All remaining U.K. Covid travel restrictions could be scrapped in days under plans being considered by ministers. The Mail has more.
The deeply unpopular passenger locator forms are expected to be ditched at a scheduled committee meeting of Cabinet ministers next week. They will also consider dropping testing for unvaccinated passengers.
The plans would bring back frictionless travel for the first time since the start of the pandemic – just in time for the busy Easter holidays next month.
The ravaged travel industry hailed the prospect of the remaining restrictions being abolished. As it stands, only fully vaccinated arrivals can enter the U.K. without the need for tests. But they must fill in a passenger locator form within 72 hours of travel, sharing their address, phone number, passport and flight details.
The forms were launched two years ago – when arrivals had to quarantine at home – to help check if travellers were following the rules.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has been pushing to scrap them in time for Easter.
Belgium is scrapping its own form on Friday while Greece is ditching its version next week.
Unvaccinated U.K. arrivals currently have to take a rapid pre-departure test within 48 hours of travel and a costly PCR swab by day two. However, next week’s ‘Covid-O’ (Covid Operations) meeting could be postponed due to events in Ukraine, and health officials will need to be won over.
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary said scrapping the passenger locator form was long overdue. He told the Daily Mail: “It’s a shambles. They should ditch it, it’s completely irrelevant. Nobody collects them, nobody checks them or follows up on them. They were designed to pretend that the politicians were doing something to protect people.”
What are they waiting for? Let’s hope the meeting is not delayed and they drop them all.
Worth reading in full.
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Haven’t seen my family in 3 and a half years because of these restrictions.
That’s awful, Cristi. Let’s hope these filthy and inhuman restrictions are all lifted as soon as possible.
This includes the requirement that unvaccinated people be tested, even if the quotes from the travel sector [*] bosses published in the Daily Mail concern only the passenger locator form.
Note
*) An industry is where people make stuff. Selling vehicle rides, running hotels, etc., isn’t making stuff.
FYI those examples are called service industries. A common place description in commerce
Bloody hell, Cristi. Where are they in the world?
Romania. But having a job means I couldn’t take 3-4 weeks off work to stay in quarantine to go visit everyone.
Yeah. I heard from several Romanians that quarantine is really enforced there. Stories of police demanding (with megaphones) to see people on the balconies of their fourth story apartment, that sort of thing, are pretty common. Crazy…
In Poland, bored soldiers were employed to visit my mother in law every day for two weeks upon her return from UK.
I haven’t seen the in-laws since 2019, not because of restrictions but because they’ve fallen for the propaganda.
Every cloud has a silver lining!
Will that include ditching the ‘obedience training ‘ dog muzzles?
They have been ditched in England and the Celtic fringes are ditching them by month-end.
Mr Tax,
I meant on flights
The wearing of face nappies on planes, according to the Civil Aviation Authority and HM Gov, has always been a guideline (aware this is just UK authorities).
Most airlines favoured “SafETy” over reason and afforded the most bossy and most stupid members of their cabin crews the responsibility to “deal with unruly passengers who flout the rULeS.”
Jet2 has already axed them. Unless you really feel you need the comfort blanket, of course…
The most militant air hostess (by far) over the last two years was one three weeks ago from Lisbon to Bournemouth. She just would not leave me alone and became pretty nasty, actually.
Ryanair has followed Jet2 – although after the way the boss of Ryanair spoke about the purebloods I don’t think I’ll ever fly with them.
I did respect Mr O’Leary until he called people exercising bodily autonomy “idiots”. Or was it Bliar that used that word?
Anyway, Michael said something pretty objectionable. But ready to forgive if he apologises (haha).
Me neither. Mr O’Leary isn’t getting another penny of my money.
How about Tesco?
Boycotts get really hard to stick to, don’t they?!
I know I certainly am not selling any of my index funds, even though they contain Pfizer, Moderna, et al.
Three minus ticks from people who said they’d boycott Tesco and then didn’t.
After O’Leary’s comments that unvaccinated people should be legally banned from flying, I decided never again to use the services of his company. I’ve used Ryanair dozens of times over the years, but it would make me physically sick now to do any business with them.
I find it strange the abuse Ryanair and M O’Leary gets.
Is he not the guy (after Freddy Laker was destroyed) who single handedly broke the insane monopoly of BIG AIR and introduced affordable flying to the masses?
He went over to America, studied their cheap flying system and introduced it first in Ireland and then all over Europe.
I don’t suppose it’s anything to do with his nationality – ignoring his abrasiveness.
I was a big fan of Mr O’Leary’s until his comments about the unjabbed.
But like I say, ready to forgive if he publicly acknowledges getting pulled along with the hysteria.
And why should his bad manners be ignored? If he wants to buy people’s goodwill, then he damned well SHOULD show courtesy to his clientele.
Maybe you should treat him the way Venezuela will treat the USA right now.
‘Mr O’Leary – if you want me to travel with you, then you pick me up in a limo, take me to the airport, give me a nice G+T and when I return home you take me by limo home again. Otherwise, you can forget it!’
I checked easyjet and Ryanair last week and it was condition of carriage, although they accept a doctors exemption letter. Lufthansa make you wear a visor if you have a medical exemption. Just checked Ryan Air, it is not in the condition of carriage, but still says mandatory on the website. And they could always refuse to transport you if you do not wear a masks as you could be deemed a threat to other passengers and staff.
What a load of coercive tripe, isn’t it?
Caesar tells us the Celts lived in NW France. The British celts are a myth.
I thought he said the area between the rivers Garonne and Seine was inhabited by Gauls. South of the Garonne: ancestors of the Basques. North of the Seine: Germanic speakers.
He said that the people of what is now SE England were the same as the people across the Channel – that is, Germanic speakers – but he didn’t visit anywhere else in the British Isles.
How about everyone else though…..
Its one thing being able to return to this (my own!) country without any unnecessary BS but you cant return without being able to go somewhere else first!
France, Switzerland etc as far as I can tell are still operating under a deluded medical discrimination system.
Until they (and everyone else) changes then what Brits have to do at our own borders is irrelevant as you cant go anywhere to get back in from!
Good point,
Is there a list of countries (warm ones) which have a sanity injection?
https://www.kayak.co.uk/travel-restrictions?travel=open-border,no-quarantine,no-testing
12 countries fully open now, 2 (Hungary and Romania) added today. Currently one more is being added every 2-3 days.
Thanks |Julian
Hungary is one of the more promising options because there are reasonable train connections to surrounding countries. Once you are in the EU, there are no restrictions at land borders. In theory you could arrive in Budapest, travel by train to a nearby country and fly back from wherever you like. Makes perfect logical sense does it not (sarc)?
“Hungary is one of the more promising options because there are reasonable train connections to surrounding countries.”
…such as Ukraine!
Try Vienna – although given the forced vaccinations there, you might want to keep out of Austria for a while….
A big thank you for that link, Julian!
The small print says not Liechtenstein or Switzerland for the unvaccinated, so we have:
Europe
Hungary
Iceland
Ireland
Norway
Romania
Slovenia <- Ljubljana is a beautiful small city
Elsewhere
Bahrain
Costa Rica
El Salvador
Jordan
Mexico
I’ve always fancied going Slovenia – thanks.
Denmark just added
Not for unjabbed … only unjabbed from EU/Schengen countries, and we’re (UK) not listed as one of those. https://en.coronasmitte.dk/travel-rules/covidtravelrules
Maybe that will be updated in due course …
Thanks for that, Kayak got that wrong then, unusual for them
Loving this page, Julian. Interestingly, when you choose Australia as the origin, everything should be red, right? I thought they were simply not allowed out. So the page does not account for the plight of the poor Aussie.
https://www.kayak.co.uk/travel-restrictions?travel=open-border,no-quarantine,no-testing&origin=AU
I thought the status of the Aussies had changed but I can’t say I followed it
It’s the best resource I have found for keeping up to date on the travel
A mate of mine went to Australia and said there was nothing there.
Just a big X floating on the water.
You’d be surprised how many places don’t actually exist.
Not sure how to take this, EF! Are you still mad at me for telling you to use your imagination regarding avoiding the testing/tracing/certificates nonsense?
That was just something I saw somewhere a while back and fits my sense of humour.
I’ve not been mad at you, but I do realise there’s no point in asking you for details of your trip if you are unwilling to provide them. The ‘postcard from Portugal’ never appeared… I’ll put that down to you being “short of time”.
I would have thought details such as which company you bought your PCRs from, how much they cost, etc. would have been relevant – there are others on this site who are keen to know exactly how things go on a trip. I do note that others are aware that travelling for ‘the unvaxxed’ remains difficult.
The bottom line for the present is that a trip to the UK for ‘the unvaxxed’ involves arranging and taking a PCR before departing, and pre-purchasing a PCR from one of Javid’s slimy mates to be taken by Day 2 of arrival in the UK.
The ‘vaxxed’ can sail on through now… but this was all about punishment for those who put up a fight and refused the ‘magic juice’.
The big X is the space inside our politicians’ heads. They might have learnt from overseas experience (our location gave us the luxury of time), but no.
Since Oz became a group of governments acting more or less independently from the vacuum that is our national government, the situation varies from state to state – but mandates rule, masks rule, and we just can’t get enough of those tests!
Population pissed off. Unjabbed still losing jobs and pretty much confined to barracks.
Thank you!
Nadhim Zahawis horses’ stables are quite warm, so I hear.
I believe Turkey has negligible restrictions. Florida ot Texas would be my top picks, providing you can tolerate the Federal rules
The country that doesn’t want me to be jabbed and is happy with me being free-faced will get my money. Whether that’s England or Estonia or Egypt.
US is vaxxed only at present
My friend is lying low at the moment. She is due to fly out to the USA in a couple of weeks with her husband to visit their daughter. Both she and her husband are triple jabbed but they will still have to take a test before they depart. She is terrified of testing positive, thus scuppering the visit.
Tell me again, what was the point of being jabbed three times?
To show how much you care.
She’ll test positive.
Do update us. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of Schadenfreude.
Switzerland dropped need to be injected for entry into their country about 2 weeks ago.
Yes but most of their houses still look like prisons.
Not according to this link: https://travelcheck.admin.ch/check
Vaxxed only unless special circumstances, when travelling from UK at least
Allegedly you may travel to Norway and Iceland if you haven’t been ‘Covid-vaccinated’.
Which is OK is you like the dark this time of year, and snowy streets.
It’s good for our own tourist sector though. Makes it easy for lots of people to come visit Britain.
Don’t regard it as more than tactical – they’ll be back.
Intermittent reinforcement schedules.
Everyone at “nudge” and behavioural units knows that stuff.
The only time I had to show my UK passenger locator form was to the Spanish check in at Tenerife airport. The UK border agency didn’t ask to see it at all.
In all our travels since the stupid things were invented, no UK Border Force employee (either at sea or air ports) ever asked to see it (four times).
In fact, the most we had was a question in September 2020, in Calais: “Have you completed your form?”
“Yes, I have, I can get it for you, it’s on my phone, hang on -”
“No that’s OK, just need to know you’ve done it.”
…pause for dramatic effect…
“If I had said I hadn’t, what would have happened, out of interest?”
“You’d have had to pay £100 now to do it in that building over there. Here are you passports, drive straight ahead. Have a safe crossing.”
I’ve never had to show mine to enter the U.K. but it’s linked to your passport so they k ow whether you’ve filled it in or not and have it on record. I’d you’ve ever entered Scotland from abroad during this ‘pandemic’ you inevitably get the call on day 2 so they know you’re there!
Who knows if they have already triangulated your phone and know where it is before they call you? So if you say you’re in Stirling when you’re really in Aberdeen, they’ll know you’re lying. Instant fine of £10,000.
They don’t need to see it because it is linked to your passport. The miracles of modern technology will pick it up when your passport is scanned
The pointless restrictions on unvaccinated travellers look increasingly like punishment for refusing to comply with government diktats. They always were of course but it’s become glaringly obvious now we know the vaccines do nothing to prevent infection or transmission. A petty infringement on our basic rights for which there is no defence. Every day they remain is a disgrace.
“The pointless restrictions on unvaccinated travellers look increasingly like punishment for refusing to comply”
Now you’re getting it. And to take the piss they make you pay for tests that their mates are flogging. Javid’s Wheel of Fortune.
That’s why there need to be court cases against MPs, civil servants and SAGE.
It’s so glaringly obvious. I will probably still have to jump through the hoops next week when I visit the U.K. whereas my once jabbed husband (August 21 so what kind of immunity does that offer – if it ever did) doesn’t. We live together and travel together so what kind of sense does that make at all except to put an immense strain on relationships where one partner has chosen to take the ‘cure’ and one has chosen not to!
Surely travellers need to be jabbed 2 times to be ‘fully vaxxed’? Unless it’s a one-shot-does-all vax such as ‘Johnson’?
My partner had her 2nd jab in October so that would have meant her EU Vaxx Pass would have stopped being valid in July 2022. (She had her 3rd jab last Thursday, so that bumps her Pass up again by another 9 months, up to early December 2022. She will have to take a 4th jab if the Pass is to be continued, and the EU does want the Vaxx Pass ‘scheme’ to be extended to June 2023.)
The whole thing is a farce, when it first started a seafront cafe had a little table set out to sign in!!
Who were you that day? Boris Johnson? Matt Hancock?
With my Sharpie, I have put a little black spot on many a QR code. An odd sort of anarchy…
But then these are very odd times.
Well given that ‘covid’ (the phenomenon that results in people ‘testing positive for covid’ hasn’t gone away, what are we to make of this? Well firstly it’s either (a) served its purpose or (b) it’s a failed attempt to achieve something. I’m leaning more towards (a) because I don’t believe that the project was ever truly threatened by the likes of us, they controlled the narrative throughout even when it looked like the truth slipped through (Sajid Javid and Dr Steve James is one example of a controlled retreat; why was this story broadcast to millions where others weren’t?) So if it’s served its purpose, then the obvious question is which one(s)?
I’m still inclined to see this as the prelude to a financial collapse and the need to make drastic changes to living standards and the monetary system without organised political resistance. Covid could be viewed as an experiment, intended to find out how pliable and controllable the public is. Now we know; In the UK it’s about 85% and in the US it’s more like 60-something for instance.
The infrastructure for digital money has been introduced under the Trojan horse of vaccine passports which are now disappearing.
The notions of ‘lockdown’ and curfews have been introduced; maybe they will be easier to implement in the event of financial shock.
The idea that privacy is not a human right has also been introduced via contract tracing and tracking.
In other words the public has been primed for collapse, but this isn’t just in the west. In an interconnected and complex global system a collapse of the dollar and euro would send reverberations around every corner of the globe, hence China and Russia for instance playing along.
If this is what they are really up to, it would also explain how world leaders were able to lie so effectively and consistently. They were genuinely afraid, not of any virus, but of the public and what will happen to them when the collapse finally occurs.
Maybe. I tend to think that they rode it while it lasted because it gave them lots of power but they ran out of lies (and political support – the backbench MPs and some Cabinet ministers decided enough was enough).
Apart from the odd day when I get out of the wrong side of bed, that is my view, too, Julian.
“vaccine passports which are now disappearing.”
The EU wants to extend its Vaxx Pass (‘Covid Certificate’) until June 2023. My partner got a 3rd jab last week and we had a look at her Vaxx Pass on-line and indeed it does say 3/3 doses given – runs for 270 days from the date of the last jab.
“The precipitous events in Ukraine have stolen the focus from the swelling voices of reason amongst citizens under the Covid cosh. But this doesn’t take away from the fact that an actual war has been declared right in our own backyards and is being pursued here and now. A war that is essentially as repressive and vindictive as classical weapons-based wars of attrition.” Julian Rose
https://newagora.ca/emergency-powers-to-end-humanity-by-julian-rose/
Err – why? They aren’t the government and it needs to be made clear to the ‘health officials’ that they are not calling the shots now, and these nonsensical measures don’t have any measurable impact anyway.
The ‘health officials’ are the disease.
Twas Lionel Shriver, I believe, of the excellent Spectator, that coined the word “Doctatorship”.
Amazing, isn’t it, how a little war in Ukraine made Covid disappear?
No doubt ‘the’ science is on hold until they need it again.
PS has UK Government repealed its emergency powers legislation yet?
“PS has UK Government repealed its emergency powers legislation yet?”
Most of the CV act has gone/lapsed, but the real problem is the Public Health Act 1984 which is what they (ab)used for most of the restrictions – it’s an enabling act so you declare a public health emergency and Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your aunt
The problem seems to be that if the executive chooses it can govern the UK partly by ‘statutory instruments’ aka decrees from No. 10. This bypasses parliament. So the ‘awkward squad’ have no say.
Statutory Instruments are created as a result of primary legislation though, so it’s the legislation which enables them which needs to be tackled – in this case the Public Health Act 1984 mostly.
In fairness, those who wrote and voted that act into law could never have imagined that it would be used in this way, and the courts should have intervened as in many cases the government were blatantly going well beyond a reasonable interpretation.
I don’t believe that, by any reasonable interpretation, the Public Health Act 1984 allows the lockdowns either. It was patently designed for isolated containment of severe diseases.
It was challenged in the High Court by Simon Dolan and he lost. Unfortunately it was then revealed that our courts could not be trusted to apply the law fairly and were as caught up in the hysteria as everyone else.
True, but at least the Public Health Act 1984 states it’s illegal to make any medical procedure mandatory.
That didn’t seem to stop them trying. What stopped them was people saying NO.
Sumption said he thought their use of the Act was unconstitutional and they should have used the Civil Contingencies Act which allows more scrutiny.
They didn’t want to use the Civil Contingencies Act at the time because it provides for only a week (or two, can’t remember) of extraordinary powers (e.g. use of military to really enforce stay at home orders). Any extension requires parliamentary approval, and then only for a period of ONE MONTH MAX. At the time they thought they didn’t have the buy-in from MPs. And they may have been correct in that…
Without the use of Civil Contingencies Act, they cannot enforce anything, hence the need for Coronavirus Act 2020 and one enormous and very well-funded campaign of behavioural psychology…
The question of “why” they did it all, still stands…
And yet the court challenges on that have failed, because don’t you know there’s a war on?
https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2021/11/26/mandatory-vaccination-for-care-home-workers-not-unlawful-nor-in-breach-of-echr/
They are touting food rationing now, I wonder if they will do that with ration books or perhaps… an app on your phone, linked to you ID? Who’d have thunk it.
…
Anyone missed this bit?
“However, next week’s ‘Covid-O’ (Covid Operations) meeting could be postponed due to events in Ukraine, and health officials will need to be won over.”
I don’t think it will be safe to travel, until those people who broke international human rights have been tried and convicted. I’m certainly not going anywhere near Australia, New Zealand or Canada in this lifetime.
Never felt the need to visit either Australia or New Zealand. But Canada, well, I’ve been to Montreal and it was really brilliant. I hope they give that little daddy’s boy, Turd, a real seeing to.
In 2019 we were talking about going to Australia. I can’t see that happening now. The natural fall backs would have been New Zealand or Canada … but they are no longer “nice places to visit” … if I wanted to holiday under and authoritarian regime, there are far better places with much more to see, and you don’t have the risk of insane governments.
There is always the risk of insane governments; other people, spending other people’s money on what other people tell them are other people’s problems.
If the unvaxxed are treated any differently then tha is still a restriction. So be weary of ay claim of the opposite
It’s another step in the right direction.
However, when will our care homes be liberated?
I haven’t seen my daughter in Auckland for three years and now she is about to undergo grueling treatment for cancer. Being unjabbed I have no hope of seeing her again if the treatment doesn’t work. I am working on accepting the fact but it’s hard.
“They were designed to pretend that the politicians were doing something to protect people.”. And this is the core of the problem, that politicians pretend that ‘something MUST be done’, and what they decide in their knee-jerk reactions is always the WRONG thing. In fact, very often, doing NOTHING is the BEST solution. Why? Because WE are the best people to decide for ourselves what risks we do and don’t take. The sooner politicians and the awful SAGE etc. despocrats understand this, the better we will be.
Perhaps he Health Secretary could also remove all restrictions from hospitals, GP surgeries and care homes. My local hospital still has a large banner outside saying “NO VISITORS!”, one of the cruelest and least caring things a hospital can do.
And drop the most stupid rule about wearing face nappies