The HfP chat thread – Friday 1st January

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

• CC says:

  1 Jan1 January 14:41

  Are BA rolling out the new Business class while there are hardly any flights? Using an FTV I booked a companion voucher flight for Tokyo a couple of months ago for October 2021 when it was showing as an A350. They finally issued my ticket so I can look at seats, and its now showing as a 789!

  • TGLoyalty says:

    1 Jan1 January 15:06

    They’re still refurbishing 777 slowly and receiving some new planes with club suite (A350, 777 and 787-10)

    But I haven’t seen anything about the 788 or 789 getting it any time in the near future.

    • CC says:

      1 Jan1 January 15:38

      Oh well, never have much luck with things. Annoying they listed it as an A350 to begin with, probably trying to suck people in.

      • TGLoyalty says:

        1 Jan1 January 17:47

        I don’t think it’s to sucker people in. Managing plane rotations and routes is a complicated business. Could change many times by then including right up until check in.

        I had a a350 on a Dubai trip last year and it was swapped out for an old crap 777 about 5 mins before check in.

        • Anna says:

          1 Jan1 January 18:07

          This year I just want to be on a plane that takes me somewhere. If it has seats, that’s a bonus!

• MKB says:

  1 Jan1 January 15:30

  I have never changed my paper UK driving licence as there was no need, it’s not free to change it unless you change address, and it incurs the hassle of ten-yearly renewal.

  For anyone else with a paper licence, or a licence issued in Gibraltar, Guernsey, Jersey or the Isle of Man, be aware that it no longer covers driving in the EU from today.

  • MKB says:

    1 Jan1 January 15:33

    Details here: https://www.gov.uk/driving-abroad/international-driving-permit

    • Tocsin says:

      1 Jan1 January 16:06

      Now, MKB, that is practical advice and information – thank you!

      (I can’t quite decide which irritates me more on HfP chat, the Brexit ‘digs’ or the Bendy, Beardy, Seagull b0llocks!)

  • Chrisasaurus says:

    1 Jan1 January 20:31

    Well thank Christ we’ve finally taken back control of paper driving licences!

• ChasP says:

  1 Jan1 January 15:37

  posted a few weeks ago that my Tesco – Avios transaction had gone through at 600 rather than the grandfather rate of 800 which had always been previously applied
  Tesco are now claiming that the rate changed – has anyone had a transfer at the 800 rate in December ? or are prepared to try a £2.50 transfer now ?

  • Lyn says:

    1 Jan1 January 17:49

    I got the 800 rate about 3 days ago.

  • Rjn21 says:

    2 Jan2 January 02:36

    I started manually easing out my balance in December 2020 after the last auto convert (800 rate) at the end of October (?) as I didn’t want to get caught out when the account locks for the February 2021 statement. In November 2020, the 800 rate was still showing on my account until the last step of the manual conversion, when it changed to 600 and that’s what I received. Now the website makes no mention of 800.

• CaptainAnonymous says:

  1 Jan1 January 16:26

  Curve payments are now working on HMRC. Made 2 payments, one for 600 and one for >2000. No issues at all.

  • Paul says:

    1 Jan1 January 21:08

    Still “Payment unsuccessful” despite no transaction decline showing in Curve for me 🙁

• Anna says:

  1 Jan1 January 16:37

  Looking speculatively ahead, weekend nights at the Kimpton Fitzroy next December are around 45/50k points per night (as opposed to 70k for the IC Park Lane). I re-read Rob’s review of it with the Christmas 5 foot gingerbread house and couldn’t resist booking a night on points followed by one on the Creation free night certificate in the hope we’ll all be vaccinated and free to delight in these things once more!

  • Jody says:

    1 Jan1 January 16:58

    Ever prepared Anna!

    • Anna says:

      1 Jan1 January 17:17

      And optimistic lol.

      • Jamie says:

        1 Jan1 January 17:39

        I give you a day before you’re fretting over the dates/rate you paid/benefits you might get/means of travel or something else, and change your plans.

        • Anna says:

          1 Jan1 January 18:10

          I haven’t changed a single booking this year for any of those reasons, Jamie, only because of tier changes and lockdowns.

        • Jamie says:

          2 Jan2 January 03:54

          Anna, your posts are littered without doing exactly this and similar.

      • old bob says:

        1 Jan1 January 17:56

        The chances of you or anyone under 50 getting the vaccine anytime soon are remote. Although our glorious leader has optimistically informed of of sunny uplands, sorted by Easter etc the reality is sadly a long way from this. Even if we had enough vaccine ( we haven’t despite govt denials) and we had the personnel to administer the ( we haven’t) and we could inject 50000 per day Monday to Friday it would take 1360 days, But Hey! let’s get wildly optimistic and multiply this number by 5 and the govt manages to vaccinate 250000per day it would STILL take 272 working days, or a year to you a me. It rather kicks the charlatan Johnsons pronouncements of a normal existence by Easter into the long grass.

        • Anna says:

          1 Jan1 January 18:09

          Good job I’m 50 then.

        • Harry T says:

          1 Jan1 January 18:21

          I’m 29 and I had my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine this week. Now we shall see if the government forces the local team to delay my second dose because of their “interesting” decision to change the dosing regime.

        • old bob says:

          1 Jan1 January 18:34

          @Anna unless you have an underlying health condition , I am willing to make a £100 wager with you for a charity of your choice, that you don’t get the vaccine until start of April.

        • Aston100 says:

          1 Jan1 January 18:38

          ***The chances of you or anyone under 50 getting the vaccine anytime soon are remote. Although our glorious leader has optimistically informed of of sunny uplands, sorted by Easter etc the reality is sadly a long way from this. Even if we had enough vaccine ( we haven’t despite govt denials) and we had the personnel to administer the ( we haven’t) and we could inject 50000 per day Monday to Friday it would take 1360 days, But Hey! let’s get wildly optimistic and multiply this number by 5 and the govt manages to vaccinate 250000per day it would STILL take 272 working days, or a year to you a me. It rather kicks the charlatan Johnsons pronouncements of a normal existence by Easter into the long grass.***

          Where are you getting this info ‘old bob’?

        • TGLoyalty says:

          1 Jan1 January 19:19

          @Aston100

          Bob did the math for you. There are 25m people in the Phase 1 groups. (Care and NHS workers like Harry all over 50’s and any 18-50 would are identified as vulnerable. The full priority list is available online)

          UK has administered 900k first doses in the first month. At this rate it will take 25 months for everyone to get their call up (there is double counting as some are vulnerable over 50’s that work in the Care/NHS for example.)

          If it’s accelerated and it’s 5m per month it’s 5 months for everyone to have dose 1 (they will need to start dose 2 for some within 12 weeks of dose 1 so they’ll need significantly more capacity in April or slow down dose 1)

          Of course it doesn’t mean that having made a significant dent in the most vulnerable won’t ease pressure on the NHS and with workers having been vaccinated they should have more people on the ground.

          Personally I think the summer is more realistic for some easing.

        • Andrew says:

          1 Jan1 January 20:05

          What nonsense.

          In case you have forgotten, there have been 3 days of bank holidays in the last fortnight. You refer to “our glorious leader”, a common term for Nicola Sturgeon, so you should probably know it’s a bank holiday in Scotland on Monday.

          Despite “lockdown” considerable numbers of health centre staff, along with medics have booked holidays over Christmas. There are also plenty of people who have not come forward for vaccination yet as they wanted to stay “safe” for the family they were allowed to see on Christmas day.

          December is not a good month to start anything, or a useful month to assess delivery.

          Any figures to judge roll out, won’t be worth looking at until you’re looking at the w/c 18th January.

          Under 50, got my vaccination organised.

        • Chrisasaurus says:

          1 Jan1 January 20:35

          I truly doubt anyone likes him less than I do, so this is definitely not an attempt to come to his defence, but the reality is that as the more vulnerable are vaccinated, so it becomes safer to open up society without increasing risk and then it’s all down to whether the vaccinated are able to be carriers – if they cannot transmit the virus then the R number will dip quickly as the opportunities for it to replicate are reduced daily…

          So, not normal for sure, but getting there quite possibly by summer

        • mutley says:

          1 Jan1 January 21:00

          @andrew, nonsense? quite the contrary , if we assume 68M population in the UK as a starting point. lets assume 8M either don’t or won’t take up the vaccination.

          If the government, love them or loath them, manage to vaccinate 250k a day/1.25m a week/5m a month we are looking at 12 months to vaccinate the whole population , so purely on a practical and logistical level Bob is correct. This is assuming that hard pressed GP’s and community Nurses, have the bandwidth on top of their normal workload.

          As an aside, I note that the late lamented Dominic Cummings of Barnard Castle fame, has come out today in the Spectator magazine offering to swear under oath that he advised Johnson to lock down in October, and the smirking Etonian dismissed the idea out of hand.

        • pauldb says:

          1 Jan1 January 21:01

          There 300,000 nurses in the NHS. My flu was a 3 minute appointment. Personnel-wise I don’t think 1 million per day is all that optimistic.

        • TGLoyalty says:

          1 Jan1 January 21:18

          Ridiculous comment there are 300k nurses doing all the day to day things they need to.

          That simply can not all be turned to vaccinate people and nothing more.

          Even if they could the supply isn’t there!

        • pauldb says:

          1 Jan1 January 21:57

          Of course the 300k have other responsibilities. I’m implying that finding 10-15k qualified nurses, from the NHS and elsewhere, seems very feasible. 100 jabs per day supports by 2-3 unqualified assistants.

        • The Savage Squirrel says:

          1 Jan1 January 22:44

          HarryT, yes, not impressed about having dose 2 likely postponed (until who knows when). First rule of all medical procedures and drug administration (well, OK second rule) … do things in the right order and timing, use things in they way they have been shown to be effective, don’t just make it up as you go along.
          That means doctors and not politicians should decide dosage and timing when administering medicines >:o

        • Louie says:

          1 Jan1 January 23:09

          Can someone explain why you need a nurse to stick a needle into someone? Why not train volunteers to administer the vaccines if staffing is a problem? We had our flu jabs administered by a pharmacy assistant (not even the pharmacist as far as I know give how young he was) in a chemist shop here in Australia earlier this year.

        • Magic Mike says:

          1 Jan1 January 23:34

          Plenty of retired medics have volunteered to scale up vaccination, but the bureaucratic hurdles are ridiculous, have to do your conflict resolution and diversity trainings plus a whole bunch of other nonsense just to stick someone…

        • Andrew says:

          1 Jan1 January 23:39

          It would appear that it simply doesn’t suit the agenda of the Covid-deniers that the 9,000+ GP practices in the UK could possibly vaccinate 110 patients a day each.

          I know my colleague jagged 90 before lunch yesterday…

        • Mouse says:

          1 Jan1 January 23:39

          We don’t need everyone to be vaccinated to reopen the economy. Once the over 70s and people with potentially complicating conditions have the jab, the rest of us can go about our business, as I am sure the government will want us to, because we are at a much lower risk of ending up in hospital and cumulatively putting excessive stress on the NHS.

        • TGLoyalty says:

          1 Jan1 January 23:42

          People aren’t the only limiting factor. There aren’t enough doses yet!

          Do you think all 100m were to be delivered on day 1?

          My understanding is c500k are in the uk ready for next week and about the same should arrive this coming week

        • pauldb says:

          2 Jan2 January 07:16

          Re: doses available – no one said otherwise, but this was a discussion about whether the rate could scale up massively or whether there weren’t the personnel.

          Re: 50%/ over 70s. Yes we can then open the economy, but infections would then spike massively in the non-vaccinated. Tricky one as a few will die. And other countries with slower progress will not want UK visitors on that basis.

  • TGLoyalty says:

    1 Jan1 January 17:49

    Only 49m more doses to go for those identified in phase 1

  • Pid says:

    1 Jan1 January 18:45

    Did the same last week and booked two nights in Dec at the Fitzroy with free night certificates that were about to expire.

• Dan says:

  1 Jan1 January 17:22

  The Delta / Virgin Atlantic devaluation announced really sucks (just read about it on OMAAT). Business redemptions have doubled? WTF.

• bm109 says:

  1 Jan1 January 17:45

  I purchased some Dragonpass airport lounge passes via Red by Dufry when they were cheap at start of 2020. One is about to expire – they are supposed to be refundable but anyone know how? Red by Dufry not responding to my emails ?

  • mutley says:

    1 Jan1 January 17:59

    Its News Years Day FFS, what do you expect.

  • Aston100 says:

    1 Jan1 January 18:38

    Dragonpasses are supposed to be getting extended.

• meta says:

  1 Jan1 January 19:01

  @Margaret I am so sorry to hear and hope the worse of symptoms go away soon.

  More than anything else it’s a psychological thing. Fearing that it could turn for the worse any day. I think it helped me personally completely shutting out the news or reading about symptoms after the first 2-3 days. Just doubling down on positive thoughts and getting energy to fight it.

  I had lots of symptoms you described. Not all at once, but everyday something different. And constant fever which didn’t go down for 12 days. Thankfully only the loss of smell now persists and bit of a cough.

  • Margaret says:

    1 Jan1 January 22:06

    Thanks @meta. I’m glad that you’re getting better:) I’m thinking of fasting a couple of days to try and reset my immune system, as that’s what causes the problems after a few weeks and mine is very sensitive! x

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