Dear Reader

YESTERDAY’S long overdue update about where and how we can go abroad has been welcomed — but it comes too late to save the jobs of thousands of travel sector workers.

Which is inevitable if the travel association ABTA is correct in saying that bookings for summer holidays were down 80 per cent compared with 2019.

It was a deliberate ploy of the Government to wait until the summer of 2021 was over before changing the rules.

Still, it’s good to see the back of the traffic light system, which became such a muddle that the only way transport secretary Grant Shapps could deal with it was by not dealing with it.

We will also bid farewell to some of the testing requirements — particularly the expensive PCR one on day two after returning to the UK, as long as you’ve been double-jabbed — which lined the pockets of greedy companies while picking the pockets of weary travellers.

But why wait until the end of October to make this particular change? The sorry truth is that the UK has paid a terrible price for not giving more freedom to those who have been fully vaxed — and we can’t even claim to be ahead of the rest of Europe with our vaccination roll-out any more.

We started strongly and are now limping over the finish line.

The number of countries on the red list is being cut from September 22.

This means that, among others, we can then visit Turkey (pictured), Egypt, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

Freeing up the Maldives is good news for all those who were married during lockdown and have been waiting patiently to go on honeymoon — and expect a rush for holidays in Turkey, where temperatures hover in the mid-20s well into October.

Savvy travellers should book now. Prices are bound to rise. The British summer might have expired but an Indian summer beckons.