So the big announcement from Boris Johnson, turned out to be a total waste of time for everyone in the travel industry. Why say you’re going to announce something on the 12th of April, change it and say it will be on April the 5th, say nothing nothing on the April 5th and say it will now be on April 12th? And then leak it to the press before you get to the date you said you would announce it. With the announcement by Jet2 of pushing back their restart date until June 24th, I think it means UK arrivals from May 17th isn’t going to happen. We need to ramp up our vaccination programme here as it looks like it will need to be at least 50% of the total population to be in the green zone. I don’t understand the push back on the Astra Zeneca vaccine and the links to blood clots.
If you’re not sure you are perfectly within your rights not to take it. But remember there’s a risk in everything and think about these facts about blood clots.
Flying: 1 in 1000
The Pill: 1 in 2000
Astra Zeneca: 1 in 250,000
I’m pleased to say that my 91yr old Mother has had her second dose of the vaccine without any ill effects. She said she can’t wait to go down the pub and have a pub lunch. I only wish we could get there and buy it for her. That brings me to ask a question, Is there any distinction between people going on holiday or visiting family? We haven’t been able to visit my family or my Wife’s family in over 16 months now, so shouldn’t there be some sort of opportunity for people who want to visit family before people who go on holiday? Not looked at the practicalities but thought it was a question worth asking.
My two boys play football at CD San Francisco based in Palma. I have moaned(probably wrongly) about the club and their Covid policy before but to be fair they have always put the kids first and are governed by what they are told by Sanidad the medical people here in Mallorca.
Last Thursday I was alerted to a situation that occurred at the club. A game between one of their Infantil teams was stopped by the National Police because of a reported outbreak of Covid. Infantil is 11 & 12 year olds and it seemed a bit heavy handed for 10 Policeman to converge on the club like it was a raid and immediately called a halt to the game. Apparently four children had tested positive and the police were told by Sanidad to go down to the ground and stop the game. Firstly the police were surprised at how young the children were and secondly they didn’t realise that San Francisco have four different Infantil teams. The team whose game they had stopped didn’t contain the children they were looking for and when the club asked who the children were to try and help, the police said they couldn’t name them due to data protection. So they had the wrong team and the club couldn’t help them as they couldn’t name who they were looking for. You couldn’t make it up. After half an hour, they apologised and left. After the event it turns out that they were looking for one player from another infantil San Francisco team who had tested positive after playing against another team from Palma the previous week. The outbreak had actually come from that team and not San Francisco meaning all the teams that had played each other needed to isolate.
San Francisco have the strictest COVID policies I have seen. All the boys are temperature checked on arrival and neither team use the changing rooms. We as parents have only just been allowed inside to watch games and we have to sign in all our details as do the opposition and we are temperature checked too. I have been to three other grounds since the restart of football and no other club has all these systems in place.
The authorities have failed the kids in their dealings with football and all other sports from the get go. My youngest hasn’t played a competitive game in over a year which is mad.
There are 32,000 licensed football players across the Balearics which represents 3% of the population. If you include the families then you are talking probably 10% of the islands population. I’m not including all the other sports which will run into thousands too. Yet the authorities choose to totally ignore the clubs who are asking the question to why the younger ones cannot return to playing competitive games.
Unfortunately it doesn’t look like it’s going to change soon. Yet they’ve been in school since last September without any major problems. This is not the rant of a father wanting to see his son play football, this is for all the kids under 12 in any sport who are being denied their right to develop their physicality, their mentality, their discipline, their social skills, their self esteem, their confidence, their emotions and channel negative feelings in a positive way. It’s all being stopped by some pen pusher who has absolutely no idea, it’s a disgrace.
Take care everyone and enjoy your Weekend!
Richie presents the Radio One Mallorca Breakfast show Monday to Friday 07.30-11.00am on 93.8fm in Mallorca and 102fm in Calvià, online at www.radioonemallorca.com on mobile through their free App for IPhone & Android, The Tunein Radio App, iTunes, the Spanish TDT TV service and all smart speakers. If you can’t hear him on the radio then you’ll find him working at Pirates Adventure the islands number one night out and every now and again he may make an understudy appearance!
Follow him on Twitter @DadTaxi1 & Instagram @dad.taxi or feel free to email him at rprior@globobalear.com
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