timochka

You sure about that?

Clue: Yankees are FAR from a majority of English speakers.

2nd Clue: India, Pakistan, Nigeria...

Fair point; the only justifiable reason to actually pay for it is if it's a feeder for a long-haul first connection (many airlines don't sell mixed-class bookings easily.)

Indeed. And they're picking on the softest target they know - this thread is ample proof that nobody will step up to defend the British because Brexit was all our own fault, after all - just to pad the numbers out.

Nobody knew what the process was the day the results came in. Most of us found out beginning of 2020, and the Swedish government fucked around for another 9 months and didn't even pass the law until the end of 2020.

Sweden didn't even decide what the correct process was until the end of 2020, months after other EU nations, because their government is incompetent.

And it turns out your advice is completely wrong - as this guy found out, citizenship is discretionary, and not covered by the withdrawal agreement. What he should have done is follow the paperwork for registering as a beneficiary under the WA, his mistake was thinking citizenship was a better idea. (Not that that paperwork is a requirement of the WA either, but who knew that the Swedes of all people would be the ones to break an EU treaty?)

Literally the whole point of the Withdrawal Agreement is that you retain the rights you had as an EU citizen. My ID card essentially has "treat as an EU citizen even though he's British" written on it (it actually says "beneficiary of the withdrawal agreement", but that's the meaning), so why would I need or particularly want to change my citizenship?

The whole "they shouldn't be allowed to live here if they won't apply for citizenship" line is exactly the anti-EU-FoM line that the Brexiteers used to justify Brexit. It's genuinely amazing how every time this comes up all the supposedly anti-Brexit people start parroting UKIP lines like they're gospel, because apparently it's only a problem when it's Poles or Romanians on the receiving end, not Brits.

To be fair, the Swedish government fucked around and didn't work out what the application process would be until months after everyone else in Europe, and finally passed the law in late 2020, when most people had more important things to worry about (i.e. Covid.)

In any event, the Withdrawal Agreement says "anyone who was resident before Brexit automatically retains all^* the rights they had", and in principle if anyone ever questions those rights all you need to do is prove you were resident before the deadline. Many countries just left it at that - no registration process at all - but some countries (including the one I live in, thankfully not Sweden) did introduce registration processes as well because having a piece of paper or card saying "we recognise they were here before" just makes that "prove it" easier. But it is NOT required by the WA.

But that does not change the fact that if Sweden is deporting people who can prove they are beneficiaries of the withdrawal agreement (i.e. were resident before Brexit), just because they didn't do some paperwork, then Sweden is not honouring the agreement.

Which is a dick move, whatever you think of Brexit.

It's also worth noting that the vast majority of beneficiaries of the agreement are not British - it's the EU citizens who are permitted to live in the UK permanently on exactly the same basis. I'll wager dollars to donuts there are a lot more Swedes resident in the UK than vice-versa, and guarantee a lot more EU citizens generally in the UK than vice-versa, and all Sweden is doing is giving a future UK government all the reason it needs to start breaking the agreement itself and start deporting. Just so a far-right government in Sweden can be seen to be tough on immigrants. Dick, dick move.

^*: Not quite 'all' - exceptions for rights that couldn't be retained for constitutional reasons; for example I lost the right to buy land or bote because changing that would have required a constitutional amemdment/referendum, which is obviously impractical.

As an employer (and thus an evil capitalist pigdog etc.) I've always applied the rule of the thumb that "twice the holiday duration as notice" is polite to the employer and your colleagues who will cover for you - so two days notice for a day off, two weeks notice for a week off, a month's notice for two weeks off, etc.

"Polite" does not mean "mandatory" of course - circumstances can dictate that sometimes you have to break the rule of thumb and that's fine.

Damn. Less than 4 weeks/year would be illegal here (it's also mandatory that an employee can take at least 2 weeks of that as a continuous single block, if they wish.) Employers are also not permitted to buy holiday allowance back (except when an employee leaves) and must roll any unused over year on year - which means employers are strongly motivated to have their staff actually take their holidays.

"Here" is, obviously, not the US...

US domestic first is hardly "stratospheric wealth" territory, anyone could afford that if they saved for it (which I really wouldn't recommend - paying over the odds for a bigger seat on a 3hr shitty 737 flight is how you ensure you'll never have enough money for real first-class travel...)

AKA "English".

"Color" is Simplified English.

Earlier this month, Senator Lindsey Graham became the fourth member of the US Senate since 2013 to have died while in office and the sixth member of Congress to have died while serving in the 119th Congress. Because the US is the greatest democracy in the world, Graham has now been replaced in the Senate by his sister Darline.

That really is a tremendous paragraph.