Letters - Thursday February 11, 2021

Viable Blackpool businesses need to hang on to whatever they can to stay afloat during this final lockdown period . Hopefully banks will support those businesses who have a good track record and require liquid cash.

With travel restrictions, Covid-19 variants and mandatory hotel quarantine rules required on the outskirts of airports, it would seem foreign holidays for Brits are less likely to happen during the summer of 2021. Planning to do anything right now is difficult, nobody really has the definitive answer or a crystal ball. Whilst experts hope the vaccines will be effective and return some kind of normality, we can only hope the medical science will prove to save lives, protect health and create wealth.

I think it would be wrong for Blackpool businesses to write off this summer, there has got to be a huge opportunity for UK tourism. Blackpool has a good infrastructure and in readiness should provisionally prepare for what could be a post war style summer. If that means extending your overdraft or increasing your business loan to survive the next 3-4 months, it could prove a better option than simply walking away in desperation.

In fairness to the government, the packages to support small hospitality businesses through this crisis have in all honesty outweighed my expectation - we’ve had suspension of VAT, business rates holidays, wage furlough payments, business closure grants and bounce bank loans offered.

The difficulty Blackpool has in comparison to other areas in the Lancashire region is the sheer volume of hospitality businesses and the restricted apportionment of allocated funding.

All those positives gained from the survival grants, were dampened by what can only be described as daft over zealous rules introduced, such as the 10pm curfew on pubs, you can only have a pint with a meal and the strict rule of six.

I do hope when pubs are allowed to re-open, operators will be instructed to follow pragmatic and practical guidelines. Equally they should be allowed to get their businesses back in action, enabling them to support their supply chain, preventing long term closures and reducing the number of boarded-up properties and unemployment.

With the current foreign travel restrictions, the government would be better placed supporting seaside towns with further specific survival funding getting them ‘match fit’ for the summer.

It would prove to be a sound short term investment and have long term economic gains for Blackpool.

Stephen Pierre

via email

virus

Booking vaccine on NHS website

I should like to reply to M.E.’s email (Your Say, February 9. Lucky to have these facilities). Yes, M.E. I also received that letter which included the mixed messages of ‘You should book as soon as possible’ and ‘You can choose to wait ...’

Given that it appears that the NHS are working through their lists alphabetically, and that my surname is way down that list, I chose the former option. I had, at that time, no idea how long it would be before my GP would contact me nor any idea how long I would have to wait for my appointment with my GP practice, so decided to be proactive and book it myself.

Yes, I am fortunate to have a car and thus am able to pick and choose my vaccination site from the selection given to me but, as I am disabled, the financial sacrifice that I have to make in order to run what some would see as a luxury is, to me, a necessity and thus not only a relatively nearby site, as driving long distances is not an option, but also nearby parking facilities are also a strong consideration as they are both important necessities for me.

Thus, it was not helpful to me to eventually find that the distances quoted on the NHS Vaccination site booking are ‘as the crow flies’ distances rather than as the ‘shown by the SatNav’ distance.

I may also be retired, but wish to make some use of my life rather than being tied to a computer trying to continually rebook my appointments as ‘More locations will also become available through the NHS website’ as quoted in the NHS letter and, significantly not, as M.E. has stated, ‘... a hub closer to home’.

Unlike the younger generation, I’m not interested in playing games on my computer for hours, with the game in question being, it seems, ‘Hunt for an NHS Vaccination Booking’ coming to a location near you. The NHS does not, as yet, offer a full picture of which local sites are available, including when they are open with, for example, it seems, Preston Grasshoppers being only available on Fridays and I never did find when the Penwortham Cricket Club site was available.

However, M.E. there is one thing that we can agree on and that is the facilities kindly provided by AFC Fylde ground at Mill Farm were excellent. As you say, the staff there were professional, polite and efficient, so much so that I was in and out in 20 minutes and that included the compulsory 15 minute wait after the vaccination! I can also concur with others who have said that it was pain free, in my case so pain free that the only thing I felt on my arm was the vaccinator’s gloved hand.

Once inside the facility, there was no queue and indeed the only other people apart from the staff were a couple in the post-vaccination waiting area.

With the latest bombshell coming out of South Africa, seeming to suggest that the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is not appearing to work as efficiently against the S.A. variant, those waiting to be vaccinated may now be asking for a site which offers an alternative vaccine, except that the NHS website does not appear to offer this option and thus perhaps perpetuating the National (Health Service) Lottery.

via email