Freedom, British style

by philg

The national lockdown in the U.K. ends tomorrow, March 29, according to the U.K. government’s general aviation page:

Even after April 12, however, “travel should be minimised as far as possible.”

2020/2021 has been a great time to own an aircraft in the U.S. (it has been tough to find a parking space at our local airport from December through March due to so many people having departed for Florida), but apparently it hasn’t been so great in the U.K.!

Forget flying then. What about folks who might want to take the train over to France through the 31-mile Eurotunnel? “It is illegal to travel abroad for holidays”:

From the same page:

you need a legally permitted reason to leave your home, including to travel abroad.

Your emotional and mental wellbeing is important. Keep in regular contact with the people who usually support you: family, friends and colleagues, especially if you are self-isolating abroad.

Noted!

Related:

  • “Covid-19: Pubs could require vaccine passports – Boris Johnson” (BBC): The idea of asking pub goers to show a vaccine certificate was raised at Wednesday’s House of Commons Liaison Committee hearing, when Conservative William Wragg asked Mr Johnson if vaccine certificates were “compatible with a free society such as ours”. Mr Johnson said the concept “should not be totally alien to us” as doctors already have to have hepatitis B jabs. … Pushed further, Mr Johnson said: “I find myself in this long national conversation thinking very deeply about it” adding that the public “want me as prime minister to take all the action I can to protect them”. (i.e., “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”) [American version: “Rutgers to require Covid-19 vaccine for students this fall” (CNN): Some experts say it remains a gray area — the US Food and Drug Administration issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for all three of the vaccines now in use in the United States. But that does not mean formal approval. … In its guidance on products that have emergency use authorization, the US Food and Drug Administration says that recipients must be informed that they “have the option to accept or refuse the EUA product and of any consequences of refusing administration of the product.” (not-at-risk 18-year-olds will have the option to refuse the experimental vaccines so long as they’re willing to do without a college education)]

10 thoughts on “Freedom, British style”

  1. What’s the general wisdom about flying over ocean in a single engine aircraft?

    If you pick a narrow enough part of the English channel, and fly high, perhaps you can either glide back or the rest of the way across if your engine fails over water?

    • Viking: I just finished a book on this subject: FERRY PILOT: Nine Lives Over the North Atlantic (included with Kindle Unlimited).

      Flying out of gliding range of land is a calculated risk. I.e., if you apply coronascience to it and listen to public health experts, you would stay home on your couch and never attempt it. (The English Channel is 20 miles across at its narrowest and the typical small plane glides 8:1 or 10:1 so you’d want to be up at about 6,000′ to be reasonably sure of dry feet.)

      Engines themselves are fairly reliable. It would be more common to suffer the failure of, e.g., an alternator or an attitude indicator. So a Cirrus over water isn’t so bad, in my opinion, due to the fact that it has two alternators, two or three attitude sources (depending on model), two batteries, etc. It also has the parachute so that you’re less likely to dig in and flip over on landing.

      The Caribbean is a much better place to paddle around in a raft for a few hours than the North Atlantic. So you also have to consider water temp, available rescue options, etc. I have done some flights around the Caribbean in single-engine piston aircraft. My risk mitigation strategy includes starting out in the morning so that if I do land in the water there is plenty of daylight for retrieval. I also try to be in continuous contact with Air Traffic Control so that they already know roughly where I am in the event of difficulty (not always an instrument flight plan, but at least “VFR Advisories” or “flight following”). Finally, I carry an EPIRB/PLB (takes the “search” out of “search and rescue”), life jackets, and an inflatable raft.

  2. One of the reasons why Brits have long been able to scoff at others who acquiesced to the loss of their liberties was because we never had our bluff called—until now.

    James Jeffrey

  3. It’s just a good thing we’re not actually at war with ourselves. Who knew it was so easy in the 21st Century to achieve Air Dominance?

  4. Early in the year 1 AC (April 2020 on the old calendar) Boris Johnson sent a letter to every household in Britain. Some extracts:

    “If too many people become seriously unwell at one time, the NHS will be unable to cope.”

    (One month later: London’s 4,000-bed Nightingale hospital to be SHUT after treating just 51 Covid-19 patients.)

    “…the more we all follow the rules, the fewer lives will be lost and the sooner life can return to normal.”

    (12 months later: Covid: £5,000 fine for people going on holiday abroad.)

    “It is with that great British spirit that we will beat coronavirus and we will beat it together.”

    To be fair, he didn’t say when they’d beat coronavirus.

  5. > Rutgers to require Covid-19 vaccine for students this fall

    I am an alumnus of a New Jersey state university and I have taken in-person coursework at Rutgers. In order to attend either school for in-person classes I had to submit proof of vaccination. I needed two doses of MMR. Since then they have added requirements of Hepatitis B as well as Meningitis if you want to live on campus.

    This is simply adding the COVID-19 vaccination to the list. I don’t see the issue here.

    • @ScsarletNumber, for the FDA approved vaccines, none are required before you board a cruise ship, attend a concert, a movie theater, function hall, a restaurant, travel to a country, etc. If we finally have an FDA approved vaccine against COVID-19 will it be a requirement to do any of those things? If so, how do you see it working? How do we track those who go it and making sure no one is using a fake proof?

    • George A: The only way to prevent vaccine fraud is by inserting an RFID chip into the necks of those who get vaccinated and then we can have a government-run central database of which chips correspond to which vaccines on which dates. Use the chip with built-in temperature sensor so that people can be checked for fever and whether vaccines are up to date any time that they walk through a doorway. (see https://identipet.com/catalogue/bio-thermo-temperature-sensing-microchip/ )

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