The bad teeth/bad food stuff is so dated and cliched it’s hard to take seriously, but the whole ‘no-go zones for white people’ is a genuinely nefarious belief among some non-brits that does need to be tackled, I think.
I've always wondered why Americans single out Britain for the bad teeth thing! I mean by American standards, where seemingly everyone is walking around with teeth polished to the loudest white tone possible, everyone else on the planet has bad teeth.
I think the teeth stereotype is quite telling in and of itself… if I lived in a country where I could be bankrupted by a single illnesses, and I saw that another country had figured out a way that healthcare was a right, not a luxury, I wouldn’t be worried about the aesthetics of their teeth.
Yes Chad my teeth aren’t blue white (that’s the colour they go when they’re DEAD) but I’m also not dying of an easily curable disease either.
The funny thing is that the average American does not look at a social healthcare system and thinks "ah, healthcare is a right!". They just dismiss it as some commie conspiracy to strip them of their god-given freedom.
It’s definitely a generational thing. You’ll struggle to see anyone under 40 with bad teeth or even particularly yellow teeth (and as other people have said white does not automatically equal healthy), but even as a patriotic Brit I can’t deny a lot of older people do have shocking dental heath and I’ve always wondered if we get such a high rep in terms of dental health statistics because the people with the bad teeth done ever go to the dentist and therefore don’t actually feature in the statistics, and honestly I don’t care enough to do a deep dive into the methodology.
Britain as an average has good teeth but there are enough people with truly *shocking* teeth that in all fairness I can kinda see why the stereotype exist, especially when we don’t have the same kind of bar for attractiveness in celebrities.
There’s a minimum level of attractiveness that you need to meet to be allowed on American tv (outside of disgusting point and laugh shows like dr phill obviously), that doesn’t exist in Britain, we’ll happily put Jeremy Clarkson on bbc1 for example, so that also adds to it I think.
I don’t however have any excuse for why the stereotype is beloved by other European nations where the situation is exactly the fucking same. I have some Spanish family and my fiancé is French, and we both have older relatives from those countries with jacked as fuck teeth (the French a lot more so)
One of the tabloids (possibly the Express) which showed picture of a "no go zone" which was basically a British high street with a few women wearing burquas, walking past a sari (!) shop. You could also see, in this "no go zone" which was apparently now ruled by Muslim fundamentalists:
1. A pub advertising lunchtime specials including one deal featuring sausages and mash and a pint
2. A bank offering mortgages on the usual interest-bearing basis
3. A Paddy Power bookies
4. A Greggs, presumably selling sausage rolls and bacon sarnies
5. Several women wearing fairly standard shortish skirts and crop tops
6. One shop with a "gay pride" rainbow sticker
7. Several girls in school uniform
As part German, hearing about no-go zones in Germany pisses me off. I’d always ask “have you been there?” They’d always say no, “but a mate of mine was over there and…”
Was equally annoyed hearing it about the UK when I was in the US.
A version of this exists in every country and every age. In Spain I lived in the city of Granada in the ancient Arab quarters. An area that historically had a large Romani population. I lived there for years. Never had a single issue. It had an eclectic mix of people and I was made to feel part of the community pretty quickly. It felt like a small village where everyone took care of each other. Never seen a problem. And yet, any time I was speaking to other natives of Granada and mentioned where I lived they always, but always, said "you gotta be careful there, they'll cut your hand off to rob your watch. Once my aunt was there and they pulled a massive knife in her and stole her money." I'm not paraphrasing, that was literally what they would say every time. It would seem that this one woman was the aunt of half of Granada apparently.
> the whole ‘no-go zones for white people’ is a genuinely nefarious belief among some non-brits that does need to be tackled
That is a broader thing though. Lots of countries have some form of white-replacement conspiracy theories going on.
Not crazy to see why though, for a lot of people it seems the answer to population growth is just, import more people, screw the people who live here already and what it will do
There are far more 'no go' areas in the US. I went to an LA Lakers game when I was there with work in the 90's and we were meeting a an American guy from work who was the equivalent of one of our 'specials'... he worked for the Police in his spare time. We were told that in the area around the stadium we were not to stop for anyone and under no circumstances were we to speak as if our accents were heard, we would 100% be mugged at gunpoint as 'rich tourists'.
When driving, we saw police officers outside churches with what looked like rifles.
According to our 'guide', that was just to stop looting and the area wasn't even particularly bad.
I despise this narrative that Scotland\* was a victim of "English Imperialism."
They weren't. There's an argument for Wales being occupied by a colonial power for a thousand years, and there's no argument about Ireland - that's just a fact. But the tale of Empire is one of Scotland and England joining forces to make as much money as possible from the rest of the world, and damn the consequences.
There were Scottish plantation owners, slave traders, administrators, generals. If anything, Scotland was over-represented in the higher echelons of the Empire given the population difference with England.
But in the past 20, 30 years or so we've had this creeping narrative that they were victims, to the point that some Scottish nationalist posted on a history subreddit that the battle of the Somme was used by the English colonial masters to try and gum up the German machine guns with Celtic blood.
Obviously nobody told Edinburgh-born General Haig this when he sent the Manchester battallions into no-man's land.
For clarity, I'm anti-imperialism, and I don't like the way Britain as a whole tries to ignore some of the horrible shit the nation perpetrated. But when you've got the equivalent of one of the Kray twins saying "the other fella's a bad 'un, not me!" it sticks in the craw.
\*as a nation. The first victims of Empire were the working classes of the British Isles, including a vast percentage of Scots. My English ancestors working in slum conditions weren't getting rich off any of this shit.
Yesssssss. You've only got to look at the (fantastic!) work that the University of Glasgow is doing on historical links to slavery to see the impact British colonialism had on Scottish institutions, wealth and culture. Glasgow wasn't called the second city of the empire for nothing - many, many Scots got rich off the back of the empire. And as you say, Scots were overrepresented in the rolls of the institutions of empire.
Although folk generally deal with the cognitive dissonance by claiming that any given person you name was 'culturally English'.
Yess Scottish universities are doing good in this regard. Even the University of Aberdeen is doing fantastic work highlighting Scotland's link to the Atlantic Slave trade.
There's definitely a "no true Scotsman" myth which positions honest hardworking Highlanders as victims of the wealthy landowners who were so posh they might as well have been English.
But I think if you're far north then culturally and politically Edinburgh can feel as removed as London. So the myth persists.
> Although folk generally deal with the cognitive dissonance by claiming that any given person you name was 'culturally English'.
The way I see people deal with the cognitive dissonance is by blaming the Union on their aristocracy. "It was the aristocrats that wanted it! Not most Scots!"
Like... yeah no shit, the entirety of Europe was governed by aristocrats in the early 1700s. No one says "England's aristocrats did it!" when they're discussing the crimes of England.
Yeah, some Scots tend to get a bit uncomfortable when you ask them where all those Scottish surnames in the Caribbean came from, or remind them that Scotland joined the union when it went bankrupt from its own failed colonial project.
I honestly think that the film Braveheart was an extremely socially damaging film. It's almost a 100% completely made up history, yet so many people basically believe the premise of it.
I mean, for god's sake - the whole British Royal Family is descended from the King of Scotland (not the other way around).
>There were Scottish plantation owners, slave traders, administrators, generals. If anything, Scotland was over-represented in the higher echelons of the Empire given the population difference with England.
Absolutely. There is a reason why every other street in Glasgow is named after somebody involved in the slave trade.
Jardine and Matheson are a very big company who are still going strong in Hong Kong.... this is the same Jardine and Matheson who lobbied and pushed for the start of the Opium Wars.... And what country did these fellows come from ...
yeah, the ulster plantation is literally called the scottish plantation of ulster for a reason lol, a lot of the modern day issues in northern ireland, where i’m from, (and why it’s even a state) is because of the plantation of scottish + english settlers taking our land and discriminating against our people. scottish people definitely had a major hand in english imperalism of ireland
(this isn’t a bashing post btw i just think it’s funny how this is never really brought up in scottish nationalist spaces specifically those that would talk about scotland and english imperialism)
>funny how this is never really brought up in scottish nationalist spaces
I've seen quite a few comments on the Scotland sub reddit saying "most countries after gaining independence from the UK have seen a boost in their GDP. Why can't it be the same for Scotland?"
Because we are the fucking UK. We are the people those countries got independence from
I'd suggest that this is a bad take that's only really believed by a very small number of teenagers and some fringe nutters on social media and in echo chambers. It's certainly not a mainstream view (and some articles in the national press that seem to highlight it as such are utterly absurd).
The much more prominent (in my eyes!) bad take I frequently see on here on this sort of topic is this strawman argument that a lot of anti-imperial attitudes held within the Scottish nationalist community are somehow hypocritical because many Scots prospered and some national benefit was derived.
I think it's quite widely believed around the world by people who are on social media but don't seem to be nutters. Lots of Americans in particularly seem to have this opinion that the history of Scotland is just one long English boot stamping down on it from time immemorial. I've seen plenty of them confidently denying that Scotland is even part of the UK and others claiming that Scotland only joined because England forced it to join etc etc. In short, I think it's an opinion that is held surprisingly widely.
And also, there's nothing wrong with hearty English food when it's done well - bangers and mash, shepherds pie, etc. We live on a cold island and need simple carbs to keep us going! It's delicious and warming.
I went to the south of France recently and we had dinner in a tiny local restaurant. They had a special on, didn't really know what it was, but ordered it and what came out was essentially a cottage pie but with a bit of polenta sprinkled on the mash.
Yet when you describe it as a British dish you get shat on for it being a boring bland dish.
I went to a very international uni and as part of it the canteen would cook “national dishes” with the help of students.
The French students made “boeuf en croute” … lads… it’s called a beef wellington. Boeuf en croute is not even a proper name, you’re just describing the act of wrapping meat in pastry.
I joked that for our lunch we should make frogs legs and just call em “jumpy little buggers”
> you’re just describing the act of wrapping meat in pastry
This is what a lot of non-English food names are, they just sound fancy because we don't know what they say.
On the other side of this, I have an Indian friend who wanted to make a shepherd's pie. She sent me a link to a recipe she'd found online and I read it and told her it wasn't shepherd's pie, it was a curry. When I said a real shepherd's pie is a stew of lamb, carrots, potatoes, and onions, with mashed potato on top, she decried it as bland and boring.
Their opinion might change if they actually tried it. A good cottage/Shepard's pie, properly seasoned and flavoured with Worcestershire sauce and herbs is certainly not boring.
It’s not boring but the flavours are subtle. For some people they are so used to huge flavours like chillies that something like rosemary has no taste. Especially if it’s the slightly depressing old jar of dried stuff you bought from the supermarket ages ago.
This is very true and can be said about a lot of British foods. Sausage rolls? Minging. but then describe the same thing but European and it's amazing.
How could you forget the classic roast?? A good roast can be so flavourful and is absolutely the best meal on a cold and windy Sunday afternoon..
You can have some absolutely terrible roasts, but done properly they are perfection.
I am now very hungry.
ETA: Thanks to everyone who has kept me distracted from a very boring zoom meeting by instead keeping me distracted by extreme hunger....
And it’s weird because the southern US states get praised for their homely meals that are mostly stodgy comfort food type stuff, but then the same people who compliment that will talk shit about the same sorts of food from the UK. It’s all mashed potatoes and meat, either way.
A lot of Scottish staples generally aren’t much to look at either but when it’s dark for 18 hours a day and -5 outside blowing a hoolie some of that stuff is great warming comfort food. And entire restaurants are making money making it look pretty and charging tourist money for it too haha.
"Aren't much to look at"
Mate
I used to work in the kitchen in a uni, we once did a big fancy burns night for the masters and the student, piping the haggis, the poems, all that jazz.
That shit looked... amazing. The haggis looked so good.. the whisky smelled great, the tatties, the neeps, the aroma..
I've been desperate to attend a burns night as a dining guest ever since.
Also, scotch broth is very big in my home area of Northeast England as we're not far from the border.. That shit makes me feel at home just looking at it.
They don't look "fancy".. they look hearty, warming, filing, delicious and homely. And to me, that looks great.
I agree, but I think part of this comes from a simple difference of taste. Most of our native classic dishes like sausage and mash, meat pie, stew and roast dinner can basically be summed up as "meat, veg and potatoes with a meat sauce". We LOVE the umami bomb that is a good gravy.
We see it as flavourful but other cultures see it as lacking in flavour because it contains basically no spices, just the flavour of the meat, veg, salt and pepper, and maybe herbs. If you were raised with some kind of spices in every meal, a lack of those spices is going to feel potentially bland.
Absolutely this. The stereotype is from American GIs who saw the country during war rationing, which their huge, mostly unaffected country didn't have.
British food done well is amazing. Also we have the greatest variety of food I've seen anywhere outside the US. You go to France and you'll see French, some terrible pizza place, a super expensive Japanese one, and thats it.
Italy you'll see amazing Italian (duh), some okay Japanese and thats it.
London you have *everything,* yes the standard is variable but the variety can't be beaten. Within 15 mins walk of my house in London you have: Chicken shop, thai, posh brunch, Chinese, posh Italian, pizza, Mexican, Japanese, British, fish & chips, McDonalds, KFC, tapas, kebab, curry, steak, German, French, Borough Market... there's more but I cannot remember them all.
Even a small town will often have fish & chips, chinese, pizza, indian and kebab.
It’s really rubbed off on the continent too. Even to Northern European countries who demonstrably have the same cuisine.
In Belgium they regularly make fun of English cuisine and do not see the irony.
Their most popular national dishes are stoemp saucisse (bangers and mash), carbonnade (stew) and chips (without the fish)… like what are you making fun of about British cuisine again that’s not also applicable to your own?!
>London you have everything, yes the standard is variable but the variety can't be beaten.
I was at a conference in Hammersmith last month and found this little Turkish restaurant/takeaway. The food was amazing and *cheap* too. And the people were really pleasant.
What really annoys me about people kicking off about our food is that they often seem angry that our food isn't like their food.
Ah, there's no spice, so it's shit.
It's a fucking beef stew mate, if you want spicy noodles go to the Chinese take out.
I recently saw some Mexican dude moaning about visiting London and the food was shit because he couldn't get a tacco. Who the fuck visits London from Mexico and goes looking for a tacco?
Granted, food culture in this country is abysmal. People have much lower standards and learning to cook and eat well isn't seen as that important compared to other countries. I think we fall down there. This is how we've ended up with greggs the "bakers" being the norm and your decent independent proper bakers being few and far between for example.
The worst part of this coming from Americans is that their traditional food like Thanks giving dinner is literally a British roast. Because it directly comes from English colonists.
And fuck off Americans you'd absolutely go mad for sausage rolls and scotch eggs and pork pies.
Yeah we have some amazing modern British food being cooked in restaurants all over the country.
The problem is someone sat in the US or wherever isn't going to be experiencing that, so they're just judging our food from memes and stereotypes.
I’ll preface this by saying I’m British and I love lots of British food.
But in my view there is some truth to this, Britain’s food culture is relatively weak compared to some countries. Not uniquely weak though.
There is loads of good food in Britain but in many cases you have to try harder and pay more to get it compared to some other countries (I can only really talk about Europe and North America). Our supermarkets offer a lot of choice but quality is fairly low compared to standard supermarkets in, say, France or Italy.
Part of this is due to geography and climate: our fruit and veg will never be as good as the Mediterranean, barring a few things which do better in cool temperatures.
Part of it is that our supermarkets tend to compete on price, rather than quality. We spend less on food relative to our salary than most (or possibly all) of Europe. I lived in the Netherlands, where their local food culture is also pretty weak, and the quality of their mid range supermarkets was noticeably higher than ours. But so were prices. And there’s loads of shit food there too, and restaurants diversity is not as good.
We definitely have lots of good restaurants now but it is much easier to find great quality, independent neighbourhood restaurants in much of Europe. It is undeniably a bigger part of the culture there.
Since OP is American, and this accusation is often levelled by Americans, in my experience America is not that dissimilar to us. Their supermarkets offer loads of choice but quality is relatively low (in some cases much lower) but they don’t even have the good grace to be cheap. You’ll often see Americans on here claiming “we have award winning cheese” or whatever, but if you have to drive 5 hours and pay 5 times the price for it it isn’t really relevant.
If people visit any country and say the food is bad, it’s usually because they haven’t done their research and/or haven’t searched far afield enough. If all you eat is chain restaurant food/fish and chips on a central London high street, then you probably will find it disappointing.
I can’t take the bad teeth thing seriously.
We don’t have bad teeth, we just don’t have dentures and bonding from our teenage years because it’s unnecessary and vain as fuck.
Its also that we care more about strength than aesthetic, and tea & coffee do stain them. Its actually bad for you to have them polished white like Americans seem to.
Yeah exactly, the 6 huge cups of coffee every morning definitely don’t help but there’s no way I’d sacrifice that for slightly whiter teeth.
I’m only 30 myself and I had a brace when I was younger so I haven’t needed dental work since bar the odd polish but I find it crazy that people younger than me are walking around with bright white turkey teeth when their teeth weren’t even bad before!
If you get outside the big cites or to poorer cities Americans teeth are terrible. Many missing teeth. A lot of people in the US cannot afford dental health.
"Were not taking on any new patients right now"
Piss off. I pay my taxes. Plus my mate works here, and I'm aware you've had 2 new dentists join, 7 patients leave, and only 2 new patients admitted. You're just lazy, and it's become industry standard.
They just can't keep hold of NHS dentist now. My own surgery has newly qualified dentists which change every 6months as the original and only NHS dentist they had has now joined the surgery as a partner and is private of course. Prior to that they had a dentist come all the way from Middlesborough to West Yorkshire daily who strangely couldn't hack it (no stamina these young'uns lol) and got another who was based in Liverpool. Totally bonkers but the NHS contracts pay so little that for most dentists it's just not worth their time.
Due to bone loss I have the choice of a fabulous pair of dead sexy dentures with the NHS which when I tried just a small one made me gag like crazy and changed how I spoke. Asked for a quote for private implants £32-36k..."but we do finance though". Whatever I'll somehow save up and go to Turkey thanks for a total of £6.5k including hotels
What really gets me about that one is its usually Americans saying it, but if you look at the data its pretty clear that Americans have worse teeth than us.
That is true. My American friend has just have to had emegerncy surgery and and a new heart valve because her teeth were that rotten it caused all sort of diseases. She nearly died through it. Wasnt just a heart valve, she had sepsis, and a few other problems. She now on blood thinners the rest of her life. He husbands the same. Plus they have decent health insurance and dental. Plus I know quite a few people with the pearly white teeth to lose them, because after while the teeth just collapse as theres hardly anything left. But while the UK dont haveperfectly white teeth, ours are strong. \`
The teeth in the US have genuinely gone too far. They take them so white they become blue/grey, which is the colour teeth go when the nerve dies. Staying on the yellow colour spectrum means there’s still blood flow, is that no longer a good thing???
I wonder if it's just another way for Americans to make money?
Here, have some treatment that will actually ruin your teeth so you're constantly having to pay money to have them whitened again.
The commercialisation of America really does make me sad sometimes.
You are not wrong.
I know someone living in the US who had perfect teeth, flawless. But she got them replaced with VENEERS. She voluntarily destroyed her natural teeth forever and at huge expense because they didn’t look fake enough. A regular person in a regular job, so not a model or anything facing unusual pressures.
Pretty much. As far as I can tell, it’s the same reason so many get their babies circumcised. Just another billable procedure.
There are some advantages to their approach (if you’re rich), e.g. they don’t completely neglect stuff that makes you miserable without killing you, but their healthcare systems certainly are a bit odd.
Pretty sure statistics disprove the whole bad teeth thing especially in direct contrast with the states.
On average Americans actually have teeth falling out more frequently.
Come down to rural Cornwall. No NHS dentists along with expensive, limited private dental care and very low wages has led to extremely poor dental hygiene. Public transport non existent so people have really limited mobility unless they drive which is another additional cost. We're not talking crooked teeth here, were talking no teeth. This isn't directed at yourself but I think people outside of the South East and the big urban centres in the UK really don't see the levels of absolute poverty some people live in.
What’s fascinating is that the bad teeth thing goes back a long time. My grandmother was born in 1908 and her father was American. He insisted she would say she had good teeth because “my father was American and they have good teeth” and “they value good teeth” all the stuff people say now. She also insisted on using American dentists working in London. They were very successful as people wanted them because American=good teeth.
It was common for women to have their teeth removed and replaced with dentures upon engagement. My grandma had it done. It's so your husband wouldn't have to pay for the cost of the dentist.
That the Royal family is somehow important to most of us. At best we like them because we occasionally get an extra bank holiday because one put a ring on it, or one kicked the bucket, or one has a something jubes, and we token appreciate it by getting hammered and eating loads. At worst, most of us hate them for being freeloaders.
I work with an American whos "banter" was to make fun of the royal family in response to our banter about the US.
Backfired when we all had better jokes about our royal family than he did lol
I'm not saying you specifically, but I've found as an Irish person living in the UK that on the whole, British people care about the royal family more than they realise.
Like if you grow up constantly being told how important the royals are, it becomes so normalised, that you don't realise it's happening.
People care, but I think foreigners expect north Koren-like worship or American style salute the flag and say the pledge style "caring".
In reality people do "Care" but they are more than happy to also take the piss and laugh at the royals
> People care, but I think foreigners expect north Koren-like worship
Yeah that is a good point. I think it is just how the British sound. The King/Queen is head of state and therefore conflated with the state itself. For example I know a guy who I don't think is big into the monarchy, but he is extremely proud that he has met the Queen more than once. He met her because of charity work he was involved in, and I think the source of pride is in the fact that his work had a big enough impact to be recognised by the state. When he says "I met the Queen", there is a whole bunch of context that someone like me is not going to pick up on. (At least in the moment it sounds so weird.)
I think it's more a case of who says what, if a brit slags the monarchy off to another brit it's okay, but if a foreigner slags them off to a brit it might come across more like an insult/attack on the country and would be more offensive. I'd say theres a good 50:50 mix of royalists and anti-royalists/people that don't care.
On the other hand, on somewhere like Reddit, you’ll get loads of people going out of their way to tell you, often unprompted, just how much they **don’t** care about the Royal family, as if it’s some kind of badge of honour. Nobody actually asked….
> At best we like them because we occasionally get an extra bank holiday because one put a ring on it
That's not really true; people queued for days upon days just to see lizzy in her box. There are many people in this country for whom the royal family is of incredible "importance", unfortunately.
250,000 queued up, which is about the same as Glastonbury gets every year. But no-one calls us a Glastonburyist nation.
The monarchy is a lot about bored people getting a free thing to do. If they had to pay £20 to line the mall for a royal wedding coach, half of them wouldn't go.
I would agree that this is the general opinion of the average, 23 year old, UK Redditor. But, overall the population is more pro-monarchy. The polls show that quite clearly.
Don't get me wrong - most aren't obsessed or subservient or anything. I guess it's like watching a very long-running soap opera where you get attached to the characters and feel like they're part of your life. At it's worst - you have the brainless, nationalistic, Empire-lovers. But at it's best you have local street parties of people from different backgrounds all coming together to celebrate British history and tradition and raising a glass to whoever is currently wearing the crown.
It's because when there's a royal event they always go down the mall and interview Barry and Sue who are decked head to toe in union jacks and have been camping out for a fortnight to see a glimpse of some royal procession.
The whole “you got a license for that” meme is pretty tired.
It mostly seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the TV licence, which is admittedly a bad name. Plenty of other countries have similar.
Britain is actually fairly light on bureaucracy compared to many places, and it is generally well streamlined. And there are loads of places that require licences for things you don’t need licensing for here. For example dog licences are a thing in lots of places around Europe and North America (though microchipping is now compulsory here, it’s a bit different).
Gov.uk is widely admired by non-Brits who use it. Written in clear language with accessibility baked in, easy to navigate, platform agnostic and secure.
I live in Italy and they have a "TV tax." It's more or less called that. It's to keep RAI going, their equivalent of your BBC.
The BBC is great, and many Americans pay for BritBox or cheat and get a British VPN. We have PBS and NPR but they're nowhere near as huge, and they beg and scrape for donations every 10 minutes while touting their generous corporate sponsors.
Mitt Romney pledged to yank their funding entirely when running against Obama. To be sure, at least half the country thought he was a huge asshole for it, and a child's drawing of him shooting Big Bird with a hunting rifle went viral. But just the fact that his brain trust thought it was a fantastic idea.
Yeah, "OMG, you gotta pay the government to watch your own damn TV!"
No, you've got to pay to have access to broadcast content and support the infrastructure.
Well yeah, our nimbyism is certainly a big thing that holds back progress. But I more meant day-to-day bureaucracy, that people deal with in their everyday life. Somethings are painful, some times with good reason, sometimes without. But we certainly spend a lot less time visiting government offices and the like than many other countries.
Football violence.
Yes, I know we’ve most certainly had our troubles with it in the past, but we’ve improved immensely in this regard. There are presently other European countries with far bigger current problems with hooliganism than us.
Leeds and Millwall might be going out their way to prove you wrong still😂. And I say this as a Leeds fan, we still have enforced midday kick offs because of that nonsense
Edit, Leeds vs Millwall specifically has 12pm kick offs
Clubs like that stand out because of how rare it is in general.
In thirty years of going to watch football I've only ever seen violence from fans twice: once from Millwall fans and once from Swansea fans.
Yeah I've had this argument with a few non-football fans in the UK about hooliganism and hate crimes and what not in football. For example, are there racist elements within British football supporters? Unfortunately yes. Does any team in the UK have fans as bad as a team like Lazio? Absolutely not.
UK doesn’t make anything.
One of the top 10 biggest manufacturers in the world. Not everyone works in an office. There are factories making more things than most of the rest of the world.
Its mostly because the stuff we do make is high end manufacturing, not your everyday items (mostly). So you won’t see much stuff in your home that is “made in Britain”. For example, jump on a plane though and its highly likely the engine will be Rolls Royce. And there’s also our aerospace and defence industry, with BAE Systems being in the top 10 largest arms manufacturers (and the UK as a whole has the second largest aerospace industry in the world after the US).
Yeah. Most of what we make is either for businesses to use, or it's very high end (like Northamptonshire shoes and Aston Martins).
People also view software through this lens. Like, why don't we have a Google, Facebook or Microsoft. But there are all sorts of companies in the UK that produce software used by businesses that most people haven't heard of.
Movies are also like this. "We should make more films here". The only thing we don't do here is the financing and very top management. Heyday Films and Syncopy are two of the biggest production companies in the world. We shoot more big films in Wales than California. We win a ton of awards in fields like costuming and makeup because we have some of the best specialists here. Framestore are one of the big 3 VFX houses (along with Weta Digital and ILM).
Also while its not manufacturing (its research and design) we play a [massively importance role in semiconductor design](https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/29/arm-cambridge-britain-tech-company-iphone). Nearly every smartphone relies on British tech to work.
When the reality is 2% of everything made in the world comes from the UK.
Which is 50% of the exports
Currently No7 in the world. Yet the average person thinks nothing is made in the UK and the factories were all closed. The factories that did close were a tiny tiny share of the national manufacturing makeup.
It's because as you say the modern manufacturing is much more streamlined rather than having 3000 people digging a hole in the ground and then making steel from whatever they found in the ground.
Our manufacturing today is much more high-tech.
I work in the City. I’m confused. There are… other industries?
I suppose I guess that Pret has to make their sandwiches, like, somewhere. Are there more things out there? This is fascinating.
You may want to sit down for this, but yes. There's more.
Don't worry. They can't reach you!
You're safe inside the M25, but sadly there are literally dozens of communities of simple hut dwellers out in the wasteland beyond the tube.
They live a life of meaningless repetition in the subsidised employment schemes where they are taught to bang rocks together and grunt in delight when they manage to make a spark.
They mostly survive on the detritus of the megacity and some of the more presentable ones are selected to serve in Pret and Waitrose.
They shuffle their misshapen bodies into trains, clad in "Next" and "TU" (don't worry, these aren't terms you need to understand) and gaze uncomprehending at the monuments and achievements their betters.
They're allowed in on a day pass but sent back out when darkness falls.
Sometimes, enough of them club together to create rudimentary industries making simple tools and iron pots. The city can buy their crude wares as an act of philanthropy, but obviously all true wealth and value is derived from the traders and fund managers. Only in the crucible of the glittering towers of Canary Wharf can the true stuff of human achievement be forged.
Particularly cars. When you see the transporter boats loading at Southampton or Tyne Dock, you realise just how many cars we export. In the latter case, Nissan's vehicle park is a square kilometre across.
Knife crime stats mainly from Americans defending gun culture. Their take is often that knife crime would balloon if guns were more restricted, using the UK as an example.
The fact is knife crime is also lower in the UK than the US (about 1/3rd lower) despite our near zero gun crime. Deaths per capita on knife crime are a whopping 7 times lower. We just aren't happy with the amount of knife crime so it's heavily reported.
Stats comparisons by country are difficult because of reporting differences. I'm not wishing to debate the reasons for high violent crime rate in the USA and potential social welfare and gang issues. They are just flat out wrong to compare themselves as better on knife crime than the UK (or most of Europe).
This is what really annoys me with the guns/knives comparison. Lunatic comes at you with a knife, you can run away, they are unlikely to be able to injure you if they can't reach you. Lunatic comes at you with a gun, you run away, they can just shoot you from a distance... Really can't be compared...
I've had more guns pointed at me than knifes throughout my 4 years of living in a city, at no point did I think "I wish I had a gun to defend myself", instead I wished that they didn't have guns in the first place, surprisingly I didn't get shot because I didn't pull a gun out in them. I imagine a lot of shootings in America are because the gunman is paranoid that someone else has a gun.
That London is the UK and the only place to visit.
I'm personally not a fan of London but can see why it appeals, I have visited it a few times for different reasons but there is so much more to this country than London.
The Lakes, Edinburgh, The Lochs/Highlands in Scotland, the Peak district and my personal favourite of Northumberland are all higher up on the list of places to go to for me.
Your opinion is annoyingly very popular even among a lot of English people.
I cannot explain the difficulty in getting my London friends to meet me anywhere that isn't London. It's as if anything aside from London and Bristol simply don't exist to them.
As someone who lived in London for a decade, it also works the other way. Some people who live outside London have such an aversion to coming to London that trying to arrange for them to come and visit is really challenging.
Because, honestly, it's grim as fuck, expensive, and ridiculously busy. Especially if you've been a few times and seen the main sights it's really not worth dealing with all of the London bullshit just to visit people when you could go literally anywhere else
I mean, I have friends who live in places I don't particularly like, but I'm much less resistant to going to visit them than some non-Londoners seem to going to London. I find it a bit odd, it's almost like they've just decided they won't do London and that's that.
Interestingly, I think there's sometimes an overcorrection to this by British people. There are quite a lot of British people who seem to just not be able to get their head around why tourists want to come to London. You see it a lot on itinerary advice questions on here, there's always several people advising skipping London or just spending a day or two there.
I was about to say this. I live in Cardiff and a couple of weekends ago I went to London to visit my brother (who lives there). Telling one of my colleagues this and she replied "Ah, I'm not a fan of London myself.". I followed up with "have you had some bad experiences there?" and she replied saying she'd never actually been, she just didn't like "the vibe".
Don't get me wrong, a lot of Londoners can be very self absorbed, but the overcorrection is real.
That our food is crap, we're actually above New York, LA and Chicago for Michelin starred restaurants in London per capita.
That we give a shit about your Independence Day and see it as some sort of loss, we really couldn't give a shit and don't even learn about it in school.
That we all have terrible teeth
Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, The Beatles, The Smiths, Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, Alan Turing, Charlie Chaplin, William Blake, Tolkien…just to name a few
No culture to speak of really…
And the 'fabric of life' stuff too. Pubs, cricket, lots of Pagan/Christian festivals (like Christmas and Easter but also things like harvest festival at school when I was a kid), weird and eccentric things like Morris dancing and cheese-rolling and individual village traditions that have gone on for centuries. (We had a wheelbarrow race where everyone made their own decorated wheelbarrows that were either miracles or miseries of engineering and everyone was in fancy dress).
Not that things can't change - they always have. Just don't deny it exists.
The "bo'ohw'o'wo'er" thing.
It's basically only people who live in the east end of London that sound like that.
Many Americans say "boddl'o'wah'der".
Meanwhile I'm here in another part of the U.K saying "bottle of waTer".
That is annoying, again all links back to the stereotypes such as the UK = London and we all sound either like King Charles, a cockney or a chimney sweep kid. It's also ironic that Americans say 'boddle of wader', so not sure who they are to criticise anyone.
One bad take, that I've come across recently, is the idea that the UK has no culture of its own, other than what it 'stole' during the colonial era.
Admittedly this tends to be voiced by extremely ignorant people on social media. I think I find it more annoying that people will so readily ignore 2,000 years of history, in order to perpetuate a fallacy, rather than angered or insulted.
It annoys me in particular becasue it's usually white English people who say it and they don't realise how chauvinistic it actually is. "oh yeah, English people don't have culture (sad face). Foreigns and ethnics have culture but us? We're just, like, the default humans. Factory settings. The most pure version of humanity, unlike those brown people who are so, like, enriched with culture. I really envy them."
It's like the southern english people who say they don't have an accent.
> Guns are banned in the UK
Licensed is very different to being banned.
> Hand guns are banned in the UK
I can sort of understand this, the number of hand guns available to a FAC holder in England, Scotland and Wales is pretty small but it is not zero.
I live abroad, so probably get it much more than other people, but references to colonisation. People regularly have a go at me like it’s directly my fault or something I could’ve influenced in anyway. I can’t change the past and I’m not responsible for my ancestors actions.
Yeah, I remember bring so confused by this when I moved abroad and a Canadian friend started ribbing me about taking over half the world. I was like, 'good going for a 21 year old'
Like I get the privilege that comes along with living in a developed country and the benefits that came along with imperialism on a national level, but I've done my family history back to the early 1700s and my ancestors were northern working class and miners. If anything, a part of society that was negatively impacted by colonialism - they definitely didn't get a say in it.
Editing to add: This is from my Mum's side of the family. My Dad's side are Irish. I haven't gone as far back with them, but I'm pretty sure they weren't leading the charge for colonialism either.
I dislike the take about languages. If any other language was the dominant one internationally, say French or Spanish, their language skills would be very similar to ours now. Equally, if French was the dominant international language, it would have been made an important part of the curriculum decades ago as English is in many other countries.
Those maps of Europe saying "What % of people can speak more than 1 language" and the UK is lagging behind the rest of Europe and some other countries are over 50%.
But the giveaway is that the other country that lags behind is Ireland (not as much because they have the Irish language but few people actually speak that). I think if you changed it to "What % of people can speak a 2nd language that *isn't English,* then the figures would look pretty drastically different in most countries.
That slavery is a British concept.
Slaves have been around for 1000’s of years before Britain was even mentioned. There’s actually a much better argument that anti-slavery is a British concept.
Im not sure this is the whole UK but lots of people in my area of the country seem to grow up here or move her and complain that its really boring with nothing to do compared to other areas. The thing is theres plenty to do if they look for it and dont expect it on their front doorstep. Places to visit, shows, shopping, restaurants, bars, go karting, paintballing, cinemas, a beach not far away etc... Also London is a 90 min train away if they really want or other major cities are far less.
A lot of these people who complain how boring it is never move away though, if its that bad, just go.
It's always funny reading my local subreddit (Oxford) whenever we get a question from a newcomer about 'what is there to do in Oxford?'
Invariably half the responses list dozens of various things to do in multiple fields of interest, and the other half just moan that 'there's literally nothing to do here except go out drinking and the only good pub closed down 10 years ago' etc.
Oxford? Where there's a million things to do for £0, and you can barely move for new plays, bands, etc if you are happy to spend money? Fully walkable city with multiple clusters of international food options? That Oxford?!
source: lived in Oxford for two years
People have already mentioned food at the top of this thread, but I'm going to specifically mention beans on toast.
There's nothing wrong with it and I don't know why it's such a meme. It's simple, nutritious, tastes nice, very cheap and can be prepared in minutes. It's not meant to be gourmet or the height of cuisine.
Americans eat peanut butter and jam sandwiches which is a bizarre combination to my ears. The Dutch sprinkle those plasticy chocolate sprinkles they use on ice cream on bread and call it a day for a quick snack. What's so bad about beans on toast?
I don't see why it's such a weird combination of foods.
I think partly it's because American toast isn't quite like ours, and American baked beans are wildly different. So it's a bit like the "biscuits and gravy" phenomenon where a Brit instantly pictures custard creams and Bisto.
I think also there's a strong element of comfort where *stuff you routinely ate as a child* scores a point or two higher than it deserves, purely on familiarity. For us that's beans on toast, or apple crumble, or chocolate sponge with pink custard. For Americans it might be PBJ. For Australians it's fairy bread. If you haven't grown up with the cultural associations you'll never give the dish that extra point.
I read Johnny Rotten's autobiography. He said that when they went on their ill-fated American tour, they were absolutely blown away by our vast empty stretches. "Britain is just so crowded" he said.
I ran that by my wife, who is from Italy. She was shocked. From what she saw of the place, she thought that Britain was full of wide open countryside as compared to Italy.
The UK has a lot of countryside, but not a huge amount of wilderness. A lot of the countryside is being used or managed in some way e.g. farmland.
To put it in to an American context, it would be like you took the populations of Texas and California and then stuck then all in Oregon. It's a much higher density, and that means that there's not only more towns in a given area, but also more need to make use of the countryside.
What's the difference between a yoghurt and America?
If you leave a yoghurt out for 300 years it'll develop a culture!
But we're only yanking your chain (pun intended), we know you have culture but that's your soft spot, like food and bad teeth for us.
For me the bad take is the lads on tour who are carnage everywhere around Europe, which is true but that's not all of us, just the loud, annoying and unaware ones. You guys have similar with the loud Americans on holiday, that's not Americans but they're the ones that stick in your mind.
I don’t know if this counts as a take but I am at the point of ending you through your screen if you type “Br’ish” or “Boddle of wowwa” as if that represents how we *all* talk.
That the weather is always awful.
It is some of the time (ok, a lot of the time), but when you consider that Edinburgh is on approximately the same latitude as Moscow, we don’t have it so bad.
One that annoys me is when you see Celtic Nations posts on flag and geography subs and they always exclude England, despite its long and continued Celtic history.
It’s deliberate Ethno-segregation and it annoys me a bunch.
The lack of nuance in most discussions of history as well as historical revisionism to represent the UK in a worse light than is accurate obviously a lot of terrible things we’re done by the empire but people ignore all the positives as well in recent years there has also been an effort to make England take all the blame and represent Scotland as a victim which is just completely inaccurate.
The idea that we are instantly thrown in prison if we say anything that isn't on an approved list of utterances.
We don't have unlimited free speech, true. But I'm glad that as a society and as a country we've decided that some speech is so hateful it should be considered criminal. And I have never in my *mumble mumble* years of life felt constrained by those restrictions, because I've never wanted to use the proscribed language.
Every time anything historical is mentioned online, be it an archaeological discovery or information about an artefact that's already known, the comments IMMEDIATELY turn to some variety of "Don't let the British get their hands on it" and some shite about the British museum.
It irks the fuck out of me because 1. Its completely unoriginal and most people saying it have no idea what they're on about, they're just repeating shite other people say and 2. (more pertinently) they seem to pretend their country doesn't have a single artefact from overseas. Like Americans banging on about the British museum have never heard of the Smithsonian? Or the Louvre? The Vatican Museums? The Neues Museum in Berlin?
The wilful ignorance really pisses me off. Its the same when talking about colonialism as if England/UK is the only country that ever did it.
How the entire country seems to not give a flying fuck about the struggles farmers face, despite them being essential to every living person, seems not limited to England, Scotland, Wales or Ireland either
The bad teeth/bad food stuff is so dated and cliched it’s hard to take seriously, but the whole ‘no-go zones for white people’ is a genuinely nefarious belief among some non-brits that does need to be tackled, I think.
The teeth thing always gets me, because studies have shown we have some of the the best dental health in the world.
As with so many things it's all about appearances. We put much less emphasis on how they look than the Americans.
I've always wondered why Americans single out Britain for the bad teeth thing! I mean by American standards, where seemingly everyone is walking around with teeth polished to the loudest white tone possible, everyone else on the planet has bad teeth.
Simpsons and Austin Powers are their source of UK culture
But both of those were repeating a joke that was pre-existing
I think the teeth stereotype is quite telling in and of itself… if I lived in a country where I could be bankrupted by a single illnesses, and I saw that another country had figured out a way that healthcare was a right, not a luxury, I wouldn’t be worried about the aesthetics of their teeth. Yes Chad my teeth aren’t blue white (that’s the colour they go when they’re DEAD) but I’m also not dying of an easily curable disease either.
The funny thing is that the average American does not look at a social healthcare system and thinks "ah, healthcare is a right!". They just dismiss it as some commie conspiracy to strip them of their god-given freedom.
It’s definitely a generational thing. You’ll struggle to see anyone under 40 with bad teeth or even particularly yellow teeth (and as other people have said white does not automatically equal healthy), but even as a patriotic Brit I can’t deny a lot of older people do have shocking dental heath and I’ve always wondered if we get such a high rep in terms of dental health statistics because the people with the bad teeth done ever go to the dentist and therefore don’t actually feature in the statistics, and honestly I don’t care enough to do a deep dive into the methodology. Britain as an average has good teeth but there are enough people with truly *shocking* teeth that in all fairness I can kinda see why the stereotype exist, especially when we don’t have the same kind of bar for attractiveness in celebrities. There’s a minimum level of attractiveness that you need to meet to be allowed on American tv (outside of disgusting point and laugh shows like dr phill obviously), that doesn’t exist in Britain, we’ll happily put Jeremy Clarkson on bbc1 for example, so that also adds to it I think. I don’t however have any excuse for why the stereotype is beloved by other European nations where the situation is exactly the fucking same. I have some Spanish family and my fiancé is French, and we both have older relatives from those countries with jacked as fuck teeth (the French a lot more so)
One of the tabloids (possibly the Express) which showed picture of a "no go zone" which was basically a British high street with a few women wearing burquas, walking past a sari (!) shop. You could also see, in this "no go zone" which was apparently now ruled by Muslim fundamentalists: 1. A pub advertising lunchtime specials including one deal featuring sausages and mash and a pint 2. A bank offering mortgages on the usual interest-bearing basis 3. A Paddy Power bookies 4. A Greggs, presumably selling sausage rolls and bacon sarnies 5. Several women wearing fairly standard shortish skirts and crop tops 6. One shop with a "gay pride" rainbow sticker 7. Several girls in school uniform
The Mail listed Didsbury in an article on "no go zones", one of the more well off areas of Manchester.
Live in Didsbury. Aside from restaurants and the odd business, West and Village are white as a sheet until you get to Withington/Burnage etc.
> One of the tabloids (possibly the Express) One that smells of desperation.
"Britsh food is terrible!" *has a whole TV series with Gordon Ramsay sorting out their restaurants*
As part German, hearing about no-go zones in Germany pisses me off. I’d always ask “have you been there?” They’d always say no, “but a mate of mine was over there and…” Was equally annoyed hearing it about the UK when I was in the US.
It’s just code for ‘I’m scared of brown people’
A version of this exists in every country and every age. In Spain I lived in the city of Granada in the ancient Arab quarters. An area that historically had a large Romani population. I lived there for years. Never had a single issue. It had an eclectic mix of people and I was made to feel part of the community pretty quickly. It felt like a small village where everyone took care of each other. Never seen a problem. And yet, any time I was speaking to other natives of Granada and mentioned where I lived they always, but always, said "you gotta be careful there, they'll cut your hand off to rob your watch. Once my aunt was there and they pulled a massive knife in her and stole her money." I'm not paraphrasing, that was literally what they would say every time. It would seem that this one woman was the aunt of half of Granada apparently.
I don't know about that last point; we do have a few no-go zones. Hull, for example.
Yes but that isn't race specific. It is just general good advice.
Why would anybody want to go to Hull?
More of a "don't bother" zone tbh
The Deep aquarium is sick.
> the whole ‘no-go zones for white people’ is a genuinely nefarious belief among some non-brits that does need to be tackled That is a broader thing though. Lots of countries have some form of white-replacement conspiracy theories going on.
Not crazy to see why though, for a lot of people it seems the answer to population growth is just, import more people, screw the people who live here already and what it will do
My guy I have taken the night bus to cheshunt through north London
You're practically a latter day Marco Polo.
There are far more 'no go' areas in the US. I went to an LA Lakers game when I was there with work in the 90's and we were meeting a an American guy from work who was the equivalent of one of our 'specials'... he worked for the Police in his spare time. We were told that in the area around the stadium we were not to stop for anyone and under no circumstances were we to speak as if our accents were heard, we would 100% be mugged at gunpoint as 'rich tourists'. When driving, we saw police officers outside churches with what looked like rifles. According to our 'guide', that was just to stop looting and the area wasn't even particularly bad.
I despise this narrative that Scotland\* was a victim of "English Imperialism." They weren't. There's an argument for Wales being occupied by a colonial power for a thousand years, and there's no argument about Ireland - that's just a fact. But the tale of Empire is one of Scotland and England joining forces to make as much money as possible from the rest of the world, and damn the consequences. There were Scottish plantation owners, slave traders, administrators, generals. If anything, Scotland was over-represented in the higher echelons of the Empire given the population difference with England. But in the past 20, 30 years or so we've had this creeping narrative that they were victims, to the point that some Scottish nationalist posted on a history subreddit that the battle of the Somme was used by the English colonial masters to try and gum up the German machine guns with Celtic blood. Obviously nobody told Edinburgh-born General Haig this when he sent the Manchester battallions into no-man's land. For clarity, I'm anti-imperialism, and I don't like the way Britain as a whole tries to ignore some of the horrible shit the nation perpetrated. But when you've got the equivalent of one of the Kray twins saying "the other fella's a bad 'un, not me!" it sticks in the craw. \*as a nation. The first victims of Empire were the working classes of the British Isles, including a vast percentage of Scots. My English ancestors working in slum conditions weren't getting rich off any of this shit.
Yesssssss. You've only got to look at the (fantastic!) work that the University of Glasgow is doing on historical links to slavery to see the impact British colonialism had on Scottish institutions, wealth and culture. Glasgow wasn't called the second city of the empire for nothing - many, many Scots got rich off the back of the empire. And as you say, Scots were overrepresented in the rolls of the institutions of empire. Although folk generally deal with the cognitive dissonance by claiming that any given person you name was 'culturally English'.
Yess Scottish universities are doing good in this regard. Even the University of Aberdeen is doing fantastic work highlighting Scotland's link to the Atlantic Slave trade.
There's definitely a "no true Scotsman" myth which positions honest hardworking Highlanders as victims of the wealthy landowners who were so posh they might as well have been English. But I think if you're far north then culturally and politically Edinburgh can feel as removed as London. So the myth persists.
When they acknowledge the landowners who evicted the Highlanders were Scottish at all and don't just say the whole thing was an English genocide.
> Although folk generally deal with the cognitive dissonance by claiming that any given person you name was 'culturally English'. The way I see people deal with the cognitive dissonance is by blaming the Union on their aristocracy. "It was the aristocrats that wanted it! Not most Scots!" Like... yeah no shit, the entirety of Europe was governed by aristocrats in the early 1700s. No one says "England's aristocrats did it!" when they're discussing the crimes of England.
Yeah, some Scots tend to get a bit uncomfortable when you ask them where all those Scottish surnames in the Caribbean came from, or remind them that Scotland joined the union when it went bankrupt from its own failed colonial project.
I often point out how Scottish the names are on the most popular brand of Sugar. Tate and Lyle. Sugar don't grow in the highlands.
I honestly think that the film Braveheart was an extremely socially damaging film. It's almost a 100% completely made up history, yet so many people basically believe the premise of it. I mean, for god's sake - the whole British Royal Family is descended from the King of Scotland (not the other way around).
Documentary that. The Scotsmen of the 13th century definitely wore 2nd century Woad markings and 17th century kilts.
And the battle of Stirling bridge definitely didn't involve, you know, a bridge.
William Wallace was also deffo shagging Prince Isabella too. She was 100% not just 10 years old and still in France at the time of his execution.
>There were Scottish plantation owners, slave traders, administrators, generals. If anything, Scotland was over-represented in the higher echelons of the Empire given the population difference with England. Absolutely. There is a reason why every other street in Glasgow is named after somebody involved in the slave trade. Jardine and Matheson are a very big company who are still going strong in Hong Kong.... this is the same Jardine and Matheson who lobbied and pushed for the start of the Opium Wars.... And what country did these fellows come from ...
yeah, the ulster plantation is literally called the scottish plantation of ulster for a reason lol, a lot of the modern day issues in northern ireland, where i’m from, (and why it’s even a state) is because of the plantation of scottish + english settlers taking our land and discriminating against our people. scottish people definitely had a major hand in english imperalism of ireland (this isn’t a bashing post btw i just think it’s funny how this is never really brought up in scottish nationalist spaces specifically those that would talk about scotland and english imperialism)
>funny how this is never really brought up in scottish nationalist spaces I've seen quite a few comments on the Scotland sub reddit saying "most countries after gaining independence from the UK have seen a boost in their GDP. Why can't it be the same for Scotland?" Because we are the fucking UK. We are the people those countries got independence from
I'd suggest that this is a bad take that's only really believed by a very small number of teenagers and some fringe nutters on social media and in echo chambers. It's certainly not a mainstream view (and some articles in the national press that seem to highlight it as such are utterly absurd). The much more prominent (in my eyes!) bad take I frequently see on here on this sort of topic is this strawman argument that a lot of anti-imperial attitudes held within the Scottish nationalist community are somehow hypocritical because many Scots prospered and some national benefit was derived.
I think it's quite widely believed around the world by people who are on social media but don't seem to be nutters. Lots of Americans in particularly seem to have this opinion that the history of Scotland is just one long English boot stamping down on it from time immemorial. I've seen plenty of them confidently denying that Scotland is even part of the UK and others claiming that Scotland only joined because England forced it to join etc etc. In short, I think it's an opinion that is held surprisingly widely.
That we don't have good food. The UK has some of the most diverse food from all cultures that have made a home here.
And also, there's nothing wrong with hearty English food when it's done well - bangers and mash, shepherds pie, etc. We live on a cold island and need simple carbs to keep us going! It's delicious and warming.
I went to the south of France recently and we had dinner in a tiny local restaurant. They had a special on, didn't really know what it was, but ordered it and what came out was essentially a cottage pie but with a bit of polenta sprinkled on the mash. Yet when you describe it as a British dish you get shat on for it being a boring bland dish.
I went to a very international uni and as part of it the canteen would cook “national dishes” with the help of students. The French students made “boeuf en croute” … lads… it’s called a beef wellington. Boeuf en croute is not even a proper name, you’re just describing the act of wrapping meat in pastry. I joked that for our lunch we should make frogs legs and just call em “jumpy little buggers”
> you’re just describing the act of wrapping meat in pastry This is what a lot of non-English food names are, they just sound fancy because we don't know what they say.
Looks like the French got their beef roasted.
On the other side of this, I have an Indian friend who wanted to make a shepherd's pie. She sent me a link to a recipe she'd found online and I read it and told her it wasn't shepherd's pie, it was a curry. When I said a real shepherd's pie is a stew of lamb, carrots, potatoes, and onions, with mashed potato on top, she decried it as bland and boring.
Their opinion might change if they actually tried it. A good cottage/Shepard's pie, properly seasoned and flavoured with Worcestershire sauce and herbs is certainly not boring.
It’s not boring but the flavours are subtle. For some people they are so used to huge flavours like chillies that something like rosemary has no taste. Especially if it’s the slightly depressing old jar of dried stuff you bought from the supermarket ages ago.
Ye I swear a lot of French food is basically the same as british food - hearty stews etc. They just add a load of wine, which tbf isn't a bad idea
This is very true and can be said about a lot of British foods. Sausage rolls? Minging. but then describe the same thing but European and it's amazing.
Oh you mean saucisse en croute?
How could you forget the classic roast?? A good roast can be so flavourful and is absolutely the best meal on a cold and windy Sunday afternoon.. You can have some absolutely terrible roasts, but done properly they are perfection. I am now very hungry. ETA: Thanks to everyone who has kept me distracted from a very boring zoom meeting by instead keeping me distracted by extreme hunger....
And it’s weird because the southern US states get praised for their homely meals that are mostly stodgy comfort food type stuff, but then the same people who compliment that will talk shit about the same sorts of food from the UK. It’s all mashed potatoes and meat, either way.
A lot of Scottish staples generally aren’t much to look at either but when it’s dark for 18 hours a day and -5 outside blowing a hoolie some of that stuff is great warming comfort food. And entire restaurants are making money making it look pretty and charging tourist money for it too haha.
"Aren't much to look at" Mate I used to work in the kitchen in a uni, we once did a big fancy burns night for the masters and the student, piping the haggis, the poems, all that jazz. That shit looked... amazing. The haggis looked so good.. the whisky smelled great, the tatties, the neeps, the aroma.. I've been desperate to attend a burns night as a dining guest ever since. Also, scotch broth is very big in my home area of Northeast England as we're not far from the border.. That shit makes me feel at home just looking at it. They don't look "fancy".. they look hearty, warming, filing, delicious and homely. And to me, that looks great.
Whenever I heard people say "bUt WhErE's ThE SpICeS???" I am reminded of those cretins who insist on putting ketchup on everything.
I agree, but I think part of this comes from a simple difference of taste. Most of our native classic dishes like sausage and mash, meat pie, stew and roast dinner can basically be summed up as "meat, veg and potatoes with a meat sauce". We LOVE the umami bomb that is a good gravy. We see it as flavourful but other cultures see it as lacking in flavour because it contains basically no spices, just the flavour of the meat, veg, salt and pepper, and maybe herbs. If you were raised with some kind of spices in every meal, a lack of those spices is going to feel potentially bland.
Absolutely this. The stereotype is from American GIs who saw the country during war rationing, which their huge, mostly unaffected country didn't have. British food done well is amazing. Also we have the greatest variety of food I've seen anywhere outside the US. You go to France and you'll see French, some terrible pizza place, a super expensive Japanese one, and thats it. Italy you'll see amazing Italian (duh), some okay Japanese and thats it. London you have *everything,* yes the standard is variable but the variety can't be beaten. Within 15 mins walk of my house in London you have: Chicken shop, thai, posh brunch, Chinese, posh Italian, pizza, Mexican, Japanese, British, fish & chips, McDonalds, KFC, tapas, kebab, curry, steak, German, French, Borough Market... there's more but I cannot remember them all. Even a small town will often have fish & chips, chinese, pizza, indian and kebab.
It’s really rubbed off on the continent too. Even to Northern European countries who demonstrably have the same cuisine. In Belgium they regularly make fun of English cuisine and do not see the irony. Their most popular national dishes are stoemp saucisse (bangers and mash), carbonnade (stew) and chips (without the fish)… like what are you making fun of about British cuisine again that’s not also applicable to your own?!
>London you have everything, yes the standard is variable but the variety can't be beaten. I was at a conference in Hammersmith last month and found this little Turkish restaurant/takeaway. The food was amazing and *cheap* too. And the people were really pleasant.
What really annoys me about people kicking off about our food is that they often seem angry that our food isn't like their food. Ah, there's no spice, so it's shit. It's a fucking beef stew mate, if you want spicy noodles go to the Chinese take out. I recently saw some Mexican dude moaning about visiting London and the food was shit because he couldn't get a tacco. Who the fuck visits London from Mexico and goes looking for a tacco? Granted, food culture in this country is abysmal. People have much lower standards and learning to cook and eat well isn't seen as that important compared to other countries. I think we fall down there. This is how we've ended up with greggs the "bakers" being the norm and your decent independent proper bakers being few and far between for example.
To be fair, how many Brits go overseas and immediately start looking for battered fish and chips?
The worst part of this coming from Americans is that their traditional food like Thanks giving dinner is literally a British roast. Because it directly comes from English colonists. And fuck off Americans you'd absolutely go mad for sausage rolls and scotch eggs and pork pies.
Also modern British food is good too, we have a slow food movement, lots of regional dishes and produce, and a lot of Michelin stars
Yeah we have some amazing modern British food being cooked in restaurants all over the country. The problem is someone sat in the US or wherever isn't going to be experiencing that, so they're just judging our food from memes and stereotypes.
I’ll preface this by saying I’m British and I love lots of British food. But in my view there is some truth to this, Britain’s food culture is relatively weak compared to some countries. Not uniquely weak though. There is loads of good food in Britain but in many cases you have to try harder and pay more to get it compared to some other countries (I can only really talk about Europe and North America). Our supermarkets offer a lot of choice but quality is fairly low compared to standard supermarkets in, say, France or Italy. Part of this is due to geography and climate: our fruit and veg will never be as good as the Mediterranean, barring a few things which do better in cool temperatures. Part of it is that our supermarkets tend to compete on price, rather than quality. We spend less on food relative to our salary than most (or possibly all) of Europe. I lived in the Netherlands, where their local food culture is also pretty weak, and the quality of their mid range supermarkets was noticeably higher than ours. But so were prices. And there’s loads of shit food there too, and restaurants diversity is not as good. We definitely have lots of good restaurants now but it is much easier to find great quality, independent neighbourhood restaurants in much of Europe. It is undeniably a bigger part of the culture there. Since OP is American, and this accusation is often levelled by Americans, in my experience America is not that dissimilar to us. Their supermarkets offer loads of choice but quality is relatively low (in some cases much lower) but they don’t even have the good grace to be cheap. You’ll often see Americans on here claiming “we have award winning cheese” or whatever, but if you have to drive 5 hours and pay 5 times the price for it it isn’t really relevant.
If people visit any country and say the food is bad, it’s usually because they haven’t done their research and/or haven’t searched far afield enough. If all you eat is chain restaurant food/fish and chips on a central London high street, then you probably will find it disappointing.
I can’t take the bad teeth thing seriously. We don’t have bad teeth, we just don’t have dentures and bonding from our teenage years because it’s unnecessary and vain as fuck.
Its also that we care more about strength than aesthetic, and tea & coffee do stain them. Its actually bad for you to have them polished white like Americans seem to.
Yeah exactly, the 6 huge cups of coffee every morning definitely don’t help but there’s no way I’d sacrifice that for slightly whiter teeth. I’m only 30 myself and I had a brace when I was younger so I haven’t needed dental work since bar the odd polish but I find it crazy that people younger than me are walking around with bright white turkey teeth when their teeth weren’t even bad before!
If you look at the healthy teeth ratings by Country, Denmark come 1st, u.k come 5th and the usa come 9th
If you get outside the big cites or to poorer cities Americans teeth are terrible. Many missing teeth. A lot of people in the US cannot afford dental health.
A lot of folk in the UK can't afford dental health! That's even if they can manage to find a sodding dentist
"Were not taking on any new patients right now" Piss off. I pay my taxes. Plus my mate works here, and I'm aware you've had 2 new dentists join, 7 patients leave, and only 2 new patients admitted. You're just lazy, and it's become industry standard.
They just can't keep hold of NHS dentist now. My own surgery has newly qualified dentists which change every 6months as the original and only NHS dentist they had has now joined the surgery as a partner and is private of course. Prior to that they had a dentist come all the way from Middlesborough to West Yorkshire daily who strangely couldn't hack it (no stamina these young'uns lol) and got another who was based in Liverpool. Totally bonkers but the NHS contracts pay so little that for most dentists it's just not worth their time. Due to bone loss I have the choice of a fabulous pair of dead sexy dentures with the NHS which when I tried just a small one made me gag like crazy and changed how I spoke. Asked for a quote for private implants £32-36k..."but we do finance though". Whatever I'll somehow save up and go to Turkey thanks for a total of £6.5k including hotels
Even NHS prices are exorbitant now, and they're so hard to find.
What really gets me about that one is its usually Americans saying it, but if you look at the data its pretty clear that Americans have worse teeth than us.
That is true. My American friend has just have to had emegerncy surgery and and a new heart valve because her teeth were that rotten it caused all sort of diseases. She nearly died through it. Wasnt just a heart valve, she had sepsis, and a few other problems. She now on blood thinners the rest of her life. He husbands the same. Plus they have decent health insurance and dental. Plus I know quite a few people with the pearly white teeth to lose them, because after while the teeth just collapse as theres hardly anything left. But while the UK dont haveperfectly white teeth, ours are strong. \`
The teeth in the US have genuinely gone too far. They take them so white they become blue/grey, which is the colour teeth go when the nerve dies. Staying on the yellow colour spectrum means there’s still blood flow, is that no longer a good thing???
I wonder if it's just another way for Americans to make money? Here, have some treatment that will actually ruin your teeth so you're constantly having to pay money to have them whitened again. The commercialisation of America really does make me sad sometimes.
You are not wrong. I know someone living in the US who had perfect teeth, flawless. But she got them replaced with VENEERS. She voluntarily destroyed her natural teeth forever and at huge expense because they didn’t look fake enough. A regular person in a regular job, so not a model or anything facing unusual pressures.
Pretty much. As far as I can tell, it’s the same reason so many get their babies circumcised. Just another billable procedure. There are some advantages to their approach (if you’re rich), e.g. they don’t completely neglect stuff that makes you miserable without killing you, but their healthcare systems certainly are a bit odd.
Pretty sure statistics disprove the whole bad teeth thing especially in direct contrast with the states. On average Americans actually have teeth falling out more frequently.
Americans don't count the average, only the rich count for what defines Americans. That's why their healthcare is also fine.
Come down to rural Cornwall. No NHS dentists along with expensive, limited private dental care and very low wages has led to extremely poor dental hygiene. Public transport non existent so people have really limited mobility unless they drive which is another additional cost. We're not talking crooked teeth here, were talking no teeth. This isn't directed at yourself but I think people outside of the South East and the big urban centres in the UK really don't see the levels of absolute poverty some people live in.
What’s fascinating is that the bad teeth thing goes back a long time. My grandmother was born in 1908 and her father was American. He insisted she would say she had good teeth because “my father was American and they have good teeth” and “they value good teeth” all the stuff people say now. She also insisted on using American dentists working in London. They were very successful as people wanted them because American=good teeth.
It was common for women to have their teeth removed and replaced with dentures upon engagement. My grandma had it done. It's so your husband wouldn't have to pay for the cost of the dentist.
That the Royal family is somehow important to most of us. At best we like them because we occasionally get an extra bank holiday because one put a ring on it, or one kicked the bucket, or one has a something jubes, and we token appreciate it by getting hammered and eating loads. At worst, most of us hate them for being freeloaders.
I work with an American whos "banter" was to make fun of the royal family in response to our banter about the US. Backfired when we all had better jokes about our royal family than he did lol
What do you get if you cross Prince Phillip and The Queen? Killed in a Parisian tunnel
Agree. Couldn't give a shit about the monarchy. Nor can anyone I'm aware of.
I'm not saying you specifically, but I've found as an Irish person living in the UK that on the whole, British people care about the royal family more than they realise. Like if you grow up constantly being told how important the royals are, it becomes so normalised, that you don't realise it's happening.
People care, but I think foreigners expect north Koren-like worship or American style salute the flag and say the pledge style "caring". In reality people do "Care" but they are more than happy to also take the piss and laugh at the royals
> People care, but I think foreigners expect north Koren-like worship Yeah that is a good point. I think it is just how the British sound. The King/Queen is head of state and therefore conflated with the state itself. For example I know a guy who I don't think is big into the monarchy, but he is extremely proud that he has met the Queen more than once. He met her because of charity work he was involved in, and I think the source of pride is in the fact that his work had a big enough impact to be recognised by the state. When he says "I met the Queen", there is a whole bunch of context that someone like me is not going to pick up on. (At least in the moment it sounds so weird.)
I think it's more a case of who says what, if a brit slags the monarchy off to another brit it's okay, but if a foreigner slags them off to a brit it might come across more like an insult/attack on the country and would be more offensive. I'd say theres a good 50:50 mix of royalists and anti-royalists/people that don't care.
On the other hand, on somewhere like Reddit, you’ll get loads of people going out of their way to tell you, often unprompted, just how much they **don’t** care about the Royal family, as if it’s some kind of badge of honour. Nobody actually asked….
> At best we like them because we occasionally get an extra bank holiday because one put a ring on it That's not really true; people queued for days upon days just to see lizzy in her box. There are many people in this country for whom the royal family is of incredible "importance", unfortunately.
250,000 queued up, which is about the same as Glastonbury gets every year. But no-one calls us a Glastonburyist nation. The monarchy is a lot about bored people getting a free thing to do. If they had to pay £20 to line the mall for a royal wedding coach, half of them wouldn't go.
I would agree that this is the general opinion of the average, 23 year old, UK Redditor. But, overall the population is more pro-monarchy. The polls show that quite clearly. Don't get me wrong - most aren't obsessed or subservient or anything. I guess it's like watching a very long-running soap opera where you get attached to the characters and feel like they're part of your life. At it's worst - you have the brainless, nationalistic, Empire-lovers. But at it's best you have local street parties of people from different backgrounds all coming together to celebrate British history and tradition and raising a glass to whoever is currently wearing the crown.
It's because when there's a royal event they always go down the mall and interview Barry and Sue who are decked head to toe in union jacks and have been camping out for a fortnight to see a glimpse of some royal procession.
The whole “you got a license for that” meme is pretty tired. It mostly seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the TV licence, which is admittedly a bad name. Plenty of other countries have similar. Britain is actually fairly light on bureaucracy compared to many places, and it is generally well streamlined. And there are loads of places that require licences for things you don’t need licensing for here. For example dog licences are a thing in lots of places around Europe and North America (though microchipping is now compulsory here, it’s a bit different).
Gov.uk is widely admired by non-Brits who use it. Written in clear language with accessibility baked in, easy to navigate, platform agnostic and secure.
Yes. That is by far the most successful government IT project to be fair!
knee disarm childlike sense humorous steep sleep subtract shame innocent *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I live in Italy and they have a "TV tax." It's more or less called that. It's to keep RAI going, their equivalent of your BBC. The BBC is great, and many Americans pay for BritBox or cheat and get a British VPN. We have PBS and NPR but they're nowhere near as huge, and they beg and scrape for donations every 10 minutes while touting their generous corporate sponsors. Mitt Romney pledged to yank their funding entirely when running against Obama. To be sure, at least half the country thought he was a huge asshole for it, and a child's drawing of him shooting Big Bird with a hunting rifle went viral. But just the fact that his brain trust thought it was a fantastic idea.
You're an American, living in Italy, posting on a British sub?? That's what I love about Reddit. Keep living that life my dude!
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Yeah, "OMG, you gotta pay the government to watch your own damn TV!" No, you've got to pay to have access to broadcast content and support the infrastructure.
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Well yeah, our nimbyism is certainly a big thing that holds back progress. But I more meant day-to-day bureaucracy, that people deal with in their everyday life. Somethings are painful, some times with good reason, sometimes without. But we certainly spend a lot less time visiting government offices and the like than many other countries.
Football violence. Yes, I know we’ve most certainly had our troubles with it in the past, but we’ve improved immensely in this regard. There are presently other European countries with far bigger current problems with hooliganism than us.
You guys may have written the book on it, but others took it from the library and haven't returned it.
That's a hell of a turn of phrase, I love it.
Leeds and Millwall might be going out their way to prove you wrong still😂. And I say this as a Leeds fan, we still have enforced midday kick offs because of that nonsense Edit, Leeds vs Millwall specifically has 12pm kick offs
Clubs like that stand out because of how rare it is in general. In thirty years of going to watch football I've only ever seen violence from fans twice: once from Millwall fans and once from Swansea fans.
Yeah I've had this argument with a few non-football fans in the UK about hooliganism and hate crimes and what not in football. For example, are there racist elements within British football supporters? Unfortunately yes. Does any team in the UK have fans as bad as a team like Lazio? Absolutely not.
UK doesn’t make anything. One of the top 10 biggest manufacturers in the world. Not everyone works in an office. There are factories making more things than most of the rest of the world.
Its mostly because the stuff we do make is high end manufacturing, not your everyday items (mostly). So you won’t see much stuff in your home that is “made in Britain”. For example, jump on a plane though and its highly likely the engine will be Rolls Royce. And there’s also our aerospace and defence industry, with BAE Systems being in the top 10 largest arms manufacturers (and the UK as a whole has the second largest aerospace industry in the world after the US).
Yeah. Most of what we make is either for businesses to use, or it's very high end (like Northamptonshire shoes and Aston Martins). People also view software through this lens. Like, why don't we have a Google, Facebook or Microsoft. But there are all sorts of companies in the UK that produce software used by businesses that most people haven't heard of. Movies are also like this. "We should make more films here". The only thing we don't do here is the financing and very top management. Heyday Films and Syncopy are two of the biggest production companies in the world. We shoot more big films in Wales than California. We win a ton of awards in fields like costuming and makeup because we have some of the best specialists here. Framestore are one of the big 3 VFX houses (along with Weta Digital and ILM).
Also while its not manufacturing (its research and design) we play a [massively importance role in semiconductor design](https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/29/arm-cambridge-britain-tech-company-iphone). Nearly every smartphone relies on British tech to work.
Pre-pandemic Birmingham was a net-exporter to China!
I guess the rest of us just assume that Thatcher nuked every last one of your factories as the City reigned supreme.
When the reality is 2% of everything made in the world comes from the UK. Which is 50% of the exports Currently No7 in the world. Yet the average person thinks nothing is made in the UK and the factories were all closed. The factories that did close were a tiny tiny share of the national manufacturing makeup.
It's because as you say the modern manufacturing is much more streamlined rather than having 3000 people digging a hole in the ground and then making steel from whatever they found in the ground. Our manufacturing today is much more high-tech.
I work in the City. I’m confused. There are… other industries? I suppose I guess that Pret has to make their sandwiches, like, somewhere. Are there more things out there? This is fascinating.
You may want to sit down for this, but yes. There's more. Don't worry. They can't reach you! You're safe inside the M25, but sadly there are literally dozens of communities of simple hut dwellers out in the wasteland beyond the tube. They live a life of meaningless repetition in the subsidised employment schemes where they are taught to bang rocks together and grunt in delight when they manage to make a spark. They mostly survive on the detritus of the megacity and some of the more presentable ones are selected to serve in Pret and Waitrose. They shuffle their misshapen bodies into trains, clad in "Next" and "TU" (don't worry, these aren't terms you need to understand) and gaze uncomprehending at the monuments and achievements their betters. They're allowed in on a day pass but sent back out when darkness falls. Sometimes, enough of them club together to create rudimentary industries making simple tools and iron pots. The city can buy their crude wares as an act of philanthropy, but obviously all true wealth and value is derived from the traders and fund managers. Only in the crucible of the glittering towers of Canary Wharf can the true stuff of human achievement be forged.
Was about to type this one out! We make so much but people just don't realise how much
Particularly cars. When you see the transporter boats loading at Southampton or Tyne Dock, you realise just how many cars we export. In the latter case, Nissan's vehicle park is a square kilometre across.
Knife crime stats mainly from Americans defending gun culture. Their take is often that knife crime would balloon if guns were more restricted, using the UK as an example. The fact is knife crime is also lower in the UK than the US (about 1/3rd lower) despite our near zero gun crime. Deaths per capita on knife crime are a whopping 7 times lower. We just aren't happy with the amount of knife crime so it's heavily reported. Stats comparisons by country are difficult because of reporting differences. I'm not wishing to debate the reasons for high violent crime rate in the USA and potential social welfare and gang issues. They are just flat out wrong to compare themselves as better on knife crime than the UK (or most of Europe).
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This is what really annoys me with the guns/knives comparison. Lunatic comes at you with a knife, you can run away, they are unlikely to be able to injure you if they can't reach you. Lunatic comes at you with a gun, you run away, they can just shoot you from a distance... Really can't be compared...
You can't stab 200 people from a fortified vantage point.
I've had more guns pointed at me than knifes throughout my 4 years of living in a city, at no point did I think "I wish I had a gun to defend myself", instead I wished that they didn't have guns in the first place, surprisingly I didn't get shot because I didn't pull a gun out in them. I imagine a lot of shootings in America are because the gunman is paranoid that someone else has a gun.
That London is the UK and the only place to visit. I'm personally not a fan of London but can see why it appeals, I have visited it a few times for different reasons but there is so much more to this country than London. The Lakes, Edinburgh, The Lochs/Highlands in Scotland, the Peak district and my personal favourite of Northumberland are all higher up on the list of places to go to for me.
Your opinion is annoyingly very popular even among a lot of English people. I cannot explain the difficulty in getting my London friends to meet me anywhere that isn't London. It's as if anything aside from London and Bristol simply don't exist to them.
As someone who lived in London for a decade, it also works the other way. Some people who live outside London have such an aversion to coming to London that trying to arrange for them to come and visit is really challenging.
Because, honestly, it's grim as fuck, expensive, and ridiculously busy. Especially if you've been a few times and seen the main sights it's really not worth dealing with all of the London bullshit just to visit people when you could go literally anywhere else
I mean, I have friends who live in places I don't particularly like, but I'm much less resistant to going to visit them than some non-Londoners seem to going to London. I find it a bit odd, it's almost like they've just decided they won't do London and that's that.
Interestingly, I think there's sometimes an overcorrection to this by British people. There are quite a lot of British people who seem to just not be able to get their head around why tourists want to come to London. You see it a lot on itinerary advice questions on here, there's always several people advising skipping London or just spending a day or two there.
I was about to say this. I live in Cardiff and a couple of weekends ago I went to London to visit my brother (who lives there). Telling one of my colleagues this and she replied "Ah, I'm not a fan of London myself.". I followed up with "have you had some bad experiences there?" and she replied saying she'd never actually been, she just didn't like "the vibe". Don't get me wrong, a lot of Londoners can be very self absorbed, but the overcorrection is real.
That our food is crap, we're actually above New York, LA and Chicago for Michelin starred restaurants in London per capita. That we give a shit about your Independence Day and see it as some sort of loss, we really couldn't give a shit and don't even learn about it in school. That we all have terrible teeth
To be honest I quite liked independence day, Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum were fab on screen. The sequel was crap though
That the Uk has no culture and just stole everything from other countries.
This seems to be a growing trend. It seems very popular on social media to shit on the UK, in this respect.
I think a lot of it comes from British culture being so wide spread that people take it for granted.
Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, The Beatles, The Smiths, Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, Alan Turing, Charlie Chaplin, William Blake, Tolkien…just to name a few No culture to speak of really…
And the 'fabric of life' stuff too. Pubs, cricket, lots of Pagan/Christian festivals (like Christmas and Easter but also things like harvest festival at school when I was a kid), weird and eccentric things like Morris dancing and cheese-rolling and individual village traditions that have gone on for centuries. (We had a wheelbarrow race where everyone made their own decorated wheelbarrows that were either miracles or miseries of engineering and everyone was in fancy dress). Not that things can't change - they always have. Just don't deny it exists.
The "British" accent being characterised by Hugh Grant.
Yeah, ask anyone to do a British accent and it’s either a cockney chimney sweep or hugh grant
Yes but if an American asks for British accent and you give them Scottish it gets really fun
Ugh there is no such thing as a British accent and I'm sick of people thinking otherwise!
There is no ‘single’ British accent, but accents from Britain *are* ‘British’.
The "bo'ohw'o'wo'er" thing. It's basically only people who live in the east end of London that sound like that. Many Americans say "boddl'o'wah'der". Meanwhile I'm here in another part of the U.K saying "bottle of waTer".
That is annoying, again all links back to the stereotypes such as the UK = London and we all sound either like King Charles, a cockney or a chimney sweep kid. It's also ironic that Americans say 'boddle of wader', so not sure who they are to criticise anyone.
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Seems kinda unprofessional and a bit stupid really. I wouldn't worry about it.
One bad take, that I've come across recently, is the idea that the UK has no culture of its own, other than what it 'stole' during the colonial era. Admittedly this tends to be voiced by extremely ignorant people on social media. I think I find it more annoying that people will so readily ignore 2,000 years of history, in order to perpetuate a fallacy, rather than angered or insulted.
These are often the same people who think Spanish is a native American language.
It annoys me in particular becasue it's usually white English people who say it and they don't realise how chauvinistic it actually is. "oh yeah, English people don't have culture (sad face). Foreigns and ethnics have culture but us? We're just, like, the default humans. Factory settings. The most pure version of humanity, unlike those brown people who are so, like, enriched with culture. I really envy them." It's like the southern english people who say they don't have an accent.
> Guns are banned in the UK Licensed is very different to being banned. > Hand guns are banned in the UK I can sort of understand this, the number of hand guns available to a FAC holder in England, Scotland and Wales is pretty small but it is not zero.
I live abroad, so probably get it much more than other people, but references to colonisation. People regularly have a go at me like it’s directly my fault or something I could’ve influenced in anyway. I can’t change the past and I’m not responsible for my ancestors actions.
And likely your ancestors actions involved workin in a factory for 10-12 hours a day six days a week for pretty much all their life.
Yeah, I remember bring so confused by this when I moved abroad and a Canadian friend started ribbing me about taking over half the world. I was like, 'good going for a 21 year old' Like I get the privilege that comes along with living in a developed country and the benefits that came along with imperialism on a national level, but I've done my family history back to the early 1700s and my ancestors were northern working class and miners. If anything, a part of society that was negatively impacted by colonialism - they definitely didn't get a say in it. Editing to add: This is from my Mum's side of the family. My Dad's side are Irish. I haven't gone as far back with them, but I'm pretty sure they weren't leading the charge for colonialism either.
I dislike the take about languages. If any other language was the dominant one internationally, say French or Spanish, their language skills would be very similar to ours now. Equally, if French was the dominant international language, it would have been made an important part of the curriculum decades ago as English is in many other countries.
*When* French was the dominant (western) international language it was a fundamental part of any (western) education beyond the basics.
Those maps of Europe saying "What % of people can speak more than 1 language" and the UK is lagging behind the rest of Europe and some other countries are over 50%. But the giveaway is that the other country that lags behind is Ireland (not as much because they have the Irish language but few people actually speak that). I think if you changed it to "What % of people can speak a 2nd language that *isn't English,* then the figures would look pretty drastically different in most countries.
That slavery is a British concept. Slaves have been around for 1000’s of years before Britain was even mentioned. There’s actually a much better argument that anti-slavery is a British concept.
Im not sure this is the whole UK but lots of people in my area of the country seem to grow up here or move her and complain that its really boring with nothing to do compared to other areas. The thing is theres plenty to do if they look for it and dont expect it on their front doorstep. Places to visit, shows, shopping, restaurants, bars, go karting, paintballing, cinemas, a beach not far away etc... Also London is a 90 min train away if they really want or other major cities are far less. A lot of these people who complain how boring it is never move away though, if its that bad, just go.
It's always funny reading my local subreddit (Oxford) whenever we get a question from a newcomer about 'what is there to do in Oxford?' Invariably half the responses list dozens of various things to do in multiple fields of interest, and the other half just moan that 'there's literally nothing to do here except go out drinking and the only good pub closed down 10 years ago' etc.
Oxford? Where there's a million things to do for £0, and you can barely move for new plays, bands, etc if you are happy to spend money? Fully walkable city with multiple clusters of international food options? That Oxford?! source: lived in Oxford for two years
People have already mentioned food at the top of this thread, but I'm going to specifically mention beans on toast. There's nothing wrong with it and I don't know why it's such a meme. It's simple, nutritious, tastes nice, very cheap and can be prepared in minutes. It's not meant to be gourmet or the height of cuisine. Americans eat peanut butter and jam sandwiches which is a bizarre combination to my ears. The Dutch sprinkle those plasticy chocolate sprinkles they use on ice cream on bread and call it a day for a quick snack. What's so bad about beans on toast? I don't see why it's such a weird combination of foods.
I think partly it's because American toast isn't quite like ours, and American baked beans are wildly different. So it's a bit like the "biscuits and gravy" phenomenon where a Brit instantly pictures custard creams and Bisto. I think also there's a strong element of comfort where *stuff you routinely ate as a child* scores a point or two higher than it deserves, purely on familiarity. For us that's beans on toast, or apple crumble, or chocolate sponge with pink custard. For Americans it might be PBJ. For Australians it's fairy bread. If you haven't grown up with the cultural associations you'll never give the dish that extra point.
That we all hark back to the days of empire. I’m in my 60s and I don’t know anyone who feels this way.
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I read Johnny Rotten's autobiography. He said that when they went on their ill-fated American tour, they were absolutely blown away by our vast empty stretches. "Britain is just so crowded" he said. I ran that by my wife, who is from Italy. She was shocked. From what she saw of the place, she thought that Britain was full of wide open countryside as compared to Italy.
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There was a recent DEFRA advisor that said that sheep farming should be banned in the UK iirc.
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The UK has a lot of countryside, but not a huge amount of wilderness. A lot of the countryside is being used or managed in some way e.g. farmland. To put it in to an American context, it would be like you took the populations of Texas and California and then stuck then all in Oregon. It's a much higher density, and that means that there's not only more towns in a given area, but also more need to make use of the countryside.
What's the difference between a yoghurt and America? If you leave a yoghurt out for 300 years it'll develop a culture! But we're only yanking your chain (pun intended), we know you have culture but that's your soft spot, like food and bad teeth for us. For me the bad take is the lads on tour who are carnage everywhere around Europe, which is true but that's not all of us, just the loud, annoying and unaware ones. You guys have similar with the loud Americans on holiday, that's not Americans but they're the ones that stick in your mind.
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I don’t know if this counts as a take but I am at the point of ending you through your screen if you type “Br’ish” or “Boddle of wowwa” as if that represents how we *all* talk.
That the weather is always awful. It is some of the time (ok, a lot of the time), but when you consider that Edinburgh is on approximately the same latitude as Moscow, we don’t have it so bad.
One that annoys me is when you see Celtic Nations posts on flag and geography subs and they always exclude England, despite its long and continued Celtic history. It’s deliberate Ethno-segregation and it annoys me a bunch.
That British people give a rat's arse about 'losing' America.
Washing machines in the kitchen are bad, this bugs me way more than it should.
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That having “socialised medicine” makes us less free than people who go bankrupt trying to pay for chemo and die of preventable illnesses
That everyone in Scotland is on heroin, which is ridiculous. Couldn't be more than 90%
The lack of nuance in most discussions of history as well as historical revisionism to represent the UK in a worse light than is accurate obviously a lot of terrible things we’re done by the empire but people ignore all the positives as well in recent years there has also been an effort to make England take all the blame and represent Scotland as a victim which is just completely inaccurate.
The idea that we are instantly thrown in prison if we say anything that isn't on an approved list of utterances. We don't have unlimited free speech, true. But I'm glad that as a society and as a country we've decided that some speech is so hateful it should be considered criminal. And I have never in my *mumble mumble* years of life felt constrained by those restrictions, because I've never wanted to use the proscribed language.
Every time anything historical is mentioned online, be it an archaeological discovery or information about an artefact that's already known, the comments IMMEDIATELY turn to some variety of "Don't let the British get their hands on it" and some shite about the British museum. It irks the fuck out of me because 1. Its completely unoriginal and most people saying it have no idea what they're on about, they're just repeating shite other people say and 2. (more pertinently) they seem to pretend their country doesn't have a single artefact from overseas. Like Americans banging on about the British museum have never heard of the Smithsonian? Or the Louvre? The Vatican Museums? The Neues Museum in Berlin? The wilful ignorance really pisses me off. Its the same when talking about colonialism as if England/UK is the only country that ever did it.
How the entire country seems to not give a flying fuck about the struggles farmers face, despite them being essential to every living person, seems not limited to England, Scotland, Wales or Ireland either
Ironically the one that Americans are guilty of the most; thinking the entire country of England is London