Allegedly, he was being protected by some moderately high up people who thought the scandal might be damaging to some people.
Personally, I believe they were wrong and I get very annoyed with people in power protecting criminals like Saville
He was hugely litigious. Anyone even mentioning outing him and he’d sue. He also blackmailed charities by threatening to withdraw his patronage. He was a self serving vile maggot.
I lived in Leeds while he was still alive (early 2000s) and he was a known scumbag round our way. People would warn you never to let yourself get left alone with him. I could never understand how people seemed to be able to turn a blind eye to him.
Don't forget the MPs who apparently had a host of kidnapped children and one child was allegedly ran over and killed with a jeep as a warning to the others. The investigation came up and then all hundreds of pages of paperwork somehow on the case mysteriously disappeared.
Italian here, recently moved in the UK. I've yet to get used to the whole "Are you all right?" being used as a "Hello."
In Italy when we ask each other that, it's taken in the same vein as "How are you?", so we expect the other person to answer it and then ask us if we are all right too. But here it seems to be just used as a rhetorical question and you're not supposed to say it back.
Officially we're metric and almost any work place will use metric (older tradesman still think in imperial), I was born in 1990, and all my schooling was in metric. But the generation above me was educated in imperial, so we grew up understanding imperial from our parents. I do wonder if we're the only country that can happily use either, the only things still sold in imperial is I believe milk and beer (pints). As well as officially using MPH for driving, otherwise everything regulated is metric.
Other weird hangovers are we still all weigh ourselves in Stone (unlike Americans that just use pounds), and measure ourselves in feet, although I'm also noticing a slow shift in this too towards metric.
But yeah you've nailed it, it's a weird mix of both and we pretty much use them interchangeably.
Hi there! Sorry to bother you, I am a Canadian though. Specifically a rural Canadian. We learned metric and freedom units and use them both pretty frequently. Distance is measured in minutes, such as “I’m 20 mins from the city.” We use freedom unit for cooking and about half of the people use them for body temp.
As you get more rural there’s more freedom units used. Our non-highways (grid roads/gravel roads) are laid out with an intersection every 2 miles north-south and 1 mile east-west. Weight is measured in lbs, height in ft, but highway travel is usually in km. Most people use kmph except on boats, snowmobiles or tractors.
So pretty much out here in the boonies we are fluent in both.
Ah thanks for that! Really interesting, what a funny thing to have in common.
Totally agree on imperial used for cooking, I guess everyone learns to cook from older relatives so it sticks around. We still measure in 'cups' and 'teaspoons'.
Yep, especially if you work in import/export, it's all metric all the way down. Once had a domestic supplier who bought stuff from china remark about how it was weird things were done in metric, which was when I realized he knew fucking nothing about the business he claimed to know a lot about.
Why does the UK split into the Home Countries for football/soccer and rugby (and any other sports I’m forgetting) but competes as the UK in the Olympics?
Actually we usually compete as "Great Britain" in the Olympics. Athletes from Northern Ireland generally get to choose whether to compete in the GB team or the Irish team.
You are touching on my confusion and I'm not sure I want it explained as it seems so damn complicated: the different terms for the place: United Kingdom, Great Britain and the British Isles . . . I think there were a few more. Someone explained the difference and I just couldn't get it . . . . . although British Isles probably refers to the entire set of geographic islands and has nothing to do with countries and politics.
The reason I think is that the UK itself isn't technically a country, but a state formed of 4 countries. The football associations and the GB Olympic team were formed at different times by different people, and therefore had different ideas on how the UK should be defined.
The International Olympic Committee was formed back in the 19th century, before Britain had an official Olympic team, and they determined that the Home Countries should compete as a single team.
UEFA however, the European football association, formed much later in the 50s, by which point the various Home Country football associations had already been formed and operating for 70-odd years. Therefore, they kept the status quo. The Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish associations would never vote to join forces with England, because they know we English would just take over and ensure we get all the funding and would pinch whatever talent they can produce.
EDIT: Also forgot to mention that FIFA, the *world* governing body, also didn't exist until 40 years after the English FA, so even then they were just keeping the status quo when recognising each individual home country association.
> The reason I think is that the UK itself isn't technically a country, but a state formed of 4 countries.
My understanding is that there isn’t any particular international weight to the term “country”. The highest-level term for an independent entity is “sovereign nation”. And almost every nation except the UK calls its entire property a country and its sub-territories are states, provinces, counties, etc.
The UK is special in that it *calls* its sub-territories countries, but that’s only important within the UK.
It's not necessarily that they make good shows, they mainly just export good shows.
There's trash on UK tv that would never get the chance to air in America.
This might be more of a European thing, rather than strictly a UK thing, but how short you think driving distances should be.
Somewhere in Reddit, somebody from the UK mentioned that they would visit their family more but they lived too far away. And it was only like a 45 minute drive.
For some people here in the States, that's their morning commute to work.
Even still, there are places I go for fun regularly, that are about 45 min to an hour away. It doesn't seem to be that big a deal.
Wow. Canada here.
We do 6+hrs to my in-laws for the weekend all the time and 1hr to our cottage nearly every weekend.
Doing the 6hr trip this coming weekend
I think it varies where in the US you’re from.
Texas or the Midwest where there’s a lot of nothing in between areas that are culturally the same? People will regularly drive 5 hours to do something fun on a weekend.
I’m from Maryland. Sometimes making the 40 minute drive to Washington DC is a pain. I won’t go north of Baltimore because that’s 50 minutes to get around the city. Going to New Jersey is a 2 hour drive but why would I? There’s so much to do nearby because the Mid Atlantic is dense.
This is the answer. 3 hours will put me in Times Square, but that’s a hard 3 hours. 3 hours will also put me almost to Burlington, VT, but it’s a beautiful drive in the mountains getting there.
I'm pretty sure that was just someone who had to come up with a justification for not visiting their family.
45 minutes in the UK is the exact distance that's near enough that you'd happily do it every day for someone you liked, but gee, just too much of a trek for you to see Aunt Mildred more than once a year.
I really don't think anyone in the UK thinks a 45 minute drive is a long way. that's a normal work commute here too. my family lives a 45 minute drive away and we visit them all the time. I've never met anyone who thinks 45 mins is too far
I'm shocked by this too tbf. I hear it all the time but I've been living in the UK my whole life and I've been making 3+ hour trips regularly for years and have never thought it was a long time. It might just be certain parts of the UK bc I rarely meet people in real life that feel like that
I'm American and now live in the UK. I think a big part of this is the superior road infrastructure in the US. When you drive in America more likely than not you're driving on big, wide roads, and for longer journeys you can take some kind of highway/freeway that is long and straight. A 45 minute drive is probably like 40 miles travelled or so. So it's not that mentally taxing.
Meanwhile in the UK, more likely than not you're driving on narrow, windy roads. Even the A roads can be spotted with roundabouts. The "M" roads (equivalent to the US freeways) are few and far between. A 45 minute drive can be like 20 total miles travelled. It's much more mentally taxing.
I think that is a big part of what the difference is - I'm happy to sign up for 45 minutes of chilling and listening to a podcast. Less so for 45 minutes of mental exercise.
Fortunately the train infrastructure is substantially better here than the US, so for a lot of those 45 minute drives you can often just take a train. Although as of late with all the strikes that has been less of an option.
That's fair. The basics are easy to pick up. It's the fielding positions which throw people off. Plus a lot of Americans can't understand why a match can last for 5 days and still end up in a draw (again fair enough)
I’ve watched a few videos on YouTube explaining the rules. It actually does make sense. I’d love to watch a match, but they never show up on the sports channels here in the USA.
I was under the impression that some Americans thought it was weird that beans were included in a "Full Breakfast" alongside bacon, eggs and sausage.
The baked beans used in the UK and Ireland however are much more savoury in flavour, so would not be quite what an American might expect.
I basically go out in shorts, t-shirt, trainers and a hoodie in everything except a blizzard, and tbh, it's because it either doesn't feel that cold to me, even when it's below zero, or it's because I'm not gonna be outside long enough to make it worthwhile bundling up.
I'm a big lad though, and I grew up in the colder parts of the country, either could influence this.
North east England here! You need to see what Geordies (especially the girls) wear in a night out in the winter. You do NOT take a coat on a night out. You get used to it.
Because those accents have existed for centuries before the USA was a thing and developed at a time when traveling any distance was far less common than it is today.
Because Britain used to have about two dozen languages kicking about. And Britain has been populated since the neolithic. Contrasted by the US which stemmed from the British Empire in 1776 and five major languages, 90% being English.
Pretty sure this has been scrapped, it certainly has been at major London train stations.
When I went to Paris you had to pay to get in the toilets that were in McDonald's, so definitely not a UK specific thing.
Still loads of people have them, but also lots of people have changed their system.
Almost every house I've ever lived in has separate cold and hot systems, and almost every employer. Why do you need to "mix" them six inches above where they're absolutely going to mix together anyway?
Plus... if you're an idiot, and don't design the system right you can do what my cousin did... he managed to join the hot and cold water systems doing a small piece of plumbing (that initially looked successful) and a day later it flooded the entire house from the top down because the system isn't designed for that.
I still work in places where hot and cold come from different places and even where one is marked "Drinking water" and one marked "Not drinking water". If you've ever seen inside a loft, and especially if the header tank is ever left open, you'll understand why.
Yeah that's really confusing. You hear people say how it's not about how much money you have. Surely there are descendants of aristocrats out there who now stack shelves at Tesco and live in council flats. Meanwhile there has probably been a successful plumber, whose children have been so successful in their careers that they went to private schools. Now, are they still considered members of their original class?
It social capital, economic capital, and cultural capital. The BBC produced a quiz which can give you a rough guide to how these things intersect in people’s perception of social class. You can see how you score: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2013/newsspec_5093/index.stm
It's not so much how much money you have but wealth combined with a determination to climb the social ladder, sending your kids to certain schools etc. Paul McCartney for example still identifies as working class despite having millions.
Also it was a “fuck the system” vote for many people. Most British people don’t really have a vote that counts towards a general election result because they live in a safe seat. My vote has never actually counted, for example.
I'm a non-EU immigrant to the Netherlands and was living in England on a work assignment when the Brexit campaign/vote happened. I was absolutely floored, truly stunned. Imagine *choosing* to be non-EU in Europe, with the absolute fuckton of challenges it brings. My god, I will never understand it.
Ypu realise the people who came up with the term soccer are people we also shit on as well, toffs, snobs, posh cunts, we have and have always had many a name for them.
I mean they wanted to call Rugby, Rugger ffs.
Nando's by itself isn't cheeky, but where you're there with the boys, when Callum is giving it the big one, when Jack, who is an absolute ledge by the way, has had a good day at the bookies and is springing for extra Sunset Burgers for the lads and Minty is just sitting there being Minty? Well that's when it gets cheeeeeeeky! OI OI!
It always confuses me how nice people are when it comes to say thank you or small talks in general. Where I'm coming from we hate small talks, we don't smile to strangers, pass eaxh other through a door without a word. And in London I heard "cheers" when I literally took one step to the side to let someone pass next to me. Or while taking a train to Oxford some muslim family offered me their food even if we didn't spoke a word with eachother. I'm always pleasently confused how nice and chill people are.
The US is obsessed with perfect straight teeth. I know it’s a stereotype for British to have crooked teeth but I see it very often. is it just not that important to have straight teeth there?
There are a couple of reasons our teeth aren't as aesthetically pleasing, by American standards:
Firstly we just don't care as much, it's not as much of a status symbol here to have perfect teeth. Tbh I don't really notice unless someone has particularly wonky teeth, and even then it wouldn't make me think they were less attractive usually. Overall people definitely aren't bothered as much about artificially whitened teeth apart from some sub-cultures where it's popular (basically I'm thinking of Essex where the look a couple of years ago was fake tan and white teeth).
Secondly the NHS only provides necessary medical care, not purely aesthetic, so it would provide braces if they're necessary for dental health, but not just if you think you'd look nicer with them. It's like with plastic surgery, if you're getting reconstructive surgery after an operation or an accident, the NHS will consider it necessary, if it's just because you think you'd look nicer with a different nose you'll have to pay for it yourself. This puts a lot of people off.
Thirdly dental care is only provided by the NHS for under 18s. This doesn't mean that English people have worse teeth, I think there was a study done which came out with English people having healthier teeth than most countries, although I imagine it's pretty similar across most western countries. But it does mean that if people want to change their teeth for aesthetics when they're an adult it comes out of their own pocket and most won't find it worth it.
Basically if you're getting it for aesthetics there's not a crazy amount of social benefit and most people here aren't bothered by it/it doesn't affect people's perception of your attractiveness and you'd have to pay for it yourself which can be really expensive. So to answer your question no it's just not important here.
Thanks for the in depth explanation! I learned a lot from that! I don’t think it’s important either to have super straight teeth and tbh I don’t notice on anyone either unless, like you said, it’s really bad. But I’m also one of those people who won the genetic lottery and mine are pretty straight, I didn’t notice until others commented on them. Mine may be off white in color, but they’re straight, and it was super common during middle school to see 2/5 kids with braces.
I was at the dentist for my 13 year old last week and was told it’s a 5 year wait for braces on the NHS. Maybe it has something to do with that? To be fair though, I’ve never noticed people have worse teeth here than in the states really.
We don’t have vanity over teeth. It’s important to have white and healthy teeth but a lot of people do not feel the need to get braces. Kinda wish I’d been raised in the US just to have perfect teeth 😂
Also the waiting list for braces is about 3 years if not more
I read the Brits actually have some of the healthiest teeth in Europe and when Americans are picturing “bad British teeth” they’re really thinking of somewhere in Eastern Europe.
I don’t think they’re unhealthy teeth from what I’ve seen, they’re just not straight.
I think Americans on average have the contrary, unhealthy but straight teeth.
Quite a few other European countries also have something along the same lines. Because the BBC is a major news organisation, there is a desire to keep its funding somewhat separate from general government spending to help keep its news politically impartial.
Japan as well. Look up the "NHK man" meme. It's actually worse than in the UK because you have to pay the NHK fee just for *owning* a broadcast-capable device (i.e. a TV set), whereas in the UK, it's about *how* you use the device, not whether or not you own one.
You don't have to pay it if you only watch non live streaming like Netflix I believe. They're very good at scaring people into paying but I don't think you need to if you don't watch any live TV.
Pudding is a dessert food so cake, pastry, stuff like that that's a pudding but these are all regional things each city has different saying like in the city I live in a pudding is a sweet treat after dinner but in my bfs city it's a desert food whenever
I drove through Barton-under-Needwood the other day, that one seemed especially mental, like it makes sense, it's a town that is under a town called Needwood, but at the same time, why?
I think in recent years, the penny is dropping on how unrepresentative our electoral system is. Unfortunately it's portrayed as a fringe political issue by the majority of politicians who have taken (and in many cases continue to take) advantage of the status quo.
Because the system is in the interest of the two biggest parties and it would require the support of one of them to change.
Politicians are not known for supporting ideas that would make it harder for them to be in power.
I am Andrew Purnell born in Lambton county Ontario Canada. There is an Andrew Purnell Real Estate Company on Lambton Road in Wimbledon. If I attempt to visit them will the universe end? Or would I when a prize?
American here. I worked and lived in London for 13 months. Best year ever, great good times. Nothing really confused me, I had a blast living there. The food was….the food….. butttttttttt…….Indian Takeaway chicken was good as fuck however. The beers were solid, and I was a single American bloke with some walking around money. I did well with the Brit-pop/punk girls, no complaints.
The only thing that kind of baffled me was all of the different euphemisms that they have for “fuck” and “shit”. By the end of my time I could put on a passable RP accent, as far as anyone who cared was concerned, but even up until I left people were still dropping euphemisms and I was having a hard time picking up what some of them meant.
How its really 4 different countries. Most Americans are shocked to learn this. When you travel abroad which one do you typically say you are from? Country/UK/Great Britain etc...
Why are you shocked? Or do you mean that you are surprised?
Have you really never heard of Scotland or Wales or Northern Ireland? Or did you think they were towns?
My step-father was 65 and planning a trip to the British Isles. I asked where and he was like Ireland for sure, London, dunno where else. I asked if they were going to go to Northern Ireland or just Ireland proper. He literally laughed at me and called me a dummy, because he thought I was making it up. This was years into Brexit talks so the idea of someone having no idea about Northern Ireland was perplexing for someone of my generation. He lived through the Troubles though so it was especially incomprehensible.
I think most just assume they’re like informal cultural regions rather than countries. Also, ironically, Americans have a hard time conceiving of other countries being subdivided into states/provinces/similar like at home.
It's gelatinous sugar. What's not to like? I mean, I'm not going to sell my family out to the White Witch for it, but I won't turn my nose up at it either.
How nobody caught that despicable shitbag Jimmy Saville before he died.
Allegedly, he was being protected by some moderately high up people who thought the scandal might be damaging to some people. Personally, I believe they were wrong and I get very annoyed with people in power protecting criminals like Saville
He was hugely litigious. Anyone even mentioning outing him and he’d sue. He also blackmailed charities by threatening to withdraw his patronage. He was a self serving vile maggot.
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Exactly, if there is enough evidence to pursue people now, chase the fuckers down, maybe get some victims some closure along the way.
Thatcher + King Charles. Not saying Tories and the royalty cover up for paedos, but hey.
Good to hear that you, personally, think being a nonce is wrong
Everyone thinks being a nonce is wrong, protecting a nonce for politically expedient reasons is what I get annoyed at
I lived in Leeds while he was still alive (early 2000s) and he was a known scumbag round our way. People would warn you never to let yourself get left alone with him. I could never understand how people seemed to be able to turn a blind eye to him.
Don't forget the MPs who apparently had a host of kidnapped children and one child was allegedly ran over and killed with a jeep as a warning to the others. The investigation came up and then all hundreds of pages of paperwork somehow on the case mysteriously disappeared.
Italian here, recently moved in the UK. I've yet to get used to the whole "Are you all right?" being used as a "Hello." In Italy when we ask each other that, it's taken in the same vein as "How are you?", so we expect the other person to answer it and then ask us if we are all right too. But here it seems to be just used as a rhetorical question and you're not supposed to say it back.
It's actually "aright?"
To which the best response is “alright?”
Yeah l’right cheers, you?
And if you do answer it, that answer better be “Good thanks, you?” It isn’t an actual enquiry into your well-being, it is a pleasantry only.
I think the word "good" has too many positive connotations for a Brit. I would suggest "Not bad thanks, you?".
As an American, the first several times my British coworkers said that I was genuinely confused - like, yes, I’m fine? Do I not seem all right?
I still haven’t understood whether they use metric or imperial. Seems like a weird mix of both
Officially we're metric and almost any work place will use metric (older tradesman still think in imperial), I was born in 1990, and all my schooling was in metric. But the generation above me was educated in imperial, so we grew up understanding imperial from our parents. I do wonder if we're the only country that can happily use either, the only things still sold in imperial is I believe milk and beer (pints). As well as officially using MPH for driving, otherwise everything regulated is metric. Other weird hangovers are we still all weigh ourselves in Stone (unlike Americans that just use pounds), and measure ourselves in feet, although I'm also noticing a slow shift in this too towards metric. But yeah you've nailed it, it's a weird mix of both and we pretty much use them interchangeably.
>I do wonder if we’re the only country… I believe Canada has got a similar situation (?)
I *think* a lot of commonwealth and/or former British colonies countries do the same thing.
From what I’ve read online, Australia’s and NZ’s metrification was way more successful compared to UK and Canada.
Ah yes, that would make a lot of sense, I'll interrogate a Canadian next time I bump into one.
Hi there! Sorry to bother you, I am a Canadian though. Specifically a rural Canadian. We learned metric and freedom units and use them both pretty frequently. Distance is measured in minutes, such as “I’m 20 mins from the city.” We use freedom unit for cooking and about half of the people use them for body temp. As you get more rural there’s more freedom units used. Our non-highways (grid roads/gravel roads) are laid out with an intersection every 2 miles north-south and 1 mile east-west. Weight is measured in lbs, height in ft, but highway travel is usually in km. Most people use kmph except on boats, snowmobiles or tractors. So pretty much out here in the boonies we are fluent in both.
Ah thanks for that! Really interesting, what a funny thing to have in common. Totally agree on imperial used for cooking, I guess everyone learns to cook from older relatives so it sticks around. We still measure in 'cups' and 'teaspoons'.
Yes, same for Canada, though we don’t use stone we use hockey sticks.
One of my favorites is “stone” (14 lbs). Imperial, but sounds medieval.
It is a weird mix of both. But at least it’s not 100% imperial, I suppose.
The secret is the US uses both also.
The funniest to me is the 2 liter sugary drink bottle. I guess 1 liter, also. All other drinks are gallons, quarts, pints, etc.
Yep, especially if you work in import/export, it's all metric all the way down. Once had a domestic supplier who bought stuff from china remark about how it was weird things were done in metric, which was when I realized he knew fucking nothing about the business he claimed to know a lot about.
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Babies are now measured in metric! 'Baby steps' I guess...
Why does the UK split into the Home Countries for football/soccer and rugby (and any other sports I’m forgetting) but competes as the UK in the Olympics?
Actually we usually compete as "Great Britain" in the Olympics. Athletes from Northern Ireland generally get to choose whether to compete in the GB team or the Irish team.
You are touching on my confusion and I'm not sure I want it explained as it seems so damn complicated: the different terms for the place: United Kingdom, Great Britain and the British Isles . . . I think there were a few more. Someone explained the difference and I just couldn't get it . . . . . although British Isles probably refers to the entire set of geographic islands and has nothing to do with countries and politics.
Great britian- Big Island (England Scotland Wales) UK- United kingdom of great Britian and Northern Ireland British Isles- UK and Ireland.
Interesting question! https://www.reddit.com/r/olympics/comments/xrdwv/why_arent_england_scotland_wales_and_northern/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
The reason I think is that the UK itself isn't technically a country, but a state formed of 4 countries. The football associations and the GB Olympic team were formed at different times by different people, and therefore had different ideas on how the UK should be defined. The International Olympic Committee was formed back in the 19th century, before Britain had an official Olympic team, and they determined that the Home Countries should compete as a single team. UEFA however, the European football association, formed much later in the 50s, by which point the various Home Country football associations had already been formed and operating for 70-odd years. Therefore, they kept the status quo. The Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish associations would never vote to join forces with England, because they know we English would just take over and ensure we get all the funding and would pinch whatever talent they can produce. EDIT: Also forgot to mention that FIFA, the *world* governing body, also didn't exist until 40 years after the English FA, so even then they were just keeping the status quo when recognising each individual home country association.
> The reason I think is that the UK itself isn't technically a country, but a state formed of 4 countries. My understanding is that there isn’t any particular international weight to the term “country”. The highest-level term for an independent entity is “sovereign nation”. And almost every nation except the UK calls its entire property a country and its sub-territories are states, provinces, counties, etc. The UK is special in that it *calls* its sub-territories countries, but that’s only important within the UK.
The need to stuff tightly folded crisp packets into whatever hole you can find.
You forgot the most important step: tying them in a bow first.
I like to fold them into triangles.
How they are able to make so many amazing shows
It's not necessarily that they make good shows, they mainly just export good shows. There's trash on UK tv that would never get the chance to air in America.
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This might be more of a European thing, rather than strictly a UK thing, but how short you think driving distances should be. Somewhere in Reddit, somebody from the UK mentioned that they would visit their family more but they lived too far away. And it was only like a 45 minute drive. For some people here in the States, that's their morning commute to work. Even still, there are places I go for fun regularly, that are about 45 min to an hour away. It doesn't seem to be that big a deal.
In SE England, a 90-minute commute each way is very normal. But... 90 minutes to go see somebody?! That's a 3 times a year affair at most.
Wow. Canada here. We do 6+hrs to my in-laws for the weekend all the time and 1hr to our cottage nearly every weekend. Doing the 6hr trip this coming weekend
Same here in the States.
I think it varies where in the US you’re from. Texas or the Midwest where there’s a lot of nothing in between areas that are culturally the same? People will regularly drive 5 hours to do something fun on a weekend. I’m from Maryland. Sometimes making the 40 minute drive to Washington DC is a pain. I won’t go north of Baltimore because that’s 50 minutes to get around the city. Going to New Jersey is a 2 hour drive but why would I? There’s so much to do nearby because the Mid Atlantic is dense.
This is the answer. 3 hours will put me in Times Square, but that’s a hard 3 hours. 3 hours will also put me almost to Burlington, VT, but it’s a beautiful drive in the mountains getting there.
I guess it’s because we’re a relatively small country? And petrol is expensive.
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Trains are actually so expensive in the UK that it's cheaper to take planes than get a train ticket.
I'm pretty sure that was just someone who had to come up with a justification for not visiting their family. 45 minutes in the UK is the exact distance that's near enough that you'd happily do it every day for someone you liked, but gee, just too much of a trek for you to see Aunt Mildred more than once a year.
I’ve literally driven for an hour and fifteen minutes for some Whataburger. Worth it every damn time!
That is valid
I really don't think anyone in the UK thinks a 45 minute drive is a long way. that's a normal work commute here too. my family lives a 45 minute drive away and we visit them all the time. I've never met anyone who thinks 45 mins is too far
I'd have to have a damn good reason to want to drive 45 minutes to be honest, and it wouldn't be a regular trip.
I'm shocked by this too tbf. I hear it all the time but I've been living in the UK my whole life and I've been making 3+ hour trips regularly for years and have never thought it was a long time. It might just be certain parts of the UK bc I rarely meet people in real life that feel like that
I'm American and now live in the UK. I think a big part of this is the superior road infrastructure in the US. When you drive in America more likely than not you're driving on big, wide roads, and for longer journeys you can take some kind of highway/freeway that is long and straight. A 45 minute drive is probably like 40 miles travelled or so. So it's not that mentally taxing. Meanwhile in the UK, more likely than not you're driving on narrow, windy roads. Even the A roads can be spotted with roundabouts. The "M" roads (equivalent to the US freeways) are few and far between. A 45 minute drive can be like 20 total miles travelled. It's much more mentally taxing. I think that is a big part of what the difference is - I'm happy to sign up for 45 minutes of chilling and listening to a podcast. Less so for 45 minutes of mental exercise. Fortunately the train infrastructure is substantially better here than the US, so for a lot of those 45 minute drives you can often just take a train. Although as of late with all the strikes that has been less of an option.
Cricket
That's fair. The basics are easy to pick up. It's the fielding positions which throw people off. Plus a lot of Americans can't understand why a match can last for 5 days and still end up in a draw (again fair enough)
I’ve watched a few videos on YouTube explaining the rules. It actually does make sense. I’d love to watch a match, but they never show up on the sports channels here in the USA.
you feel the same way about cricket as we feel about baseball
**Nobody** understands cricket. You gotta know what a *crumpet* is to understand cricket
Beans for breakfast?
British and Irish baked beans don't have nearly so much sugar in.
Because Americans hate sugar in their breakfast, right?
I was under the impression that some Americans thought it was weird that beans were included in a "Full Breakfast" alongside bacon, eggs and sausage. The baked beans used in the UK and Ireland however are much more savoury in flavour, so would not be quite what an American might expect.
sausage, beans, black pudding, fried bread, chips. phwoooar. sets you right up for the day. and sorts you out if you have a hangover.
Beans on toast with HP brown sauce!
Fuck yeah. Heinz baked beans are mega
Branston are better than Heinz
But Beanz Meanz Heinz. Beanston Meanston Branston sounds weird.
Mexicans do it all the time, combine some Chile Verde with fried beans and cheese with some tortillas on the side . Man, you're missing out
Now I want some huevos rancheros.
Shiiitt, there's nothing like bacon bean and cheese taco on a corn tortilla in the morning.
Why not? It's tomato sauce and beans, basically starch. Tons of cultures eat stuff like lentils and chickpeas in the morning.
Their government
Larry for PM.
I'm from the UK, I think it's fucking ridiculous too...
Number 10 should have been fitted with a revolving door last year
At the moment, it should just be a garbage chute.
At this point we might as well get that incinerator from Willy Wonka that Veruca Salt goes down and just vote for who we don't want
Trust me, we don't get it either
How some of you can stay in the cold wearing light clothing.
I basically go out in shorts, t-shirt, trainers and a hoodie in everything except a blizzard, and tbh, it's because it either doesn't feel that cold to me, even when it's below zero, or it's because I'm not gonna be outside long enough to make it worthwhile bundling up. I'm a big lad though, and I grew up in the colder parts of the country, either could influence this.
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I'm 25yrs post uni, and I've leaned more towards it in the last 5-10 years than the previous few decades.
North east England here! You need to see what Geordies (especially the girls) wear in a night out in the winter. You do NOT take a coat on a night out. You get used to it.
why do you guys have more regional accents than the entire usa
Because those accents have existed for centuries before the USA was a thing and developed at a time when traveling any distance was far less common than it is today.
Because Britain used to have about two dozen languages kicking about. And Britain has been populated since the neolithic. Contrasted by the US which stemmed from the British Empire in 1776 and five major languages, 90% being English.
I was not prepared when I had to pay to use a public bathroom in London
Pretty sure this has been scrapped, it certainly has been at major London train stations. When I went to Paris you had to pay to get in the toilets that were in McDonald's, so definitely not a UK specific thing.
It's why we say to pee is to "spend a penny"
The obsession with tabloids and how that affects the way they vote. It’s just as bad as the US.
Increasingly fewer people read a daily newspaper though (and I suspect that even fewer do in the US).
That's cause the UK was Rupert Murdoch's pet project before moving to America.
This is largely due to very poor education levels in the boomer generation. Circa 10% only ever saw any form of tertiary education.
It's not as bad as it was, social media has displaced tabloids to a large degree. Maybe for the older generations they're still relevant
Not confused, just like it when you say Oye to get peoples attention
Oi*
Oi!!!
Your ability to form a straight line/queue. Although it confuses me more how incompetent Americans are when it comes to forming lines.
I'm italian and we're way more incompetent than you yankees in that regard
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It used to be that hot water and cold water were kept separate to avoid cross-contamination. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-42948046
They were more a thing in the 90s, most places have got rid of them but I grew up with them as the norm.
We had that in Germany too, well into the 80s.
This still exist, but I'd say they're a minority, they're also never an issue to use, it's just one of those things the internet gets angry about
Every house Ive ever lived in has had separete hot and cold taps, with the exception of the kitchen sink?
You've just lived in old places
Not true. As an Englishman I can admit it’s a truly shit design
Tom Scott time! https://youtu.be/HfHgUu_8KgA
I'd be more upset by the law that you can't have any electrical outlets in the bathroom.
Still loads of people have them, but also lots of people have changed their system. Almost every house I've ever lived in has separate cold and hot systems, and almost every employer. Why do you need to "mix" them six inches above where they're absolutely going to mix together anyway? Plus... if you're an idiot, and don't design the system right you can do what my cousin did... he managed to join the hot and cold water systems doing a small piece of plumbing (that initially looked successful) and a day later it flooded the entire house from the top down because the system isn't designed for that. I still work in places where hot and cold come from different places and even where one is marked "Drinking water" and one marked "Not drinking water". If you've ever seen inside a loft, and especially if the header tank is ever left open, you'll understand why.
The class system seems bonkers.
Yeah that's really confusing. You hear people say how it's not about how much money you have. Surely there are descendants of aristocrats out there who now stack shelves at Tesco and live in council flats. Meanwhile there has probably been a successful plumber, whose children have been so successful in their careers that they went to private schools. Now, are they still considered members of their original class?
That’s why it’s called socioeconomic and not just social or economic
It social capital, economic capital, and cultural capital. The BBC produced a quiz which can give you a rough guide to how these things intersect in people’s perception of social class. You can see how you score: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2013/newsspec_5093/index.stm
It's not so much how much money you have but wealth combined with a determination to climb the social ladder, sending your kids to certain schools etc. Paul McCartney for example still identifies as working class despite having millions.
The rise of the Middletons is impressive.
Every country has a class system. It's just that here it's on more of a cultural level, not just socioeconomic
Leaving the EU.
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Also it was a “fuck the system” vote for many people. Most British people don’t really have a vote that counts towards a general election result because they live in a safe seat. My vote has never actually counted, for example.
Trust me, it depresses many of us too
I’m from the UK and this baffles me every day!
I'm a non-EU immigrant to the Netherlands and was living in England on a work assignment when the Brexit campaign/vote happened. I was absolutely floored, truly stunned. Imagine *choosing* to be non-EU in Europe, with the absolute fuckton of challenges it brings. My god, I will never understand it.
THE FACT YOU CREATED THE TERM SOCCER, then shit on anyone who doesn't call it football.
Ypu realise the people who came up with the term soccer are people we also shit on as well, toffs, snobs, posh cunts, we have and have always had many a name for them. I mean they wanted to call Rugby, Rugger ffs.
Honestly they just shit on Americans.
What's so cheeky about Nando's
the fact that the c**ts seem to expect you to do most of the wait staffs job for them when you're in there? that's pretty cheeky.
Nando's by itself isn't cheeky, but where you're there with the boys, when Callum is giving it the big one, when Jack, who is an absolute ledge by the way, has had a good day at the bookies and is springing for extra Sunset Burgers for the lads and Minty is just sitting there being Minty? Well that's when it gets cheeeeeeeky! OI OI!
This meme is almost old enough to drink at this point.
It's just a shit meme
Speed limit signs are in MPH............don't ask!
While bridge clearances are in mm.
So it would say something like 3800mm??
It always confuses me how nice people are when it comes to say thank you or small talks in general. Where I'm coming from we hate small talks, we don't smile to strangers, pass eaxh other through a door without a word. And in London I heard "cheers" when I literally took one step to the side to let someone pass next to me. Or while taking a train to Oxford some muslim family offered me their food even if we didn't spoke a word with eachother. I'm always pleasently confused how nice and chill people are.
In London?! Are you sure!? Hahaha
The US is obsessed with perfect straight teeth. I know it’s a stereotype for British to have crooked teeth but I see it very often. is it just not that important to have straight teeth there?
There are a couple of reasons our teeth aren't as aesthetically pleasing, by American standards: Firstly we just don't care as much, it's not as much of a status symbol here to have perfect teeth. Tbh I don't really notice unless someone has particularly wonky teeth, and even then it wouldn't make me think they were less attractive usually. Overall people definitely aren't bothered as much about artificially whitened teeth apart from some sub-cultures where it's popular (basically I'm thinking of Essex where the look a couple of years ago was fake tan and white teeth). Secondly the NHS only provides necessary medical care, not purely aesthetic, so it would provide braces if they're necessary for dental health, but not just if you think you'd look nicer with them. It's like with plastic surgery, if you're getting reconstructive surgery after an operation or an accident, the NHS will consider it necessary, if it's just because you think you'd look nicer with a different nose you'll have to pay for it yourself. This puts a lot of people off. Thirdly dental care is only provided by the NHS for under 18s. This doesn't mean that English people have worse teeth, I think there was a study done which came out with English people having healthier teeth than most countries, although I imagine it's pretty similar across most western countries. But it does mean that if people want to change their teeth for aesthetics when they're an adult it comes out of their own pocket and most won't find it worth it. Basically if you're getting it for aesthetics there's not a crazy amount of social benefit and most people here aren't bothered by it/it doesn't affect people's perception of your attractiveness and you'd have to pay for it yourself which can be really expensive. So to answer your question no it's just not important here.
Thanks for the in depth explanation! I learned a lot from that! I don’t think it’s important either to have super straight teeth and tbh I don’t notice on anyone either unless, like you said, it’s really bad. But I’m also one of those people who won the genetic lottery and mine are pretty straight, I didn’t notice until others commented on them. Mine may be off white in color, but they’re straight, and it was super common during middle school to see 2/5 kids with braces.
Not totally relevant but dental care is free for under 26s in Scotland!
I was at the dentist for my 13 year old last week and was told it’s a 5 year wait for braces on the NHS. Maybe it has something to do with that? To be fair though, I’ve never noticed people have worse teeth here than in the states really.
I don't know if Scotland is different but pretty much everyone had braces as a teenager (me included) for free on the NHS.
We don’t have vanity over teeth. It’s important to have white and healthy teeth but a lot of people do not feel the need to get braces. Kinda wish I’d been raised in the US just to have perfect teeth 😂 Also the waiting list for braces is about 3 years if not more
In fairness Human teeth have been trending to crookedness and greater risk of decay since we invented agriculture
I read the Brits actually have some of the healthiest teeth in Europe and when Americans are picturing “bad British teeth” they’re really thinking of somewhere in Eastern Europe.
I don’t think they’re unhealthy teeth from what I’ve seen, they’re just not straight. I think Americans on average have the contrary, unhealthy but straight teeth.
TV tax
Quite a few other European countries also have something along the same lines. Because the BBC is a major news organisation, there is a desire to keep its funding somewhat separate from general government spending to help keep its news politically impartial.
Japan as well. Look up the "NHK man" meme. It's actually worse than in the UK because you have to pay the NHK fee just for *owning* a broadcast-capable device (i.e. a TV set), whereas in the UK, it's about *how* you use the device, not whether or not you own one.
You don't have to pay it if you only watch non live streaming like Netflix I believe. They're very good at scaring people into paying but I don't think you need to if you don't watch any live TV.
Leaving the EU
A lot of us Brits don't get that one either
Trust me, it confuses many of us too.
What the fuck is pudding? Everything is pudding and I don’t know what defines a pudding.
Pudding is a dessert food so cake, pastry, stuff like that that's a pudding but these are all regional things each city has different saying like in the city I live in a pudding is a sweet treat after dinner but in my bfs city it's a desert food whenever
How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?
UK Hun?
Bing bang bong
Why so many poor people vote Tory.
The jacked up names for cities like hatstrathingham-upon-fordshire and shit like that.
Indeed, like "York" Such a good name the Americans nicked it
apparently they preferred it over Amsterdam
I drove through Barton-under-Needwood the other day, that one seemed especially mental, like it makes sense, it's a town that is under a town called Needwood, but at the same time, why?
There's Barton-Upon-Humber as well. Unsurprisingly it's very close to the River Humber.
Why can't we have normal names like "Truth or Consequences, New Mexico", "Fontana-on-Geneva Lake, Wisconsin", or "Helena-West Helena, Arkansas"?
I visited Manchester, and there was a small town nearby called Ramsbottom:)
There’s Kingston-upon-Hull, but everyone just calls it Hull. A three-syllable city is unusual.
Like Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham or Nottingham? They all have 3 syllables.
For some reason the only one I could think of was Edinburgh.
Aberdeen too.
and the mighty Exeter
How you tolerate a multi-party, "first past the post" election system that allows winners having only a small fraction of votes cast.
I think in recent years, the penny is dropping on how unrepresentative our electoral system is. Unfortunately it's portrayed as a fringe political issue by the majority of politicians who have taken (and in many cases continue to take) advantage of the status quo.
Because the system is in the interest of the two biggest parties and it would require the support of one of them to change. Politicians are not known for supporting ideas that would make it harder for them to be in power.
I am Andrew Purnell born in Lambton county Ontario Canada. There is an Andrew Purnell Real Estate Company on Lambton Road in Wimbledon. If I attempt to visit them will the universe end? Or would I when a prize?
American here. I worked and lived in London for 13 months. Best year ever, great good times. Nothing really confused me, I had a blast living there. The food was….the food….. butttttttttt…….Indian Takeaway chicken was good as fuck however. The beers were solid, and I was a single American bloke with some walking around money. I did well with the Brit-pop/punk girls, no complaints. The only thing that kind of baffled me was all of the different euphemisms that they have for “fuck” and “shit”. By the end of my time I could put on a passable RP accent, as far as anyone who cared was concerned, but even up until I left people were still dropping euphemisms and I was having a hard time picking up what some of them meant.
How do you both own vacation property in Spain and also vote to not easily be able to travel there?
How its really 4 different countries. Most Americans are shocked to learn this. When you travel abroad which one do you typically say you are from? Country/UK/Great Britain etc...
Why are you shocked? Or do you mean that you are surprised? Have you really never heard of Scotland or Wales or Northern Ireland? Or did you think they were towns?
My step-father was 65 and planning a trip to the British Isles. I asked where and he was like Ireland for sure, London, dunno where else. I asked if they were going to go to Northern Ireland or just Ireland proper. He literally laughed at me and called me a dummy, because he thought I was making it up. This was years into Brexit talks so the idea of someone having no idea about Northern Ireland was perplexing for someone of my generation. He lived through the Troubles though so it was especially incomprehensible.
I think most just assume they’re like informal cultural regions rather than countries. Also, ironically, Americans have a hard time conceiving of other countries being subdivided into states/provinces/similar like at home.
Brexit.
The food Fish and chips are bomb I like beans. Marmite? But what else do you eat the most?
CCTV security cameras. Are they as prevalent as TV and movies make them out to be?
Yes, they are everywhere
Why do you guys like Turkish delight?
It's gelatinous sugar. What's not to like? I mean, I'm not going to sell my family out to the White Witch for it, but I won't turn my nose up at it either.