The HfP chat thread – Monday 21st December

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We have decided to run this daily chat thread on Head for Points during the coronavirus outbreak.

Historically, the daily ‘Bits’ articles were the de facto repository for random comments and questions. With the news flow being lighter, we are running fewer ‘Bits’ articles.

The comments under this article are where you should post questions about travel and, indeed, anything else on your mind. At this tricky time, and given that many of you are at home, we want the HfP community to have a place to chat.

Please only comment under the main articles on the site if your comment is directly related to the topic of the article. This has long-term benefits as it keeps the commentary relevant for people who read those articles in the future.

Old chat threads are hidden from the HfP home page. If you want to look for something in an old thread, click here. This brings up all the articles in our ‘General’ category which includes the chat threads.

Category

General

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Anna says:

21 Dec21 December 11:12

Breaking news – France to re-open borders. Perhaps fish was mentioned.
- Rhys says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 11:14
  
  Banning passenger travel is one thing….banning freight is another!
  - James says:
    
    21 Dec21 December 18:20
    
    They’ve banned accompanied fright only, i.e. truckers who might be carrying the virus. What’s the difference between them and a plane passenger?
- Chris says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 12:06
  
  FFS
- Pablo says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 12:48
  
  Your xenophobic drivel would be more appropriate in the Daily Torygraph comments section.
  - Mike says:
    
    21 Dec21 December 12:57
    
    Islam is a Religion of Peace
- John says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 12:56
  
  France takes in many more asylum seekers (genuine or not) than the numbers trying to cross the channel
- TGLoyalty says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 12:57
  
  I expected better tbh.
  - Mike says:
    
    21 Dec21 December 12:59
    
    The vast majority do not meet asylum criteria and would be sent back by HMG.
- ken says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 13:16
  
  2019 Figures
  
  Asylum seekers
  
  France 130k
  Spain 118k
  Greece 77k
  UK 45k
  
  Germany has averaged over 200k a year for a decade
  
  hope this helps
  - PerkyPat says:
    
    21 Dec21 December 13:25
    
    Dont confuse people with pesky facts! We want lies and bluster!
  - Mike says:
    
    21 Dec21 December 13:44
    
    Asylum “seekers” vs asylum “granted”….now those would be interesting figures.
- BSI1978 says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 13:26
  
  Jesus wept, after a weekend when people have praised you consistently, this nonsense!
- Lady London says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 13:39
  
  Disappointing. I would have expected better. I should have remembered that English tongue-in-cheek humour doesn’t always travel, and that part of the virus spread problem seems to be linked to the UK no longer having “one nation together trying to beat the virus together” unity. Which may turn out to make the UK stronger overall of course.
  - TGLoyalty says:
    
    21 Dec21 December 13:48
    
    Needed a winky face 😉
- Josh says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 13:45
  
  There are a lot of guardian readers kn HfP it be seems 😂
S says:

21 Dec21 December 11:16

There are some changes to our limits structures that have been rolled out in the last few weeks. These limits are set by MasterCard and we are unable to alter them.

Your new limits with a Personal card will be on the highest tier. These will be:

4500 GBP per single transaction and per day
1000 GBP cash withdrawal per day
1,400,000 GBP per year
- S says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 11:16
  
  Curve update
RussellH says:

21 Dec21 December 11:31

I was involved in a discussion about making the threading of comments here clearer, specifically with “Small Shop” and “Mouse”.

Mouse’s suggestion of family tree style lines is what I would really like to see too – I just did not know how to describe that. [My preferred e-mail program does that, but as it it neither Windows nor MacOS nor Linux I did not think it would be useful to mention it here.]
Another thought though. It has only just sunk in that comments have a dark grey vertical bar on the left hand side of the box.
What about about 2 bars for 2nd level, 3 bars for 3rd level and so on?
- KBuffett says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 11:43
  
  The best option is to implement a forum. Many of the same questions are asked daily, because it’s too difficult to find previous comments, and even more difficult to provide an update on an issue/comment.
  - Aston100 says:
    
    21 Dec21 December 11:51
    
    A forum (that requires user registration) is the answer to many things on this site including, but not limited to:
    Cutting down a little bit on unsuitable comments (accountability)
    Searching for keywords & topics
    Providing FAQs that can be referenced
    Being notified of replies to your own threads & posts
    Being notified about new posts in threads you are watching
    etc
    - Mr. AC says:
      
      21 Dec21 December 12:13
      
      Only the most hardcore folks will go to the forum. Most scroll through comments on the go. Current structure is “suboptimal” but works.
      That being said, reply notifications are badly needed!
      - Dr C says:
        
        21 Dec21 December 13:00
        
        Define: works
        
        Having 100’s of comments practically the same everyday isn’t really working for the user but more for the analytics. Yes people will come back but user experience and usefulness could be a lot better with at least some alternative.
        
        Its impossible for me to find a comment from last week unless I had added some random identified to it that could be searched for in google.
        
        You don’t have to use the word forum which for whatever reason is bashed on here, but something better than wordpress standard comments! There is no point mentioning disqus as its always bashed by comments that some other sites say it doesn’t work, well it at least has the ability to find previous comments, as nobody has any other solution.
      - Dr C says:
        
        21 Dec21 December 13:04
        
        Ironically I will probably never see the replies to this…
    - John says:
      
      21 Dec21 December 12:58
      
      I think a forum would generate a lot more mud slinging. With daily chat threads they kind of die off after a day when people stop reading them. I guess a similar thing could be implemented on a forum though
      - Mouse says:
        
        21 Dec21 December 14:10
        
        I also like the daily rhythm of things, which I think would be lost somewhat moving to a forum. It’s sort of comforting with all that’s going on in the world to load the page up just before lunchtime and know that someone will have asked what does Beardy/Bendy mean and someone else will have received helpful advice on cancellations. You know where you are with the hfp chat thread.
      - Rob says:
        
        21 Dec21 December 14:35
        
        Google loves forums though!
      - RussellH says:
        
        21 Dec21 December 16:43
        
        If Google loves forums, then that, to my mind, is another reason for ignoring them.
  - RussellH says:
    
    21 Dec21 December 12:10
    
    For myself, I hate forums. I have never seen one that threads properly, and to me, that is more useful than anything else.
    And how does a forum stop people asking the same questions over and over again?
    I know I am not alone in my dislike of forums either, but perhaps it is an age-related thing?
    - Dr C says:
      
      21 Dec21 December 13:01
      
      For get ‘Forum”. Just the ability to search previous comments and actual registration would solve a lot of basic issues.
    - David D says:
      
      21 Dec21 December 13:02
      
      RussellH, forums have moderators who can transfer the post and subsequent comments into a previously created thread and/or advise the initial poster directly of the thread to look at, with details of search functions. Quite a bit of work for the mods generally during the first few months of a forum but as people get the hang of it it becomes new posters only and dwindles to a couple per day. However, I would suspect due to the content that there would be quite a few per day which a few moderators can easily handle normally.
      - Nick says:
        
        21 Dec21 December 16:24
        
        I don’t think I’ll use a HFP forum. Too much hassle on my phone. Current system works well for me as I can read and comment anywhere.
      - RussellH says:
        
        21 Dec21 December 16:49
        
        I have found the search facilities on forums utterly useless.
        When a search engine gives me a link to a forum, I can almost guarantee that there will be no reference on the page to my search string: it might be in the topic somewhere, maybe page 73 of stuff that that topic has now stretched to, but search has connected me to page 29.
        
        Here I have a pretty good idea of where I have posted and where to go and look for a reply. I would not think of using a search engine.
        Does HfP’s search facility actually rely on a mainstream search engine? Or is it built in to WordPress?
Princess says:

21 Dec21 December 11:36

Reporting some info for people arrived in Italy from the UK.
We manage to move our flight to the 18th to avoid the new Xmas quarantine rules.
We got a test on the 16th (negative)
Yesterday the Italian government banned all flight from the UK and issued a new law: if you have been in the UK in the previous 14 days you have to call the local health service (ASL) and tell them who you are, when you arrived…
So I did it this morning: they asked me to send an email with our details, the tests results we got in the UK and to TRY to get an antigen test in the coming days and to let them know the results. No requirement to quarantine or isolate.
Clive says:

21 Dec21 December 11:46

Indian borders closed which may affect some
YL says:

21 Dec21 December 11:49

Thank you for the update Mark. This is very helpful!
Fab212 says:

21 Dec21 December 11:50

Can anyone recommended a reliable VPN product to work from abroad that works on iPhone, iPad and laptops please?
- AndyGWP says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 12:05
  
  I use OpenVPN as my client app on iphone and laptops – so anything where you can get your should do the job 🙂
  
  I use Surfshark and it’s perfect for what I need (on iPhone and laptops) 🙂 you can usually get it heavily discounted via. c@shb4ck sites too and it doesn’t limit concurrent usage on the same account
  
  They currently have (directly) an offer of £1.64 per month and when I joined a few years ago, I discovered it stacked with the aforementioned site for a brucey bonus 😉
- AndyGWP says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 12:08
  
  I should add, that for the very best solution when I’m abroad, I use a Raspberry Pi running PiVPN, to actually VPN onto and use my own home broadband. This also uses OpenVPN as a client, and means that every action I perform on my phone / laptop, is as it would be at home (ie. no workarounds needed to get iplayer working or anything like that) 🙂
  
  Needs a little bit of tech knowledge to get the certs onto the phone, and to sort out DynDNS etc tho
  - Lady London says:
    
    21 Dec21 December 12:18
    
    ComputerActive magazine covered how to do this last year, I think.
    
    Back issues available on Amazon (disc) or via one of the online magazine services.
  - Brighton Belle says:
    
    21 Dec21 December 12:32
    
    Me too, the Pi VPN is great and free if you have the time and inclination to get it working. We have 2 at home serving UK TV to various bits of family in distant lands and little chance of the IP address being blacklisted like commercial VPN’s our UK broadcasters choose to block.
- TGLoyalty says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 12:09
  
  I use PureVPN. Seems to work on everything include my fire stick.
  - Ryan says:
    
    21 Dec21 December 12:20
    
    I second PureVPN. Been using them for 8 years, and have always found them reliable. Customer service is helpful and efficient too.
- Lady London says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 12:15
  
  I have found expressvpn the best. Nordvpn scores around next best but I am dissatisfied with them as too many websites have been able to see through the nordvpn vpn this year and Nordvpn does not seem to keep up in the constant game of staying ahead of this.
  
  This after many incidents reported to Nordvpn this year when their vpn did not shield.
  
  I did not have that problem with vpnexpress – only really aggressive sites like Amazon seem to see through it with any level of success. Also noticed Nordvpn seems to consume more data these days.
  
  With both and a mobile network that manages capacity during the day to divert resources to cities in working hours on an already weak-ish signal, with both VPNs I have found I frequently get better performance with the VPN than without, weirdly.
  
  YMMV.
  - Fab212 says:
    
    21 Dec21 December 12:47
    
    Thanks all for the feedback
  - Mike says:
    
    21 Dec21 December 13:00
    
    Express was good but now its poor and I had to cancel. Does not work with iPlayer. NordVPN works much better and they now use RAM servers which they didn’t when I signed up to Express.
    - Mouse says:
      
      21 Dec21 December 14:13
      
      I’m currently with Express – have also noticed that it seems to be getting worse.
      - Lady London says:
        
        21 Dec21 December 14:29
        
        Thanks guys – I was about to switch back to expressvpn from nordvpn but will give purevpn a try now.
  - Josh says:
    
    21 Dec21 December 13:49
    
    PandaVPN works well if you’re ever in China
- memesweeper says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 15:42
  
  Proton VPN is what I use
Nick says:

21 Dec21 December 12:17

Is it just me or is Curve customer help non existent. I have e mailed 3 times in last week as my card is as much use as indicators on a train, its just gets rejected
- The Savage Squirrel says:
  
  21 Dec21 December 13:40
  
  Send a short message via the app. Then follow it up with a longer one detailing your issue. Weirdly this seems to work where long messages alone do not.
  - Nick says:
    
    21 Dec21 December 14:38
    
    Savage I have tried that, I had one reply saying” Looking into it” ……………………………..