If someone can explain the latest UK government advice to me in terms of where we can go, when and by what means I will be very grateful. Gillian Keegan MP Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills certainly could not to Julia Hartley-Brewer on talkRADIO on Wednesday morning despite repeated opportunities. Ms Keegan went on to say the most extraordinary thing on Sky News later:
“We haven’t legislated to ban people from going on holiday at all,” she told Sky News. “This is guidance and, as in many of these things that we’ve had throughout the pandemic, this has been about really allowing the great British public, you know, relying on them being sensible and looking at the guidance that we have put in place and taking their own decisions.”
This is a fine time to be ‘relying’ on ‘the great British public’ to be ‘sensible’ and take our ‘own decisions’. That is exactly what we should have been allowed to do throughout the pandemic. In fact, many of us were. There was government guidance by the bucket load over the past year, but I do not recall us being allowed to take our own decisions. Exceeding ‘the guidance’ was often backed up by the full force of the law. My view is if they have not legislated against it then they should simply shut up and stop confusing people.
Visit the GOV.UK Foreign Travel Advice and it seems quite clear what we are permitted to do within certain restrictions. But just as the EU say we are welcome, Health Minister Lord Bethell has told us not to take summer holidays abroad. It is not only hard to fathom what is going on but even harder to fathom why. We seem to be in an ‘untravelling’ situation akin to Humpty Dumpty’s ‘unbirthday’ in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. I also note the absence of any real enthusiasm to promote taking holidays in the UK. At least this could be sold to us as a ‘buy British’ drive to which some may respond positively. But I cannot help feeling that with the genuine possibility of a renewed tiered lockdown state being imposed that we are being softened up for not leaving home at all for a very long time.
It is hard to imagine the extent to which hearts will be sinking in the travel industry. People working in airlines, airport hotels, travel agents and other aspects of our infrastructure that support the holiday industry must be going from depression to despair. Thousands of people who have been confined to quarters here for months on end who were looking forward to getting away must also be disappointed. Some people do not have gardens to sit in and offices to work in at home, they have been cooped up in close proximity to their partners and children with nowhere to go and little to break the monotony except Netflix and alcohol. I have alluded before, in The Salisbury Review, to our situation being like a cork being pushed ever tighter into the neck of a powder keg. With the looming prospect of continued and re-imposed restrictions, the fuse may well have been lit.
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