Land Of Confusion

With a month to go before our cruise I thought I'd better get organised. I like to think of myself as reasonably literate and a bit tech savvy but the rules regarding a simple thing like going on holiday seem designed to get people to pay out lots of money for no real reason.

First was the insurance. Probably like a lot of people we have travel insurance that we already pay for. This may be as part of your bank account or life policy or just one that you pay for separately and it auto renews each year. However despite already paying you will probably find you'll have to buy new insurance because the tour operator will now insist on all new rules that your old insurance doesn't cover. In our case TUI wanted £10'000'000 coverage! I appreciate it can be expensive to helicopter someone off a cruise ship but if £5 mil was good enough before why has it suddenly doubled because of a virus? The only reason I can think of is because they want to sell more insurance and this is a good way to make you pay twice.

Then there's the traffic light system. It should be simple. Green, go, Amber, best not unless you have to, Red, nooo. Except it's not that simple. The traffic lights refer to what you have to do when you come back from a country. We are going to Spain. According to the government it's 'Amber' even though their infection rate is a quarter of the UK's and is going down. 70% of the population has been vaccinated and the Spanish Government is happy to accept anyone who has been fully vaccinated without requiring them to quarantine or take tests. Yet our government insist you take a test 2 days before returning to the UK and then another one 2 days after you return even if you have had both jabs. We will be tested before we board the ship and twice while we are on it but apparently this doesn't count. Of course we will have to bear the cost of these unnecessary test.

Then there's the test themselves. I booked the test via TUI who use a company called Chronomics. They do two types of test, Green and Amber but these colours don't refer to the traffic light system! That would be far too simple. A 'Green' test is what you need if you are fully vaccinated and coming back from an Amber list country and comprises 2 tests at a cost of £20pp. An 'Amber' test is what you need if you are coming back from an Amber list country and haven't been vaccinated. That has 3 tests but costs 150% more at £50pp. Its quite clear why they have done this. They want you to buy the wrong and subsequently way more expensive test. I nearly did this.

Thats not the best bit though. I was confused about how these test were going to be administered and submitted, especially the one while we were on the ship. It turns out it's just a lateral flow test, the sort you can get for free and the one the cruise company will be giving us anyway! And nobody administers it! If I'm feeling a bit sniffly I could get anybody to take the thing and they'd never know. It's the same for the PCR test 2 days after we get back.

The unavoidable conclusion is that the whole thing has nothing to do with public health and keeping COVID under control. Money is the reason. Money is why you have to buy unnecessary insurance. Money is why popular holiday destinations are kept on the 'Amber' list despite being far safer than the UK. Money is why you have to pay for a normally free test in a pointless testing system. Money that goes from your wallet to the bank account of multimillionaire mates of government minsters. I'm going to guess that all the time there's money to be made not much will change.