COVID Hotel and Testing Avoidance Prison Sentence and Fines
- More details have been released on the COVID Hotel scheme due to begin from 15th February.
- Travellers returning from red-list countries – of which there are currently 33 – will need to pay £1,750 to quarantine at a COVID Hotel for 10-days.
- 4,600 rooms across 16 hotels have been booked ready for the scheme to begin.
- Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned anyone trying to conceal being in a red-list country in the 10-days before arriving in England could face a prison sentence of up to 10-years.
- Those arriving from all countries will also need to take a PCR test on days 2 and 8 after arrival, as part of 10-day quarantine.
- Those who fail to comply with new testing requirements face fines of up to £2,000.
My view
It’s peoples lives we are talking about so although the prison sentence seems rather hefty for something that would seem small, it is to be remembered that it only takes one super-spreader to start off a very large outbreak, which could include the new variants.
It needs to be tough due to the seriousness of the situation and to really drive it into people that they need to follow these rules to save peoples lives, anyone who avoids them is being totally selfish and anyone who dies from the virus due to that selfishness, is on the spreaders hands, it’s basically manslaughter at that point if you’re purposely avoiding such measures.
Measures exist for a reason and people thinking they can avoid cause it’s “just them” and they “probably don’t have the virus” can’t be certain of that, and it only takes one person to be wrong, one person to be selfish.
Really it is why so many have also asked for travel into the UK from other countries and travel out of the UK should be totally stopped during lockdown as even with all these measures in place there are various reasons they can fail while some form of travel in and out is still allowed. The COVID Hotel scheme is also taking a while to come into effect and it will be to see if this was a mistake on the government’s part to wait this long and to avoid total border lockdown.
New Online Sales Tax considered to pay for Pandemic Borrowing
- Chancellor Rishi Sunak is considering introducing a new online sales tax on major online retailers such as Amazon to help pay back debts from pandemic borrowing.
- Companies that have done well during the pandemic due to an increase in online shopping would be targeted by the new tax.
- This means companies such as Amazon, ASOS, Deliveroo, among others who improved their sales and customers through the pandemic could be slapped with the new tax.
- An excessive profits tax is also being considered on companies, such as Amazon, that have seen profits surge during the pandemic.
My view
I have thought for a while that large corporations and conglomerates should pay more in taxes, specifically corporate tax, but it is also understandable that this is easier said than done to implement due to power such multi-national companies have to simply just move operations elsewhere with less tax, which is really quite selfish in my opinion, leaving to smaller companies and business to pick up the tax slack basically, who don’t really have the ability to avoid it in such a way as large multi-national business can.
But I do think these new taxes, if implemented correctly and specfically for the goal of repaying debts accumulated from coronavirus aiding and in such a way where it will not damage high-street chains, would be a good idea.
Ultimately I do hope one day that a global initiative can be formed against multi-national companies who use sneaky ways to get around paying more tax, which include punishments such as reducing power of Big Tech and other Big Business, including via breaking companies up, to promote competition as well. Companies like Google, Amazon and others in Silicon Valley do seem to have a bit too much power.
I understand that companies should have the freedoms to do what they want, but ultimately when this clashes with harming of a state’s economy, harming of smaller business and consumers, harming of other freedoms (such as speech), vast control over sections of the web due to their monopolistic size making uncompetitive environments, then it becomes more complicated and conflicting.
Possible School Summer Term Extension
- Boris Johnson has not ruled out extending schools summer terms as a way to help pupils and students catch up with work they have missed out on due to the pandemic lockdowns.
- The Prime Minister said the government’s biggest priority will be overcoming the loss of learning suffered by children during the pandemic. This includes a £1bn programme to help children catch-up.
- In week of 22nd Feb the PM will unveil a roadmap to lifting of England’s current lockdown restrictions.
- One proposal is to increase Summer term by two weeks (reducing Summer holidays down to 4 weeks) and to compensate increase Autumn half-term and Christmas holidays by a week each.
My view
One of the most interesting things about this pandemic is what lasting changes will it leave behind? I can certainly see it changing up how the school calendar works and that even long after the pandemic has ended and there is no longer any threat, such new school calendars could very well be kept in place.
For a long time even way before the pandemic many have suggested decreasing the long Summer holidays for schools (some of the longest in the world) and increase the length of other holidays such as Christmas. I for one very much support this kind of thing happening now, although it won’t really affect me at all, it still makes a lot more sense in this state and age.
I know back when I was a kid at school anything that aimed to reduce the summer holidays and increase other holidays I was dead set against because I just enjoyed having such a long peroid off, but really as I am older now and think more logically a shorter summer holiday (that would even still be pretty long anyway, even if a couple weeks were shaved off) would be better for learning and better for parents as well. Defering these weeks to other holidays is a great idea, I’d have loved to have an extra week of holidays during Christmas – even though I would not have wanted Summer holidays reduced for it – but that’s kids for you.
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