U.S.A. = George W. Bush, traffic jams, poor national cycling program, and can be a bit too prudish regarding sex at times.
Still, home sweet home for me. Have to take the good with the bad.
Some things that Ruadh & jjimm forgot about Ireland.
- All anyone does is drink
- Anyone outside Dublin thinks Dubliners are shite
- Anyone inside Dublin thinks country-people are shite
- The weather is shite
- The weather is shite
- The weather is shite
- The weather is shite
- The weather is shite
- And the weather is shite
That is all.
I’m from Singapore. Here’s why.
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We have the SARS rap, a horrible blight on the face of the earth.
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The government actually grades public toilets.
But besides that, it’s okay.
you got everything I was going to say, except for
- Public transport. We have the makings of a great system (if we can ever finish it), but the mismanagement of it is startling. I dread qwhat will happen if it gets privatised.
One more note on the PD’s. I think they actually are the PNAC, run by Thatcher.
Summers that are too hot winters that are too cold.
A lack of any decent form of opposition in Parliment means we have to keep electing the same yahoos…
oh by the way None of your prime ministers come close to Creepy Uncle Jean and his inability to speak coherantly in both official languages.
I submit his wonderful answer to what constitutes the type of proof required for Canada to back an attack on Iraq back in Sept
High Taxation
A neglected military
Too much regional infighting
Not enough Holidays…
Really lackluster attempts at home grown entertainment (Stomping Tom excluded from this grousse of course)
Not having a Stanley cup winning team in almost a decade!!!
Having to live with THOSE people south of us… 
more about ireland… we’re making it sound like a shithole…
Protectionism in various industries (particularly pubs) leading to profiteering
The way that the road distances are posted in km, but speed limits are posted in mph
Superpubs…
And as above, corruption among elected representatives, crap public transport, the weather etc.
The Tierra Del Fuegans?
I can’t run to the local 7-11 for Kinder Eggs or Stroopwafels.
Another Canadian view…
Unelected Senate
No effective opposition
Corruption throughout the bureaucracy (Immigration review board judges bribed etc.)
No effective government
No effective parliament
Policy and appointments (Supreme Court, Senate, crown corporations, embassies, etc.) doled out by the PM or his office (PMO)
RCMP appear to by tied far too closely with the PMO
Massive mismanagement of public funds (+1 Billion on a gun registry that was suppose to cost 2 million, 1 Billion lost through a human resources department, etc.)
Rust out issues with military hardware
Rust out issues with Healthcare
Excessive taxes for supplied services
Rampant self image crisis that can only be relieve by a beer commercial
Smug moral superiority to everyone else
No actual proof of smug moral superiority to everyone else
Knee jerk anti-Americanism
The long hot humid bit of the too short summer
The long slushy grey damp bit of the too long winter
Regional misunderstanding
Regional bitching
Undervalued dollar
Whole federal departments dedicated to “Canadian Cultural Encouragement”
Continual threat of Quebec separation
No Canadian Stanley cup for more than 10 years
Complete bi-polar disorder when the Canadian Hockey teams play internationally
Excessive dependency on the US for economic livelihood
That’s about it for right now. Thanks. I needed that. 
More stuff that sucks about Canada, Ontario, and Toronto:
A climate where:
- people die of heat stroke during the summer.
- other people freeze to death in the streets during the winter.
- sucky wet weather in between
- about a month total of really decent weather.
Mosquitoes the size of chihuahuas, and the further north you go, the bigger they get.
Too many beggars on the streets, and no coherent idea what to do about it.
Enough levels of government to enable infighting and collective aviodance of responsibility until Doomsday.
A provincial government that has consistently underfunded the cities, yet refuses to give then the tools to do the job themselves. As a result, the cities are falling apart and tourism is down.
This same provincial governemnt repealed electricity-conservation efforts, did not build new power plants, brought in a botched privatisation scheme, and as a result, our electricity supply is strained to the limit and we maty have blackouts this summer! This in the provice that made Hydro (-electricity) a household word!
A goofball mayor who puts his foot in his mouth and embarasses the city. (Shaking hands in public with the Hells Angels was the least of it…)
A provincial governmnet that spoke of decentralisation and personal responsibility, but then promptly centralised all political power over education in the Ministry of Education, resulting in underfunded schools and eternal warfare between teachers and the Ministry.
A provincial government that “downloaded” of the responsibility for many provincial highways to municipalities. Not such a bad idea theoretically, perhaps, but as part of this, highways were renumbered to reflect the change of “ownership”. As a result, a decades-old system of consistent route numbering bewteen population centres was destroyed, we had to redo all the maps, and more people get lost than ever before.
A provincial government that cut back the Ministry of the Envirinment’s water-quality controls and instituted industry self-regulation, and, as a result, people died from water contaminated by pig-farm runoff at Walkerton.
Thank the Goddess there are municipal and provincial elections in the fall…
Australia. Let’s go:
We’re falling back into an intolerant, scared culture that hates the outside world, doesn’t think about the future and is forgetting its mistakes. Australia has some ugly features to its history - poor treatment of Aboriginals and the White Australia policy heading the list, but for a while there, things were looking really great. Australia didn’t just say that we were a tolerant, accepting melting pot of cultures, we also went a long way towards showing it. We celebrated our diversity, we began important steps toward reconciliation with the Aboriginal people and, with the republican movement, we were becoming a completely independent country.
Then at the end of the '90s, we started regressing. The government adopted “wedge” policies, dividing the community and fostering hatred for their own electoral purposes. Intolerance grew rapidly, conservative wowsers began imposing prudish censorship on the media we were allowed to consume (things could be shown on Australian TV in the '70s that networks are not allowed to show today) and we adopted US brown nosing as foreign policy. We rejected multilateralism and international law by invading a foreign country.
We’re nowhere near as laid-back as we once were, or are portrayed. We have a government intent on destroying a reasonably successful health system, making worse an average educational system and locking up 14 year olds who haven’t committed a crime.
We have an Australian who has been imprisoned by a foreign country without being charged for the past 18 months, who is finally being given a trial in a kangaroo court where he will not be able to choose his own legal representation, will not be able to privately converse with his lawyer and could be sentenced to death if found guilty. Even if found not guilty, there is the possibility that he will not be freed. Our government won’t assist him or even support his right to a fair trial.
We have an opposition too incompetent to oppose the government. We give ridiculous subsidies to farmers too stupid to realise that dry, dusty areas that commonly suffer drought aren’t good places to try and farm. Our economy relies far too much on mineral resources and farming when we could be focussing on things that really make a lot of money. Did you know that we used to send rockets up in to space? Now we only dig stuff out of the ground, send it to other places where other countries work out how to make it useful, then sell it back to us at a substantially hgher price.
What’s more, it’s expensive to get to other countries because they’re so far away and it’s expensive to get to other cities because they’re so far away. In most places we don’t have proper seasons, resulting in a yearly cycle of summer, really hot summer, summer and dull and rainy with intermittent summer. Summer’s really great and all, but I think I’d really appreciate it if I had time to miss it. Sure, there are a few places where a reasonable winter can be found, but these tend to not be very populated.
Because it’s so hard to get here, many cool bands pass us by. It’s 5 or 6 years since Radiohead were last here! U2 missed us on their last tour.
I have to clear this up. While the HoS is irrelevent to the day-to-day lives of your average Australian, the identity of that head of state is only argued by rampant Monarchists who find that their support of Australia remaining subservient to another country is unplatable to the general community. So they pretend that the Queen isn’t really our Head of State, she just approves her representative to be.
Even more sucky stuff about Canada:
A non-completed metric conversion. A former Conservative federal government halted the 80%-complete metric conversion, just before a number of importent items were to change: paper sizes and real estate, for example.
As a result, I went to an architecture school where we dimensioned all our plans in millimetres, but all the lumber was sized in Imperial. Floor area is still advertised in square feet, but highway distances are in kilometres, and god help you if you have to read a lot plan. We’ve taught our people metric for thirty years, but there’s still enough Imperial to confuse, and don’t mention the differences between Imperial and US Customary…
Finish the *&^%%$ conversion!
You do remember that the U.S. was founded by a bunch of British colonists who unpatriotically rebelled against the Mother Country, right? I’d have to say it’s in our blood.
The one thing that drives me absolutely crazy about the U.S. is the general apathy about politics, both domestic and foreign. Everybody bitches, but nobody votes.
More awful stuff about the Netherlands: People don’t drive on bicycles as much as they used to.
Diane I’d be happy to send you ‘stroopwafels’ and - what the heck- kindereggs [though these are German ;)] No, I’m not begging for your address. P.O. box or addy of your great-aunt will be fine.
That’s true but I wasn’t just talking about everyone here watching British TV. I also meant things like greater coverage being given to EPL games than to League of Ireland games, stuff like that.
Thought of another one: we don’t get enough international tv shows. It’s improving a bit with BBC America, but even that channel’s usually taken up with those stupid home improvement shows, of which we’ve already created American counterparts on TLC (Trading Spaces/Changing Rooms anyone?)
When I lived in England we saw British, American and Aussie programs in a fairly good mixture. Here in the US though, we get American, American, and American tv.
Oh, and most of our tv sucks.
You’re right, I neglected the positive factors.
I sincerely hope you enjoyed your stay. 
CANADA
The worst thing about Canada… we are in a real bad neighbourhood… the Ozzie who was complaining about not bordering another country should be counting his/her blessings.
Now, there are a LOT of annoying things about Canada, but the worst is definitely the neighbours… maybe we should build a spite fence.
ditto just about everything said about the U.S.
And:
Outdated currency/coinage system, with the coins worth too little. Also the monochrome paper currency, though that’s due to start changing.
So where would you suggest then? Jeez if thats what we want give us a fucking break will ya?
Oh and not all of us want to visit cultural hotspots or museums, maybe us students wanna go get smashed in the hot sunshine not too far away from home…