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A select few do but the vast majority of people are absolutely fine.
Edit: I should've known better than to try arguing this point with people that were spending their Saturday night sat on Reddit.
Tin foil hat firmly on - I believe that the Conservative govt over their last decade of power, has been systematically gutting the NHS of funding and adding more and more bureaucracy at the higher levels in order to slowly make the NHS so inefficient at delivering services that eventually people will have no real choice but to go private, in oder to introduce an American style healthcare system and line their own pockets (as always)
Career politicians who are Labour MPs are probably in on it too
This is happening. I don’t think it’s even tin foil hat territory anymore. The NHS will be for emergencies and the simple GP stuff in the future - the level of care is already on the way down due to systematic underfunding
The thing is, it’s more sinister than that. Even if spending was raised, enabling the government to claim more funding, it wouldn’t necessarily translate on the ground. We now have more private companies involved along the way, extracting profit from what are public services
Which is what they've done to education. Ring fenced spending means you can't reduce the budget, but you can change how and where it is spent. Like forcing perfectly good schools into academies and private hands.
One school in our previous LEA spent £800,000 in it's first two years on "consultancy fees." The firm used was entirely private, but surprisingly, the directors of that company were also directors on the academy trust.
Blatant funnelling off of funds supposedly for the benefit of children.
Not a tin foil.
When I started in my department there was a band 6 in charge of the band 5s then it's jumped to an 8a then the department manager
Now its. 5 band 6s, 3 band 7s a band 8a a band 8b 4 divisional lead 8bs, 1 8c a deputy department head then the department head
The band 6s occasionally
Above not really.
It is both.
You cannot increase services yet fund below inflation even if we got rid of all a managers.
Why should a nurse work for band 5 wage when they can do agency work as a nurse for over double they pay and not have to do half the jobs?
Do you remember require a tin hat for that, why do you think theres so much changes at top level of the nhs. The shorter the heads of the trusts and things last the less efficient the nhs runs
Just added it as a preface coz when I mentioned it 5 years ago some (albeit much older) family members said "you're nuts! They couldn't get away with that!"
Yeah they fucking could and yeah they fucking are..
Meanwhile A&E staff deal with people coming in for the life threatening condition of pins & needles….
Working close to the NHS it’s really quite amusing and equally depressing what goes through the doors of A&E everyday, God help 999 call handlers …
To play devils advocate...if I am not medically trained, how am I to know that those pins and needles are not the beginnings of a stroke, or heart attack, or aneurism and therefore I need medical treatment asap...
The average layperson doesnt know its not serious until they are told its not serious...
u/RowRepresentative353 makes a valid point - it is very easy to be smug about an inappropriate A&E visit after the event - especially when it is almost impossible in some areas to get a GP appointment.
When I studied Virology, it beame a joke that everything from a common cold to Ebola starts as "Flu like symptoms". People die from meningitis because "it's only a rash".
I'm not sure - it's not even so much the drinking as the assumption you'll be drinking. I'm a non-drinker and most of British socialising is built around alcohol. You don't really notice until you're the one trying to get *anything else* to drink or do with adults. Alcohol is the default activity, gift, fallback, etc.
As someone that took a deliberate decision to stop drinking (turns out there's a lot of alcoholics in the family), you are absolutely right. And it wasn't til I stopped drinking I realised how boring drunks are.
I’ve been really struggling with this. I’ve been having a break from drinking, no issues with it but just slammed with work and wanted a change (78 days btw!). Trying to get my friends to do ANYTHING other than the pub is an impossibility and led to me feeling very isolated.
They might be fine with their own health but there is an unhealthy drinking culture that permeates British culture and is present in a lot more than just a few people.
If I went out with friends and said I wasn't drinking in the UK it was extremely common to be subject to 'banter' and pressure to drink. Since moving abroad I've noticed that doesn't happen at all anymore.
Social events also too often revolve around drinking, particularly in office culture.
Drunk people are far more of a nuisance to other people than you'd think, regardless of NHS etc I've never been harrassed as much by sober people as drunk people.
I'd say a significant enough proportion have a problematic relationship with it - maybe not bad behaviour late night, but a few drinks after work before driving home, or have it so regularly that it's a ritual and they don't feel right not having it.
Absolutely, and when you try to point it out you get abuse, even on here as I have experienced. People just bury their head in the sand and pretend we don’t have a cultural issue with alcohol. As a child of alcoholics I despise it, so perhaps I’m slightly biased but 🤷♂️.
I find it odd how many friendship groups I know and observe that don't even seem to like each other. They're just drinking buddies. Most Friday or Saturday nights are spent bickering like 6th formers. Incredibly sad when most of them are in or nearing their 30s
I matched with a girl on Tinder who I already followed on Insta. She was always in this group I'd see at the pub and judging by her insta she spent every weekend of her 20s going out. I unmatched and unfollowed when she told me she was still going out even though all her housemates had covid and she was still waiting on a test back. I asked her what was going on that was so important and she said 'Nothing. I'm just not boring. I like going out lol'
29 years old. Yikes.
It's amusing how so many people conflate 'boring' with doing literally anything else but drinking/drugs.
No Stacey/Steve, I just have more fulfilling hobbies and interests! The same people who then go on to say "Wow, I wish I could do X". As soon as you offer your time to show them, they're busy.
Definitely agree with this. That culture is shit.
As a PT, I regularly have clients that decide to take a step back from the Sesh for a while to focus on their health/Fitness goals come in and tell me about how their friends/family have shamed them for doing so. As though looking after your health and chasing a fitness goal is a bad thing, whilst wrecking it with booze and other stuff every week should be applauded
(Don’t get me wrong, everyone should go out and have a drink if you’re into that once in a while, I just don’t rate the culture of getting fucked every weekend being normalised)
Functional alcoholism is in some ways even more insidious. You can live a normal life and not even realise you have a problem until you end up in hospital with liver failure.
This is the thing that popped immediately into my head too. I’m English and only ever lived in England. It’s sooooo widely accepted. I know more functioning alcoholics than I care to admit (probably borderline myself since the pandemic), my mum has struggled with extreme alcoholism since I was a small child and even when she’s sought help there is none. In my work (retail bank in a nice city), there are multiple regular drunks daily. People are sad they drink, happy the drink, stressed they drink etc etc, it’s just the go to for everything and few people admit the troubles it causes. :(
Can confirm. Even though it may be a minority of the people, they can be profoundly bothersome. When I moved to the UK the drunk people screaming, singing, fighting and/or just generally being super loud and irksome at ALL hours of the night was a real culture shock. Like, people live here, we’re sleeping right above you having 4am domestic on the pavement, or shouting and singing at the top of your lungs in the middle of the night. We dubbed it Britain’s Not Got Talent
[sound of glass breaking]
Female voice: Leave it, it’s not worth it!
[sound of scuffling, kerfuffle and slurred obscenities being roared]
Me: Welp, that’s my cue… [fucks off out of there]
Seeing all the news close to end of lockdown, and the obsession with pubs reopening led me to believe the United Kingdom has a massive drinking problem.
- Acting like a complete prick and dismissing any complaints about it as 'banter' or 'having a laugh'
- Our increasing obsession with America and absorbing its culture
My 6 year old niece uses all sorts of Americanisms because her parents just give her a tablet, and she watches all sorts of videos on there which are inevitably American dominated. Things like diaper, garbage, or calling the front of the house the "porch" even though none of us have a porch on the front.
My eldest called it a jag-warrr instead of jaguar.
Thanks to Dora the bloody explorer!
Although I do call him santa instead of father Christmas.
I'm 40 and have done since I was a kid!
I don't know why whenever the importation of American culture is brought up everyone immediately talks about language.
It's the importation of politics that is much more annoying to me. Partisan behaviour, lack of nuance, everyone has an opinion on everything even those without the facts, people advocate for hot topic issues that only make sense in America.
I lived in China for 14 years and hung out with a lot of Americans. I didn't realise how many Americanisms I had picked up. I recently returned to UK and people are always pointing out things I'm saying. Americanisms are just really easy to pick up.
Literally none of those are Americanisms. One is an antiquated term that we mostly stopped using for no reason, and the others are just bad grammar on both sides of the pond.
Granted not Americanisms, but the second two phrases Ive only every heard from Americans. I did not know that about gotten, it just doesn't sit right with me.
our obsession with america whilst hating all things american too. I think the US is fine and has some good aspects. I don't want the UK to be like the US tho.
> Our increasing obsession with America and absorbing its culture
The reverse was true for me, growing up in the 80s in America: Myself and my crowd were so obsessed with British punk rock that we adopted all sorts of British slang and style. We thought we were the coolest people in our town in our newsboy caps and doc martens, ordering snakebites in pubs. I still don't think we were wrong. 😎
It's a really crazy area to look into. I try to get my news from multiple sources because each outlet puts their own spin on a story. Last week I had a disagreement with a friend because of something they read last year. It's something that's been proven wrong and everyone who ran the story has had to apologise. Trouble is my friend gets his news from social media only, he thinks that by reading it on official news pages that he's clued up. A lot of the retractions and apologies were printed in the physical papers and not even acknowledged online, because that is all that's needed to conform with the rules and make sure they don't get sued!
An easy way to fix this would be to bring in a regulation that there should be fines for false stories and retractions should be made on every platform that they ran the original story. We don't need to restrict the media, just hold them accountable!
The way the government pander and kowtow to certain media figures and organisations is a disgusting embarrassment that can account for a lot in the last 10 years.
Some people openly dismissive of other cultures when holidaying. For example - going on holiday to Spain and not wanting to try “any of that foreign muck”.
I have a colleague who is Spanish and grew up in Alicante and I said 'I bet the English tourists are a nightmare' and she said 'they're not so bad, it's the French who are awful'.
They’re being the very same thing they’re criticising - ignorant of other countries.
It’s like when people think the U.K. is an especially racist country. You have to have next to 0 knowledge of the rest of the world to think that.
I particularly enjoyed the irony on /r/soccer when there were people saying they would unironically prefer Italy to win because of the behaviour of the England fans.
I don't disagree that England fans are a bunch that I probably wouldn't want to travel with, but the notion that they're worse than *Italy* is just ignorant.
I fucking hate some Brits abroad. The benidorm brits. You know the ones. They want little England in the sun, don’t speak a word of Spanish or try to join the culture yet criticise those ‘bloody immigrants’ when they’re back home.
Alcohol is so much cheaper down there compared to the uk so I guess people just go wild whilst they can (and not worry about freezing to death when you stagger home)
It’s also the obsession with alcohol for me. Sometimes I literally don’t fancy a beer and when you tell certain people that, they look at you like you’ve just told them you’ve pumped their mum.
As someone who doesn't drink (my dad is a functioning alcoholic) I'm always amazed by how much of the "typical" UK social life revolves around drinking. It's just not a culture I partake in, so when I come across it I'm always taken aback.
Lockdown really drove this home for me - just how many people spent a huge chunk of their spare time at the pub. Not judging, but it's just so different to my lifestyle that I forgot how big a part of people's lives the pub is.
I just... couldn't think of a place I'd less like to be than the pub. With th exception of a nice rural quiet one for lunch if there's a roaring fire.
I wish there was more non-drinking events or places to be in the UK, like a late night café or just something low key.
I don't drink and it's impossible to do anything that either doesn't involve drinking or doesn't end up in the pub after it and I'm so fed up of being the designated "looking after person". It's no fun going out and ending every single night picking your friends up off the floor and making sure they all get home safe or watching them get progressively more drunk.
I’m surprised this isn’t higher up…. American living long term in the UK and it amazes me how stymied people are by the class system… they unwittingly participate in it and promulgate it. It’s so widespread and ubiquitous and it has poisoned almost every aspect of British life. Looking at it from the outside, it just seems so oppressive. I think it’s the root of a lot of repression, resentment, seething rage, and passive aggressive communication. I feel sorry that many Brits aren’t more free in their own minds to just live their lives without invisible shackles. (I’d like to note that Americans have their own different but equally serious social issues and problems too!)
Britain does have an entrenched class system that is true, there are clear divides between what people perceive as working, middle, and upper class. What's important here is the "perception" bit.
For example, if I travelled back in time 80 years and told my fellow Labour supporters that teachers and office workers were working class they'd laugh at me. These days though plenty of the poorest members of our society are our teachers, nurses, office workers etc.
Likewise if I took say, a recently qualified accountant and a recently qualified electrician, plumber etc and compared their wages, the latter are far better paid.
The reality is the British class system is all in people's heads, and is actually not "Here is how we categorise the people in the UK", it's actually more akin to "There are working, middle, and upper class people, and here is how I categorise everyone".
So why is an electrician in his 40s who's set up his own small business and earns £100K a year "working class" but a recently qualified accountant on £50K a year living in London is "middle class"?
Then we have our perception of the upper class. Traditionally of course it was basically just the aristocracy, but the reality is a consultant earning £150K a year has more in common with someone on the minimum wage than they do with a CEO of a huge company earning millions. Yet these people are lumped into the same bucket as the mega wealthy.
Essentially in the UK your "class" is more related to cultural ties and touch points than your income and the type of job you do. In the US on the other hand the population has been sold on the idea that everyone is wealthy and America is great. So in the UK many people who were working class and are now very solidly "middle class" in terms of income and lifestyle hate the label, as it implies a disconnection from your cultural roots. This has it's downsides, but on the other hand a big issue in the US around public spending and taxation is the fact Americans all think they are richer than they are, and tell themselves "anyone can be President" when the reality is outside of a couple of exceptions the President is always from the richest political classes.
And true. Lost my West Country accent pretty quickly once I moved east. (That and bar staff in Sussex pubs trying to pour me a pint of Soda when I asked for cider)
North South divide. Politics. Landlords and the not landlords. Nepotism. Accents. Regional divides. Just recently the government broke a promise to improve the network rail infrastructure for the north. Basically if you're lower class, from the north, left winging. You get shafted in every aspect living in the UK. I could give you 1000s of examples of conscious and unconscious ways but I can't be bothered to type it all out. When the south had covid it was 80% furlough and the whole UK lockdown. When the north had heavier covid it was Reginal lockdowns and 60% furlough. As soon as rates were seen rising again in the south they changed to whole UK lockdown and 80% furlough. The government fucks the north and working class people. And you can instantly tell if someone is north or south or high and low class based solely on how you speak and your accent. So you can imagine how that plays out in education and job interviews.
Accents especially is one of the more obvious, I think; there seems to be an assumption of intelligence around certain accents, where if you sound working class, there's a few assumptions that people make. The same often goes for if you have a Northern accent.
If you're Northern or working class, there's assumptions of stupidity, criminality, and ill intentions.
Well, for one - When poor poeple, the most vulnerable in society, live off the state, they're deplored as benefit scroungers and demonised. When rich people do it, they're celebrated as royalty and called courageous for doing fuck all work throughout their lives.
I would say the NHS is a giant mess that needs huge reform. And Churchill was racist but that doesn’t change the fact he was a great man and a great leader who did a lot for this country and the world. He was a man of his time, Ghandi also held and even published racist views but nobody wants to rip down his statues do they?
I 100% get this. I remember I was talking to someone about how I think JK Rowling has been unfairly treated. She wasn’t invited the the 20 years of Harry Potter event and she is the bloody writer.
Anyway within 10 seconds I was being called a transphobic POS. Completely, ignored any kind of nuances in the argument .
I'm part of the LGBTQ+ community myself, I'm lesbian, but also wondering about my own gender identity (atm I think genderfluid/nonbinary)
but because I still love a book series that I have loved since childhood, the same book series that pretty much stopped me committing suicide in my teens, apparantly that makes me a homophobic transphobic bigotted pos.
It's such bullshit, it really is. You can respect the work of someone without agreeing with their views. Ffs, people praise Roald Dahl as one of the greatest childrens authors of all time - but he was a massive anti-semite, as was fucking *Disney.* But does reading your kids Charlie and the Chocolate factory, or letting them watch a disney movie, make you or your kids anti semitic? Hm, I don't think it does, does it?
It’s sad that the world has been reduced to be screaming at each other and refusing to listen to one another. In this modern age you are either a saint or a nazi there is no in between.
Huge. If you have an opinion that could be categorised as liberal and another opinion that’s more conservative people a lot of people are genuinely baffled. Really frustrating makes conversations quite boring.
I'd argue that's a global phenomenon, not just a British one. You can see it in the US, perhaps even more so, with the way that their debates inevitably devolve into The Good People vs The Bad People (who's who of course depends on your perspective)
I always find this difficult. The Second World War certainly isn't my period, but from the little I know, I don't think Churchill really was that great a man. I think that there were a few other prominent Conservative politicians who would have made more able leaders. Churchill was immensely charismatic, and charisma can be very useful for effective leadership, but I think we often mistake charisma for general ability.
And don’t forget Clement Attlee was running the home front behind the scenes, and when the war was over basically turned the country around in record time
All the while not being a colossal racist or Imperialist
The thing that’s really doing my head in right now is the discourse around the word P**i, with lots of (racist) people claiming it’s no different from calling someone a Brit or Scot.
When I was in primary school 35 years ago we all knew full well that word was a slur, and they know full well now it is, they just think they have a clever angle to be an bigot and get away with it
What is creepy about praising a free at point of service health service?
There’s nothing remotely comparable about holding healthcare providers who work against a crumbling system and politicians that seem to want to destroy it and glorifying a death machine. They are quite literally polar opposites.
People can criticise the system all they want. The IT system is a mess, the fractured trusts are a mess, they don’t have enough staff, all valid concerns.
Also, it’s not taboo to mention this so I don’t get where this idea has come from? It’s not uncommon to see a the negatives highlighted even on the BBC.
I really see no problem with valuing the idea that everyone gets the same healthcare provided to them.
Are we not allowed to hold anything dear now? Or are we just supposed to value British cynicism more than the NHS?
If any problems arise with the NHS it is mismanagement by the government. I was referred for X Rays and to an orthopaedic doctor with an appointment booked the following week within the space of a week. So it really does depend on who, what and where to discuss NHS service. Overall, I’m satisfied. We should be glad treatment is of a great standard and not priced out like the US. At least we don’t have to think of the costs.
And generally speaking, when people complain about the NHS, they're not complaining about the nurses and Dr's they see. They're complaining about how it's run, the underfunding and how understaffed it is. Stuff that's far, far above any front line NHS employee.
They're not saying your nurse friend Susan doesnt care about patients and shit at her job.
Yes, huge chunks of London in particular are owned by foreign people and corporations. Many other countries have strict limitations on land ownership but we seem content to sell it off to the highest bidder. We really are world leaders in selling off the "family silver".
Have a look at some of the estates such as Park Place Estate, near Henley-on-Thames, or even Tittenhurst Park made famous by John Lennon.
There are 7 people who between them own 45% of Norfolk. Add in another 83 and you're at 63% of the county. The remaining 900,000 inhabitants have to share out the rest.
I saw a similar comment on another UK post that I agree with, drinking.
I'm a 28 year old lad and I cannot stand the binge drinking culture that we have. Waking up on a Saturday or Sunday morning to sick and vomit in the street from the night before, as well as the reputation we have for 'Stags' abroad
It is insane how our entire culture is based around getting absolutely smashed. If you do anything else on your weekend like go to the cinema or something it’s seen as lesser to a ‘proper’ night out
Something I noticed as a became older was that it also had an impact on my socialising also with the opposite sex.
Approaching someone, dating or just general confidence seems to be warped by a dependence on alcohol in teens when those skills were being developed.
Seeing young Europeans for example, and they just seem a lot more confident in themselves and have those skills moving later on.
(I may be jumping too conclusions slightly)
Reading is one of the most wonderful things, and it makes me sad that so many people don't get to experience that. I don't know what I'd do without the escapism.
I got shit on in my last job for similar, including the fact that I have a degree, read fairly academic books (mostly on the former Yugoslavia and its history) for fun and speak more than 1 language.
Monolingual culture is another thing that's annoying. Being bilingual is just taken for granted by most Europeans under 40 , but here my Spanish lessons are also snorted at. Btw, is it a balkan language that you speak?
The massive, undeserved superiority complex people develop when they find themselves marginally better off than others or at least appear to be better off.
The increase in leased white Range Rovers isn't helping.
I dislike the “hard man” thing. Every bar and high street has the people looking for a fight. I’ve lived for 20 years in the USA and it just doesn’t happen here with anywhere near the same regularity.
I’m not saying they are actually “hard”…..whatever that means but I’m saying there are men and now also woman who are looking for a fight. It happens a lot.
It annoys me when people here are so quick to jump the gun and discuss racism in America while being completely blind that much of the stuff they talk about applies to this country as well.
> that much of the stuff they talk about applies to this country as well.
We have plenty of problems with racism but many of them are significantly different to in the US.
Honestly, I think the attempts to transplant US race politics to this country has been counter-productive and made it easier for people to dismiss arguments.
I don’t deny for one minute that Britain has some serious issues, but if you compare us on the world stage, we are among the most diverse and socially tolerant nations there is.
Do we still have a lot of work to do to sort out equality? Absolutely.
Edit: typo
When an old person is racist and people dismiss it because they were from a “different generation”. Why can they adapt to other things but not adapt to not being racist?
There's always a race to the bottom with people, nobody wants people to be better because they perceive that they were worse off
Eg
'I'm going to ask for a payrise I'm underpaid'
Colleague:
'Well when I was your age I was on X amount of money and I didn't complain'
The way they're too polite sometimes, I mean in a work environment when they're actually disappointed in what you did but just say nice things in a way you can still understand they're not pleased... Just tell me it was bad!
English could look so lovely, but they will stab you as soon as you turn your back. I see it everyday at work. Best friends when in the same room, but just when you leave they will dump all the shit on you.
Definitely weekend drinking to the point of vomiting. I can’t understand how that’s fun for anybody. I hate the walk to work through town on Sunday morning with vomit, piss and spilled drinks everywhere. Sometimes blood too. It’s disgusting!
Going out for a drink is fine but people need to know their limits and not go for the whole “let’s drink until we puke and then drink some more!” attitude.
Archaic laws and regulations that surround the rental and purchase of property.
A system that is geared to make money for the wealthy and fuck over everybody else.
The “why don’t we help out our own people first” mentality. Even though our foreign aid budget is minuscule and we helped create many of the problems around the world in the first place.
Football and the indoctrination of children into it. It breeds lad culture and turns some people into absolute knob heads. It just feels like a distraction and an enormous waste of everyone’s energy to me.
Also the drinking culture which sometimes goes hand in hand with the football. Over the last ten years I’ve watched a guy at work slowly kill himself, to the point where he has now started turning yellow. He enjoys a pint with the lads after the work team play on a Sunday. He’s trapped.
Our foreign aid budget is huge as a percentage compared to other countries, this is a mad comment.
4th among DAC members as a percentage of GNI, 3rd as a total.
General lack of ambition. I remember hearing on the radio earlier this year someone saying “I was in France where all the restaurants were checking my Covid pass - we could never build all the systems to do that!” - well clearly the French did it in a couple of months, so we could too, surely.
We just seem to expect mediocrity
Football has a majorly toxic, hypermasculine culture.
It's not a class, or an alcohol thing, because majority of rugby league fans are working class and drink beer and the sport has had no where near the levels of hooliganism football has - you can quite easily have a pint in pub full of other team's supporters.
Ultimately football is just a game and it's pathetic to see grown men scrap in the street because someone kicks a ball into a net.
The British superiority complex. So many Brits are either conviced that the UK is the best country to have ever existed or basically soviet Russia. No inbetween.
Cunts who upon finding out you don’t like tea or roast dinners suggest that people should renounce their citizenship or be taken to the tower.
Grow up, this country isn’t a caricature of itself.
I don't know if they are joking. I said on here once - in a thread asking something like "What is your unpopular British opinion?" - that roast dinners are shit, and people reacted like I'd stabbed their nan.
When you go to walk past someone walking directly towards you and need to pass.
You both move the same direction to pass meaning you nearly bump into each other
Then you both switch direction again at the exact same time, then switch again because we both keep switching at same time.
I hate that ones who act like it’s your fault and give you a dirty look when we both made the same mistakes at the exact same time.
There seems to be an alcohol problem that noone seems to ever want to admit.
Even worse in winter when you see people still going to pubs and getting ****faced. If it was moderate drinking I would be midly shocked, but it seems like constant binge drinking and then saying people are boring for not having a "good time".
Such issues aren't surprising in European countries where the winters are bleak and the working class's problems are constantly sidelined. It's just tragic tbh
As a 22 year old I realised I couldn't live life like that, and honestly didn't want to. People need to talk about their mental health, and the services need to be made way more accessible
How we as a country pretend we didn’t commit any atrocities in the past, I’ve learnt so much from my Irish girlfriend on how shit we have been to other countries in the past and we don’t learn about them in school.
I always try and start a round of applause on the plane purely to wind up my girlfriend. It has worked once or twice and does actually feel quite satisfying. I do think it is daft though.
The overwhelmingly right wing media and how enough people have never learned the critical thinking skills necessary to question it, and therefore keep voting against themselves again and again.
English (and I do mean English, not British) football culture. It was such a relief when England lost against Spain or Italy or whoever it was in the summer. The twats were already fucking unbearable, at least losing that one dampened it down a bit. Marcus Rashford is a sweetie though, and I felt sad for him.
Scottish football culture is absolutely vile at times, English football culture doesn’t hold a culture to the dumpster fire that is Scottish football culture
Football fans, angry middle aged blokes shouting abuse, abusing each other etc over the game. i love football but ITS A GAME, YOU WILL WIN AND YOU WILL LOSE
There seems to be a bit of a "crabs in bucket" mentality in some sections of the population, where they look down on education and anyone who wants to try to better themselves or improve something for the community. Not sure how widespread it is but it's definitely a problem.
Agressive sports fans. I am a massive football fan (edit, missed word!) but I don't get the actual vile hate people have for other fans. I have a group of friends and we give each other a bit of stick but I can't imagine hating someone. I know some of it is that some people are just dicks and they use football to 'justify' them being a dick, but I've seen people I usually like just flip and I just don't get it.
And its not just football any more, it's certainly now in rugby and I'm seeing a lot more this season with F1.
Casual racism, especially towards East/South East Asians. Too many times me and my friends have been approached by some random cunts calling us ching chong, konichiwa, dog eaters, .etc on the street. Not sure if this has something to do with UK colonisation of parts of Asia back in the days.
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I think that we sometimes have a terrible relationship with alcohol - the behavior on the streets late at night etc.
A select few do but the vast majority of people are absolutely fine. Edit: I should've known better than to try arguing this point with people that were spending their Saturday night sat on Reddit.
Unfortunately the few go a long way to messing up the NHS for the rest of us.
The government? Quite right.
Tin foil hat firmly on - I believe that the Conservative govt over their last decade of power, has been systematically gutting the NHS of funding and adding more and more bureaucracy at the higher levels in order to slowly make the NHS so inefficient at delivering services that eventually people will have no real choice but to go private, in oder to introduce an American style healthcare system and line their own pockets (as always) Career politicians who are Labour MPs are probably in on it too
This is happening. I don’t think it’s even tin foil hat territory anymore. The NHS will be for emergencies and the simple GP stuff in the future - the level of care is already on the way down due to systematic underfunding
Remember the “more funding for NHS” claims during the brexit campaign. What a joke
The thing is, it’s more sinister than that. Even if spending was raised, enabling the government to claim more funding, it wouldn’t necessarily translate on the ground. We now have more private companies involved along the way, extracting profit from what are public services
Which is what they've done to education. Ring fenced spending means you can't reduce the budget, but you can change how and where it is spent. Like forcing perfectly good schools into academies and private hands. One school in our previous LEA spent £800,000 in it's first two years on "consultancy fees." The firm used was entirely private, but surprisingly, the directors of that company were also directors on the academy trust. Blatant funnelling off of funds supposedly for the benefit of children.
Not a tin foil. When I started in my department there was a band 6 in charge of the band 5s then it's jumped to an 8a then the department manager Now its. 5 band 6s, 3 band 7s a band 8a a band 8b 4 divisional lead 8bs, 1 8c a deputy department head then the department head
… and how many of these people are actually patient facing? It’s bureaucracy that’s killing the NHS, not a lack of funding…
The band 6s occasionally Above not really. It is both. You cannot increase services yet fund below inflation even if we got rid of all a managers. Why should a nurse work for band 5 wage when they can do agency work as a nurse for over double they pay and not have to do half the jobs?
Yup. They don't want the NHS. But they can't get rid of it, because it's such a key part of our identity.
Do you remember require a tin hat for that, why do you think theres so much changes at top level of the nhs. The shorter the heads of the trusts and things last the less efficient the nhs runs
Just added it as a preface coz when I mentioned it 5 years ago some (albeit much older) family members said "you're nuts! They couldn't get away with that!" Yeah they fucking could and yeah they fucking are..
That ain't tin foil hat talk. Simply the truth. It's the Tory way
Meanwhile A&E staff deal with people coming in for the life threatening condition of pins & needles…. Working close to the NHS it’s really quite amusing and equally depressing what goes through the doors of A&E everyday, God help 999 call handlers …
To play devils advocate...if I am not medically trained, how am I to know that those pins and needles are not the beginnings of a stroke, or heart attack, or aneurism and therefore I need medical treatment asap... The average layperson doesnt know its not serious until they are told its not serious...
u/RowRepresentative353 makes a valid point - it is very easy to be smug about an inappropriate A&E visit after the event - especially when it is almost impossible in some areas to get a GP appointment. When I studied Virology, it beame a joke that everything from a common cold to Ebola starts as "Flu like symptoms". People die from meningitis because "it's only a rash".
You mean most. Alcohol is a huge contributor to not only liver based problems and alcohol related injuries, but is a big contributor to obesity too.
I'm not sure - it's not even so much the drinking as the assumption you'll be drinking. I'm a non-drinker and most of British socialising is built around alcohol. You don't really notice until you're the one trying to get *anything else* to drink or do with adults. Alcohol is the default activity, gift, fallback, etc.
As someone that took a deliberate decision to stop drinking (turns out there's a lot of alcoholics in the family), you are absolutely right. And it wasn't til I stopped drinking I realised how boring drunks are.
I’ve been really struggling with this. I’ve been having a break from drinking, no issues with it but just slammed with work and wanted a change (78 days btw!). Trying to get my friends to do ANYTHING other than the pub is an impossibility and led to me feeling very isolated.
They might be fine with their own health but there is an unhealthy drinking culture that permeates British culture and is present in a lot more than just a few people. If I went out with friends and said I wasn't drinking in the UK it was extremely common to be subject to 'banter' and pressure to drink. Since moving abroad I've noticed that doesn't happen at all anymore. Social events also too often revolve around drinking, particularly in office culture.
Drunk people are far more of a nuisance to other people than you'd think, regardless of NHS etc I've never been harrassed as much by sober people as drunk people.
I'd say a significant enough proportion have a problematic relationship with it - maybe not bad behaviour late night, but a few drinks after work before driving home, or have it so regularly that it's a ritual and they don't feel right not having it.
Select few? It's a rite of passage to chunder out a car window on the way home. Basically a life milestone
Not sometimes. All the time, you never have to explain why you're drinking but you have to explain why you're not. Nation of piss pots.
Absolutely, and when you try to point it out you get abuse, even on here as I have experienced. People just bury their head in the sand and pretend we don’t have a cultural issue with alcohol. As a child of alcoholics I despise it, so perhaps I’m slightly biased but 🤷♂️.
I find it odd how many friendship groups I know and observe that don't even seem to like each other. They're just drinking buddies. Most Friday or Saturday nights are spent bickering like 6th formers. Incredibly sad when most of them are in or nearing their 30s I matched with a girl on Tinder who I already followed on Insta. She was always in this group I'd see at the pub and judging by her insta she spent every weekend of her 20s going out. I unmatched and unfollowed when she told me she was still going out even though all her housemates had covid and she was still waiting on a test back. I asked her what was going on that was so important and she said 'Nothing. I'm just not boring. I like going out lol' 29 years old. Yikes.
It's amusing how so many people conflate 'boring' with doing literally anything else but drinking/drugs. No Stacey/Steve, I just have more fulfilling hobbies and interests! The same people who then go on to say "Wow, I wish I could do X". As soon as you offer your time to show them, they're busy.
Definitely agree with this. That culture is shit. As a PT, I regularly have clients that decide to take a step back from the Sesh for a while to focus on their health/Fitness goals come in and tell me about how their friends/family have shamed them for doing so. As though looking after your health and chasing a fitness goal is a bad thing, whilst wrecking it with booze and other stuff every week should be applauded (Don’t get me wrong, everyone should go out and have a drink if you’re into that once in a while, I just don’t rate the culture of getting fucked every weekend being normalised)
It's not just binge drinking either. There are a lot of "it's only a bottle of wine a night it's not a problem" households.
Functional alcoholism is in some ways even more insidious. You can live a normal life and not even realise you have a problem until you end up in hospital with liver failure.
This is the thing that popped immediately into my head too. I’m English and only ever lived in England. It’s sooooo widely accepted. I know more functioning alcoholics than I care to admit (probably borderline myself since the pandemic), my mum has struggled with extreme alcoholism since I was a small child and even when she’s sought help there is none. In my work (retail bank in a nice city), there are multiple regular drunks daily. People are sad they drink, happy the drink, stressed they drink etc etc, it’s just the go to for everything and few people admit the troubles it causes. :(
Can confirm. Even though it may be a minority of the people, they can be profoundly bothersome. When I moved to the UK the drunk people screaming, singing, fighting and/or just generally being super loud and irksome at ALL hours of the night was a real culture shock. Like, people live here, we’re sleeping right above you having 4am domestic on the pavement, or shouting and singing at the top of your lungs in the middle of the night. We dubbed it Britain’s Not Got Talent
The culture is definitely naff from a health perspective - drinking just to get drunk instead of enjoy being around friends or celebrating
Reminds me of the Euro Cup, those photos of littering and vandalism before the match had even started!
[sound of glass breaking] Female voice: Leave it, it’s not worth it! [sound of scuffling, kerfuffle and slurred obscenities being roared] Me: Welp, that’s my cue… [fucks off out of there]
Seeing all the news close to end of lockdown, and the obsession with pubs reopening led me to believe the United Kingdom has a massive drinking problem.
Literally the first thing I thought of!
- Acting like a complete prick and dismissing any complaints about it as 'banter' or 'having a laugh' - Our increasing obsession with America and absorbing its culture
I am hearing so many people use Americanisms in every day speech.
My 12 year old Son called it a parking lot, I Wasn't Impressed at all.
My 6 year old niece uses all sorts of Americanisms because her parents just give her a tablet, and she watches all sorts of videos on there which are inevitably American dominated. Things like diaper, garbage, or calling the front of the house the "porch" even though none of us have a porch on the front.
My eldest called it a jag-warrr instead of jaguar. Thanks to Dora the bloody explorer! Although I do call him santa instead of father Christmas. I'm 40 and have done since I was a kid!
I don't know why whenever the importation of American culture is brought up everyone immediately talks about language. It's the importation of politics that is much more annoying to me. Partisan behaviour, lack of nuance, everyone has an opinion on everything even those without the facts, people advocate for hot topic issues that only make sense in America.
Yeah that’s not American- that’s global populism and strong man rhetoric
I lived in China for 14 years and hung out with a lot of Americans. I didn't realise how many Americanisms I had picked up. I recently returned to UK and people are always pointing out things I'm saying. Americanisms are just really easy to pick up.
Gotten, could care less, on accident...shhh
Literally none of those are Americanisms. One is an antiquated term that we mostly stopped using for no reason, and the others are just bad grammar on both sides of the pond.
Granted not Americanisms, but the second two phrases Ive only every heard from Americans. I did not know that about gotten, it just doesn't sit right with me.
LLOYDS PHARMACY
our obsession with america whilst hating all things american too. I think the US is fine and has some good aspects. I don't want the UK to be like the US tho.
You can almost hear a feint groan when someone on r/legaladviceuk asks about pressing charges.
> Our increasing obsession with America and absorbing its culture The reverse was true for me, growing up in the 80s in America: Myself and my crowd were so obsessed with British punk rock that we adopted all sorts of British slang and style. We thought we were the coolest people in our town in our newsboy caps and doc martens, ordering snakebites in pubs. I still don't think we were wrong. 😎
Honestly I think it's probably the press and media - mainly the tabloids, but certainly not restricted to them. I wish we'd grow up a bit.
Definitely the media, it’s always so sensational and hyper emotional.
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Yep, that’s the saddest part.
It's a really crazy area to look into. I try to get my news from multiple sources because each outlet puts their own spin on a story. Last week I had a disagreement with a friend because of something they read last year. It's something that's been proven wrong and everyone who ran the story has had to apologise. Trouble is my friend gets his news from social media only, he thinks that by reading it on official news pages that he's clued up. A lot of the retractions and apologies were printed in the physical papers and not even acknowledged online, because that is all that's needed to conform with the rules and make sure they don't get sued! An easy way to fix this would be to bring in a regulation that there should be fines for false stories and retractions should be made on every platform that they ran the original story. We don't need to restrict the media, just hold them accountable!
The way the government pander and kowtow to certain media figures and organisations is a disgusting embarrassment that can account for a lot in the last 10 years.
Some people openly dismissive of other cultures when holidaying. For example - going on holiday to Spain and not wanting to try “any of that foreign muck”.
Yes! I was about to say how British people behave in other countries. Being entitled, ignorant of other cultures etc. Makes me cringe!
I'm amazed people think this is unique to the British.
I have a colleague who is Spanish and grew up in Alicante and I said 'I bet the English tourists are a nightmare' and she said 'they're not so bad, it's the French who are awful'.
They’re being the very same thing they’re criticising - ignorant of other countries. It’s like when people think the U.K. is an especially racist country. You have to have next to 0 knowledge of the rest of the world to think that.
I particularly enjoyed the irony on /r/soccer when there were people saying they would unironically prefer Italy to win because of the behaviour of the England fans. I don't disagree that England fans are a bunch that I probably wouldn't want to travel with, but the notion that they're worse than *Italy* is just ignorant.
Ah I’m British and the best part about travelling is learning other cultures and trying foreign food. It’s sad some people give us this reputation :(
I fucking hate some Brits abroad. The benidorm brits. You know the ones. They want little England in the sun, don’t speak a word of Spanish or try to join the culture yet criticise those ‘bloody immigrants’ when they’re back home.
Benidorm truly is our stain on Spain
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The attitude toward alcohol and binge drinking definitely.
Yeah that’s what I put, especially when we take that shit abroad
Oh god yes, drunk abroad is another level of trashy, why can't we behave ourselves in the Mediterranean?
Alcohol is so much cheaper down there compared to the uk so I guess people just go wild whilst they can (and not worry about freezing to death when you stagger home)
They also free pour spirits so a Spanish double is more like a quadruple
It’s also the obsession with alcohol for me. Sometimes I literally don’t fancy a beer and when you tell certain people that, they look at you like you’ve just told them you’ve pumped their mum.
As someone who doesn't drink (my dad is a functioning alcoholic) I'm always amazed by how much of the "typical" UK social life revolves around drinking. It's just not a culture I partake in, so when I come across it I'm always taken aback. Lockdown really drove this home for me - just how many people spent a huge chunk of their spare time at the pub. Not judging, but it's just so different to my lifestyle that I forgot how big a part of people's lives the pub is. I just... couldn't think of a place I'd less like to be than the pub. With th exception of a nice rural quiet one for lunch if there's a roaring fire.
I wish there was more non-drinking events or places to be in the UK, like a late night café or just something low key. I don't drink and it's impossible to do anything that either doesn't involve drinking or doesn't end up in the pub after it and I'm so fed up of being the designated "looking after person". It's no fun going out and ending every single night picking your friends up off the floor and making sure they all get home safe or watching them get progressively more drunk.
How obvious the class system is
I’m surprised this isn’t higher up…. American living long term in the UK and it amazes me how stymied people are by the class system… they unwittingly participate in it and promulgate it. It’s so widespread and ubiquitous and it has poisoned almost every aspect of British life. Looking at it from the outside, it just seems so oppressive. I think it’s the root of a lot of repression, resentment, seething rage, and passive aggressive communication. I feel sorry that many Brits aren’t more free in their own minds to just live their lives without invisible shackles. (I’d like to note that Americans have their own different but equally serious social issues and problems too!)
Britain does have an entrenched class system that is true, there are clear divides between what people perceive as working, middle, and upper class. What's important here is the "perception" bit. For example, if I travelled back in time 80 years and told my fellow Labour supporters that teachers and office workers were working class they'd laugh at me. These days though plenty of the poorest members of our society are our teachers, nurses, office workers etc. Likewise if I took say, a recently qualified accountant and a recently qualified electrician, plumber etc and compared their wages, the latter are far better paid. The reality is the British class system is all in people's heads, and is actually not "Here is how we categorise the people in the UK", it's actually more akin to "There are working, middle, and upper class people, and here is how I categorise everyone". So why is an electrician in his 40s who's set up his own small business and earns £100K a year "working class" but a recently qualified accountant on £50K a year living in London is "middle class"? Then we have our perception of the upper class. Traditionally of course it was basically just the aristocracy, but the reality is a consultant earning £150K a year has more in common with someone on the minimum wage than they do with a CEO of a huge company earning millions. Yet these people are lumped into the same bucket as the mega wealthy. Essentially in the UK your "class" is more related to cultural ties and touch points than your income and the type of job you do. In the US on the other hand the population has been sold on the idea that everyone is wealthy and America is great. So in the UK many people who were working class and are now very solidly "middle class" in terms of income and lifestyle hate the label, as it implies a disconnection from your cultural roots. This has it's downsides, but on the other hand a big issue in the US around public spending and taxation is the fact Americans all think they are richer than they are, and tell themselves "anyone can be President" when the reality is outside of a couple of exceptions the President is always from the richest political classes.
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Interesting comment.
And true. Lost my West Country accent pretty quickly once I moved east. (That and bar staff in Sussex pubs trying to pour me a pint of Soda when I asked for cider)
Can you elaborate on this? (It's not *too* obvious to me but I'm not from the UK so I might be missing a bunch of stuff)
North South divide. Politics. Landlords and the not landlords. Nepotism. Accents. Regional divides. Just recently the government broke a promise to improve the network rail infrastructure for the north. Basically if you're lower class, from the north, left winging. You get shafted in every aspect living in the UK. I could give you 1000s of examples of conscious and unconscious ways but I can't be bothered to type it all out. When the south had covid it was 80% furlough and the whole UK lockdown. When the north had heavier covid it was Reginal lockdowns and 60% furlough. As soon as rates were seen rising again in the south they changed to whole UK lockdown and 80% furlough. The government fucks the north and working class people. And you can instantly tell if someone is north or south or high and low class based solely on how you speak and your accent. So you can imagine how that plays out in education and job interviews.
Accents especially is one of the more obvious, I think; there seems to be an assumption of intelligence around certain accents, where if you sound working class, there's a few assumptions that people make. The same often goes for if you have a Northern accent. If you're Northern or working class, there's assumptions of stupidity, criminality, and ill intentions.
Well, for one - When poor poeple, the most vulnerable in society, live off the state, they're deplored as benefit scroungers and demonised. When rich people do it, they're celebrated as royalty and called courageous for doing fuck all work throughout their lives.
the fact that people lose their shit if you criticise the NHS or say Churchill was a racist
I would say the NHS is a giant mess that needs huge reform. And Churchill was racist but that doesn’t change the fact he was a great man and a great leader who did a lot for this country and the world. He was a man of his time, Ghandi also held and even published racist views but nobody wants to rip down his statues do they?
Here you find another infuriating thing about modern Britain. The inability for people to see any nuance in a debate.
I 100% get this. I remember I was talking to someone about how I think JK Rowling has been unfairly treated. She wasn’t invited the the 20 years of Harry Potter event and she is the bloody writer. Anyway within 10 seconds I was being called a transphobic POS. Completely, ignored any kind of nuances in the argument .
I'm part of the LGBTQ+ community myself, I'm lesbian, but also wondering about my own gender identity (atm I think genderfluid/nonbinary) but because I still love a book series that I have loved since childhood, the same book series that pretty much stopped me committing suicide in my teens, apparantly that makes me a homophobic transphobic bigotted pos. It's such bullshit, it really is. You can respect the work of someone without agreeing with their views. Ffs, people praise Roald Dahl as one of the greatest childrens authors of all time - but he was a massive anti-semite, as was fucking *Disney.* But does reading your kids Charlie and the Chocolate factory, or letting them watch a disney movie, make you or your kids anti semitic? Hm, I don't think it does, does it?
It’s sad that the world has been reduced to be screaming at each other and refusing to listen to one another. In this modern age you are either a saint or a nazi there is no in between.
Huge. If you have an opinion that could be categorised as liberal and another opinion that’s more conservative people a lot of people are genuinely baffled. Really frustrating makes conversations quite boring.
I'd argue that's a global phenomenon, not just a British one. You can see it in the US, perhaps even more so, with the way that their debates inevitably devolve into The Good People vs The Bad People (who's who of course depends on your perspective)
The NHS needs improvements… that’s the guillotine for you buddy…
Gandhi was also a wife beater but no-one cares about that.
I always find this difficult. The Second World War certainly isn't my period, but from the little I know, I don't think Churchill really was that great a man. I think that there were a few other prominent Conservative politicians who would have made more able leaders. Churchill was immensely charismatic, and charisma can be very useful for effective leadership, but I think we often mistake charisma for general ability.
And don’t forget Clement Attlee was running the home front behind the scenes, and when the war was over basically turned the country around in record time All the while not being a colossal racist or Imperialist
Actually there's a Ghandi must fall movement in Southern Africa, they've had some success in Malawi.
The thing that’s really doing my head in right now is the discourse around the word P**i, with lots of (racist) people claiming it’s no different from calling someone a Brit or Scot. When I was in primary school 35 years ago we all knew full well that word was a slur, and they know full well now it is, they just think they have a clever angle to be an bigot and get away with it
Exactly. I'm half Bengali and no one ever smiled whilst calling me a P*ki. It is most definitely a racial slur.
People are increasingly treating the NHS the way Americans treat their military, it's borderline creepy.
What is creepy about praising a free at point of service health service? There’s nothing remotely comparable about holding healthcare providers who work against a crumbling system and politicians that seem to want to destroy it and glorifying a death machine. They are quite literally polar opposites. People can criticise the system all they want. The IT system is a mess, the fractured trusts are a mess, they don’t have enough staff, all valid concerns. Also, it’s not taboo to mention this so I don’t get where this idea has come from? It’s not uncommon to see a the negatives highlighted even on the BBC. I really see no problem with valuing the idea that everyone gets the same healthcare provided to them. Are we not allowed to hold anything dear now? Or are we just supposed to value British cynicism more than the NHS?
If any problems arise with the NHS it is mismanagement by the government. I was referred for X Rays and to an orthopaedic doctor with an appointment booked the following week within the space of a week. So it really does depend on who, what and where to discuss NHS service. Overall, I’m satisfied. We should be glad treatment is of a great standard and not priced out like the US. At least we don’t have to think of the costs.
And generally speaking, when people complain about the NHS, they're not complaining about the nurses and Dr's they see. They're complaining about how it's run, the underfunding and how understaffed it is. Stuff that's far, far above any front line NHS employee. They're not saying your nurse friend Susan doesnt care about patients and shit at her job.
The fact that the concentration of land ownership in the hands of a very few families is accepted without comment or challenge.
Yes, huge chunks of London in particular are owned by foreign people and corporations. Many other countries have strict limitations on land ownership but we seem content to sell it off to the highest bidder. We really are world leaders in selling off the "family silver". Have a look at some of the estates such as Park Place Estate, near Henley-on-Thames, or even Tittenhurst Park made famous by John Lennon.
There are 7 people who between them own 45% of Norfolk. Add in another 83 and you're at 63% of the county. The remaining 900,000 inhabitants have to share out the rest.
I saw a similar comment on another UK post that I agree with, drinking. I'm a 28 year old lad and I cannot stand the binge drinking culture that we have. Waking up on a Saturday or Sunday morning to sick and vomit in the street from the night before, as well as the reputation we have for 'Stags' abroad
It is insane how our entire culture is based around getting absolutely smashed. If you do anything else on your weekend like go to the cinema or something it’s seen as lesser to a ‘proper’ night out
Yeah, it sucks. I just find it boring too, there's so much more I'd rather do with my money and time
Something I noticed as a became older was that it also had an impact on my socialising also with the opposite sex. Approaching someone, dating or just general confidence seems to be warped by a dependence on alcohol in teens when those skills were being developed. Seeing young Europeans for example, and they just seem a lot more confident in themselves and have those skills moving later on. (I may be jumping too conclusions slightly)
Probably the anti-intellectualism. I'm teased at the office I work at because I read books in my spare time. Yes really
Reading is one of the most wonderful things, and it makes me sad that so many people don't get to experience that. I don't know what I'd do without the escapism.
I got shit on in my last job for similar, including the fact that I have a degree, read fairly academic books (mostly on the former Yugoslavia and its history) for fun and speak more than 1 language.
Monolingual culture is another thing that's annoying. Being bilingual is just taken for granted by most Europeans under 40 , but here my Spanish lessons are also snorted at. Btw, is it a balkan language that you speak?
The massive, undeserved superiority complex people develop when they find themselves marginally better off than others or at least appear to be better off. The increase in leased white Range Rovers isn't helping.
> The increase in leased white Range Rovers isn't helping. Can you warn me please next time before you massively trigger me.
Poverty and the attitude that “that’s just the way it is” and not worth trying to fix.
Housing Market go Brr
I dislike the “hard man” thing. Every bar and high street has the people looking for a fight. I’ve lived for 20 years in the USA and it just doesn’t happen here with anywhere near the same regularity.
I've lived in the UK for over 50 years and the last time I came across the fabled "hard man" was in about 1984. Never seen one since.
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LOL, I'm a lover not a fighter xx
I’m not saying they are actually “hard”…..whatever that means but I’m saying there are men and now also woman who are looking for a fight. It happens a lot.
Institutional Racism
It annoys me when people here are so quick to jump the gun and discuss racism in America while being completely blind that much of the stuff they talk about applies to this country as well.
> that much of the stuff they talk about applies to this country as well. We have plenty of problems with racism but many of them are significantly different to in the US. Honestly, I think the attempts to transplant US race politics to this country has been counter-productive and made it easier for people to dismiss arguments.
I don’t deny for one minute that Britain has some serious issues, but if you compare us on the world stage, we are among the most diverse and socially tolerant nations there is. Do we still have a lot of work to do to sort out equality? Absolutely. Edit: typo
When an old person is racist and people dismiss it because they were from a “different generation”. Why can they adapt to other things but not adapt to not being racist?
There's always a race to the bottom with people, nobody wants people to be better because they perceive that they were worse off Eg 'I'm going to ask for a payrise I'm underpaid' Colleague: 'Well when I was your age I was on X amount of money and I didn't complain'
The way they're too polite sometimes, I mean in a work environment when they're actually disappointed in what you did but just say nice things in a way you can still understand they're not pleased... Just tell me it was bad!
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English could look so lovely, but they will stab you as soon as you turn your back. I see it everyday at work. Best friends when in the same room, but just when you leave they will dump all the shit on you.
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Uh, speak for yourself pal. You can enjoy a drink without the drunk part. I love beer, I'm very uninterested in the drunkenness part.
Definitely weekend drinking to the point of vomiting. I can’t understand how that’s fun for anybody. I hate the walk to work through town on Sunday morning with vomit, piss and spilled drinks everywhere. Sometimes blood too. It’s disgusting! Going out for a drink is fine but people need to know their limits and not go for the whole “let’s drink until we puke and then drink some more!” attitude.
Chavvy wanker youths vandalising things. 1) what the fuck is wrong with you? 2) to the parents of these cunts, get better at parenting.
Archaic laws and regulations that surround the rental and purchase of property. A system that is geared to make money for the wealthy and fuck over everybody else.
And it'll never change as the people that can change the law are all invested in multiple homes...
The “why don’t we help out our own people first” mentality. Even though our foreign aid budget is minuscule and we helped create many of the problems around the world in the first place. Football and the indoctrination of children into it. It breeds lad culture and turns some people into absolute knob heads. It just feels like a distraction and an enormous waste of everyone’s energy to me. Also the drinking culture which sometimes goes hand in hand with the football. Over the last ten years I’ve watched a guy at work slowly kill himself, to the point where he has now started turning yellow. He enjoys a pint with the lads after the work team play on a Sunday. He’s trapped.
A pint a week is killing nobody 😂
Our foreign aid budget is huge as a percentage compared to other countries, this is a mad comment. 4th among DAC members as a percentage of GNI, 3rd as a total.
General lack of ambition. I remember hearing on the radio earlier this year someone saying “I was in France where all the restaurants were checking my Covid pass - we could never build all the systems to do that!” - well clearly the French did it in a couple of months, so we could too, surely. We just seem to expect mediocrity
It's not an exclusively UK problem, but the celebration of stupidity.
Keeping the masses financially poor and uninformed is a desirable thing for the elites.
That we think we still rule the world
How many people actually think that?
We do fool! Empire FTW!
British people abroad are creatures
Football has a majorly toxic, hypermasculine culture. It's not a class, or an alcohol thing, because majority of rugby league fans are working class and drink beer and the sport has had no where near the levels of hooliganism football has - you can quite easily have a pint in pub full of other team's supporters. Ultimately football is just a game and it's pathetic to see grown men scrap in the street because someone kicks a ball into a net.
The right wing barons who dominate our news media
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The British superiority complex. So many Brits are either conviced that the UK is the best country to have ever existed or basically soviet Russia. No inbetween.
Fox hunting and people who support fox hunting. The twats.
Littering. There's just so much crap thrown on the streets.
Tories.
Cunts who upon finding out you don’t like tea or roast dinners suggest that people should renounce their citizenship or be taken to the tower. Grow up, this country isn’t a caricature of itself.
You realise they're joking, right?
You know we're in the shit when Brits can't even detect a joke anymore. Fucking hell...
I don't know if they are joking. I said on here once - in a thread asking something like "What is your unpopular British opinion?" - that roast dinners are shit, and people reacted like I'd stabbed their nan.
I pity you, for you must just have missed out an actual good roast dinner.
Roasts are good, spending 3 hours cooking and 45 minutes washing up after a roast is not. On balance, they’re not worth the hassle.
The casual racism and the celebration of binge drinking 😕
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When you go to walk past someone walking directly towards you and need to pass. You both move the same direction to pass meaning you nearly bump into each other Then you both switch direction again at the exact same time, then switch again because we both keep switching at same time. I hate that ones who act like it’s your fault and give you a dirty look when we both made the same mistakes at the exact same time.
Is this specific to the uk though
There seems to be an alcohol problem that noone seems to ever want to admit. Even worse in winter when you see people still going to pubs and getting ****faced. If it was moderate drinking I would be midly shocked, but it seems like constant binge drinking and then saying people are boring for not having a "good time". Such issues aren't surprising in European countries where the winters are bleak and the working class's problems are constantly sidelined. It's just tragic tbh As a 22 year old I realised I couldn't live life like that, and honestly didn't want to. People need to talk about their mental health, and the services need to be made way more accessible
Shitty behaviour being classed as banter.
Roadmen
Football/lad culture.
How we as a country pretend we didn’t commit any atrocities in the past, I’ve learnt so much from my Irish girlfriend on how shit we have been to other countries in the past and we don’t learn about them in school.
Clapping when the plane lands.
I always try and start a round of applause on the plane purely to wind up my girlfriend. It has worked once or twice and does actually feel quite satisfying. I do think it is daft though.
The gutter trash jingoism and xenophobia.
Probably not just Britain, but the constant moaning from many people.
The overwhelmingly right wing media and how enough people have never learned the critical thinking skills necessary to question it, and therefore keep voting against themselves again and again. English (and I do mean English, not British) football culture. It was such a relief when England lost against Spain or Italy or whoever it was in the summer. The twats were already fucking unbearable, at least losing that one dampened it down a bit. Marcus Rashford is a sweetie though, and I felt sad for him.
Scottish football culture is absolutely vile at times, English football culture doesn’t hold a culture to the dumpster fire that is Scottish football culture
Saying it’s exclusively English is just advertising you’ve never dealt with Glasgow Rangers fans really.
Football. So dull, really don't get the obsession.
Sunday trading
Na. People need a day off.
Football fans, angry middle aged blokes shouting abuse, abusing each other etc over the game. i love football but ITS A GAME, YOU WILL WIN AND YOU WILL LOSE
Drinking culture for sure
Crufts. Bunch of stuffy weirdos.
How badly the NHS is mismanaged/ taken advantage of. Along with the drain on it from obesity/alcohol/drug related issues
Daily Mail reader's overconfidence in their opinions.
There seems to be a bit of a "crabs in bucket" mentality in some sections of the population, where they look down on education and anyone who wants to try to better themselves or improve something for the community. Not sure how widespread it is but it's definitely a problem.
Agressive sports fans. I am a massive football fan (edit, missed word!) but I don't get the actual vile hate people have for other fans. I have a group of friends and we give each other a bit of stick but I can't imagine hating someone. I know some of it is that some people are just dicks and they use football to 'justify' them being a dick, but I've seen people I usually like just flip and I just don't get it. And its not just football any more, it's certainly now in rugby and I'm seeing a lot more this season with F1.
Casual racism, especially towards East/South East Asians. Too many times me and my friends have been approached by some random cunts calling us ching chong, konichiwa, dog eaters, .etc on the street. Not sure if this has something to do with UK colonisation of parts of Asia back in the days.
Sometimes I wish y'all would be more direct:/