Member Info for big-blue

I doubt there will be much impact in the probe about refunds. It is more damage fro BA being put in the same basket as Ryanair. lol. 1st among equals, lol!

We were lied to last Thursday, it is as simple as that. I expect legal action to follow now from airline and some holiday sector in the form of freedom of information on what information was used against metrics for decision making previously announced. From that a case for damages will be made. Given how very, very VERY ****e.d off certain ceos are, this is a public fight the politicians will not want. So many people have been kicked in the teeth one way or another due to the lies culminating last Thursday there will be no spin or hiding place. A lot of people want to spill blood because of the pandemic and I think the government stupidly held up a lightning rod last week for it.

Easy J has the wind behind it this morning, at least I am recovering my small loss last week. But impossible to say what the prospects for any in the travel sector is.

Industry is the victim of political in fighting within the cabinet.

"Oh Lord, what fools these mortals be"

iWeb sending out message they will be collecting the 0.2% tax. I still cannot figure out the mechanism whereby retail investment platforms based outside the Spain are obliged to collect a sales tax on behalf of the Spanish treasury. What next, 0.5% collected by the supermarkets for each bottle of Spanish plonk sold? And then qhat if every country starts doing this on every item? I cannot see how it us legal or enforceable.

I've taken a punt on both Easy J and IAG in case something emerges from the G7 meetings that play out positive from a market point of view, but it I might be jumping in and out in half's or thirds whilst the speculation goes ape up to 1st July. This sector is very much more of a day trader at the moment. Unless I get unlucky and a placing bomb shell lands whilst holding. Cripes, white knuckle ride!

Well it was Blair over the weekend with his foundation calling for vaccine passport access rules and this morning Brown flogging his book by piggybacking on the world vaccination debate.

These two are just hilarious. Old sluggers punch drunk in the ring.

Then again...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9656797/Matt-Han****-accused-killing-British-travel-abroad-forcing-Portugal-holiday-amber-list.html

This one puts Hancoc.k and Shapps on the same side.

urmmmm.....

Han**** and Gove 'killed British travel abroad': Ministers are accused of over-ruling scientists by removing Portugal from 'green list' with a few days’ notice and refusing to add 'safe' Malta
Matt Han**** was today accused of 'killing British travel abroad' amid a furious Cabinet row over foreign holidays.

The Health Secretary and fellow senior minister Michael Gove have been blamed for the decision last week to place Portugal on the amber list as just a few days' notice.

The move last Thursday, which comes into effect on Tuesday, forced thousands of Britons into a last minute scramble to get home without having to quarantine.
They are said to have over-ruled more hawkish elements int he Cabinet, led by Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, who wanted Portugal put on a 'watchlist' that would have given holiday makers more time.

They have also been accused of over-ruling scientific advise from the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC) clearing Malta to be added to the green list of quarantine-free travel destinations.

The Mediterranean island has one of the lowest Covid rates in Europe and has been open to UK travellers since June 1.

A ministerial source told the Sunday Times there had been a 'heated' meeting earlier this week.

'Ministers were bounced into this at the last minute. Han**** held on to the data until the last minute,' they said.

Mr Han**** defended himself today, telling Sky that 'my first duty is to protect the UK population and that does include trying to minimise transmission' from abroad, though he was not specifically asked about holidays.

And a Whitehall source told MailOnline that the decision on Portugal and Malta was supported by a majority of Cabinet ministers and all the devolved administrations.
JBC said Portugal was borderline and some ministers wanted a watchlist of green countries that might go amber.

'There were clear reasons to put Malta on the green list but the formal recommendation from the Department of Health was that it should not happen.

'Han**** doesn't think anyone should be going abroad on holiday this year. He is killing British travel abroad. If we are going to follow scientific advice to stop people travelling we should be following scientific advice if they say people can travel.'

It came as a leading epidemiologist said that Portugal was probably safer than some parts of England.

Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London, told Times Radio: 'If you travel from London to Manchester at the moment, it's a much greater risk than going to Portugal, Spain, Italy, France.
Are we protecting the Portuguese from problems? Is it that way around? Because otherwise I don't really get it. We can't stop variants coming int

GOVE!

This little **** went all quite and off the record in April when he was supposed to have been reporting back on the travel roadmap. He has been keeping well out of the lime light for some months now. He seems to be the one manipulating Downing St, he is the one Boris needs to kick out of cabinet. Whilst a lot of people mock him and dismiss him, he is a very clever and influential man. I am surprised the side he has taken. He has clearly taken on the mantle of king maker and running his own government within a government. If Boris will not deal with him then Boris must go. We can't have behind the scenes governance like this which is doing such damage to an important business sector and to our basic freedoms. I want to know what his prime motivation is.

I smelt a rat about him a while back. The war in the cabinet has been raging for some months now. Pieces of the jigsaw, Cummings going hell for leather against Hancoc.k, Hancoc.k lobbying for opening up travel, Shapps/Gove lobbying against. This is rapidly approaching a worse situation than with Blair and Brown. Boris must act but the G7 meetings will be a distraction. OK, major reshuffle after G7 or more high profile names walk from Downing St. Something is on the verge of snapping big time.

As for sp predictions based on this? Haven't a clue. Just about everybody reacted with dismay and disbelief to the green list review. If the cabinet war is drawn up on these lines I can not see a back peddling of the decisions early. I still think the hand of the EU is on the tiller in some way. We may be being held to significant ransom in some way. There is a lot more to be revealed.

Didn't send me an email

:(

NOTE THE DATE

https://easac.eu/publications/details/vaccination-in-europe/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9656117/Britain-lead-way-vaccine-passports-G7-summit.html

Who would be a government minister this weekend? I expect there to be a savaging in the Sunday's. With a couple of days to chew over the travel announcement and time to consider the bare faced lie coming out of the government that travel must be all but curtailed because of spurious variants, the questions will be posed about countries with next to no covid being left off the list and above all else why on earth have we been vaccinated in the first place? If it is OK to go mingling in the UK, then why not in places with less and even zero infection rates? Surly a vaccine allows a person to go to and be amongst and infected zone. That is the whole point of vaccination, that we can be around covid with a very low probability of contracting it.

Something now stinks to high heaven ove rthe policy. I gave a lot of room for the dealing with the pandemic on the basis of it being new, unique and there being no model to work off. The original opening up of travel with vaccination was curiously weak - but they had the benefit of doubt that it was a prudent start. There has been no negative ramifications, yet they then back peddle on travel. This time round the excuses do not wash. This stinks. Let's see what the Sunday's dig up.

where's Nigel Farage? I'm willing to give him a go at the helm now.

Based on the theory that the UK travel sector has been deliberately pulled back and lockdown, no in full again, under direction from the EU, the next possible date where things may open up is 1st July which is when the EU vacc passport scheme comes into effect. If the UK policy is under the diktat of the EU commission then by the 2nd week of June we should be hearing noises in the media suggesting what a good idea it would be to become a part of the scheme and the nudge theory will start.

Iceland and Norway I understand want to be a part of it too, so keeping an eye on news from those countries might give an early indication as to whether the UK is indeed going to sign up to the EU scheme or, like the US, press for our own vacc scheme to be recognised by the WHO and make the systems 'interoperable' as the rhetoric goes. From the very start it should always have been a WHO led scheme but places like the EU are so hell bent on doing everything in isolation. No doubt the EU will try and use participation in its scheme as leverage to back-peddle on some of the trade agreement in favour of the EU.

That may get settled at the G7 meeting. Other than that it is a complete guess as to what will happen. The news yesterday is so indefensible in so many different ways it can only be explained in terms of some political manoeuvring within Downing St and the EU directive to hold back seems to continue to fit best into the the big hole in the jigsaw puzzle.

Portuguese Algarve MP says Portugal has 12 controlled cases of the 'Nepalese' variant.

So that is what it takes to to shut down travel. Then the policy is defined - there is no intention of allowing travel to restart, travel is on a permanent lockdown. Lockdown for every variant? No travel or green list for the rest of the year at least. That is the only interpretation I can put on it. But the spinless little ****s won't say it out loud because they know what the response will be.

Portland,

Rights issues talk is generic across the board meaning any one company may suddenly drop one. IAG may have some cash but do remember they did a loan notes thing recently which was a bit out of the blue. Also, the market is expected to take verbatim previous 'health' statements. That'll be a first on AIM.

The problem is more to do with confidence that the expect route out of travel lockdown, including the most coveted US routes, will now end up a spaghetti loop where nobody has any idea what the trajectory is. If Portugal was put on the watch list, and then the full reasons disclosed, the industry would have a bearing with which to determine how future policy might be made. But it wasn't and many well placed people with good access to the pandemic data cannot reconcile how the traffic light lists have been formulated. Essentially everybody is left running blind. In that case, the probability that additional funding will be required since travel is to be perpetually delayed until everybody on earth, mars and jupiter has had at least 15 jabs increases. Being in a share when the bomb shell drops and you have instant devaluation is awful. People will therefore become very risk averse and that is why there is a higher probability of further damage to the sp. I sold Easy J at a loss quickly when I realised the news about Portugal wasn't speculation or miss reporting about the watch lists.

Yesterday is going to be reverberating around the market for a few weeks to come.

Linktop, "small bumps", have a little trawl through the news headlines reacting to the the review yesterday. This is no small bump on the road. We've ridden out many of those over the last 6 months. This is in another league. There is a very significant variable at play which I suspect has nothing to do with covid. There are waring factions within Downing St and major policy decisions are being used as weapons in that war.

"It's a bold decision from the government but that will save us from future downs, so when other countries are ready to open, then we are ready too"

Except other countries HAVE already opened up. We are more than ready. So why isn't Grenda at the very least on the green list? Why were the Canaries not on the green list? Why was Malta not on the green list?

Looking through some of the responses from industry peeps so far, I am not the only one using the language - pretty universal.

Tomorrow there will be board and senior level meetings all over the place. Financial directors will be asked to re-examine the plan B file. Some of those files will already have the recommendation in place. I don't think the extent of just how devastating this retrograde action is. The watch list wasn't even used. Destinations with no covid at all are not even considered. The reliability of the decision making in Whitehall has been destroyed. Nobody in the overseas travel sector is going to have any faith in the medium term. Hundreds of businesses are going to call it a day. It's over. And when a whole sector is depressed, those continuing to trade are often dragged down too. This has turned from a money making switcheroo to a an obsolete nightmare. I still find it jaw dropping. There will be some serious punching of wet paper bags on R$ Today program in the morning. One question that is going to be repeated more and more. Why did we bother with the vaccinations if we can't travel?