The nation deserves a holiday, so sort out this travel mess

THOUSANDS of words have been written about how illogical the ‘pingdemic’ is, and rightly so. The postponement of urgent measures to pay for social care – because the Ministers involved are selfisolating – sums up the absurdity. It is yet another way in which government success is being clouded by confusion and pedantic pettifogging, the rigid imposition of rules often for their own sake, or on very weak grounds.

An equally egregious instance of this is the way we have made it so illogically difficult to travel. The Mail on Sunday has repeatedly pointed out that the families of the nation need and deserve a decent holiday, to help the country get over 18 months of gloom, confinement and separation from loved ones. Once, tight restrictions on travel were justified. But the impressive take-up of the vaccination should have transformed this. It is astonishing how little difference it has made.

Claims, later toned down, of dangerous new variants led to severe limitations on travel to France. Almost every European country has been subjected to a zig-zagging succession of bans, relaxations and new bans. This has caused misery to those who dared to travel. It has deterred many others from even trying, lest they too are forced to make a sudden dawn dash homewards to avoid long and expensive days in quarantine or isolation.

As for the incessant and overpriced tests demanded, they just add to the mental torture heaped on the heads of innocent people trying to take a badly needed break in the sun by the sea.

Ministers really need to act to ensure that, while necessary restrictions on travel are maintained, they are not discredited and made ridiculous by over-caution and needless rigidity.