Around 19 million people from around the world visited Singapore last year, but one year on, the situation is very different.
Tourists are banned from entering the city-state and it is not clear when borders will reopen to the tourism industry. Staff in Singapore’s hotels are preparing for a very different kind of summer season.
Video by Fahmi Jamal and Suranjana Tewari
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Martin Whelan
Back in normal times, on match days, the pavement outside the Tollington Arms would be as crowded as a Tube station. The pub is right next to the Emirates stadium, Arsenal’s home ground, and is a popular sports pub.
But although the Gunners are on the pitch this Saturday, the doors will remain firmly shut.
The government has given pubs in England the go ahead to reopen from 4 July if they follow a strict set of social distancing rules, but last week the Tollington’s manager, Martin Whelan, posted a message on social media announcing it would stay closed.
“We cannot in good conscience open the pub when contracting a deadly virus is still possible under these guidelines,” he tweeted.
The decision was met with a flood of support on Twitter with customers praising it as a “wise” and “courageous” decision. Only a handful were scornful, urging them to be less cautious and open up.
None of the other eight bars Mr Whelan runs around London will be opening either.
“Some of my staff have had this virus and when you’ve seen them at death’s door you take a different point of view,” Mr Whelan says. “It’s a very sobering position to be in.”
Once the virus is circulating at lower levels in the population and there’s a “proper track and trace scheme” up and running then he would consider reopening, he says. In the meantime he couldn’t look his staff in the eye and ask them to come back with confidence.
“Nobody likes losing money but you have to have a conscience too.”
Britain’s pubs were among the hardest hit businesses when lockdown came. Many had to pour away beer that grew stale, throw away food that couldn’t be served, board up premises and furlough staff.
Now social distancing rules have been reduced from two metres to “one plus” and the government has set out conditions, including taking the names and contact details of customers, to mitigate some of the risks.
The big pub chains including JD Wetherspoon and Stonegate Ei are opening almost all of their sites with modifications including plastic screens, one way systems, reduced seating, and apps for ordering food and drink.
Nevertheless only around half of the UK’s pubs will be open this weekend, according to a survey by the industry body UK Hospitality.
Pubs in Scotland and Wales haven’t yet been allowed to reopen, accounting for a lot of those remaining shut, but still a large number of pubs in England won’t be welcoming back customers either.
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The Tollington
For some it simply isn’t economically viable to do so. Chris and Liz Smith run The Chambers which used to host live music and serve food in a packed basement in Folkestone.
“We’re quite a unique venue. We offer a bit of everything, but music is the key for us functioning,” says Ms Smith.
Without music they don’t think the atmosphere would work, but there are also the insurmountable problems of a single narrow staircase down to the basement and a narrow corridor to the toilet.
“We don’t want to open if we can’t do it properly,” says Mr Smith, but he recognises there is a possibility they may never be able to reopen at all.
Other pubs can accommodate guests more easily, like the Prospect in Exeter, which, even with reduced seating can manage space for 78 outdoors in the fresh air.
But landlord Suzanne Abrey-Cameron is apprehensive about what the prime minister has dubbed “Super Saturday” after all these weeks of people being cooped up indoors.
“There’s a lot of expectation,” she says. “It’ll be worse than Black Friday.”
So the Prospect won’t open until 9 July when she hopes things will have calmed down.
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The Prospect
“We’ve missed out on four months, one weekend is not going to make a difference.”
Moreover, the opening hours will be “weather permitting” since they are only serving customers al fresco.
One of the large chains, Greene King, is also only opening its pubs after the weekend, not because of concerns over unruly behaviour, but to ensure staff and facilities are ready.
“It wasn’t a case of avoiding the hysteria, more making sure the teams were ready,” says Karl Gibson, who manages Greene King’s Trip to Jerusalem pub in Nottingham.
He’s taken down the boards protecting the pub during lockdown, which they’d decorated with messages of support for the NHS, and is preparing for a gradual return, spread out over ten days from Monday.
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Trip to Jerusalem
But for some city centre pubs, especially in Nottingham, which is in striking distance of Leicester where pubs remain closed due to the local lockdown, there is a shadow of concern over this weekend’s openings. The police have warned that pub-goers shouldn’t treat it as an excuse for excess.
Tony Cockcroft of the British Security Industry Association says security firms have seen a wave of enquiries ahead of the weekend. “We’re looking at levels akin to a bank holiday weekend,” he says.
Extra security staff are likely to be needed if queues form outside pubs and possibly to administer and explain the new regulations to customers as they enter.
But Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UK Hospitality, points out that this is all very familiar territory for a lot of city centre landlords, accustomed to managing anti-social behaviour at busy weekends. Moreover for the time being volumes are likely to remain much lower than usual.
“In recent weeks we’ve seen what happens when you don’t have facilities open, there is that pent-up demand,” she says. “You have illegal raves in Manchester, you have crowding at beauty hotspots.
“Reopening the pubs, bars and restaurants could be part of the solution not part of the problem. We can provide for people who want to get out of the house and make sure there’s social distancing policed on premises.”
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Steve Cumming
A father who initially paid £4.99 for his 11-year-old daughter to use a smartphone app was shocked to discover a bill for thousands of pounds a month later.
Steve Cumming, 72, said he let her make what he thought was a one-off payment on his debit card to a firm called Roblox.
After looking at his balance a month later, he saw thousands had been charged.
Roblox says it will refund him.
Roblox is an online multiplayer game with about 100 million users worldwide.
It is especially popular with children. Its business model relies on in-app purchases. Roblox is free to download, but users can then spend money during play.
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Roblox
Mr Cumming wrote to BBC Radio 2’s The Jeremy Vine Show to explain that his 11-year-old daughter had unwittingly run up the enormous bill while playing the game during lockdown.
“My daughter told me all her friends were playing this game and she wanted to spend £4.99,” he said. “She made that purchase using my debit card on 16 April and I thought nothing more of it.”
During the pandemic lockdown he decided to sign up to online banking.
“I’m not very tech-savvy. Due to coronavirus I couldn’t visit the bank and I didn’t want to use cash machines, so I decided to sign up to online banking,” he said.
When he first logged in, almost a month after that initial payment to Roblox, he was shocked to discover that £4,642 had gone and he was in his overdraft.
“When I first logged in nearly a month later I was astonished to see hundreds and hundreds of separate transactions, all between £0.99 and £9.99. I couldn’t understand it. I thought I’d been scammed.”
He realised he had lost about £3,500 so he phoned his bank, HSBC, to cancel his card. Despite doing that a further £1,000 or so left his account and was paid to Roblox via Google Play, he says.
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Steve Cumming
“My daughter was really upset when we told her about the financial consequences. She thought she was playing with monopoly money – it didn’t seem real to her. How can these companies be allowed to trap minors in these games? To trap people who are vulnerable?” he said.
He said he also thinks the government should step in and change the law.
“I get by on my pension. But this is a lot of money to me. I had earmarked it for a holiday when this pandemic is all over. I wanted to pay for my daughter to have a break. We can’t now and I’m in my overdraft.
Steve admits that he didn’t read the terms and conditions of the sale when he allowed his daughter to initially spend £4.99 on his debit card.
But he says he’s amazed that in a game designed to be played by children it would even be possible to spend thousands of pounds across a thousand transactions over the course of just a few weeks.
After being approached for comment by the BBC, the company said it would issue a refund.
“We strive to prevent unauthorized purchases, by taking measures such as not storing billing information, and work directly with parents to provide appropriate refunds whenever possible, which is the case in this instance,” Roblox told the BBC.
“We encourage parents to review their payment settings on third-party services, such as Google Play, as they typically have an option to require a password for each purchase made and/or to prevent any information from being saved in browser settings that could allow them to be reused.”
His bank HSBC said: “We sympathise with Mr Cumming and appreciate these payments have come as a surprise to him. We have received a claim for a dispute for these payments and we will be taking a closer look at the circumstances surrounding this matter in accordance with Visa dispute regulations.”
You can hear an interview with Mr Cumming on Friday’s Jeremy Vine Show.
As Yo! Sushi prepares to reopen some restaurants in England, it has had to adapt its conveyor belt system.
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Pubs, restaurants, hairdressers and cinemas in England are opening their doors for the first time in three months after a major relaxation of coronavirus lockdown restrictions.
Businesses reopening on Saturday must observe strict social distancing rules.
As measures eased, Boris Johnson urged people to act responsibly, while the government’s scientific advisers said the latest step was not “risk-free”.
The health secretary has warned those who get carried away could be jailed.
Matt Hancock told the Daily Mail people were entitled to enjoy themselves at pubs, but added: “You could end up behind bars if you break the law.”
Restaurants, hairdressers and cinemas were allowed to reopen just after midnight, with some hair salons welcoming clients in the early hours, but pubs had to wait until 06:00 BST after Downing Street expressed fears of early morning partying.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak said people should make the most of the easing to boost the economy, telling the Times: “We need to relearn what it’s like to go out again.”
Mr Sunak said while people should act responsibly, eating out will help protect jobs in the struggling hospitality sector.
Social distancing rules in England have also changed from 2m to “one metre plus” – meaning people should stay more than 1m apart and take additional precautions when they are less than 2m from someone else.
Other places now allowed to reopen in England include:
Mr Johnson said a timetable for reopening other businesses including gyms, nail salons and night clubs would be set out next week.
This is a big moment. Hospitality chiefs have described it as an important development for the national psyche.
But it’s also a moment when health and economic concerns collide.
Trade body Hospitality UK estimates that 53% of pubs and bars and 47% of restaurants will reopen this weekend generating a total – they hope – of nine million visits.
But while a sector that employs three million people is keen to reopen, many are anxious. Will too many customers return to manage venues safely or too few to make it economically worthwhile?
Social distancing measures will both reduce capacity and increase front-line costs.
Three-quarters of businesses expect to run their businesses at a loss this year and the industry estimates that even if this weekend goes well, the sector could lose 320,000 jobs.
It is a high-stakes gamble and the government will be watching nervously to see how the public responds and behaves.
That will ultimately determine whether we are getting a sufficient economic bang for the health risk buck that medical experts say we are inevitably spending this weekend.
Sandra Jacobs was one of the first people through the door at her local hairdressers in Camden, north London, on Friday night, describing it as “such a relief” to be back in the salon chair.
She said her haircut made her feel “normal again”.
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Her hairdresser, Carole Rickaby, said it was great to pick up the scissors again. “We’re being very cautious with aprons and facemasks, but it can be a bit of a problem,” she said. “I wear glasses, so wearing a mask as well made my glasses steam up whenever I tried to talk.
“I ended up just telling Sandra she can talk to me and I’ll just listen.”
Meanwhile, Prince William visited a village pub in Norfolk which had been closed since March.
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On Friday evening, England’s chief medical officer Prof Chris Whitty said people must take a “really disciplined approach” to social distancing as he warned of the risk of coronavirus spreading in pubs.
He said there was a “real possibility” of a second wave of the virus – which “goes up sharply” if people do not take social distancing measures seriously.
Speaking at a Downing Street coronavirus briefing, he said the country would see both health and economic problems as a result of the pandemic, with the government trying to walk a “narrow path”.
Ministers hope to rely on effective testing, tracing and targeted local lockdowns to contain the virus in future.
Each UK nation’s lockdown measures differ, including varying rules on the reopening of food and drink outlets.
In Northern Ireland, pubs and restaurants could reopen on Friday.
In Scotland, beer gardens and outdoor restaurants will be allowed to reopen from 6 July, and indoor areas can be used from 15 July.
The Welsh government has promised talks with the hospitality sector about a “potential phased” reopening, but no dates have yet been given.
Latest figures show a further 137 people have died after testing positive for coronavirus in the UK, bringing the total number of deaths to 44,131.
In other developments:
How are you planning to deal with lockdown easing? Are you going to meet loved ones for the first time since it began? Are you working? Are you happy or concerned about lifted restrictions? Please email .
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Portugal’s foreign affairs minister has said his country’s exclusion from a list of countries for which quarantine will not apply for people returning to England is “absurd”.
Augusto Santos Silva told the BBC not including Portugal was “senseless and unfair”.
The list of countries exempt from quarantine was published on Friday.
Boris Johnson said 14-day quarantines would remain for countries where the virus was not under control.
Other countries excluded from the list, which comes into effect on 10 July, include the US, China, the Maldives and Sweden.
Mr Santos Silva told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme: “We are very disappointed with the decision of the British authorities. We think it is senseless and unfair.
“It is quite absurd the UK has seven times more cases of Covid-19 than Portugal so we think this is not the way in which allies and friends are treated.”
The Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, tweeted comparing the UK’s number of coronavirus cases with that of the Algarve, saying: “You are welcome to spend a safe holiday in the Algarve.”
Labour shadow transport minister Jim McMahon said people up and down the country were keen for the quarantine measures to be lessened but said “this is a mess”.
“First we had the quarantine that they were slow to implement, then they said they’d do air bridges,” he said.
“Now we see a plan to let residents of 60 or more countries into England without any reciprocal arrangements.”
Scotland and Wales are yet to decide whether to ease travel restrictions and described the changes as “shambolic”.
The quarantine rules will also remain in place in Northern Ireland for visitors arriving from outside of the UK and Republic of Ireland.
Some of those on the list include popular short-haul destinations such as Turkey and Cyprus, as well as long-haul locations including Australia, Barbados, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand and Vietnam.
However, some countries will require visitors to isolate on arrival or will bar them from entering at all.
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A list of countries which will be exempt from the Foreign Office’s advice against “all but essential travel” from Saturday has also been published.
The Foreign Office is expected to update its travel guidance on Saturday, including naming which countries will have a reciprocal arrangement with the UK and not require British visitors to quarantine on arrival.
The introduction of the quarantine on 8 June was met with criticism from the travel, tourism and hospitality industries and the easing of restrictions on arrivals from some countries has been welcomed.
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Tesco has reportedly asked suppliers to agree price cuts as it steps up its battle with budget supermarkets.
The move is part of its shift to an “everyday low pricing strategy”, which will see it use fewer promotions.
A Tesco spokesperson said: “We are committed to open, fair and transparent partnerships with all of our suppliers.”
Tesco has given suppliers a deadline of 10 July to agree, according to the Grocer.
Several suppliers told the trade publication that they faced pressure from the supermarket to lower their prices.
Some raised concerns over the timescale of the demands, as well as a lack of clarity over how the change in promotions would work in practice.
Tesco launched its “Aldi price match” promise in March, where products including fresh and freezer food are matched against those offered at the budget supermarket.
The supermarket announced in June that it has extended the scheme to nearly 500 Tesco and branded products in response to increasing competition.
“We have also reduced the number of short-term promotions, as we focus our investment on everyday low prices instead,” it said.
A Tesco spokesperson told BBC News: “We have been speaking to suppliers about how we can work together to continue giving our customers great value.
“We don’t believe that our customers should pay more for a brand in Tesco than anywhere else.”
They added: “We are committed to open, fair and transparent partnerships with all of our suppliers, and that collaborative approach will continue as we look for new and innovative ways to bring our customers great value.”
Tesco reported strong first quarter sales last week. The supermarket said that while the number of trips made by shoppers fell by nearly a third in the 13 weeks to 30 May, the amount being bought rose 64%.
In a trading update, Tesco said group sales had risen 8% to £13.4bn in the period, but warned that coronavirus-related costs were set to hit £840m this year.
Neil Shah, director of research at Edison Group, said that investors “should keep a close eye on the company, since the group operates in a crowded market with retailers Aldi and Lidl continuing to gain market share and current results might not be replicated when the UK is lifted from lockdown.”
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Air France-KLM plans to cut more than 7,500 jobs at its French arm as the airline industry reels from the coronavirus crisis.
Europe’s second-biggest airline will cut 6,560 staff at Air France, with its regional French carrier Hop! losing 1,020 jobs, the company said on Friday.
In a statement, the firm said: “Recovery looks set to be very slow” due to uncertainties around Covid-19.
The cuts will take place over the next three years.
The group also cited the lifting of travel restrictions and changing customer demand as potential cause for concern in the future.
At the height of the pandemic, revenues fell by 95% and the Air France airline was losing €15m (£13.5m) per day.
Air France does not expect that activity will return to its pre-pandemic level before 2024.
The group’s flagship airline expects to have cut more than 6,000 jobs by the end of 2022, out of a current total of 41,000 staff.
“Natural departures”, such as retirements and employees who leave of their own accord, are expected to make up about half of the reductions at Air France.
Its sister airline Hop! will see 1,020 jobs cut over the next three years. It currently employs more than 2,000 people.
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The company said: “Air France and Hop! are working together with the unions to implement plans that give priority to voluntary departures, early retirement arrangements and professional and geographical mobility.”
Air France also said that a wider “reconstruction plan” would be presented at the end of July, along with one for the wider Air France-KLM group.
Union members and staff staged protests at several sites across France on Friday, including outside the company’s offices near Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport.
The French government has pledged billions of Euros to support Air France-KLM and the wider aviation industry as demand for travel has crashed as a result of coronavirus-related lockdown measures.
Loans to Air France were contingent on the carrier scrapping some domestic flights in a bid to cut its carbon emissions.
Other airlines have also been forced to adopt similar measures in anticipation of a long, slow return to former levels of demand.
EasyJet previously said that it may need to reduce staff numbers by up to a third because of the coronavirus pandemic.
In June, Lufthansa said it planned to cut 22,000 jobs, and British Airways said in April that it could cut up to 12,000 jobs from its 42,000-strong workforce.
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The Washington Redskins American football team will review its name after demands from major sponsors.
Its headline sponsor, Fedex, joined a fresh wave of calls to scrap a team moniker long-criticised as racist.
The Washington DC-based team has faced years of pressure over a name seen as offensive to Native Americans. The latest calls come amid a fresh focus on racism sparked by worldwide protests.
FedEx made the request at the behest of its own investors.
Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins, said: “This process allows the team to take into account not only the proud tradition and history of the franchise but also input from our alumni, the organization, sponsors, the National Football League (NFL) and the local community.”
At the turn of the millennium, FedEx paid $205m (£165m) for the naming rights to the Redskins’ 82,000-seat stadium in Maryland. The deal expires in 2025.
But that is not the delivery giant’s only tie to the team. The boss and founder of FedEx, Frederick Smith also owns a minority stake in the Redskins.
The team has been under pressure to change its name for decades.
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Six years ago, FedEx shareholders voted to allow the Redskins to keep its name after the shipping giant received a complaint from the Wisconsin-based Oneida Indian tribe.
But as firms assess their stance on issues around race, following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, FedEx has now called for the team to rebrand.
Last week, 87 investment firms and shareholders wrote to FedEx, along with fellow Redskins’ sponsors Nike and PepsiCo, calling on the firms to sever ties with the Redskins, according to trade publication AdWeek.
“‘Redskins’ remains a dehumanising word, characterizing people by skin colour and a racial slur with hateful connotations,” the letter written to PepsiCo said.
“We have been in conversations with the NFL and Washington management for a few weeks about this issue,” a PepsiCo spokesperson said.
“We believe it is time for a change. We are pleased to see the steps the team announced today, and we look forward to continued partnership.”
As of Thursday, Nike’s website did not display any Redskins merchandise. The Washington-based team was the only one of the 32 NFL teams no longer listed in the site’s index.
Nike did not immediately respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
In the past, the team’s owner Mr Snyder has remained steadfast on keeping the name, calling it a “badge of honour”.
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Reuters
A full list of countries for which quarantine will not apply to people arriving back in England has been published.
Countries including Greece, Spain, France and Belgium are on the list, which comes into effect from 10 July.
But countries such as China, US, Sweden and Portugal are not, meaning arrivals from those have to isolate for 14 days.
Scotland and Wales are yet to decide whether to ease travel restrictions and described the changes as “shambolic”.
The rule will also remain in place in Northern Ireland for visitors arriving from outside of the UK and Republic of Ireland.
The restrictions came into place in early June in a bid to stop coronavirus entering the country as the number of cases was falling.
People travelling from the 59 countries and 14 British overseas territories on the list will not have to quarantine on arrival in England unless they have travelled through a place which is not exempt.
Passengers will still be required to provide contact information on arrival in England.
Some of those on the list include popular short-haul destinations such as Turkey and Cyprus, as well as long-haul locations including Australia, Barbados, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand and Vietnam.
However, some countries, such as New Zealand, will require visitors to isolate on arrival.
A list of countries which will be exempt from the Foreign Office’s advice against “all but essential travel” from Saturday has also been published.
The advice has been lifted for Portugal but only for the Azores and Madeira.
The government said information for travel into Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will be published in due course by the devolved administrations.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said finalising the list of countries had been delayed – after scrapping the quarantine was announced last week – in the hope that the four UK nations could reach a joint decision.
He said there was “still an opportunity” for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to co-ordinate and therefore make the changes more simple.
But the first ministers of both Scotland and Wales have criticised the government, with Nicola Sturgeon saying Scotland could not be dragged along by the UK government’s “shambolic decision making”.
Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford said the approach had been “utterly shambolic”.
The introduction of the quarantine on 8 June was met with criticism from the travel, tourism and hospitality industries.
The publishing of the lists has been welcomed by the airline industry with Tim Alderslade, chief executive of industry body Airline UK, saying it gave “a clear path to opening further predominantly long-haul destinations in the weeks ahead”.
A High Court challenge by British Airways, easyJet and Ryanair against the government’s 14-day quarantine is set to be withdrawn, their barrister Tom Hickman QC said.