Day: 24 October 2020

Guy de la Bédoyère Sitting on a beach on the north coast of Rhodes in the last week of October, the sight is enough to warm the cockles of a British airport manager’s heart. One Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 series machine after another joins the circuit to come down at the airport. Every one of them is carrying a couple of hundred more willing punters and representing money and jobs for the local economy. And meanwhile what’s happening in Britain? One glance at the news and I learn that Mark Drakeford has thrown Wales back hundreds of years into half-demented medieval superstition. Totally unable to concede to himself and anyone else the basic reality that coronaviruses are beyond the wit of man to do any more than inhibit, he has decided the best thing to do is lead the pack in the race to the bottom of economic destruction in the crazed belief that finally COVID-19 will get the message that he means to destroy it with futile gestures. While the Welsh wrap up microwaves and socks in supermarkets to stop anyone buying them, the citizens of Rhodes are operating more or less normally. Mind you, we didn’t get here without some trouble. Both the British and Greek governments are subscribing to the ‘we’re not here to enjoy ourselves’ ...

Gyms Are Essential Services A group of 100 gym owners from across Wales have got together to tell the Welsh Government that it is wrong and harmful to shut gyms during the so-called "fire break" lockdown. They told Lockdown Sceptics: As of 18.00 Friday we enter a 17 day “fire break” period where all but non-essential businesses will close across the entire country.As a collective, we strongly believe that gyms are an essential service, and scientific evidence shows that active participation in exercise through establishments such as gyms relieves the strain on the NHS through the promotion of physical and mental wellbeing.  In forcing the closure of gyms, the Welsh Government will be harming a large proportion of the Welsh population and we cannot stand by and allow that to happen.Just as the Liverpudlian gym community fought (and won) against gym closures in its city, we are now going to do the same for our country. However, we want to take it a step further in getting gyms officially recognised as an essential service by the Government, as they have in other countries across Europe.– According to ukactive, there were 22 million gym visits in England between July 25th and September 13th and they resulted in just 78 confirmed Covid cases– The number of cases per 100,000 gym visits in ...