Swimming Pools Under Pressure to Remove Covid Booking Rules
Swimming pools are under pressure to abolish restrictions introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, which still remain in place years later. The Telegraph has the story.
Indoor pools were forced to close during lockdown in 2020, which prompted concerns there would be a “lost generation” of young swimmers.
Since reopening, many operate under a system in which swimmers have to book timed slots to access the facilities.
Prof. Karol Sikora, a cancer specialist, has called for the removal of such systems and suggested they act as a barrier to individuals exercising.
The measures were introduced to restrict the number of people who visited the facilities in a given time period and reduce the risk of Covid transmission.
However, swimming pools and lidos across the country are still imposing these rules, several years after the pandemic.
A number of sites across London, including Parliament Hill Lido, Hampstead Ponds, London Fields, Finchley Lido and Brockwell Lido use booking systems in which swimmers can pay for slots by buying tickets online. Similar systems are used across the country.
On its site, Brockwell Lido in South London, says: “Since the COVID-19 pandemic, all sessions for the pool must be pre-booked. There are no walk-in sessions. You cannot queue up to get access like you used to.”
Prof. Sikora told the Telegraph: “Those responsible for the imposition of restrictions must now remove the last vestige three years on.”
He added: “Exercise is important for health – we need to return to the pre-Covid situation as soon as possible.
“But the minor bureaucrats that enforced the rules so quickly just don’t want to give up control.”
The number of people who swim twice a month dropped during Covid and only recovered to pre-pandemic levels in November 2023, according to data from Swim England. …
Prof. Sikora warned that without changing the systems used by pools these figures would be stagnant as new swimmers are discouraged from partaking in the activity.
Worth reading in full.
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Coivd handed enormous power to bureaucrats who are mostly socialists by nature.
In a socialist, interventionist society the producer is supreme and the consumer public is subordinate as opposed to a free market system where producers are led and directed by the consumer public and so subordinate to them if they want to prosper and survive.
Nobody gives up power willingly and without a fight.
Covid was really the wet dream come true of all those of a collectivist, socialist disposition.
I wouldn’t consider there are many actual useful producers in a socialist society. In addition there are also actual producers that are not driven by the market because they invent something that did not exist, so they have created a new market. This is Buckminster Fuller’s perspective from the 1960s. “Take away the energy-distributing networks and the industrial machinery from America, Russia, and all the world’s industrialized countries, and within six months more than two billion swiftly and painfully deteriorating people will starve to death. Take away all the world’s politicians, all the ideologies and their professional protagonists from those same countries, and send them off on a rocket trip around the sun and leave all the countries their present energy networks, industrial machinery, routine production and distribution personnel, and no more humans will starve nor be afflicted in health than at present. Fortunately, the do-more-with-less invention initiative does not derive from political debate, bureaucratic licensing, or private economic patronage. The license comes only from the blue sky of the inventor’s intellect. No one licensed the inventors of the airplane, telephone, electric light, and radio to go to work. It took only the personally dedicated initiative of five men to… Read more »
Wonderful quote.
I would of course say that inventors on the whole are driven by the free market. Edison, to take one of the examples in the quote, was as much an entrepreneur as he was an inventor. In any case, for me the free market is shorthand for a system of private property and free exchange. What was once known as classical liberalism.
Indeed. Once the required legal framework is in place, and perhaps some light regulation, all you really need government to do is run anything that is best suited to being a state monopoly, deal with external threats to national security, keep the peace, and deal with new situations that require new laws. But the endless tinkering is damaging – but it’s what people expect!
Thanks for posting. Mr Fuller was spot on.
We just went to the river. Free. Much nicer. Outside. And no stupid “lifeguards” who wouldn’t know risk if it smacked em in the face.
I hope you filled in your risk assessment sheet first.
This includes removing restrictions to other facilities such as the recycling centres in Hampshire. You can only book one time slot a week and have to go through multiple steps on a website where you must also state whether you are driving a vehicle or even walking. You cannot even walk in without booking. And contravening the rules will mean being banned. It’s a refuse collection centre for crying out loud! There are greater restrictions here than there are at border control in Dover. Actually no, you can just walk in at Dover.
And they wonder why fly tipping is on the rise.
Christ on a stick, how retarded! Speaking of which, I don’t know what this person’s sex is but they seemingly identify as a cabbage patch kid;
https://x.com/JebraFaushay/status/1809685081188975022
Yes the perpetual retardation of the Covidiot cultists. For some the PsyOp was insanely effective. They now suffer from the permanent affliction of ‘Long Vaxtarditis’, but their collective delusion will never allow them to admit it;
”She believes she ‘caught’ it on a plane. Maybe she got it from a vial and had it jabbed into her arm…”
https://x.com/OVG369/status/1808885994210427171
‘Long Vaxtarditis’
good one. Had to listen to some idiot moan about long Rona. So I interrupted him and said he had long poison and longer stupid.
😀 😀 😀
Well that didn’t take long….Tony Blair has been pushing the ID cards again. Because of illegal immigration, yeah sure!
Whereas the idea of ID2020 was to give everyone in the world – including illegal immigrants – the “human right” of a digital identity. That way we know people are illegals when they arrive in small dinghies via a lifeboat, and we can… issue them with NI numbers, accommodation and social security. A great step forward.
It wont have occurred to any of TPTB that ID cards can be forged just like passports and bank cards.The idealistic naivety is what gets me most about the left.
Indeed. This is why they always fail after the sheep get bored and wander off.
“idealistic naivety”
There is definitely no “idealistic naivety” this is all about control. Bliar is wetting himself at the thought of having the planet tagged and chipped. He is the worst sort of evil on this earth.
The solution to illegal immigration is simple if government took its responsibilities seriously…
Shut the feckin borders.
A load of silly rules that at best did nothing, and at worst were detrimental, but people followed them as they follow authority ( see Stanley Milgram). Also people tend to listen to the loudest and angriest faces.
Councils will be hoping that they lose money so they can shut them down and sell them to developers.
Councils hate customers. Especially ones that pay council tax. Councils are populated by left wing types for whom the idea of service in return for private wealth is anathema.
“Better” (not-for-profit leisure outsource provider) do this for all their activities, including ice skating. Sessions are between 1.5 and 3 hours but you can only book a one hour slot, so if you want to skate the whole session you need to book multiple slots. I think it’s pre-book only, too. Other leisure facilities I use you can pay at the till (card only) but you need a membership card to do so, meaning they can track everyone using their facilities.
Living a good cycle ride from Bournemouth beach might get me swimming even in a lock down. Presently I book in a try to swim 10k a week. I keep fit at age 70 but, I’m not hopeful for my future. Lock down is on the cards and all the wrong ones in place to make life a living hell.
It would be good to make a list of nonsense rules and behaviours still in place after Covid.
Wimbledon’s interviews still conducted miles apart…
My personal experience: I swam every morning for an hour at a health club pre-pandemic. I absolutely hated the Stasi-like regime that was imposed during the pandemic and chose to walk instead. The restrictions continued and I have never returned. I love swimming. It’s just one of the very many sad consequences of the pandemic mismanagement.