BES island flags

[Michael Everson]

But it’s nonsense. There is no “official” flag for Northern Ireland. Unionists like to use the Union flag 🇬🇧. Nationalists like to use the Irish flag 🇮🇪. But the UK remains a State made up of four Nations, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿, and Northern Ireland OOPS. And there is a flag used — by everyone — for Northern Ireland in terms of sport and other things. Nowadays the distinction is extremely important in maps and charts, for instance, of COVID-19 incidences and responses. But Unicode failed to add the Northern Ireland flag, even though it exists, regardless of its “official” status. (They didn’t ask the Irish or UK representatives to SC2 for an opinion, either. They just decided “No flag for GB-NIR”.) 

The decision made was not practical, not respectful, and not correct, in my view.

Michael Everson

> On 24 Sep 2020, at 11:56, Christoph Päper via Unicode <unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
> 
> 23.09.2020 um 18:50 schrieb Markus Scherer
>> 
>> Unicode only defines valid and recommended sequences. It does not prescribe how exactly glyphs for those should look.
> 
> Still, the lack of a commonly agreed upon design was the reason for not RGIing the flag emoji for GB-NIR alongside GB-ENG, GB-WLS and GB-SCT. 
>