules are still in force.
Hospitals across the country are still banning loved ones from visiting patients, even though the official NHS guidance has told them to open up. More than one in eight hospital trusts in England are still refusing to allow any visitors, while many more have some form of restrictions in place. …
Households are still having to book a slot before visiting rubbish tips – a system that has led to an increase in fly-tipping. …
Holidaymakers are still having to wear masks at airports and on flights, even though the legal requirement no longer applies. Major airlines, including British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, easyJet, Norwegian, Jet2 and Tui have relaxed the rules. However, they still require passengers to wear masks if the destination country mandates that people wear face coverings indoors. This means a passenger flying to the USA, where there is still a federal mask mandate on aircraft, will have to cover their nose and mouth for the duration of the flight. Airlines are still encouraging passengers to wear masks, even though it is not required, and are urging them to pack masks in case the rules change. U.K. airports are also strongly advising holidaymakers to wear masks in terminal buildings, bus stations and railway platforms. …
The days when visitors could wander into a gallery or museum have not yet returned. During the pandemic, many introduced booking systems which required people to obtain tickets in advance, so that visitor numbers could be better managed. Some have not yet reversed the policy, even though social distancing is no longer a legal requirement. …
Theatres are also sticking with some coronavirus restrictions. The Old Vic says it would “strongly recommend and request that you wear a face mask at all times”. It also asks visitors who are exempt to download a “mask exemption” badge on their phone to display it to staff. Visitors are being offered mask exemption stickers, even though everyone is legally exempt from wearing masks. Everyone is also required to sanitise their hands before entering the building.
One piece of good news is that this week, the UK Health Security Agency revised its infection prevention and control guidance for hospitals. They are now advised to remove all social distancing measures, which have been identified as adding to recent pressures. The required isolation period for Covid-positive patients in hospitals is also reduced from 10 to seven days if the patient produces two negative lateral flow tests – which is better but still treating Covid as an especially serious disease – while patient contacts of those who test positive are no longer required to isolate if they have no symptoms.
But with Covid now recognised as not a socially critical disease, why not removed all the special guidance completely?
Worth reading in full.
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Covid has been absolute heaven for health and safety obsessed businesses, councils, people in charge of H&S in their workplace etc. In this respect it’s no more than a continuation of the tendency for H&S officials to poke their noses into every area of our lives and enforce petty rules “just in case”.
This reminds of a story I read earlier about a council who told a homeowner to drain their garden pond before they could host a family from Ukraine, presumably because some jobsworth decided it presented a risk of drowning to young children.
These people need to be stopped, so that the rest of us can get back to using common sense.
Tales abound of “safety” improvements being required to homes where families have been brought up for years.
Common sense doesn’t create jobs for council jobsworths.
Gas plumbers do scams like this too.
Don’t they just!
I visited Edinburgh a few days ago and very few were wearing masks, and none of the transport, bars, restaurants, shops or public places were insisting, despite all the notices plastered everywhere. Getting into a lift there was a notice requiring single family occupancy. My wife and I got in only to be followed by 11 other people – we could get no more in.
As we left there was an announcement on the train about mask wearing, ironically from the English train manager. It was universally ignored.
Mask are and always have been totally unscientific nonsense and at last the scales seem to be falling from everyone’s eyes.
Glad to hear this – and for those who don’t already know, maskwearing is still legally required in many contexts in Scotland. And not only that, but the lying nationalist “First Minister” with the fake marriage says people should keep on wearing them in many places even after they stop being legally compulsory in Monday.
It’s got to the point where, that if you listen to people like the 1st Minister (Scotland, Wales, you take your pick), you know the opposite is the truth.
The people there obviously love their leader. I had damaged my rm and remarked to the barman that I would be unable to do a Nazi salute.
His reply was that I had better avoid the first minister.
Aggressive non-comoliance is the answer.
If comoliance is not a word, it should be.
LOL
Those who make profits out of “non-profitmaking” entities have been known to do it not only by paying rent to property companies based in the Caymans, but also by buying services at inflated prices or that aren’t really needed, such as for certification or advice. Obviously on paper something has to be done for such certification, or actual “advice” has to exist, so that if anybody says anything the businesspeople involved can stand there with wide-open faces and swear blind that they’re all as honest as the day is long.
The Old Vic is owned by a “non-profitmaking trust”.
In large parts of the economy – such as the hotel sector – certification scams are a big deal. The pandemic has been all right for some.
Bonfires ‘cos the tip is shut, illegal dumping on the up
Empty buses run on time, sunbathing is a crime
I wrote that in April 2020. Two years later, not much has changed. It’s as if the nefarious/ dimwit authorities actually enjoy imposing their stupid rules on us.
The whole song, lyrics in the description under the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GquQmT8UnCc
The whole poem, with two more verses: https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/my-covid-diary/
This is excellent! You earned a YT sub 👍
Thanks very much. I was particularly pleased with:
Wait in line for something to eat, toilet roll is a treat
Big clap on a Thursday night, gives the cats and dogs a fright
The second line is an homage to the immortal verse of Matthew Fairchild from the 1980’s ITV comedy Brass:
Awake!
For morning in the bowl of night
Has flung the brick
That gives our cat a fright
The local council where I live – Stockton Borough Council – make it almost impossible to go to the recycling plant located at Haverton Hill. Just look at this utter shite that you’ve got to abide by:
https://digital.stockton.gov.uk/hwrc-calendar
Furthermore, you’ve got to take photographic identification – just to stop people from outside the area using the facility! Why in the name of sanity are they bothered about people from outside the area? For every person who might come into the area to use the tip, there’ll probably be another one that goes out of the area to use a neighbouring tip – I would. The closest tip to me is in the North Yorkshire area, but I’m not allowed to use it. Bloody madness!
It’s all typical of the pompous, self-serving attitude of the morons in local government.
At the local tip where I used to live, they try to stick stickers inside your car windscreen without asking, advertising the company that “manages” the tip, “so that you don’t have to show ID”. They told me I was the only person that had ever objected. And on one occasion I drove past the checkpoint when the moron working there pressed a button to raise the barrier to let me through, presumably considering that actually looking at my ID would interrupt whatever sh*t he was doing on his smartphone – and then when I got to the skips I was ordered to go back through the checkpoint as if I were some kind of intruder, rather than the said moron who was paid to run a checkpoint not knowing how to do it. Then mostly the experience by the skips involved being watched by thuggish looking guys standing there with folded tattooed arms, who occasionally order people to throw their rubbish in this skip rather than that one, and who guard the skips full of old rubbish as if they were the crown jewels. Of course I am sure nothing whatsoever goes on at such places that’s in any way gang-related or corrupt.
I objected to the sticker when the employee reached inside my car and tried to stick the bloody thing right in front of me on the windscreen. I also objected to him, getting out of my car to make the point more forcefully.
Good grief!
Then they wonder why people fly tip. Rubbish collection is the key function of councils, one of the basic requirements for a civilised society is sanitation. Making people jump through hoops to get rid of rubbish is self-defeating.
Perhaps we should compile a list of places that might actually deserve our custom.
The Old Vic can shove their plays where the Sun doesn’t shine.
I will visit the Tate Modern, though, because I want to see their Surrealist exhibition. I hope they have a suggestions box.
The Old Vic has turned into a endless drip of wokery. Even if they didn’t encourage you to wear a mask or put that skin-damaging hand gel on your hands, I wouldn’t darken their doors.
There was such a list on here in 2020. I suppose it might still be here. I put my then preferred jewellers on it – only for them to lose my custom a few weeks later after a row over masks. 🙁
There’s a lovely open air swimming pool in Cornwall somewhere, can’t remember exactly where.
A couple of months back, we were planning a short family holiday with our two children, and were considering staying somewhere near said pool.
Their website states that children are not allowed in the pool, not at any time. I decided to phone them to check, just in case this was some nonsense COVID rule which had not yet been deleted from the site.
The lady who answered said, “That’s correct, we have to follow guidance, the water is too cold for children.”
“Oh, that’s OK,” I said. “I’m happy to take full responsibility, is there a waiver for me to sign?”
“No, we can’t allow children in the pool, we have to follow guidance.”
“But if it’s guidance, surely you can use your discretion – no? My kids are fine with cold water, we swim in rivers all through the year!”
“You’re not listening to me, we have to follow the guidance, children can’t regulate their body temperatures properly.”
I told her the situation was utterly ridiculous and that I’ll never – kids or no kids – visit the pool while they have such nonsensical rules in place and hung up on her.
Instead, we went to Lisbon for four nights. And swam in the deadly, freezing Atlantic – waves, rocks and all.
How cretinous! Kids love the sea, and it can’t be any colder than the North Sea! I can only stick my foot in and that’s sufficient, they’re hard as nails. LOL And as for them not being able to regulate their body temperatures, what utter cobblers. It’s the more advanced elderly who have disordered body temp regulation so I wonder if they had an upper age limit…And ironically, plenty of oldies like swimming in the sea also.
‘…children can’t regulate their body temperatures properly.’ What an utter load of poppycock! Where does their precious guidance come from indeed? It’s this sort of attitude, as you imply, that is allowing these mandates to continue.
As a nation, we often sneer at how ordinary German citizens were hoodwinked into Nazism and turned a blind eye to the death camps during WW2. ‘We were just following orders’..sounds so similar to…’We have to follow the guidance’. Seems there are people, many people, who never question anything which doesn’t bode well for the future.
The muppet answering the phone is just doing what they’ve been told to do. Best to contact the owner of the pool and explain why they are losing money; if it’s a private concern. If it’s council run then save your breath.
“Children can’t regulate their body temperatures properly”?
We were taught to swim in unheated open air pools at school!!
They’ve misinterpreted and safety embellished what everyone knew. Children love splashing around in cold water, but after a while they get cold. They lose heat quicker than an adult (surface area to volume ratio cf an adult), but you fish them out when they get that blue tinge around the edges. Unfit adults can have some sort of heart incident triggered by plunging into cold water. So lets ban swimming entirely, that would be much safer for everyone.
In Germany lots of council owned swimming pools are lower the water temperature as they cannot afford the gas bill. So I guess learning to swim with school in a council owned pool is over soon.
On the topic, my sister took her daughter to swimming classes, and the whole class kept going until the last pupil, (my niece) was able to dive 10metres with her eyes open. Only then did they get their certificate. I guess one way to squeeze money out of the parents. I’m surprised the parents did not get annoyed with my niece. It was a “everyone is a winner” policy.
Funny, just today a friend talked about how he wanted to take his 14y old to a movie with certificate 15, and they were refused entry. He argued as the father he took responsibility, and what difference does it make to see it in the cinema or he can get the dvd and watch it at home. It is all about the 0.00000001% chance of something bad happening.
I had thought of ditching my exemption badge translated into Classical Greek; now I shall keep it.
The regulations do not state in which language the exemption must be expressed.
If the goons who insist on this nonsense cannot read my exemption that is THEIR problem. Referring to such jobsworths as ‘goons’ is an insult to the original goon show.
I am trying to learn Arabic, I might string a few letters together, it will be nonsense, but that won’t matter – required, even!
But if it’s not a legal requirement then a person should be able to just say “No chance” and that should be the end of it. Certainly that’s what I’ll be doing when I come home for a visit this summer. And thank god KLM have ditched the nonsense too.
All about control – the damn things don’t work and anyone who mandates their wearing is insane
Someone who can use the gerrund case, made my evening, happy Easter.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” – C S Lewis
I overheard someone ask another person yesterday why they are still wearing their mask – the person replied that they have just gotten so use to wearing one now that its become the normal thing to do now … wear a mask when in a shop, and if anyone asks why they are still wearing one they shall tell them to mind their own business.
Marvelous I thought , so now mask wearers are in the minority we should leave them alone and mind our own business and yet when I was practically the only person not wearing a mask in a store it seemed to be everyones business.
I don’t. I point at them and go “Oh my god”. I feel duty-bound to point out what idiotic tits they look. Where I am in the Netherlands they’re few and far between though, so they look even more peculiar and certifiable when you do see someone wearing a panty-liner over their mush! It’s always, 99.99% anyway, Chinese-looking people too for some reason..
After 6 months with 2 fillings missing and waiting for a check up and another 8 week wait I returned to the Dentists last week.
As in Feb I ignored the wear a mask sign on the door and this time was met by a receptionist hiding behind plastic screens and wearing her ineffective bit of paper who asked me to put a mask on.
I was already reaching for the hand gel, which was the request in Feb when my brain caught up.
‘No I’m exempt’.
Everyone is, other that the brainwashed who still walk among us unable to see that we never all suddenly dropped dead in the street.
Ah yes the hand gel obsession, that other utterly pointless act of wringing one’s hands in slippery supplication as if it stood between you and eternal damnation.
And what a surprise that all this irrelevant use of hand gel has resulted in an increase in contact dermatitis. No shit Sherlock time again.
Exactly! It contains many horrible chemicals that is absorbed through the skin more effectively due to the high amount of alcohol (think nicotine patch on steroids)
And the base is not drinkable ethanol, it’s the iso version. And some of the uncertified stuff might well have methanol in it, which can be absorbed via the skin and will do you no good whatsoever.
Wearing a mask in the dentists waiting room is as stupid as wearing whilst walking around the restaurant but not when sitting down.
It is. And if these bits of Chinese paper were REALLY effective, then there’d have been hazardous waste bins everywhere for their disposal.
Firm non-compliance is the only way. I’m not in the UK but I’d never obey this bollocks, even more so if it’s not a legal requirement. These companies are just taking the piss, and as we’ve seen by the ridiculous councils telling people to wear masks on the beach, they will keep these rules in place all year round if people don’t send a clear, resounding “F!ck you” message by acting like normal human beings and not complying en masse. This absolute Clown World sh*te has gone on long enough!
The CofE too has been continuing to ‘encourage’ face masks in church, despite the ABofC having been given the data that shows them to be useless and so manifestly untruthful as a policy. They have closed their ears, eyes and minds to truth, and continued to want to virtue signal their ‘goodness’.
It sounds like, in the UK, they’re thinking that they’ve invested so much effort and expense into the massive PsyOp fear campaign you guys have been exposed to that they want to see their efforts have paid off and that it was all worth it. A high % of compliant drones that make up the population is what their objective is, and I’d say the proof of the success of this national social experiment is how many automatons still comply with nonsensical rules all throughout the summer, especially at 30+deg temps! Now that will be a good test. All it would take is the government to announce that masks are no longer necessary, just wear one if you want, ( to look like a tit! ) but are they doing that?
Our local churches insist that attendees take a lateral flow test before attending and wear a mask when in the church. It doesn’t affect me as I don’t go but the number of previously sane people who go along with it and justify it is surprisingly high.
Good grief! Are you sure? I’ve heard of some Covid nonsense in churches, but nothing as nonsensical as that.
Leafy suburbs in Glasgow under the rule of Nicola The Cruel.
The only things they’re justifying is their own cowardice and lack of intellect.
Seems to work a treat though. Parishioners comply willingly.
The church has been a total disgrace throughout. Totally unchristian at every opportunity from Canterbury to our local clergy. I will never support them in any way ever again and the church roof can go on leaking and good luck to the woodworms, dry rot, wet rot, the bats, the swifts and anything else that can make better use of the once-upon-a-time house of god.
I feel exactly the same way. My daily walk always takes me through the churchyard – and sometimes I attended services (though not regularly). I was appalled that through lockdown we saw neither hide nor hair of the vicar. I always said that if I’d been a committed clergyperson (and still being paid) I’d have been there under the old preaching cross on a Sunday morning, or at my trestle table in the church porch, failing all else if the church were locked against me. But no – not even a message of hope and encouragement on the notice board.
Sickening hypocrisy and cowardice.
This looks like a good resource: MaskWatch – Smile Free
I need an eye test so will probably try Vision Express as their stated policy is masks are optional. Have tried a few independent ones near me and they all push masks as they are following NHS, still at “condition Amber”.
A useful resource. Thanks.
Exceedingly irritating to read what these buffoons are up to.
I’ve used Specsavers recently. Says ‘masks should be worn’ on their blurb – but I didn’t and no-one challenged me.
It is mad, but the solution is not to go anywhere that is still applying covid rules and deprive them of money until they change their approach (in some cases it is often central bodies which are the problem – dentists, opticians, etc). So I don’t go to church, dentist, optician, museums with the advance booking nonsense, anywhere with covid signs up generally.
At the tip a couple of weeks ago – while they don’t have a booking system they do have a man in a hut at the gate to “manage” the traffic and make sure people don’t get too close to each other in a wide open space, a border guard as I called him. He laughed and said that everyone had lost their minds in the last 2 years, he could be doing something useful but instead he is standing at the gate telling people where to park their cars, which they are perfectly capable of doing themselves.
Insanity.
We were talking about travel today and I had heard on BBC R4 you and yours (I sometimes dip in to hear how stupid people are) that a lot of people with newly issued (printed in France) passports are having problems with the e-gates. So after trying 3 times one is sent to a staffed desk by the “helpful” person standing next to the e-gate. It would be much better to have this person staff a gate and do the old and tested checking system!
I once talked to a check-out operator at Wilko about this, too, she was the only staffed check-out, and then a staff member was standing around in case the self checkouts need assistance. I mentioned it would make more sense to have this person sit at the till, and she said everyone hates that job and they’d rather operate a till.
Hospitals are not fully open. Wards are not back to full capacity, chairs 50% taped off, day treatments patient only no spouses etc, and I bet treatment lists at 50%.
Remember the “good old days” full waiting rooms, surgeries open and full. All the little bugs (like covid) went round fast, immunity was reached and we all got on with our lives unhindered.
Well we wont see those again in our lifetimes, not until all the covidians are dead and gone.
Sadly the covidians will never fully go. Children have been conditioned by zealous parents to expect to have a cotton bud pushed up their noses at the first sign of a sniffle or even a headache. Fear will stalk the population for a long time yet.
Perhaps I could suggest the following becomes the new national anthem for those of us still in posession of our own minds.
I don’t need you to worry for me ’cause I’m alright
I don’t want you to tell me it’s time to come home
I don’t care what you say anymore this is my life
Go ahead with your own life leave me alone
I never said you had to offer me a second chance
(I never said you had to)
I never said I was a victim of circumstance
(I never said)
I still belong (still belong)
Don’t get me wrong (don’t get me wrong)
You can speak your mind but not on my time
They will tell you you can’t sleep alone in a strange place
Then they’ll tell you you can’t sleep with somebody else
Oh, but sooner or later you sleep in your own space
Either way it’s okay, you wake up with yourself
I don’t need you to worry for me ’cause I’m alright
I don’t want you to tell me it’s time to come home
I don’t care what you say anymore this is my life
Go ahead with your own life leave me alone
I never said you had to offer me a second chance
(I never said you had to)
I never said I was a victim of circumstance
(Gf circumstance)
I still belong (still belong)
Don’t get me wrong (don’t get me wrong)
You can speak your mind but not on my time
I don’t care what you say anymore this is my life
Go ahead with your own life leave me alone
With thanks to Billy Joel
And thanks to you too – one of my very favourites!
I was surprised to see the little Catholic church is Exmouth, Devon still insists it’s parishioners wear masks to “protect their vulnerable parishioners and the priest”. Wow, have they not read the science? Masks do not work. Although last year at this time the Catholic Church simply locked their doors and their parishioners did not even have access to go in to say a prayer on Good Friday without booking a place. Despite everyone we now know triple jabbed and masked….many are getting covid. Looks like they have been conned, once again.
Not just Government locations. I’m in Wensleydale this weekend in a little village miles from nowhere. Sign on door of said village store reads “Face masks are not required BUT WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND THEY ARE WORN INSIDE”. Inside, the Covid Nazi owner, rancid mask resting on his chin, still hides behind his pathetic plastic screen dangling from the ceiling and stoping two feet short of the counter. Of course nobody but the totally paranoid takes a blind bit of notice of the sign whilst our mask less covidian facist store manager carries on a conversation about the chances of a Crystal Palace win.
WTF is this madness going to stop?
When people stop complying. But more must do that. Perhaps write a letter to this dimwit in Wensleydale, saying you appreciated that his store is there and open – but that you intend to go elsewhere in future even though it’s not so convenient. Perhaps send several letters to make it look as though more feel as you do. This is a time when lying has to be done, even if it goes against the grain.
The problem lies with the very many ‘sheeple’ who are still only too happy to comply with restrictions in shops, theatres etc, despite the full lifting of these by the Govt. In a recent opera event at the RNCM (Music College) masks were handed out AT THE ENTRANCE to those without one. We shouted ‘mask exempt’ and walked straight in. Virtually everyone kept their mask on throughout the 3 hour opera in a crowded theatre. Why?
Try going to see Cabaret at the Playhouse Theatre – a musical about 1930s Germany and the rise of totalitarianism, but you have to show your (Covid) papers at the door! Off the scale irony, completely lost on the leftie luvvies in charge.
I just looked it up:
https://help.atgtickets.com/hc/en-gb/articles/4418986791698-Cabaret-Health-and-Safety
WTF! Unbe-bloody-lievable!”
What are these hollow-heads on with!
Write and ask them exactly that! Tell them you’d intended to come with a party of ten people, but that you’ve all changed your minds, and will suggest to other friends that they give it a miss too.
Then why not confront them? Go the next day and ask to see the manager. ANYTHING that will show that some people have brains in their heads.
I went to the theatre in Guildford and was told that it wanted people to wear masks. I didn’t and nor did the vast majority of the audience – mostly oldies as it was a matinee. I doubt that anyone suffered as a result.
We went to see Semmelweis at Bristol Old Vic- he was the man who put science behind infection causing maternal deaths. Irony of Irony mask wearing compulsory for the audience when seated but not while drinking or in bar. Mask wearing should be made a civil offence ?
Here’s me thinking that covid is all over.
Just simply refuse
Local branch of Specsavers still demands masks and social distancing, limiting the number of people in the shop. I think – but don’t know for sure – that they don’t allow you to walk straight in off the street, you have to lurk outside until someone notices you. Or that’s what it looked like to me.
I changed to a small independent optician about 3 years ago. I never masked up, just wore an exemption lanyard and not a word was said. They did insist on taking my temperature though, on my wrist, but nothing else.
I’ve been into Specsavers recently – walked straight in, through to the reception desk at the back of the ‘store’. All the assistants were muzzled, but not all the customers. I wasn’t and no-one said a word to me about it.
These restrictions only work if we comply. It is the imbecilic members of my profession who are fully aware that masks do not work and have not stood up against the buffoonery of vaccine mandates. The first successful litigation for clinical negligence will see a sudden end to this unscientific nonsense.
Our local park council managed toilets still have the laminated paper “please wear a face mask inside the toilets”. Well, the ladies now doesn’t.
There is usually an attendant, but no-one there, so today I felt like taking it off.
We should all begin to do our bit – and little things like this will make a difference.
I am in hospital. Every time I am taken for a procedure, scan, Xray, see a consultant etc, I am asked to wear a mask. i always say ‘I do not wear a mask’. That is the end of all those conversations.
For God’s sake, JUST SAY NO!
Why not remove the rules? Because there would be pen pushers with nothing to do. All this is simply theatre – we know it. THEY know it. The cruellest thing that has been done through all this madness is the keeping apart of people who need support.
I only wish we knew who were the guilty ones – who are STILL the guilty ones. We can’t expect the law, such as it is, to punish them – so we’ll just have to hope that there are other more appropriate punishments bearing down upon them.
Tell these tubes to shove their masks where the sun don’t shine.