💡Travel Advise: Latest Update from the UK Foreign Office

[JENNYJET]

I suppose if one thinks about it, how many Spanish citizens travel to the islands for work and are possible carriers of Covid. Is this the logic behind the total quarantine from the Kingdom of Spain? The islands are deemed safe for travel but are the residents safe to mix with?

 

[Aviador]

I suppose if one thinks about it, how many Spanish citizens travel to the islands for work and are possible carriers of Covid. Is this the logic behind the total quarantine from the Kingdom of Spain? The islands are deemed safe for travel but are the residents safe to mix with?

We weren't stopped from visiting Leicester during their local lockdown so I don't see the difference.

 

[JENNYJET]

No difference as far as it goes, except it would be unlawful to isolate a city within the nation without an amendment to Magna Carta and latterly The Bill of Rights. Otherwise it is a recipe for Civil War. Lockdown as provided for in the Coronavirus Act 2020 is the limitations of movement within a designated area of concern.

It is possible that the government in Madrid have not provided such legal niceties with concern for their island territories.

 

[Aviador]

Interesting point @JENNYJET I know the Canary Islands are pushing for full independence and they have their own regional government. Obviously this isn't enough.

 

[IanFarquharson]

I agree that it could have been spelt out more clearly. Simply put, everyone returning to the UK from the Spanish mainland or its islands will have to quarantine but, additionally, the FCO is advising against all but essential travel to mainland Spain.

That is correct, everyone from any part of Spain inc Islands needs to quarantine

 

[JENNYJET]

Mirrors Scotland me thinks!

 

[JENNYJET]

The FCO and Downing Street should have said The Kingdom of Spain as this includes all lands and territories and leaves no legal loopholes.

 

[KARFA]

What happens to people who don't have a mobile phone - like me (from choice)?

fill it in online and print it off

 

[KARFA]

Karfa, like all arrangements put in place, there can be flaws. The night before i returned from Portugal i received an email from Ryanair and duly filled in the passenger locator form on my smartphone. However, where this fell down for me and for many other passengers, was inside the terminal at Birmingham where i could not get a wifi connection. I am not a technophobe and while i did not panic i clearly needed some help. Eventually a Border Force guy was able to connect me first to the Birmingham Airport wifi and then onto my own locator form.

Not everything is as straightforward as it is meant to be.... Multiply my dilemma ten fold and therein lies the problem. Maybe the Border Force check should be sited elsewhere at the airport, perhaps on the tarmac as people leave the plane, as it was in Portugal when i arrived there 10 days previously....

once you have competed the form it gets emailed to you in pdf form. If you don’t have a phone which incoudes date just save pdf to your phone before hand.

i think you have missed the point of my post tho tbh. Since everyone already had to co the form why does Spain being removed from the exemption list change anything at the border? The trouble you had would have been the same either way.

 

[Sherburnflyer92]

https://www.travelweekly.co.uk/articles/380777/spain-quarantine-there-is-too-much-mystery-behind-these-decisions-the-government-is-not-learning

Perfect headline summing up probably a good chunk of the UK population feelings. The government is not learning. It never will.

 

[Aviador]

Throughout the pandemic Boris insisted we needed to use our own common sense and our own judgement. So if we can do that at home, why not abroad? Give people the information they need and let them decide.

If we were told covid-19 was likely to disappear in the coming months then the current government advise would make sense until it clears, but we're told covid-19 is here to stay and it's unlikely to ever go away. This means sooner or later people will have to make their own choices because the economy can't stop forever.

 

[JENNYJET]

I apologise at the start if I offend. I ask one question. Who do we trust with factual honest information, experts working via government or those journalists that muddy the waters with questions designed to create doubt and confusion leading us on forums throughout the internet to stray from our basic reason for existence? I refer to a discussion on here yesterday about Spain with little reference to aircraft or airports, and it continues. I am not attacking this forum but I find myself constrained by Tip toe correctness and self censorship, trying not to upset members with straight talk.

I admit I have issues caused by a solitary life, by choice, and sometimes fail to consider other possible solutions etc. and I have been admonished for this.

I shall try harder if your bear with me. Thank You.

 

[Sherburnflyer92]

Tough question there @JENNYJET. Until Boris Johnson and his bunch of nodding morons cabinet come along i would of said i trust more the Government then i do the media. Unfortunately this past 12 months i've changed my mind completely. I don't trust a word that comes from the majority of cabinet politicians, especially this cabinet. Full of nodding dogs, who are clearly very incapable, useless, and would need a map and compass, to find their backbones.

You cannot continue like this. It's simply not doable. This all needs the proper infrastructure behind it to ensure that we are able to, once again, successful open up our borders. This is something that, during the dark bleak days of lockdown, April, we should have been thinking about. How do we open our borders without enforcing a 14 day quarantine? Testing everyone on arrival, testing a sample 30-50% of pax on arrival, track & trace? Where did they stay? Which resorts did they visit whilst over there and what days/times? Yes it's annoying, but the "new normal" has been absorbed well as far as i can see here in Leeds. In fact the "new normal" in some instances is better than "normal".

Quite clear from the FCO change that someone is pulling their weight and it is not favouring the FCO. As far as i'm concerned all this, advice of quarantine, traffic light system - it should all sit under Dominic Raab's umbrella in the FCO office. Simple as it gets. Them guys have dealt with terrorist attacks, wars, natural disasters, political unrest and the list goes on. They are experts at this sort of stuff. Risk management.

As you've pointed in the Jet2 thread @JENNYJET we need an urgent cabinet reshuffle/boot out and get some real politicians/experienced senior conservatives who are very good at crisis management. Or just management in general.

 

[JENNYJET]

I recommend watching. Yes PrimeMinister again as this is very close to the reality of Government today, apart from that is not funny to the citizens of these islands today

. Unfortunately, the great and good amongst the political classes were elevated to the Peerage and sit in the Lord's and current convention is that only elected persons may be answerable to MPs as Lord's cannot enter the Commons unless under summons of the Speaker. This is a Blair reform since Mandelson, Carrington and another peer I forget held Cabinet Office.

I would have the best people in their respective disciplines be appointed to Secretaries of State and be Privy Councillors but as commoners and not peers unless already appointed i.e. Hereditary. There are niceties concerning democratic accountability!

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Can anyone tell me why the Balearics and Canaries were not included in the non-essential travel category along with mainland Spain on Saturday? What has changed in the meantime, and at a time when the Uk government was said to be speaking with Spain to have the islands removed from the quarantine requirement altogether?

Now, not only does the quarantine remain, but people are being told not to go to the islands at all if their journey is non-essential.

Unless a reliable vaccine is found (unlikely according to many 'experts') this sort of stop-go, stop-go could last for years.

I remember at the beginning of the lockdown in March some 'experts' were saying that whenever it was eased spikes in the number of cases were bound to occur. As has been said in the recent posts in this thread, robust plans should have been put in place to deal with any likely eventuality. As it is, we seem to have a government that reacts instead of proacts, and reacts in a shambolic way for much of the time.

The PM admitted recently that the government made mistakes in the early stages of the pandemic and would learn from them. They are slow learners based on today's chaos.

As for the quarantine process, what happens to people who have no phone - mobile or landline? Will the contactors visit their address physically? O'Leary rightly said many weeks ago said that if the checks are made by phone someone could be on the golf course and say they were at home. In any case it's not expected that more than 50% of those who are in quarantine will be contacted if that, and they would have used public transport in many cases in order to reach home even though the government says they should not. How else could many people get home from an airport?

I'm not suggesting that managing the pandemic is easy - far from it - but the government has made so many mistakes that I have lost confidence in whatever they pronounce vis-a-vis the pandemic. I have no party political allegiance and have a healthy contempt for most politicians whichever party they are in.

 

[Brum X]

The Muppet Show that is the UK government under-react at the beginning of all this and over-react now in order to regain some credibility. All in vain from where I stand. No quarantine from Gibraltar, which is surprising to say the least when you consider its location. 😡

What a shambles

 

[thunderchild]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we just need to clone Jacinda Ardern!

 

[Jerry]

No quarantine from Gibraltar, which is surprising to say the least when you consider its location.

But then that would be admitting that Gibraltar is part of Spain not the UK.
What I find laughable is that the UK government saying that Spain isn't safe when the death rate here and specifically in England is much higher! I'm surprised that Europe hasn't banned Brits from travelling.

 

[JENNYJET]

It is theoretically possible to second her to Britain. Like BoJo, she is Her Majesty's Prime Minister in New Zealand. A realm of the Crown. One could start a petition inviting her to help us but why would anyone wish to leave that fabulous country?

 

[KARFA]

What I find laughable is that the UK government saying that Spain isn't safe when the death rate here and specifically in England is much higher! I'm surprised that Europe hasn't banned Brits from travelling.

It is judged on the 14 day confirmed cumulative number of cases per 100,000. By that measure the UK is around 14-15. Spain , Portugal, and Sweden are all around 35-40.

Gibraltar is about 15 too at the present time, although with a small population a handful of new cases could obviously change that number very quickly.

The death rate from coronavirus over the last few months is not much different being around 600-700 per 1m for both UK and Spain, although this is largely irrelevant for judging where there are areas of current higher infection and therefore from which countries there should be self isolation for arrivals.