Brake For The Border

at

Earlier…

Taoiseach Micheál Martin

“There has never been a ban on North-South travel, not will there be.”

Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Fianna Fáil Parliamentary meeting, November 29, 2020

This morning.

From 7am, people who live in Northern Ireland faced fines of €100 from Gardaí if caught crossing the Irish border without “a reasonable excuse”.

Via BBC:

The unprecedented step has been taken by the Irish government in a bid to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Northern Ireland residents who have to cross the border for essential work or essential purposes, such as seeking medical treatment, will be exempt from fines.

Public health guidance in NI says people “should not travel in or out of Northern Ireland except where it is essential to do so”.

Coronavirus: NI residents face fines for crossing border (BBC)

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23 thoughts on “Brake For The Border

  1. Cian

    The same law that apply to an ROI resident also apply to a NI resident once they cross the border?

    Seems fair enough.

  2. Charger Salmons

    Needs must.
    Amazing what you can achieve without interference from the EU.
    Such a shame Ireland allowed themselves to be led by the nose from Brussels for so long ….

    1. Andrew

      Reactive all the time. No leadership and to be honest I just think they don’t really care. They’re just delighted hat they have ‘made it’. The trappings of office is good enough for them, no real vision or convictions beyond that.

  3. f_lawless

    Not directly about the border, but Covid-related

    I watched this clip yesterday of an interview with UK Vaccine Deployment MP Nadhim Zahawi.Gives a glimpse of where this runaway train of mass vaccinating whole populations and vaccine ‘freedom passports’ is headed.

    https://twitter.com/jengleruk/status/1358353911002902530

    “This is a really important point for your viewers: Of course the virus will mutate and the more we vaccinate, the more the virus will attempt to survive and mutate even further…we’re able to sequence the genomes rapidly and then talk to the manufacturers. And you saw the deal we announced this week with CureVac where we’re looking to manufacture the new variant of vaccine that deals with the new variant of virus..”

    What a wonderful self-perpetuating line of business from a pharmaceutical industry perspective.

    1. Charger Salmons

      Yes, it almost like the flu virus that mutates every year and requires a slight tweaking off the annual vaccine.
      Of course we could forget about those nasty Big Pharma trying to save lives and let the old just die off anyway …

      1. Micko

        I’ve no problem with saving the old. I’ve just got a problem with sacrificing my kids education and development to do it.

        A year is a very long time in a young child’s life.

        If your old then stay in and wait for the vaccine. Let everyone who wants to do otherwise do so.

        1. Charger Salmons

          So you’d be up for the kids going back to school during the summer holidays to make up for lost time ?

      2. f_lawless

        Your second sentence is a strawman argument so leaving that to one side; I think there’s some key differences to the flu vaccine.

        – The flu vaccine is only administered to a subset of populations. The focus is on the at-risk groups. We don’t know what the knock-on effects will be of vaccinating close to entire populations – particularly with new experimental ‘gene therapy’ vaccines that have no long term safety data. Considering that the virus currently has an extremely high survival rate and most people will only have mild symptoms to none at all, what happened to the precautionary principle? Shouldn’t the focus just be on the at-risk groups?

        – We don’t require proof of flu vaccination to access the different aspects of daily life – travel, work, go to an event, etc. If this system is to be put in place indefinitely, it will have fundamentally changed democratic society as we know it. Citizens would no longer be free to determine their own health safety. Instead, health is imposed on them by the state as an obligation – don’t comply and you’re effectively shut out of normal life.

        You can choose to have blind faith in the likes of Boris Johnston or even in corporate power but the reality is they’re not going to do anything to prevent us going down this path towards a totalitarian-like surveillance state. Better to not put your head in the sand and to confront what’s happening

        1. Charger Salmons

          You’re making the classic error that most people, particularly the Irish, make about Boris Johnson.
          He is firmly on the libertarian wing of the Conservative party and the mistakes he’s made over the pandemic have been more about his reluctance to curtail personal freedom than about his desire for a totalitarian state.
          As for vaccines they are not compulsory. But the take-up amongst the elderly and at-risk groups in the UK is extremely high.It will probably be less so as the age levels to be vaccinated come down but I suspect if there’s a choice between not having a vaccine and getting off their nuts in Ibiza this summer the younger types will vote with their bare arm.

    2. George

      Yeah, farmers have the same scam going. You buy food and then a week later the food is gone and you have to buy it again.

  4. George

    Given that the check points are all over 5km from the border this is simply an enforcement of the existing laws.

  5. bisted

    …surely, only a few weeks until the mass vaccination programme in the north turns the table on the number of new cases recorded and Mehole will have to backtrack again…unless a new strain emerges…as predicted by the pro-sickness prophets…

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