‘Seething’ dad considering England stay

A HOLIDAYMAKER from Wales has said he is “seething” that he and his family will have to quarantine upon their return from Crete and is pondering booking a hotel in England for two weeks to avoid it.

Cardiff father Jonathan, who did not wish to give his surname, is staying with his wife and two children near Chania and was left angry by the decision of Welsh Health Minister Vaughan Gething and the devolved government to diverge from the UK’s list.

He said: “It’s the lack of consistent messaging and management across the whole UK Government I’m really angry about now – and the fact they’ve announced it at five o’clock UK time, so 7pm they’ve said ‘you’ve got until 4am tomorrow to get home’.

“I mean, what, am I supposed to charter a private jet to try and get me and my family home?”

Jonathan and his family are scheduled to fly back to London Gatwick on Tuesday with Tui.

He said: “I’m almost at the point where I’m thinking I’m just going to book a Premier Inn or something in Bristol – if it costs me five or six hundred pounds I don’t really care, I can afford it, I’ll do it – and stay there and I’ll just live my life as normal.

“Because if there’s 196 people on that flight from England they can just go and live their life as normal, but because I live in Wales Vaughan Gething has said, ‘screw you, I’m going to make you sit in your house for 14 days’. It’s a joke, an absolute joke.”

Jonathan believes the Government is being heavy-handed in its approach to the virus.

“I’m more likely to die and kill my whole family in a car crash on the way home from Gatwick Airport than I am of dying from Covid, let alone infect a load of other people,” he said.

“It is beyond sense that they are taking this approach and I am so angry at the Welsh Government and the whole Government at how they’re handling this pandemic because the whole country is being fed a load of rubbish in how this is being done, and I’m fed up with it.”

Another holidaymaker, who spent nearly £1,000 changing her family’s flights home from the Algarve to avoid having to quarantine, has accused the Government of “moving the goalposts left, right and centre” after Portugal remained on the exempt list in England.