The no holidays allowed is here as well. ?5k if caught travelling for holidaying. It is not just todays- no visiting family abroad either. There is a list of reasons on the UK gov website that you are allowed to travel for, and if it is not on that list, you will be fined. With business travel, there is a list of occupations that are allowed to travel for work. This is because former Love Island contestants turned influencers were travelling to Dubai for work purposes, which seemed to be taking holiday photos on posting them on Instagram. There is no ban entering the UK if you are a citizen or resident - although you may need to quarantine because it is a red list country. But for those red list countries? There is no direct flights. Colleague is currently stuck in South Africa because of that. Travelled over in February last year to give birth, spent maternity leave there - and now cannot return. Not because she isnt willing to quarantine or will be stopped from entering, but because she cannot get a plane back.
There are quite a few people from outside the UK I think who do not realise the level of restrictions we have here, and have been in since November my area. By the time this lifts it will be month 6 of this. Pretty much everything is shut here. No shops other than groceries. No travel outside of the town you live in without a good reason. Which needs to be on the list of good reasons for leaving your town. We are all pretty much sat indoors, with the exception of the once a day daily exercise. Legally you cannot exercise twice. Only once. Currently debating whether or not it's worth heading over to the office just so I have an excuse to leave town.
Dont get me wrong. These restrictions were needed at the end of last year. The Kent Variant was rampaging through the population here, I lost count at one point of how many people I knew who had tested positive. We were desperate at that point. The total death count passed 100k, hospitals were overloaded. Hence why the vaccines were approved fast, and why we lengthened the gap between the 2 doses to get more people having 1. Who knows if the current numbers being down is due to all of being sat indoors and not doing anything, or because of the vaccines. Lot of people thought that was a risk. It has paid off.