Scots_Al

Can’t help you on the first part of your question, but the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act is of no help to you here - because it relates to public disclosure of information, personal data such as medical records are sensibly exempt.

Should you feel the need to enforce a legal obligation here, a subject access request made under the terms of the Data Protection Act is more relevant.

:D!

The traffic here was only quiet for about 6 weeks from 26 March 2020 to the middle of May 2020. Otherwise I would have been in a traffic jam every day had I gone driving.

In Jan and Feb 2021 there were traffic jams during the day but it was quiet in the evenings, which was to be expected.

In autumn, especially on weekends, the traffic was worse than pre-covid because some cyclists have decided that they should now ride in the middle of the road instead of single file in the cycle lane. Whatever your views are on cycle safety etc., the effect is that a file of 20+ vehicles is often held up by 2 cyclists at 10mph (perhaps they deliberately cycle slowly to wind people up).

13901

I hear that argument very often and, as much as it's true that there are twats on bikes as well as the hideous Santander bikes, to say that cycling causes congestion is a bit of an overreach.

On the other hand, my ride today has been from my home to Hyde Park via Acton, Shepherd's Bush, Holland Park, Serpentine, Knightsbridge, Hammersmith and home. On the stretch between Acton and the turn-off for the Serpentine I counted 42 cars parked on the cycle lane. Cars, not vans unloading goods, and since this was at 6AM I'd say that most were there for the night.

Bottom line = this is surely a complicated issue. As we reopen, I definitely see traffic getting worse, not better. Some might return to public transport but if you have a car and don't need to travel into the C-charge area I see the reason for using it... especially as people keep on not wearing masks/wearing them wrongly on the Tube with no issue at all.

paulaf

I thought from your previous posts 17th May was pretty definite, have they gone softer on the date?

Wasn't there some legal action threatened by the airlines last year which was dropped when the travel corridors were announced, maybe they should do the same again, Sacha Lord's case on hospitality is being heard next Monday.

13901

Robert Boyle on the RAG rating: https://www.gridpoint.consulting/blo...lassifications

His bottom line:

Professor Yaffle

I totally get the frustrations of the travel industry at the lack of clarity - government clearly doesnt give a ---- about the sector and is only intent on keeping the country in a police state for as long as it can get away with. As big an issue however is the lack of a decent opposition. My local labour MP in sussex is completely ignoring the issue, only interested in wingeing about the Cameron affair. You would have thought he would be more concerned about the thousands of jobs in the region that rely on this industry.

As I have said before, the 17 May date has been trailed for so long now, if it ends up passing without decent numbers of countries 'green' there will be serious unrest in the country. Literally everything is going better than expected (cases, deaths, vaccinations, variants) and yet still there is a strong push for more control for longer. The only weapon in the doom monger's arsenal is the variant 'threat', which is just not a justifcation given it is having zero impact outside of Brazil due to the dominance of the Kent version (which, surprise surprise is no deadlier than Vanilla Covid, despite the months of scare stories to the contrary).

Example - Portugal - successful lockdowns, virtually no cases now, travel banned from Brail, and yet still only likely to be Amber - what a joke. The US might go green, which is great, as long as Jo lets us in(!)

I personally am totally sick of all this and so depressed at the state of this country and our government. We were promised that vaccines would be the end of this. Nowe we have them, I want OUT.

Misco60

I think the government's message has always been "no earlier than" 17 May. Perhaps that message has got lost in the speculative frenzy of this forum.

Silver Fox

You might find this interesting relating to the blood clots. I am due a refill of AZ soonish and am not worried in the slightest about anything, other than where I park.

Which doesn't help you, but shows my attitude to risk. And I am a gambler.

"This condition is known to occur naturally and is thought to be extremely rare. The background rate of CVSTs is estimated to be around 5 to 16 per million annually, although there is currently limited data on the background rate of CVSTs occurring without thrombocytopenia. It is currently estimated that the overall incidence following the AZ vaccine is around 4 per million first doses administered. It is also important to note that thromboses (blood clots) have been reported with natural COVID-19 infection and more than a fifth of hospitalised patients with COVID-19 have evidence of blood clots.Internationally, there have been a very small number of reports of thromboembolic events accompanied by thrombocytopenia following AZ vaccine."

Information for healthcare professionals on blood clotting following COVID-19 vaccination

Swanhunter

As I know from my time working in Test & Trace, things move really fast in virus world. It’s great saying what you think the colours might be in mid May, but a hell of a lot can and will change in the next 4 weeks.

NWIFlyer

Although, equally, it has also been "we don't see any reason we can't keep to this roadmap" - which politically is certainly what the government would like us all to hear and digest, I'm sure. Given that's been the case so far with the relaxation of meeting rules to allow six people/two households, and now the re-opening of outside areas for pubs, with the numbers continuing to head in the right direction (and certainly not get worse following the first relaxation) that will inevitably create an expectation.

I do accept foreign travel is a much more nuanced, less popular, UK pastime and the government's approval rating is less likely to be hit if it pushed the date back compared to allowing people to drink inside a pub or get a haircut. Nonetheless, it will still send a message that all is not as well as we hoped, and that will reflect back on the politicians.

As such, I have great sympathy for many of the views expressed by @Professor Yaffle upthread, albeit I think the police state one might be pushing the boundaries a bit. If the green list is obviously over cautious that, imo, sends a downbeat message to the country that I don't think the government will want to portray.

At some point the country has to move on, otherwise we'll end up in the position Australia and New Zealand find themselves where there is no way out without a massive and embarrassing u-turn, with large sectors of their economy remaining closed forever. We've consistently, and rightly, been told that vaccination is the way out. We've done that - it's a massive success story for everyone involved, not least the government who took the risk of investing early in both research and orders. In that respect, we are well ahead of those countries who are still shut off to the rest of the world - our priorities and policies can and should be different.

Dan1113

I am sceptical of the US given vaccine hesitancy and variants

Professor Yaffle

So many of the things I have witnessed in the last year would have been unthinkable in years gone by, and have gone way beyond the need for common sense restraint for the 'greater good' of Covid protection - from the wall to wall government advice advertising, to 'stay home' messages on every road sign and motorway gantry, to more serious incidents like the police brutality at the Sarah Everard vigil and one I witnessed personally - two policemen in a patrol car using a megaphone out of their window to tell a pensioner, from a distance of 5 yards, that he couldnt sit on a bench on Hove seafront for a short rest on his daily walk.

I am convinced that Brexit hysteria, fuelled by lying corrupt politicians on all sides, is the root cause of all this, but that is an argument for another day...

ahmetdouas

For pcr testing on the way back, why not do it for free with the NHS? It’s not like testing centres are that busy right now !

13901

I'm in two minds on 'variants'. On one side I get the need for caution; on the other, the level of media-fuelled paranoia makes me think that they're the reddest of red herrings. I'd like to think that, in future, we'll regard the variant panic in the same way as we first thought that Purell was the solution to all our problems.

fransknorge

"Me, me, me".
Unrest, police state, when talking about going for a sip of martini in Dubai.
Know your pecking orders, before allowing vacations for the happy few who can allow them, there are multitude of things: aids for affected business who have lost their income, aids of affected chronic patients, spending time on aggravated state of chronically ill patients because hydrotherapy pools was closed, help for families who assisted to funerals via iPads, the list is very long. Those are the priorities. Not putting Portugal in green will not trigger major unrest, this is a ludicrous notion.

As for variants, they of course do not affect only Brazil. It affects all of South America, India (the case curves is climbing vertically those days), Europe.
Vaccines are the end games IF the spread is under control, which is not the case in most of the world. The UK has to close its borders if it wants to keep control of the spread, even with current vaccination rates.