Around the Campfire: Summer deferred

“One can never predict the future with perfect confidence”, the UK government’s Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove told the BBC today. He wasn’t interviewing for a job as a financial services’ compliance officer but instead seeking to justify why the government has just announced a postponement of the lifting of all remaining anti-Covid lockdown measures in England, from 21st June to 19th July.

The changing regulations leave many people confused about what is or is not ‘permitted’. I can testify that many more people are out and about than this time last year; trains seem to be full, the London Underground is full, road traffic seems back to ‘normal’. Mask-wearing is ubiquitous.

I’m full of admiration for those who are still planning to travel abroad in the next month – not because they are risking infection but because they might find themselves scrambling for vastly inflated prices to get on a plane home before they are required to ‘quarantine’.

Around 75,000 Brits were in Portugal – the only mainstream destination they could travel to without quarantining on their return – when at the start of June the government took the country off the ‘green’ list, the list of countries to which we can travel without quarantining, a kind of domestic lockdown, on your return. According to the consumer protection body Which less than 1% of travel insurance policies give people full comprehensive cover for COVID-related disruption. People who rushed to Faro or Lisbon airports to buy a pre-quarantine ticket back to Blighty found they had to pay several times what the pre-panic tickets cost.

Such is the quixotic nature of this virus and the government’s rule-making that I don’t think it’s worth the risk.

I had intended to take the family away for some much needed post-Crowdfunding R&R but I am now putting it back until all the mess has sorted itself out. Vacations are about relaxation after all.

But when I do eventually hit foreign beaches I know that one risk – exchange rates’ rip-offs – is just a bad nightmare, thanks to my Glint account. Glint gives you the freedom to use gold as money. But it also gives you the freedom to spend gold (or Dollars, Pounds or Euros) around the world. We’re also up to 6 times cheaper than banks, and there are no hidden or disguised fees. You can use Glint to pay for products and services in shops, restaurants and online, anywhere in the world, at the best available wholesale market rates (no mark-ups here) and with only a small 0.5% transaction fee. You no longer have to worry about the risk of losing significant sums of money from shifts in exchange rates. If you need some extra cash when traveling abroad then you can withdraw up to £300 (or $300) per day from ATMs that accept Mastercard®, with only a small fee of £1.50 / $1.50 / €1.50 per withdrawal from Glint, which just covers our costs.

So, if you do decide to travel, you can minimise one risk, unfair charges – take and use your Glint App and card.

Happy travel planning!

Jason Cozens