You could not make this up. Incompetent, fumbling government encouraging travel abroad and then not having a single clue what reactive, policy to implement to mollify voters. (Paywall)

Quarantine to be cut to 10 days for people arriving from Spain https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/07/27/quarantine-cut-10-days-spain-arrivals/?WT.mc_id=tmgliveapp_iosshare_Avr7KC3VQVHW

Your periodic reminder of the useless “quarantine” policy that if I were to go to Spain - which I have no immediate plans to - here is what would happen on my return:

1) I might fill out a travel declaration online - but you can certainly arrive without one and be admitted, as I found out last week. (I did fill in the form after the fact, but wished to test the system)

2) No temperature checks at the border, and nobody asks if you’ve filled in the declaration, or indeed checks where you’ve come from.

3) If I then have to quarantine under the policy, that’s not immediate. Nobody takes you away, and nobody pays for 14 days in a locked up hotel. I arrive at Heathrow and spend an hour on the Piccadilly Line and then another hour on another train, then a bus home. (YES REALLY)

4) When I get home I must stay there for 14 (or, as will be soon, 10) days. But who checks? Not the police - they’ve never fined anyone and most forces said openly they wouldn’t get involved in enforcing this policy, which is a waste of everyone’s time.

5) Quarantine - or self isolation - is a dead cat strategy designed to make the government LOOK serious when in fact it is in the process of grossly exculpating itself from the scandal of coronavirus running riot in care homes. THAT is the scandal.

6) Quarantine - if implemented where you’re effectively captured at the airport, driven in a govt vehicle and detained - as happens in some countries, at least makes sense as a policy, and makes sense from a scientific perspective. This doesn’t. You’re getting played.