Tommart
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Posts posted by Tommart
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Watched this the other day on Talking Pictures - might be of general interest to anyone fascinated by the history of cruising:
SS France
Video Description:SS France. In 1973 the ship was the world's largest afloat - the longest ever built at the time. This captivating film follows a sailing from Southampton to New York.
https://www.tptvencore.co.uk/Video/SS-France?id=f6dab894-6d2a-40a1-80a3-d7886da3ceac-
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Very difficult to get these away from Staffordshire, so we're going to have to make some. Any thoughts from local experts on this recipe please?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/staffordshireoatcake_92371
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This always appealed to us but we couldn't go.
Does there happen to be anyone aboard who'd be prepared to spend a bit of time on feedback to those of us shivering enviously at home? I'd love to hear what it's like in the sunshine - and I doubt I'm alone in that! 🙂
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5 hours ago, Selbourne said:
I am wary of going near the medical centre due to their fondness for imposing cabin confinement, which I wouldn’t be prepared to do. We brought some Covid test kits with us and I tested when this took hold and I was negative.
Frequently it takes a few days for the tests to show positive, particularly with the more recent strains. I hope it proves to be bacterial though, rather than viral, and that the antibiotics clear it up quickly.
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7 hours ago, Selbourne said:
Another very poor nights sleep due to my sore throat, cough and congestion that has no sign of easing. I’m usually pretty OK once up and about and during the day, but the sore throat and cough is ten times worse at night. Thankfully we have a table for 2, as conversation is nigh on impossible during the evenings.
Sorry to hear that, but I'm enjoying the blog. Sounds suspiciously like a certain virus, particularly in the light of some of your earlier comments. Glad you're wife's OK.
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24 minutes ago, bobstheboy said:
I've just been on the NHS site and find nothing on current booking arrangements for covid or flu. What's the secret password ?
Am I eligible for an autumn Covid booster?
The following people are eligible for an autumn Covid booster:
- Residents in care homes for older adults
- All adults aged 65 years and over
- People aged 6 months to 64 years in a clinical risk group, as defined in tables 3 and 4 of the Covid-19 chapter of the UKHSA Green Book on Immunisation
- frontline health and social care workers.
- People aged 12 to 64 years who are household contacts of people with immunosuppression, as defined in the UKHSA Green Book
- People aged 16 to 64 years who are carers, as defined in the UKHSA Green Book, and staff working in care homes for older adults
This is because the risk of severe Covid continues to be strongly associated with increasing age and underlying health conditions.
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What a depressing thread........I'll be very interested indeed to read the first reports from passengers returning once things start up again. Until then, I think I'll holiday in the UK for a while. 😀
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This says it all - and now everyone's going to think they're 'special' so they can ignore the rules!
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8 hours ago, batholiver said:
You have to wonder exactly what hold he has over Boris Johnson that allows him to get away with it. Puppet Johnson may well have shot himself in the foot this time though as more and more comes out.
Maybe he'll have to hide in a fridge again - even tomorrow's Mail is attacking Johnson as a useless leader!
The message this sends out is appalling - and it's telling everyone that the rules don't really matter any more. Cummings was heavily involved in writing those rules. He knew exactly what they meant, as did the PM.
Thousands of other people with far less money followed them at great personal sacrifice, but Cummings (on a huge salary with plenty of other options, unlike most of us) decided they didn't apply to him, and the PM has now confirmed that they didn't.
Clear message now for once - forget the rules everyone, they don't matter any more. Get out there, do as you like, spread the virus, swamp the poor NHS workers. They must be gutted at this disgace.
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Well that was a confusing mess last night from Boris Johnson, wasn't it? Vague, no detail, confusing 'Stay Alert' (alert to what?) message - all the usual bluster and waffle, and nothing of much use to anyone. Just more questions.
Feel very sorry for employers with employees 'encouraged' to return to work this morning - how were they supposed to contact their employees last night? What to tell them? What responsibilities do they have? How do the employees get to work if they're advised not to use public transport?
What about the quarantine imposed on people coming to the UK? Is it just airlines? Does it exclude France as suggested this morning? Does it exclude ports and Eurostar?
Can you drive 100 miles to the beach? People in small seaside resorts are scared still of mass influxes like this from the big cities where infection rates are so much higher?
What a mess! And meanwhile we still can't achieve anywhere near the 100,000 tests a day promised, PPE is still a mess, and we've got the highest death rate in Europe, second highest in the world. Another fine mess you've got us into!
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16 hours ago, terrierjohn said:
I think the govt hope that now they will have sufficient testing capacity , and tracing with the new app. to make it viable now compared with 2 months ago.
Yet another testing foul up I'm afraid. And as the Telegraph says (and this is a government supporting paper!), the UK has failed to meet the 100,000 a day testing target every day for the last week, and only 'met' it once ever by posting 40,000 testing kits to people at home to fiddle the figures!
No wonder we've got the second highest death rate in the world after the US, a much larger country. This is a tragic performance by our government, for which they should be deeply ashamed. We'll see what the PM has to say later today, but I guess he'll be saying how well we've done, as usual.
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22 minutes ago, wowzz said:
The lock down has nothing to do with Ferguson. Italy, Spain, Germany managed it without him.
Hang on a minute, there - you might like to read this:
Sorry it's the Mail, but government supporters distrust the Guardian and most of the others are paywalled.
Italy Spain and Germany were urging us to follow suit, Italy in particular, but we took no action because somebody right at the top thought there were better uses for his time while those critical Cobra meetings were taking place. -
8 hours ago, NoFlyGuy said:
Very true. Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing! People moaning now about the Nightingales not being needed.
What would have been the reaction if the NHS had not been able to cope with the cases?
Actually, the NHS didn't cope. If it had, our death rate per million population wouldn't be on a par with Italy's - the worst in Europe.
It appeared to cope because people dying weren't allowed anywhere near a hospital - particularly those in care homes, where huge numbers of deaths took place and are still taking place.
And all because we were a month late, ignoring advice from Italy, in taking any real action - still allowing people to go to major racing and sports events way after the horse had bolted.
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8 hours ago, wowzz said:
Good. He destroyed the UK dairy industry in 2001 with his advice on Foot and Mouth disease, and was widely discredited subsequently.
His lady friend has done the UK a service by visiting him.
Good riddance.
He did a lot of modelling work on Foot and Mouth (and on various other diseases) - and he was awarded the OBE for his work on Foot and Mouth. He wasn't discredited, and is one of the world's most influential disease modellers.
This was a stupid error of judgement (like Boris Johnson declaring on the day that SAGE advised against shaking hands that he'd carry on shaking hands) for which he's paid the price. Shame - we need people of his calibre to advise our lacklustre politicians.
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10 hours ago, CCFC said:
I have a cruise out of Southampton on July 11th which still hasn't been cancelled and is still on sale. The fact that the ship I would be travelling on, the Crown Princess is currently on its way to the Philippines to drop the crew off makes me think it wont happen. I also have a B2B out of LA in October which I do think will happen.
I have had the virus and recovered, it wasn't nice.
Glad you're OK - on the bright side, you've hopefully now got immunity.
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5 hours ago, terrierjohn said:
And yet most countries in the world are struggling to get adequate supplies, do you think every government should be flogging themselves, wearing hair shirts, and making groveling apologies?
Not every government, no. But take a look at an impartial view of the situation in the UK from the viewpoint of a quality Australian newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald. They have no political axe to grind, but they're clearly stunned by the failure to take timely action here, bearing in mind that we now have the worst death rate in Europe. It doesn't make pleasant reading, particularly for anyone who's lost someone in a care home.
'Biggest failure in a generation': Where did Britain go wrong?
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2 hours ago, IDB37 said:
If the UK Government hadn't ensured sufficiency of ICU capacity by taking over the private Health sector beds and building Nightingdale Hospitals in record times, and there had then been a bed shortage (like Italy), no doubt you would also be complaining vociferously about that.
For my part, I agree completely with ADawn47's post above.
I'm not sure how much you know about the situation in the UK, but it's become very clear over the last few days, following a detailed report in the Times (Coronavirus: 38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disaster), that the government acted far too late - it's one of the reasons our NHS workers are facing shortages of protective equipment, and it's one of the reasons our death rate is now heading for Italy's. There were no queues outside hospitals, but people still died, and the 20,000 deaths now reported don't include thousands of deaths in care homes and elsewhere. These are just the hospital deaths.
More than 100 NHS workers have died as a consequence of the delays in providing equipment (still going on). Nothing was done in February when we should have been taking action based on Wuhan and Italy, and Boris Johnson skipped five Cobra meetings on the virus because he didn't see it as important. At that time he was concentrating on his interesting private life.
This from a senor advisor to Downing Street:
“There’s no way you’re at war if your PM isn’t there. And what you learn about Boris was he didn’t chair any meetings. He liked his country breaks. He didn’t work weekends. It was like working for an old-fashioned chief executive in a local authority 20 years ago. There was a real sense that he didn’t do urgent crisis planning. It was exactly like people feared he would be.”
The government did too little, far too late, and the economic and health consequences are disastrous.
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9 hours ago, kalos said:
Who brought up the pensions ???
Pensions are a very relevant point here - they help to pay for cruises, and this thread is all about whether people will cruise again. So many people having a go at younger people - stereotyping an entire generation. And the point is, though so few people seem to get it, that while we may be paying taxes too their generation are largely footing the bill for our pensions and all the other costs that skyrocket as we get older. As you sit in your house bought many years ago at maybe a tiny fraction of what it would cost now, spare a thought for young people who have no chance of ever buying one.
And as you all spend all the money on cruises, how many of you have helped your kids financially so that they can buy a house? Having taught our kids to share, we've shared with them, and they will in turn with their children. Nothing like as many cruises for us, but they both have nice houses, bought largely from gifts from us. Have you done that, or is it a case of - it's my money, I'm spending it? Spending the kids inheritance - horrible phrase, but I've heard it so many times. What a selfish, unpleasant attitude.
Let's be nice to the younger generations, and let's make this a nicer forum.
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8 hours ago, kalos said:
As I just posted Harry the two posters were remarking on how a few, not all could not care less about
social distancing ,not baby boomer,not pensions or who has what regardless of age .
I fail to see how they were being negative posters.
You get selfish in all age groups and age nor status comes into it in my opinion .
Sorry but I think staying two meters apart is what the point of the posters was. Nothing more nothing less.
I think you're missing the point - what he said was this:
"Quite how you read a post about younger people paying for the pensions and healthcare costs of older people as in any way suggesting it's anybody's fault escape me!
Why be so negative about any group of people? Try not to create intergenerational disharmony - it achieves nothing for anybody, and that's been the thrust of every post I've made on this."
You were the one being referred to as negative, and I agree. It's very easy to criticise young people, without having tha ability to appreciate their difficulties.
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I wonder how P&O would react if customers decided they'd ignore the terms and conditions - just as P&O are doing? I think we know the answer to that one.
Something on the lines of - "Sorry, can't pay the final balance. Run out of money." Much like what P&O are doing.
Can you really ever trust a company, now or in the future when things return to normal, if it's prepared to ignore its legal obligations? What else does it sweep under the carpet?
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1 hour ago, grapau27 said:
Our older generation probably had doubts about us all too.
They sure did - but they didn't publicly attack us on forums like this! Why so much vitriol from older people here? Can't you just live and let live? Just a very small number of posters here astute enough to appreciate that attacking the very people who currently make the largest contribution to our NHS and our pensions is a pretty odd way to behave.
This really can be a very unpleasant forum sometimes - no wonder so few younger people want to join in and be got at! Why is there all this constant sniping at younger people?
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All good here - everyone working together to help each other.
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8 minutes ago, cruisenewbie1976 said:
Very possible. I'm relatively new to cruising (5/6 years) so I don't really know what it was like before. I can only go on what I see now. If I was that unhappy with a company, I'd stop using them.
Some of the die-hards here have. And the way they're handling refunds (or rather not handling refunds, despite their obligations) will put off quite a few more I guess. P&O are very good at quoting terms and conditions when it suits - a bit quieter on that when they're refusing refunds!
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3 hours ago, daiB said:
Everything I have seen says that if you cannot use your FFC by the end of the period it is valid you then get your money back.
So not taking it now makes no sense.
Not ideal but the best solution in strange times.
Sent from my iPad using ForumsDo you have anything to back up that claim? I've seen nothing to suggest that if you take the FCC credit you can then get a cash refund in any circumstances.
And FCC means risk - if Carnival goes under, or is restructured into a different financial entity, all these FCCs will be completely valueless, much like Woolworth gift vouchers.
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Baltic Destination Changes?/Payment Deadline?
in P&O Cruises ( UK )
Posted
If it's of any help, we've taken two or three 10 day family holidays in Helsinki, and in June I'd recommend just chilling and taking in the summer atmosphere, which is just great. They really do know how to do summer in Helsinki! It's a young, vibrant city with plenty of places to eat, indoor and outdoor.
In mid-June sunset's not until 2245 and it's great just being outdoors. There are loads of things to do - take your pick, according to how much time you have, and what the weather's like:
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attractions-g189934-Activities-Helsinki_Uusimaa.html