Well in Pommyland that would be “hooverving”
I have also heard “'luxing”
And me dear old Mum used to Pledge the furniture
Regarding chocolate, Hersey’s dark chocolate and almond nuggets are pretty darn good. We also have the specialty shops where you can get wonderful truffles.
The commas set apart a phrase. The cheese, not the country, is out of this world.
No its not because, if you put the pieces back together, you have to declare that they are one again and most people don’t believe that .999…= 1.
I had no idea! How cool - I will try to look into it - sounds interesting. Thanks!
Vacuuming
Don’t mistake the WNBA or MLS as “major” sports leagues followed by the mainstream American sports fan; I’m not ripping on soccer, as a matter of fact Im a “card carrying” Son of Ben for the Philadelphia Union, but MLS teams get away with it because 1)major soccer teams from around the world do it and most MLS fans are soccer fans already and the MLS is trying to do all it can to look like a “European” league so American die-hard soccer fans dont care that logos are pasted all over their jerseys (they actually look cooler on soccer jerseys, anyway) and 2)MLS teams need the money more than the teams from the other “major” four team sports do (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL). As for the WNBA, NO ONE watches or cares.
The reason the 4 sports teams won’t put sponsors on their uniforms is because there is no promotion or relegation, if you own one of the 152 major league sports franchises in North America, you don’t need that extra $50 million from Apple or Samsung to buy that extra player in return for plastering their name over the hallowed “Dodgers” logo. Even if your team sucks, you are guaranteed a spot in the Premiership, and if you bleed money, hell you can sell your team for half a billion dollars. American sports fans know this, and any such move would be viewed as unbearably cynical. Plaster the “Bimbo” bread logo on the Philadelphia Union jersey? Hell, I ran out and bought one the next day. If I see “Bimbo” on the Philadelphia Phillies uniform with its 140 year history? Thats a reason to step outside.
As for NASCAR, NASCAR truly is a meritocracy; if your team doesn’t do well, you lose guaranteed spots in major races and might end up drummed out of the Sprint Cup. So sponsorship money IS crucial to financing a teams success—theres no guarantee that even the top drivers will have a spot in next years competition if things go south for them. It requires a lot of high risk capital to put a car on the track and getting sponsors to finance “your ride” is an old tradition and custom in stock car racing, and that is why shameless sponsorship and shilling is widely accepted in racing, especially NASCAR, which has about as a targeted demo audience as you will find in sports, to the point some fans will buy one product over another just because their favorite driver is sponsored by it.
As for stadiums being named after sponsors, while a mild lament, at this point so many of them are new, and were built in order to keep our teams from moving, we see it as a sacrifice in order to not see our team moved to Memphis. That said, notice Fenway Park, the new Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field, Lambeau Field have all resisted being renamed for sponsors.
I’ve never understood why people have such a hard time writing “1/3”.
It’s quite entertaining, but I do wish some Americans wouldn’t carry on like their country invented politics.
Possibly this is a uniquely English (Not watched TV in the rest of the Union) perception because the main BBC channels are commercial-free (or was, last I checked)? I wouldn’t say ad-free, but it’s all ads for other shows 
Pity us poor South Africans, we have the same mandatory licence fee setup as the BBC but also ads on our nationalized channels.
It’s vacuuming in South Africa
That whole electoral college thing is a bit bonkers, yes. It’s absolutely absurd that your vote counts more depending where in the country you live.
Hmmm. It sounds like the President of South Africa is not directly voted into office, but rather appointed by the the party who wins the most votes in the election. Not unlike Canada and the UK, from what I can tell.
What makes the electoral college any more bonkers than this?
The rest of the Union have exactly the same television as England (by and large - they have regional variations of the same channels that might have different programming).
The BBC does have ads for it’s own brand but they never appear during a show - all shows/movies etc air on the BBC in their entirety, any ads are after the show has finished and before the next one begins.
In the US, it’s possible for who’s President to not reflect the will of the majority of the population - just the majority of the states, which is not the same thing at all.
ETA - and we know who the presidential candidate for each party will be when we vote, so it’s not like we can vote for a party and they then spring a surprise president on us.
The UK actually has a larger disparity between constituencies than anything in the electoral college. The Isle of Wight has five times the population of Na h-Eileanan an Iar, but still gets just one measly MP. (Texas, the most underrepresented state, has 3.6 times the population per elector as Wyoming.)
That’s true for any country where the head of government is selected on the basis of a result in multiple geographic divisions. I’d prefer if we didn’t select our president that way, but the possibility of losing with a majority of the vote isn’t some uniquely American concept. I haven’t counted but it might be the norm in democracies. (Likewise, apportionment on the basis of something other than strict one person-one vote is pretty common too. Again not my favorite thing, but not some uniquely American oddity either.)
On US thing I find weird is that speeding a few mph over the limit on freeways is considered a routine thing to do, especially when the choice is speed or annoy all the other drivers who are also speeding.
That and no, we don’t consider your African-Americans to be African. Not in the slightest. That “Returning to the Motherland” schtick just makes a lot of us laugh at you. Especially when you do it in South or East Africa.
In a first-past-the-post parliamentary system the Prime Minister isn’t even directly voted for. He, or she, is simply a Member of Parliament running for election in one riding only, and the party winning the election can have as little as 30% of the popular vote and still form a government.
The percentage of the population who actually directly votes for the Prime Minister must be something like 1%. We vote for our own Members of Parliament (MPs) in our own ridings. The party who wins the most number of elected MPs gets a chance at forming the next government.
You want to talk about the leader of the country not getting his (or her) share of the popular vote?