Travel: Britain is open for business

Britain is open for business

Foot-and-mouth disease and a number of other problems have tourists unnecessarily avoiding one of the finest destinations in the world.

By ROBERT N. JENKINS

I have visited London several times but never for a full week, as I did earlier this month when my wife and I went there to celebrate her birthday. It was an actual vacation -- the first out-of-country trip I can remember in my 14 years as Travel editor in which I did not take a laptop computer.

The other big difference was that I have never seen London wound so tightly.

Britons have been consumed for more than two months by the issue of foot-and-mouth disease, with no sign of the controversy abating.

In mid-April, racism became a hot topic in debates preceding June's parliamentary elections.

A strike by doctors is rumored; a strike by workers on London's famed Underground is set for May.

The city is tensing as it anticipates widespread disruptions May 1 by a loose coalition of people, variously termed "anarchists" and "rioters," protesting globalization.

While many travelers happily avoid news of local events while away from home, journalists seldom do. So I read two London newspapers daily and watched the BBC and other channels when I wasn't out savoring one of the great cities of the world. Too bad the Brits seem to be too preoccupied by the events noted above to fully enjoy their nation.

Regularly referred to as a crisis, the livestock disease has several facets, all contributing to making both a newsworthy and an emotional issue:

The Labor Party government did not merely stub its toe in handling the outbreak but repeatedly ran over itself. Various levels of administrators would pronounce the disease under control, only to have to admit that was not close to being true.

More than 1,460 cases have been confirmed, although the number of new cases reported per day has dropped from about 40 at the beginning of this month to about 10.

Clouding the discussion, different government branches cannot agree on how many animals not yet infected but scheduled for slaughter -- as prevention against spread of the disease -- still await the soldiers' rifles.

As a further example of the aggravations, according to Prime Minister Tony Blair's office April 19, the number of carcasses of animals slain but not yet burned stood at 175,000; that same day the Agriculture Ministry put the number at 427,000. Asked to reconcile the figures, the prime minister's spokesman said the Agriculture figures were a week to 10 days old.

Things are so bad that officials last week set rules on how far the pyres should be -- depending on the number of carcasses to be burned -- from communities, lest airborne particulates irritate those with respiratory problems or perhaps even spread the virus.

How to control the spread of the disease, which causes no harm to humans not involved in slaughter and disposal of the infected animals, is at the center of the latest furor.

If the government decrees a farmer's cattle or sheep must be killed, the farmer receives compensation. But more and more scientists are advocating vaccination against the disease -- a policy previously approved by the European Union.

Vaccination would save the animals now, but they could not be slaughtered for their meat for one year afterward, and there would be no government compensation. The National Farmers Union strongly opposes vaccination because it means farmers would have the cost of maintaining their herds but could not count on any income for 12 months.

Meanwhile, Parliament was told last Wednesday that the epidemic could last until at least mid-July.

Inflaming the matter are the perhaps inevitable slaughtering mistakes, as well as the heart-rending reports from families who have raised livestock for several generations.

One woman wrote a letter to the editor this month about her farming neighbors; she used the phrase "silence of the lambs" because pregnant ewes and newborns were being slaughtered. One of those neighbors, who had reportedly given names to most of her sheep, held each one before it was killed.

Another family had its herd wiped out after government workers misread a positioning-satellite report on an infected flock -- and went 100 miles out of the way to kill unendangered animals.

While the numbers of slain or sentenced animals is staggering, they are actually a small fraction of the United Kingdom's farm animals. The harm, however, goes beyond the current situation:

The British fear that other nations will not allow import of U.K. meat and dairy products. This comes soon after relaxation of concern over the spread of another British phenomenon, mad cow disease -- which can be fatal to humans.

Continually scraping at the British economy are the televised and printed scenes of livestock pyres. The result: Tourists by the thousands are canceling their plans to vacation in the U.K.

The government-financed British Tourist Authority reported this month that "Before the outbreak of (foot-and-mouth disease) in Britain, spending by overseas visitors was expected to rise in 2001 by around 2 percent," but that the agency now "estimates that inbound tourism will be between 10-20 percent short of that." That could mean a loss of between $2.16-billion and $2.7-billion.

Likewise, the London Tourist Board said in midmonth that a survey of members showed "a marked softening" in bookings for hotels and attractions.

Those surveys have government officials racing about. The newest catch phrase, uttered even by Blair, is "Britain is open for business."

Indeed, it is -- and not just fabled London. One estimate by the British Tourist Authority is that more than 80 percent of the standard tourist attractions in the United Kingdom are operating normally.

The agency created a special Web site, http://www.open.visitbritain.com/, so that potential tourists can check specific destinations, attractions and events.

The site notes: "Visits to the countryside are not banned. You can freely drive along (paved) roads and visit country towns, villages, stately homes, hotels, pubs and museums."

About all you cannot do is walk the fields and farmlands of the sceptered isle.

Two weeks ago the tourist authority brought in about 40 travel-industry leaders from the nations that are major suppliers of tourists to the U.K. By limo and helicopter they toured unrestricted areas. The executives finished with a half-hour photo op with Prince Phillip at Windsor Castle and then a tour of the prime minister's residence, No. 10 Downing St., where they were welcomed by Blair's wife, Cherie.

How desperate are British officials to get out the word? They even asked me if I would be interviewed by a London newspaper reporter; I agreed and was portrayed later in the week as at least one American brave enough to come to England despite the livestock-pyre/foot-and-mouth/mad-cow fears.

And then there was the race card.

Conservative Party officials and Conservative members of Parliament engaged with their Labor opponents this month in a lusty debate about signing a pledge to not invoke racist themes in the upcoming national elections.

At one point the rhetoric devolved into whether a non-authentic Indian dish, chicken tikka masala, had indeed become England's national dish -- thus showing how multicultural that society has become.

If it was not for some of the ugliness hiding just behind the politicians' pronouncements, that element would have become laughable. Not so a newspaper's report that at least one London neighborhood, an enclave of Pakistani and Bangladeshi emigrants, was unsafe for whites.

Meanwhile, balancing all of this news coverage were gleeful reports on how well Britain's Anne Robinson had done as snide hostess of the latest TV phenomenon, The Weakest Link.

Maybe Anglophobes could seize on her high-paid nastiness as "another" reason not to vacation in the United Kingdom this year. But for the rest of you who had made plans to visit the favorite European destination of American tourists, proceed with them:

You can still wonder at the fabulous history scattered about Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland. You can still enjoy marvelous theater, sample great beer, use London's quirky Underground system and cruise on the Thames River.

Besides, our strongest ally needs the business.