They are rigging the results by not counting the new restrictions on UK citizens entering and operating within 27 EU countries, including the 5 countries they visit most: Spain, France, Italy, Greece, and Portugal.
No honest person would claim that the UK passport is equal to the Danish, Irish, or Dutch passport. Absurd.
I am not aware of even one country, anywhere in the world, that has made entry easier for UK citizens following Brexit. Certainly, nothing has happened over the past year to justify the UK rising in the ranks.
I have a UK passport but, even before Brexit, found it more pragmatic to travel on my Irish passport. British tourists have long had a somewhat tarnished reputation and, in some countries, resentments still linger from Britain's rather brutal past.
Since Brexit, over a million UK citizens have applied for and received Irish passports, giving them back the EU citizenship rights they had before Brexit.
"You can build an account where you mix and match the plan level to each user. For example, you can build a Fastmail Family by adding additional Standard and Basic plans for adults and children."
- https://www.fastmail.com/pricing/
Only one of your accounts needs to be Standard tier ($50/y) to allow up to 100 custom domains. The other 5 accounts can be Basic tier ($30/y) and still use as many custom domains as you give them access to. Total undiscounted cost for your family would be $200/y.
Use the 25% 1Password discount to reduce your total to $150/y. You have the option to extend that 25% discount up to 3yrs and receive an additional discount for paying in advance. Your total for your first 3 years would be $420, then $560 for each 3 years thereafter.
Alternatively, you could consider allowing all your family members use the same Standard account ($105 for the first 3yrs) but with multiple email addresses. Use labels to surface each address for the relevant family member.
In my case, I created a family@surname address for any family business, and a name@surname address for each family member. Each family member has set their Fastmail app to focus on their own address. Yes, technically, they can see each other's email, but it hasn't been a problem. I presume they use throwaway gmail accounts for stuff they want to keep totally private.
We share a specific custom domain for our masked emails and love that feature, especially the 1Password integration although that has some rough edges.
I'm surprised there aren't more comments about this. It is a brilliantly positioned service that takes some features that were previously only available at the paid levels ($20 and up) and bundles them into a $5 add-on for free users.
I have been working with WordPress-to-static on Cloudflare Workers for a while and am very curious to see how this solution performs.
After 3 years, I heartily recommend the Advantage2. Using it is simply more fun. I use mine with a trackpad sitting in the space between the two wells.
Creating those wells is, apparently, a tough engineering challenge, which is why so few commercially available keyboards have them, but they are what makes it so comfortable and effective. I consider the flat split keyboards to be pointless.
Standout feature for me is the claimed OTG via USB-C.
The videos show a guy using it with their own Bluetooth keyboard, but if this can be used with a good mechanical keyboard, such as the Kinesis Advantage2, connected via USB, that might make the Lumi ideal for distraction-free writing.
The Lumi uses Android 10. I presume there is some Android equivalent to the iOS writing apps Scrivener and Ulysses. Such an app, along with the far larger screen and an ergonomic mechanical keyboard, would make this a bulkier but far better writing experience than the $599 Freewriter device with it’s 6” e-ink screen and limited software.
The 15-minute launch video gives some good info about both the Lumi and the smaller Note Air, although the included promo videos for each product are somewhat exasperating.
Well, whatever he thought, Covid-19 has blown everyone's plans wide open.
Erdogan has to somehow keep his deeply indebted country rolling and his population of 82 million employed. It seems foolish to start picking fights with his biggest trading partner but, who knows, perhaps this is the sort of distraction that will keep his population focused on nationalism.
No, it really is not. It is exactly how 167 countries have agreed that maritime territory should be allocated. China's island-making shenanigans in the South China Sea are merely an attempt to hack that agreed standard.
What is problematic is Turkey's unique claim that islands should only be entitled to a 12 nautical mile territory rather than the usual 200 that Turkey and other countries are entitled to. Highly convenient for a country with lots of nearby islands inhabited by other people.
> Cyprus should not have been admitted to EU before accepting the Annan plan
The invasion was illegal by any internationally accepted standard. Therefore, the invaded people were under no obligation to accept any compromise. They democratically rejected it. It would have been against the core principles of the EU to withhold membership until they voted "the right way".
Delaying Turkey membership on the basis of invading other countries, or its human rights record, is different. That is about getting them to align with those principles before joining. Ultimately, the government of Turkey decided that their own principles were better aligned to the fast-growing nations of the Middle-East.
Neither aunty_helen nor anyone else is suggesting an invasion of Turkey. They don't need to. Turkey's move towards isolationism is going to do more damage than any invasion could.
It does not matter if some unnamed EU diplomat thinks that letting Cyprus into the EU was a mistake. They have been a full member for 16 years now. That diplomat works for them. They are a participant in the world's biggest economy and federation of nations.
Turkey, meanwhile, under Erdogan, has been rapidly burning bridges and has become a real embarrassment to NATO. Everyone, on both sides, knows they are only kept in because the US needs somewhere to fly its planes into the Middle East.
20 years ago, just a few years before Erdogan became Prime Minister, Turkey was officially recognized as a candidate for full membership of the EU. It would have been the most populous nation in the EU, with its youthful citizens doubtless making a big impact on the evolving face of Europe. The future was bright.
Today, you would struggle to find an EU diplomat who believes that there is now any possibility of Turkey ever being accepted into the EU. Indeed, if Turkey does launch a military attack upon drilling operations within internationally recognized Cypriot waters, the most likely result will be a complete EU boycott on Turkish goods and a travel block. Again, they don't need to invade.
It was not left unoccupied for almost half a century by mistake. There was an actual UN resolution that ruled it could only be resettled by the original inhabitants. Tearing down those homes and building over them will be deeply consequential. It will make Turkey an international pariah and raise questions about other issues, such as their treatment of their Kurd minority.
For your cheap package tourist, money and convenience matter even if ethics do not. The international embargo means no direct flights from anywhere other than Turkey, so, your package tourist would be looking at significant additional travel time and expense.
Then you have infrastructure. The south of the island received significant grants and subsidies from the EU, had plenty of foreign investment, a thriving tourist industry, and a tourist-oriented population that can mostly speak English. The north was isolated, unable to export, and almost entirely dependent on meagre support from Turkey, meaning that the north fell far behind.
So, your package tourist will have fewer comforts, fewer food choices, and would be served by inexperienced staff with little English. The TripAdvisor reviews will be painful.
For the next decade or so, the supply of tourist accommodation all over the world is going to wildly exceed demand. The established destinations, with experienced operators, established reputations, and direct flights are going to utterly dominate a cut-throat market. The main Turkish tourist industry will, of course, survive but this self-inflicted damage to its reputation will make it harder than it could have been.
No, I had not been following it, interesting, thank you for drawing my attention to it.
Based on the relevant Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprus%E2%80%93Turkey_maritime...) and a few other sources I briefly looked over, it appears that the nub of the argument is that, due to a different, earlier dispute with Greece, Turkey was one of only 15 countries (including Venezuela, Eritrea, South Sudan, and Kyrgyzstan) that refused to sign UNCLOS, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Under international law, Cyprus has a right to certain areas of sea around its internationally recognized territory. All 167 countries who signed UNCLOS agree with the principle of territorial waters.
Turkey's invasion and annexation of the north of the island was against international rules at the time and has never been recognized as legal by any other country. Even today, Turkey is the only country which recognizes Northern Cyprus.
Now that gas deposits have been discovered in Cypriot waters, the Turks have threatened military action against any equipment installed to extract that gas. No other country believes that this would be anything other than an illegal interference in another country's territory.
Again, I do not see how this strong man nationalism and isolationism is helping the Turkish people. If Turkey had not invaded Cyprus in 1974 it would probably have become a full member of the EU by the late 1980's, shortly after Greece. That would, I believe, have been of great benefit to the Turkish economy and the Turkish people, including better human rights and better relations with neighboring countries.
Idiotic move, driven by Turkish nationalism, that hands a massive PR win to the Cypriots and is likely to result in a significant backlash against Turkish tourism in general.
Pre-Covid, Turkey's tourist industry had been rapidly expanding. By 2019, Turkey was the world's sixth most popular destination, with over 51 million tourists. That's a lot of jobs, a lot of cash for a developing nation with low levels of education and skills.
The fact that their newly opened Istanbul Airport will, once completed, have an annual capacity of 200 million passengers indicates Turkey's ambition was to keep their tourist industry growing as fast as possible.
The national flag carrier, Turkish Airlines, with 315 scheduled destinations, was the largest mainline carrier in the world by number of passenger destinations. That's a lot of planes that are currently mostly grounded.
Now, just as the entire global tourist industry lies in tatters, the Turks are going to dredge up bad memories and alienate the valuable European market by moving aggressively against Cyprus, an EU member. Are German and Swedish tourists really going to ignore that and book their winter escapes in Turkey?
All that Turkey gains is a good but relatively small site for a tourist city, one that has to be demolished and built again from scratch. That massive investment, made in direct defiance of United Nations rules, could all be lost if they do end up having to hand that disputed territory back to the original occupants.
It is all so needlessly stupid, running directly counter to the long-term interests of Turkey as a whole. This is a good example of why "strong leaders" are not such a hot idea. The generals running Thailand, another country massively dependent upon tourism, are an example of the same thing. Even before Covid-19 came along, they were needlessly whipping up anti-Western sentiment, overcomplicating their visa rules, and pretending that tourism was no longer a significant part of "Thailand 4.0". Now that roughly a quarter of their economy has disappeared, they have to somehow do a 360 without admitting they made a mistake and losing face.
They are rigging the results by not counting the new restrictions on UK citizens entering and operating within 27 EU countries, including the 5 countries they visit most: Spain, France, Italy, Greece, and Portugal.
No honest person would claim that the UK passport is equal to the Danish, Irish, or Dutch passport. Absurd.
I am not aware of even one country, anywhere in the world, that has made entry easier for UK citizens following Brexit. Certainly, nothing has happened over the past year to justify the UK rising in the ranks.
I have a UK passport but, even before Brexit, found it more pragmatic to travel on my Irish passport. British tourists have long had a somewhat tarnished reputation and, in some countries, resentments still linger from Britain's rather brutal past.
Since Brexit, over a million UK citizens have applied for and received Irish passports, giving them back the EU citizenship rights they had before Brexit.