Why we left Cyprus

Sir,
I read your feature entitled ‘Brits go home?’ in the internet edition of your paper (August 20), and I must say I am not surprised.
I left with my family in May 2005, and my memories of Cyprus are not fond ones. Right to the end, when we were cheated and ripped off by the removal company, not the workers but the people in charge. We were forced to pay twice for the shipment of our pets from Cyprus to France only to find that an animal’s ticket is not the same as a human’s and if they do not make one flight they go on the next. They even pinched the sky kennel which we bought on their recommendation for our dog.
My memories are bitter, the lies, cheating, stealing, blackmail, and violence and corruption. I still have nightmares even now, and my eight-year-old daughter will not even recognise she was ever in Cyprus.
We are well out of Cyprus, if they have unpleasant people coming to stay, then they only have themselves to blame, they drove all the honest decent people away.
Well, this Brit did not go home to the UK but went to France, a true member like the UK of the European Union. And perhaps one day the bad dreams will stop as happier times replace them.
Janis Winnett
Ponsampere, Midi Pyrénées, France

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.