Flights

[victor]

from UK now being banned from EU countries

[Workingman]

Not just European countries, other places are thinking along the same lines, and can you blame them?

This new variant was first discovered in South East England in September. It is reported that the UK has informed the WHO, but when? It only really became public knowledge early last week

I hope to God the UK didn't sit on this thinking it might go away. If we did there will be Hell to pay.

[miasmum]

So what happens to people that flew yesterday.

I know someone who flew yesterday before the announcement but is Tier 4

[Workingman]

It is all going pear shaped as countries line up to impose UK travel bans, and not just in Europe. Some are for an emergency period of 24 to 48 hours with a review, but others go on to the end of December and January, and others are open-ended.

It also looks like the UK was monitoring this for weeks before the PM's announcement on Saturday, judging from papers released by SAGE and NERVTAG. It is starting to look as though we were not totally open and honest about all this with the global community, and all for what - Christmas?

The Far East and Asia wake up in a few hours - expect more bad news.

[Suff]

Yet, also, with both France and Germany having unprecedented levels of infections, Italy overtaking the UK with deaths again and the whole world seeing a massive spike in New infections, it is being suggested that many countries are not looking too hard at where all these new infections are coming from.

From my perspective this may speed up the Oxford approval and massively ramp up the vaccination efforts.

Sometimes it takes a bigger crisis to move things faster.

It also means the government may have legitimate reason to change supply routes and bring in container goods from places other than the EU. Something I am not averse to.

I have been saying for months now that governments need to start tallying the dead as they seek to cover their asses with a vaccine. Perhaps this current situation speaks louder than a mountain of dead people? I don't know.

[Workingman]

It also means the government may have legitimate reason to change supply routes and bring in container goods from places other than the EU. Something I am not averse to.

What a stonkingly brilliant idea! Get our friends and neighbours to close their air and sea ports to us. I wonder why nobody else has thought of it! Get the bulky stuff brought in via W. African ports and have your stag night in Prague or lover's weekend in Paris via Atatürk, Sheremetyavo or Zhuliany airports. Bon voyage.

[Suff]

It also means the government may have legitimate reason to change supply routes and bring in container goods from places other than the EU. Something I am not averse to.

What a stonkingly brilliant idea! Get our friends and neighbours to close their air and sea ports to us. I wonder why nobody else has thought of it! Get the bulky stuff brought in via W. African ports and have your stag night in Prague or lover's weekend in Paris via Atatürk, Sheremetyavo or Zhuliany airports. Bon voyage.

It is about supply security.

Our closest trading partners just made our supply less secure. So instead of begging or scraping or bowing, we should use our financial clout and go get our supplies from places where the supply is secure.

It would even mean we'd need to beef up our own internal trucking fleet. That would be Such a bad thing wouldn't it.

This is business 101. If your supplier becomes unreliable, you ditch the supplier and find one that is reliable. Of course the cross channel ferries might go bust, the tunnel might go bust, but that is not the problem of the companies that need reliable supplies. If they are going to have to go to containerised supply to British ports, with attendant delays, why pay for the expensive stuff when you can get it elsewhere cheaper?

Fortunately, for this decision, the drivers in Calais are not so stupid as to cross to Dover and get stuck in the UK. I feel for the hundreds of Irish drivers stuck in Kent, unable to move, who have been hammered in this move. Even more, they have been put at a much higher risk of being infected where they are stuck.

[Workingman]

I just looked at a map. The UK is part of an archipelago off the coast of Europe - its nearest land mass. Most of its countries have closed their borders to us. Others around the world have joined in.

Geopolitics 101.

Convoys anyone?

[Suff]

It is indeed. But if our nearest neighbour's don't want to supply?

Our nearest manufacturing industries are just over the water. Yet we suck in massive amounts of goods and components from China.

At the height of the pandemic, Britain imported more goods from China than from any other country, for the first time on record.

One pound in every £7 of goods bought by the UK came from China

It is a large world out there and it is full of all sorts of goods which they would love to sell us. If our oh so good and close, friends, don't want to? No skin off my nose.

[Workingman]

Suff, you are in danger of turning it into a B thing when it's an emergency pandemic travel thing. Countries around the world are now lining up to close their borders, even ones we trade with, more than 40 of them. It is also a temporary thing, but one which could be very damaging in its nature.

Not that long ago people were calling for sea ports and airports to be closed in order to control the virus being spread by travellers and the argument then was that it was impossible as it would destroy the economy, or sectors of it. It is now being done for us: ironic eh?