the UK!
- Thread starter cm1179
- Start date
There aren't many countries more tolerant than we are, with the mix of cultures and people we have
This,
I simply love the amount of respect and tolerance shown to everyone in this country (In general) I also love the fact that lots of people think in the way that "if it makes them happy, then fair enough"
Rule britannia!
Soldato
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COULDN'T! COULDN'T agree more!
You ****ing Yankee halfbreed!
Thank God its not just me..
I also get confused when people say they banged their head off something...
No no.. You banged your head ON something!!
I did try and answer the OP btw... And couldn't for the life of me think of something that we're best at.
Worst: Being a society of Yobs
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COULDN'T! COULDN'T agree more!
You ****ing Yankee halfbreed!
Hey!!! Chill. iPhone pred txt, I just didn't catch it this time.
Wots up...sheep not playing tonite....
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Hey!!! Chill. iPhone pred txt, I just didn't catch it this time.
Wots up...sheep not playing tonite....
Was a tolerance joke
iirc since ww2 there has only 1 year that a British solider has not been killed in action.
only in the very small "developed world" group of countries. everywhere else makes us look like prudes.
[TW]Fox;17460753 said:
Couldn't have said it better myself. In the 3 years I've been out of university I've lived in New York, Sydney and London and I can honestly say the UK road and rail network is the best I have experienced.
Even NYC transport system lags behind the TfL, no integrated ticketing between the operators (PATH, Metro, buses), crowded (no different to London) and far more confusing (How hard is it to present just 1 map of every train link, regardless of operator - as per London).
In Australia, I am amazed they have roads over here at all - the distances they cover are insane (a 900km drive - Plymouth to Aberdeen - is about the shortest distance between two large cities here). But the roads are covered in, as Fox says, craters that sometimes you physically have to dodge if you care about your car. Here in Sydney, the main street linking the eastern suburbs to the city centre (Oxford Street) feels like you're driving over a corrugated iron roof the whole way. Signage is poor compared to the UK and their Sydney network just can't handle the traffic that is applied to it so you get jams everywhere.
Notice I haven't mentioned public transport over here yet? That's because there may as well be none. The majority of transport is provided by buses (again, no integrated ticketing between them and the trains) and the trains are slow.
We joke about our big, usually over budget projects but to give you an idea of who runs the infrastructure projects out here, they had a massive $2.3 billion project to link two suburbs in Sydney by train, the line was first halved to save money then finished before they realised in 2007 that the slope of the track was too steep for the new rolling stock (ordered specifically for this route) to climb it! They tried to fix it by building a 800m long tunnelled curve to flatten the slope only to discover that the screeching noise from the train wheels whilst navigating this curve, from inside the carriages, is 90dB, the equivalent of a 737 taking off.
[TW]Fox;17461672 said:
A quick googling for Americans moaning about road conditions turned up this photo.
This quite frankly, looks like state of Edgware Road running through central London. I actually think, your optimism about state of British roads lies in location - you get to do your daily travels on roads that don't see heavy weight traffic and are so nice, that rest of us use them for holiday hoonage.
I generally like everything about Britiain - even the less funny things - like the medieval plumbing, battlefield health care or stress free schooling, bit have three gripes affecting my daily life - all of them are related to motoring, and to me, they are, as British as grinning Cheshire cat:
- The state of road network, especially in South East is mostly diabolical. Old road specs, with many unexplained bottlenecks, constantly struggling with volumes, loud, poor quality, noisy tarmacs, full of badly patched up maintenance scars, potholes, epic tramlines and incredible amount of wasted road space, removed out of service by painted patterns and accumulated debris no one ever seems to be cleaning or removing. Commuters, services, tourists, as well as logistics and transportation for the entire country is serviced by only two Thames crossings - one 1963 private toll crossing in Dartford and one 1897 horse carriage way in Blackwall. In a country that could afford olympic village north of the river, but seemingly can't afford a bridge to deliver people to it. Now, I understand, there might be countries that have worse roads - Poland, Romania, Cuba, one of the old English penitentiary colonies etc. But it doesn't change the fact - situation is getting ridiculous.
- Road work furniture. Not roadworks. Road work furniture. It's everywhere. Crack in a pavement allows councils to panel out square mile of road in the middle of capital to park 10 luton vans with engineering staff pondering course of action for a fortnight. A single man with a lawnmower cutting catnip in a ditch, apparently now requires two lanes of motorway conned out for 20 miles. Double red lines don't mean anything to any council contractors as long as they have "work in progress" or "highway maintenance" plaques. Which means half a city is full of Sivyer lorries, J Murphy and Morrison vans or other Clancy Docwra field plowing equipment parked everywhere - middle of the road, double reds, traffic light island - while the crew is enjoying greasy spoon or Starbucks. Tourist season or not, you have white and red planks everywhere, temporary plastic fences that are cheaper to replace than collect, last years Tour De France metal crowd control fences stuck up around trees, half of temporary installations not attended for weeks, knocked down by the wind, filthy cones rolling around central areas, signage not fully removed - ugly, dirty mess. Again. Perhaps it's worse in some countries. Albania. Mongolia. West Coast of US. Humptydumtykistan. But you know - this doesn't make it look much better on our soil.
- Closure hysteria. I don't need to explain in detail to anyone, right? Jackknife a lorry on M25 and it's closed completely for 24 hours. Then two out of three lanes will be closed for half a week. I understand, cargo insurers need to attend. Quantity surveyors. Safety crew needs to work out plan of safe entry for cargo recovery specialists. Insurers of both need to check the conditions to calculate the policy. Then we have recovery trucks, and the actual work done. But ffs, compared to several thousand people having their time wasted for a week - this almost needs legislation.
Another scenario - in early 2009 it was announced Blackwall Tunnel southbound will be closed overnight for refurb works. Until December 2012. Southbound Blackwall tunnel is only 900 meters long. Which means whatever is being done to it at night, is calculated to progress at less than 1 meter a day. Wow. HTF do you get that kind of contract. I could clean, strip, prime, PVC and wallpaper that tunnel myself at that pace a day while few hundred thousand people have to do 40 mile detour via Dartford.. - now apparently the only river crossing between south and north of Great Britain between 21:00 and 6 am....
It's that kind of "weight of things" - the "lesser evil" idea that's somewhat lacking - on one hand overturned lorry, 2 tons of apples everywhere - **** happens - on the other - gazillion commuters trying to get home. What to do.. what to do... push the lorry off into ditch, open the road or close the road, get some pictures, invite some crew to ponder and investigate the apples... What's more important?
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in the main areas it is probably the best in the world
but try going from rural village to rural village. you will need a 4x4
whereas here we have nice tarmac going to our villages no matter how small and out of the way they are
Does the oyster card now work on all the overland lines out of London ?. It didn't when I left 4 years ago but I have no idea of the state now. Travel cards are good but only cover to Zone 6 (unless that has also changed). Honestly interested to know as I will be visiting in Nov again.
Good at;
Inventing sports
Inventing things
Ability to laugh at ourselves
Ability to know that sometimes bad things happen and not try to find someone to sue (although this was changing when I moved away).
Free healthcare.
Beautiful countryside.
Bad things;
People immigrating who have no desire to integrate.
Bad behaviour especially when alcohol is involved (binge drinking).
Generally marketing good inventions
Beating other nations when playing the sports we invented
RB
I think the US have us beat on this one.
We're only European Champions at teenage pregnancy.
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
Swiss roads > UK roads > US roads.
I've travelled a fair bit and the UK isn't bad. Certainly not as bad as many people make out. We have a lot that's good.
Something we do quite bad is customer service. There are pockets of incredibly good service - world-class service - but huge swathes of utter rubbish service up and down the country in hotels, restaurants, shops etc.
I've travelled a fair bit and the UK isn't bad. Certainly not as bad as many people make out. We have a lot that's good.
Something we do quite bad is customer service. There are pockets of incredibly good service - world-class service - but huge swathes of utter rubbish service up and down the country in hotels, restaurants, shops etc.
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Worth a read, sorry if it breaks the rules.
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=128562
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=128562
Try living in Kilburn as I did for 4 years
I always imagined that Kilburn must be like a cold Beirut
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More racist than Israel - a state which is founded on the ideal of a nation exclusively for God's Chosen Race? We're are not anywhere close to being that 'racist'.
The British perceive themselves to be racist? Maybe it has something to do with the political and media onslaught which teaches them to be ashamed of themselves and their culture.
I could take any non-European country in the world and show you their racist history but you wouldn't be interested because they are not White. Britain is one of the least racist countries in the world. What other countries have welcomed refugees in from all parts of the world at a massive expense to itself and its culture?
