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THOUSANDS MORE LORRIES have been allowed to cross the English Channel after being held at the border on Christmas Day, but hauliers have warned “it’s not over yet”.
Congestion continues to ease at the Port of Dover and Eurotunnel today after thousands of drivers spent days in queues, but more who held off leaving for the border over the festive period are expected to join the queue soon.
France closed its border last Sunday following the discovery of a fast-spreading mutant Covid-19 strain in the UK, and drivers wishing to enter the country from Britain must now show proof of a negative Covid-19 test taken in the previous 72 hours.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said 15,000 lorry drivers had been tested for coronavirus by midday today and the backlog at the testing site at Manston Airport had cleared.
He said on Twitter: “Update on Kent lorry situation: 15,526 #Coronavirus tests now carried out. Just 36 positive results, which are being verified (0.23%). Manston now empty and lorries should no longer head there please.”
Traffic began moving smoothly through Dover on Friday, with French firefighters and the Polish military’s Territorial Defence Force drafted in to help some 1,100 British military personnel with testing at Manston Airport and two mobile sites.
Around 3,000 hauliers were still waiting to cross into France from Kent yesterday evening, and around half of these had been cleared by 10.30am today, according to the UK Department for Transport.
More than 8,000 HGVs have passed over the border via the port or through Eurotunnel since Wednesday when the border reopened, the department said.
Duncan Buchanan, policy director at the Road Haulage Association (RHA), said “traffic is flowing” at the Port of Dover on Boxing Day, but he added “it’s not over yet” because more drivers who held off leaving over Christmas would be joining the queue in the coming days.
Buchanan said: “At the moment, it’s just a case of keep going because we need to make sure we can get as many people out as possible.
“We still have all the people who delayed travelling, who will start to want to get through. Some people will have parked up in Essex and will be looking at moving again.
“Next week is a normal working week so I would expect the vehicles to increase then too. It’s not over yet and we will see what happens next.
“I want to pass on a thank-you to everyone who has helped look after the drivers by giving them food – a lot of people have done a lot of hard work, and it’s really good to see so many people helping.”
Volunteers – including individuals from nearby communities, the Salvation Army, Muslim group Al-Khair Foundation, HM Coastguard and Kent County Council – have been delivering thousands of warm meals and water to the drivers.
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I never did invest in a blackberry. I never had that 5 minutes to spare to send a text, or the navigational skills requires to change a setting. Totally unnatural computing…
Bye bye Blackberry!!
Oh how the mighty have fallen. First Nokia and now BBY, the two biggest companies at a time….
See what happens if you keep dishing out the same products year after year..
Eh… Apple same shit different advert and same idiots buying it up
That’s lego fu@#ed so
Same what???
Amazing the morons who are obsessed with Apple buyers.
Putting it away with my Betamax Video recorder.
I imagined Microsoft were eyeing them up. Combine them with Nokia, and you have a great army of hardware engineers …. Combine that with the software expertise and they can bring out a true end to end experience that could compete with apple and the Samsung/android devices.
Two bits of poo does not maketh a cutting edge byte
Earth calling Michael
Just to be clear, I hate blackberry products, and similarly dislike the Nokia ones- but they have some good hardware features (and engineers) as do Nokia. Windows are clawing desperately to find a decent hardware software offering. Seems like a triple win for the right price.
It’s no use, he’s on his BlackBerry.
Hahaha nope- I’m an apple freak. Closer to queuing up for the iPhone like the lads in the other article, than ever using anything else!
I have an iPhone. I use a blackberry in work. The BB is a solid device but it will never compete with real smartphones.
Playbook tablet is top quality however they abandoned it recently, let them rot
Ah, just sell it to the Chinese and let them strip the company appart and transfer all the knowledge and jobs to China…
Theres no beating the samsungs.
BlackBerry is fooked, so someone pays $4.7B for it. In a couple of years they’ll sell it to someone else for another few billion. The bankers get to keep the coins which stick to the shovel, probably about 100M. Wall Street, man.
struggling blackberry sold for $4.3billion! I have one and was going to let it go for a tenner ! Will have to change my done deal add!
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