The confusion and delays at airports highlight another issue. It is now a ritual for many to have an annual foreign holiday in the sun. As someone who has not left the UK to holiday for more than a decade I don’t fully comprehend this, but accept it as a reality, for now. And what airport chaos is doing is to take the pleasure out of that, entirely. Whether it’s having a second rate passport or the inability to recruit staff due to Brexit that is to blame is of little consequence. The reality of Brexit has now become clear to millions. The choice to create borders, which is what Brexit was about, has a significant cost. It just had to get very personal for it to be noticed. Now it has been. There will be millions pondering the wisdom of their choice as they wait in line only to have their flights cancelled this summer. Few will escape the conclusion that Brexit really is not working.
The airport chaos has nothing to do with Brexit of course, it’s a result of lockdown. That thing Spud wanted harder and longer.
And isn’t he nice to accept the summer hols as a reality. For Now. With that rather explicit just you wait until I’m in power, Mateys…..
“As someone who has not left the UK to holiday for more than a decade I don’t fully comprehend this…” Or anything else. I’ve never been convinced that travel broadens the mind, but I may have to reconsider.
Hmm, when was the Dachau trip? Or would that be educational, not a holiday?
As someone who has not left the UK to holiday for more than a decade
Perhaps if he had, he might have passed through airports such as Schiphol which have identical problems. Hadn’t realised Brexit was so far reaching.
So that’s why so many of you Brits leave the place!!!! Even if it’s only for a holiday.
The Dachau trip was in 2016 and Hauptmann Kartoffel blogged about it on 10th August of that year:
which prompted one witty contributor here to write:
Somehow
When I visit Dachau,
Everything I see
Makes me think of me.
So now it’s six years to a decade – there’s inflation for you.
He’s a know supporter of the Greens – additionally there’s some harebrained scheme which seems to be gaining momentum – pick the bones out of this.
https://www.transportxtra.com/publications/local-transport-today/news/62997/every-airport-and-port-must-close-for-climate–academics/
So only three airports allowed and flights rationed. So you are spot on Tim.
Doesn’t Schipol sell itself as London’s fourth airport? Does it still?
Must say, given that its heat or eat such as to require £15 billion or so of handouts, there are a lot of people who can spend hundreds or thousands on holidays.
As late as that? I’d have guessed the early-to-mid 1940’s unless he was involved in the construction as well…
😐
It used to be easier to go direct to Schiphol from some of the regional airports and get an onward connection there than transitting through one of the London hubs (Heathrow, Luton, Stansted or Gatwick), if you were going on family vacation to somewhere that was expensive due to UK air tax you could avoid it by routing through Schiphol. Not sure if that still works out though.
Guy who has spent the last 10 years saying Great Britain is schit prefers to holiday in Great Britain.
As someone who doesn’t have a model railway I don’t fully comprehend people wanting one.
Tell me you’re on a “no fly” list without telling me you’re on a “no fly” list.
Hoe dare you? It’s only Brexit Bitain that’s suffering labour shortages, in the EU it’s… Oh.
TMB:
TMB: *applause*
If he gets his way and people don’t go on holiday, he’d be complaining that the UK resort towns were far too busy.
Chernyy Drakon
I think in his vision, in the longer term people will only be allowed to travel on certain days which he mandates. And forget using a car. You’ll have to go by bike or some other ‘carbon free’ method. And as I think the BiS said – this is the longer term official policy of almost every single political party in the UK – certainly the Tories, Labour, Libdems, SNP, Greens and Plaid Cymru are all committed to ‘Net Zero’ which will only be possible with basically a return to early Victorian times (or even earlier)
Schiphol used to have fantastic connections to a dozen or more UK regional airports. KLM bought out Air UK at about the same time as British Airways decided to become Heathrow Airways (and before the rapid ascent of Flybe), and KLM ended up running many international flights from NotLondon for a few years. When they gave up on that, frequencies to Schiphol from lots of NotLondon increased considerably.
Yesterday I was in Copenhagen. The day befire that at the OECD in Paris. Oh and before that the EU Parliament in Strasbourg. And then of course the landmark vist to Dachau. And I am applying for an Irish passport.
I have not been ON HOlIDAY outside the UK for a decade.
And Brexiteers are narrow-minded. Or I’m just completely full of shit.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2016/08/10/a-postcard-from-munich/
Looks like he visited France and Luxembourg as well as Germany
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2017/11/07/how-very-appropriate/
Copenhagen in 2017
Schipol stopped being London’s 4th airport when Air UK went away. The first time we visited friends in Seattle in the late 90s we went via Schipol, mainly because Northwest Airlines were linked with KLM, but it was better than pissing about at LHR.
Perhaps he doesn’t like that foreign muck?
Second rate passport? He might be talking about your Zimbabwean colonial cousins who never got out.
I have a memory that I once flew to Philly via Schiphol; it seemed well run but there were some long walks within it. Not good for codgers, I’d say, or people with small children.
@dearieme They’ve got the rolling roads now, but yeah.. it’s a BIG airport, so there’s some Long Walks still.
As far as Schiphol goes… It’s currently in the same pinch staffing-wise as anywhere else, “aided” by the fact that some of the more dodgy staffing agencies have been Thrown Out to ensure peoples’ valuables stay in their luggage..
Biggest problem for Schiphol is the Greens and the NIMBY’s who will fight any suggestion of expansion, even though Schiphol already has a capacity problem and it’s shunted quite a lot of pricefighter/minor flights to Rotterdam and Eindhoven, and even Aachen.
Thing for Schiphol is that they can’t get more efficient at shifting passengers**, and they could conceivably easily handle double the numbers if they can shunt freight flights to other airports. Which are about 60%-70% of actual air movements there, and which they’re not allowed to offload on the minor airports.. Because Green Limitations on air movement slots..
Because the Greens pretend Greater Amsterdam is still the pristine polder landscape of my Youf.. Which it most definitely isn’t anymore. Or Eindhoven ( or any city in Brabant), which has exploded in the past few decades.
** In the belly of the Beast there’s a lovely train station with TGV/Eurostar connections to Brussels/London/Paris/Aachen/Berlin.
And direct intercity connections to Amsterdam/Rotterdam/Utrecht, from which you can get anywhere in Clogland and beyond in a more sedate pace.
People who park their cars at Schiphol are Idjits, or the unlucky ones with insane departure times.
Second rate passport?!?!
Sooner the UK ends this dual passport nonsense the better. And let’s end the Free Travel arrangement with the Republic while we’re at it. I really would like to see that cnut having to apply for UK residence & failing to get it.
@Van_Patten
Tories, Labour, Libdems, SNP, Greens and Plaid Cymru are all committed to ‘Net Zero’ which will only be possible with basically a return to early Victorian times (or even earlier)
+1 Their aim is earlier: pre Industrial Revolution and 90-95% in poverty
Boris at CoP Glasgow: “I apologise for Britain’s Industrial Revolution and its spread around world”
bloke in spain,
“Sooner the UK ends this dual passport nonsense the better. And let’s end the Free Travel arrangement with the Republic while we’re at it. ”
Indeed. It made sense for some time after Irish independence, I think, as people figured out whether they wanted to be in the UK or Ireland, but that started over 100 years ago.
Makes sense BiS and BoM4. Southern Ireland, or whatever they call it, is independent. It has to accept the costs of that state.
Unlike a lot of the Protocol doom-mongering, I think the passport / common travel stuff genuinely is stuck with us now due to the Good Friday Agreement. Accepting that some people in NI define themselves as Irish and will use an Irish passport not a British one means that eg stopping Irish people crossing UK borders or stopping Irish people from voting would now open an enormous can of worms.
(Letting Commonwealth people vote is an oddity and a real imperial holdover – a Brit can’t vote in Singapore but a Singaporean grad student over for a one year masters course can vote in London. Why?)
As far as Schiphol goes… It’s currently in the same pinch staffing-wise as anywhere else, “aided” by the fact that some of the more dodgy staffing agencies have been Thrown Out to ensure peoples’ valuables stay in their luggage.
Yes, changing at Schiphol, while usually cheaper and often more convenient than Heathrow, was regarded as a sure-fire way of losing your luggage, particularly if interlining.
@Anon
Rather than opining, read the Belfast Agreement
All your “I think” is wrong
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