Hello, it's Saturday the 18th of September. Thanks for joining me, Simon Calder, for the latest on travel and destinations from the Green List and the travel desk of the Independent.

Today, more on the international travel rules and the incoherence across the UK. A year late, red list hubs are opening up, I find that really quite underwhelming,

and how Turkey is set to become the quarantine laundrette. Of course, this podcast is completely free,

as is my weekly travel email. Do sign up at independent.co.uk forward slash newsletters.

Well, about 18 hours on from when we finally saw the changes to the international travel rules, I've been able to sleep on those and have a bit of a

think about what is happening. And I'm afraid I am still largely unimpressed of course bear in mind

these rules are strictly for coming back to the UK and if you're traveling abroad you need to

check out what the rules are well it's great as I mentioned to have eight fewer countries

on the red list but we still have a disproportionate

number there. Also, anybody who says, oh, we've scrapped the red and amber and green traffic lights.

We've only got red and green. We'll be forgetting that actually we've got red, amber and

green traffic lights.

Red, of course, the red list, don't want to go there. Complete pain when you're coming back from

there. Amber, which is everywhere, including the places which were on the green list before,

and green, which is Ireland or on its glorious own. So that is what has happened and anybody who tells you

differently, I would respectfully suggest, is not telling the exact truth. There's also, and this is

where the incoherence comes in, a lot of disquiet about the relaxation in the testing rules coming from Edinburgh

and Cardiff. Just to remind you at the moment, oh my goodness, you're coming back to the UK,

you've got to have a test before fly, flying, you've got to have a PCR test booked on day two

of your arrival. The UK government for England wants to change this

so that you don't take a test to fly if you've been fully vaccinated and coming back,

well, by the end of October, that day two PCR test, which can actually be taken on day

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