All adults by the end of July now. And Monday’s news to come. Whilst getting my ten miles walking, today, I spotted a group of socially distanced ladies, in Salford. They were laughing and drinking Champagne in the the howling wind and driving rain (ooh, bit poetic by my standards but yes, they really were doing exactly that). The so called lockdown conditions* never really bothered me; for some it’s clearly all starting to wear a bit thin.

* It never really was a proper lockdown. I’m don’t think we’re a nation of stoics anymore.

From everything I have seen and read with regards to lockdown easing seems to have foreign travel not being permitted till late summer :(

I know that on Monday we will know the plan for sure, but I'm losing confidence about any trips outside the UK this summer.

Yes but as a temper to a cautious timetable I note from the DM, shops not opening until after Easter, not personally bothered about that but where it sits in the overall program, worrying.

I think limited travel for some is still possible but, with buts. I think families with children will struggle in terms of their confidence to leave the country ( even if they can). Vaccinated individuals and couples, OTOH, might have an easier time. All speculation, of course, bearing in mind the two immutable rules of this pandemic:

• The long, slow motion car crash of news (Oh the drama!).
• Related, but events repeatedly surprise and overtake us.

OT: And lest we forget... Those of us who travel to Europe and the Canaries, for our holidays, have no idea what kind of welcome we'll get anyway thanks January winter sun escapes being cancelled

For the record, the reports in the Conservative supporting newspapers this morning are what I would call "managed leaks" from Downing Street. Put out to gauge reactions from the public and MPs ahead of tomorrow's announcement. Cabinet meets virtually this afternoon.

From what I can see the news on the vaccine rollout is great but the roadmap way way too slow nothing happening other than schools until after Easter. My nephew said last night he just wants to do something fun, I agree there's none at the moment and not until mid April? That's 8 weeks away!

Based on the Telegraph’s summary, three big questions that aren’t covered (I didn’t do a full scrub of conservative media!):

(1) When does the legal stay at home order get lifted? Presumably it has to be in conjunction with non-essential retail opening if not before?
(2) When would gyms reopen and will they bifurcate open gyms vs. class gyms? Presumably no later than hairdressers but could be before?
(3) Once the legal stay at home order is lifted, what’s the legal framework re: international travel? Goes to my post a day or two ago - do they create a separate legal regime (enforceable with fines or being directed home - which apparently the government wants to move away from) which makes it illegal to leave the country except for currently permitted reasons? Or do they advise against (including through FCO advise), keep the travel corridors close, keep the 10 day quarantine with 5 day test and release, keep the 2 and 8 day testing requirement, keep the red list with hotel quarantine while not legally prohibiting people from leaving?

The Standard (which I suspect is not on the list of Conservative media) was reporting, Friday, that Chris Whitty was very much against the alleged plans for "big-banging" all schools at the same time. The reporters even went as far as saying that he was refusing to put his name on that plan.

I listed to Paul Charles (PC Travel) interviewing Simon Calder this morning on Travel.Radio and it was definitely a great listen. Both Paul and Simon think by May some foreign travel will be back. I don't know what it was based on, but I hope their predictions are right.

Simon Calder did say however that Boris Johnson will most likely not even mention travel and he thinks the government has zero interest in the travel industry or what happens to it - which I completely agree with and I have been saying for weeks.

Personally I'm disgusted at how this government, and other governments have handled the travel and aviation sectors. According to Simon Calder, 2.4 million jobs are at risk: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel...-b1802185.html

2.4 million jobs represents approximately 6 - 7% of the pre-pandemic job force. I don't understand how people don't get how important the economic health of a country is to the physical and mental health of its people. Covid-19 is not the only ailment or disease that exists on earth. If new cases and deaths continue to drop at the same rate over the next 6 - 8 weeks, all priority groups are vaccinated, things really need to open freely again. Our most vulnerable will be protected, pressure will have eased off hospitals, and we now have vaccines and lots of great treatments available that have been developed over the last 12 months.

The truth is that no political party has, at least recently, gave the furry derriere of a rodent’s about the air transport industry.

Labour has seen it as a problem due to its impact (small, though growing and increasingly visible) on the environment; even when jobs were on the line, such as when BA shed its IT department with the loss of a few thousand employees, they were conspicously absent.

Tories are a bit more ambivalent but the few places where they get votes in London are under the flightpath (and Zac Goldsmith’s still around) so they’re not keen either. As for Boris, he’s notoriously illiterate when it comes to economics. Maybe Rishi Sunak will lend a sympathetic ear, if nothing else to stop furlough and get APD flowing...

Well I hope that Rishi Sunak understands the situation well. Because at the moment, the UK is headed for stagflation. The effectively zero interest rate at the moment is going to be around for a while, and I imagine money supply will continue to increase, however, without a travel industry, and with the potential for the population growth to stagnate, you are looking at minimal production and output, pushing unemployment ever higher.

Then it isn’t stagflation :confused:

If the UK is one of the first large countries to achieve herd immunity through vaccination (as looks likely), it will actually be under pressure to restrict international travel more rather than less, as the potential impact of escape variants from elsewhere in the unvaccinated world actually magnifies. The only possible exception is travel corridors from other similarly vaccinated countries, but this is politically sensitive and relies to an extent on trust.

if I was still living in the UK I wouldn’t be getting my hopes up about holidaying anywhere abroad, maybe other than Eilat.

LOL. Do you know what stagflation is?

I read Paul Charles tweets every day to try and stay positive, he also did an interview on BBC today saying the same thing as his campaign ie travel from 1st May.

I think I have a fair grasp of it, yes.

Have you got your own set of price indices that nobody else has access to? The ones I look at don’t have anything resembling inflationary numbers for the next 2 years of the forecasting period and revisions over the last few years have been downwards. Ergo regardless of what output is doing, it’s not stagflation.