Observations about England

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve just moved back to England, having last lived here for a year over a decade ago. (I’m American.) Some mundane, pointless observations I need to get off my chest:

  • You’re still not mixing your taps? Why?? I know there MUST be a good reason, but I can’t think of it. I’m always scalding one hand and freezing the other. Yeah, yeah - I get that you’re supposed to plug the sink then mix the water in the bowl, but how practical is that?

  • “TO LET” signs still make me think for half a second that you are advertising a “TOILET.”

  • People are really friendly. I was in town the other weekend with a friend and at least three people stopped to ask if we needed help.

  • Your roads, I’m sorry to say, are terrible - narrow and bumpy and inconsistent.

  • The countryside is beautiful. (I’m in East Anglia, to be not-so-exact.)

  • Many of the towns are also beautiful - hedge rows, thatched roofs, pleasant lanes, pretty architecture. Some towns, though (a minority), are very run-down.

  • I’ve heard more warnings about crime than I have in any other country I’ve been to in in western Europe, though less so than in the US.

  • In the US I was taught that [some] women’s habit of turning every sentence into a question is a sign of insecurity and internalized sexism. But most Brits - male and female alike - do that too, don’t they? They can’t help themselves, can they? They turn everything into a question - d’ye know what I mean? Kind of annoying, innit?

  • Taxes for everything! Council tax, road tax, TV tax…

  • Everyone complains about the trains, but so far they’ve worked perfectly well for me.

  • The populace seems to be almost uniformly well-traveled. Even your seemingly backwards, uneducated people who in the US would have probably never left their home state have typically been to Spain, Greece, somewhere in the Middle East…

  • The rain is kind of ridiculous. Okay, I guess it’s the time of year. But the first week I was here it almost never seemed to stop drizzling, and even when it did it wasn’t for long enough for anything to get dry!

  • Everyone in the world apparently wants to be here. There are so many Eastern Europeans, Portuguese, Spaniards, Indians, Nigerians, Americans, Canadians, South Africans… I don’t know if the statistics bear it out, but there seem to be more foreign-born people here than in most European countries I’ve been to.

  • The obsession with roundabouts takes some getting used to. I was driving somewhere today and must have gone through five different ones in about as many minutes.

  • Your radio programs seem to be excellent. Every time I flip through the stations there’s something interesting on.

  • Cheese and pickle sandwiches are…delicious.

That’s it for now.

2

Oh, one more:

  • I really and truly can’t understand some of you Brits! I’m not being rude; my ear is just not accustomed to hearing all your various accents. I often have to pay close attention to get what you’re saying.
3

Rodgers, most of your observations are spot-on to me. Especially, the questions? I don’t know why most of their sentences are questions? Know what I mean?

The crime warnings though, notice how the stories are about people getting brain-damaged from beatings. As you know, here in the U.S. we just shoot them. I don’t know which style of violence is worse.

I do miss being there at Christmas. It’s just a lovely time, at least in Bristol.

4

I like how you have

  • Taxes for everything! Council tax, road tax, TV tax…
  • Everyone complains about the trains, but so far they’ve worked perfectly well for me.

next to each other.

Yep. Welcome to Britain. It’s half way between America and Europe, in so many ways.

5

Apart from the TV licence fee, which isn’t technically, a tax, it is far from apparent to me that America has fewer types of of taxes, or types of things that are taxed, than Britain does (or most other first world countries, come to that). Certainly your other examples, Council Tax and Road Tax, have their equivalents in America. A lot of types of tax are payed to the state in America, rather than to the national government, but hardly seems relevant. Overall levels of taxation are probably higher in Britain, but I doubt whether there are significantly more, and (given the lack of a “state” level of government) there may well be significantly fewer, actual different taxes to deal with.

Also, roundabouts are very good way to keep traffic flowing through junctions, and are pretty simple and intuitive to use. It is a mystery to me why America, with its car culture, and all its traffic problems, has taken so long to catch on to them, although, from what I hear, they are lately (and belatedly) becoming much commoner there.

The beauty of the countryside (such as it is) is largely a *result *of all the rain.

6

If you think we have too many roundabouts, go visit Milton Keynes. Then you’ll know what too many roundabouts is.

Don’t worry about the accents- I grew up here, and there are several I can’t understand at all.

7

I feel that you can hope for additional pleasant experiences in this line, when visiting other parts of the country. Scenery-wise, East Anglia is generally regarded as low-lying and a bit dull, though often quite pretty – much of England is hillier, and more visually rewarding.

Here in the UK, that intonation is often regarded as an Australian thing – its use by many people, especially the young, is ascribed to over-exposure to Australian soaps on TV.

You should have been here a bit over fifty years ago: back then, passenger rail lines ran almost everywhere in the land. An enormous rail mileage has been closed down since those times.

Without wanting to get into the acrimonious-debates realm: this is a circumstance which many Britons are not altogether happy about.

Well, whatever turns you on…

8

East Anglian roads are particularly bad by British standards (I am also in East Anglia). In fact, the entire East of the country is a lot less developed compared to the West, from my observations.

I own a house less than 2 years old and all taps are mixer taps. I’ve not seen any house built in the last decade that doesn’t have mixer taps.

9

This strikes me as a bit odd, because these so-called tag questions are not real questions, but in my experience are used to assume your agreement with the statement they just made: “Nice day, and if you don’t agree with it, something must be wrong with you!”

As opposed to Australians, who use inflection to make everything sound like a question: “Good day?”

But I agree with all your other points!

10

As a native, allow me to respond

yeah, that is silly. I much prefer mixers and they are becoming more common but more would be better.

they can be, a legacy of pre-motorised vehicles and lack of space, however, having driven in many first-world countries I can say that the actual quality of driving and safety of the roads are very, very high.

Difficult one to gauge this one, I don’t think about crime at all when I’m in the UK other than simple security precautions, but I confess I feel safer about my property when I’m places like the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland etc. e.g. I don’t bother locking my bike over there but would here.

It’s what you get used to. I know in the US you still have property fees, car registration fees, to get any type of reasonable TV selection you need cable or similar, you also have sales taxes that get tacked on, pretty much compulsory tipping for a very wide variety of services. You just stop seeing the extras after a while as it is just the price of accessing society.

weather is a national obsession, simply because we don’t get too many severe natural events of any type so we have to make the best of anything remarkable we do have.

Quite possible. We are the original mongrel nation and a ride on the London underground is to experience enormous diversity. Other cities and rural areas…less so.

And had there been 4 way junctions it would have taken you twice as long. Seriously. Roundabouts are the most efficient way of controlling such intersections.

Radio 4 and particularly “Test Match Special” are our lasting legacy to the world.
you can get it online around the world, I urge people to dip into it, it is particularly wonderful.

Well quite, and of course the UK has a greater variety of cheeses than even France. I big it up for Cotherstone cheese, a variety local to my birthplace. Not really suitable to go with pickle but very much recommended to go with a rich fruit Christmas cake.

11

Surely the usual stereotype within Britain is that the east (at least the south east, where London, and most of the people are) is urban and modern, whereas the west is mostly bumpkin country. In reality there is probably not a discernible difference in terms of how modern they are, but the idea that anyone would regard the west of England as more “developed” than the east (in anything but cider making) is quite bizarre to me.

Admittedly, East Anglia, specifically, is sometimes considered bumpkin country too (by Londoners and other urbanites, anyway), but not the east as a whole.

12

I thought the big divide in England was between north and south in this regard.

13

Yes, but I was responding to Capt. Ridley’s Shooting Party. Traditionally, southerners regard the north as “undeveloped” (urban and industrial, but run-down and outdated) and northerners regard southerners as effete. Of course, it is all bull, as anyone with half a brain knows. An American would not notice much difference, except for accents.

14

I wonder if the OP is renting an older property. New houses and houses that have had any renovations done in the last 20 odd years all have mixer taps. Of course landlords aren’t always renowned for their eagerness about splashing out on new bathrooms and kitchens.

Thing about East Anglia is that it’s really rural and undeveloped. Heck the biggest ‘city’ is Ipswich, with a population of c.130,000. Hence there’s isn’t a lot of investment in transport infrastructure.

15

I have been everywhere in the UK except for Wales. Have made several trips there for vacations and I have enjoyed every minute of it. If I had to move to a different country other than the US, I would love to live in London. Great place.

16

Oo Aar, that be roit enough…

…it sounds better in my terrible Somerset accent

It’s the Fenlanders dragging the rest down.

17

I love, love, love the public transport in London anyway - I live in St. Louis, MO and the public transportation is terrible.

What the hell is with the rain that falls sideways in the countryside? There’s no using an umbrella to avoid that.

I really like the notion of towel warmers. When you get out of the shower (and lots of places have just a shower attachment to the tub, your towels are nice and cozy. Not many places in the U.S. have those.

I like that in Europe in general, international travel is lots more common and much, much easier.

18

Hey ! I come originally from that part of England :frowning: : no, it’s true that those parts have something of a reputation. Some folk believe, or suspect, that Fenland denizens have webbed feet…

19

Rodgers, is it difficult getting used to driving on the other side of the road?

20

I lived in England from 1988 to 1992 so I might have a couple of insights.

Mixing taps. Look around outside. Do you see any water towers? Probably not. Many homes and buildings have a reservoir in the attic to keep the water pressure steady and provide some water in case of an outage. Some of these reservoirs can be down right nasty with dead birds, dirt, and things in them. The only safe drinking water is usually from the cold water tap in the kitchen! It’s connected directly to the main water supply and not from the reservoir. That’s why you don’t want the taps mixed as least in the kitchen. I lived in a house build in 1989 and it was true then.

Think WC instead of To Let!

They are building more and more roundabouts where I live near St. Louis. They just completed a very nice double roundabout that has really fixed a problem intersection that had 4 sets of traffic lights before. As another poster mentioned Milton Keynes has a crazy amount of roundabouts. I had the pleasure of driving there a few times.