What do people think about your country or culture that just isn't true or is inaccurate?

[NwaNaija]

I read a funny thread somewhere else on the myths/misconceptions about different countries. What are yours?

We're loud - Ok, Ok yes we are, especially when on the phone. This one's not a myth but not everyone is.

We all speak one language and understand each other - No we don't.

@NwaNaija, I make suya sometimes. DD1 was at an international boarding school, and when I took her back one Sunday evening, I was met by a deputation of four Nigerian girls, who said “Baby Blyatiful said you make suya sometimes. Please could you make us some?” So DD and I had a massive cooking session the following weekend and she went back to school with boxes of suya and jollof rice to heat up.

Turkish here. Atheist, vegetarian, hate the beach, grew up in regular - 10 degree winters. We are loud though, and do like music and to dance...

As a Jewish person I find it interesting how people project Christian norms onto Judaism, ie thinking that being Jewish is about having 'faith' and not seeing how you can be a regularish synagogue attendee without believing in God (not the case for a lot of Jews, but I'd say very few of the congregation I'm part of believe in God per se).

That is possibly true of a good many Christians of various denominations, Echobelly.

@Prokupatuscrakedatus

That we scoop our shit out of the loo to inspect it because we are all riddeld with worms because we eat raw pork from badly raised and badly inspected pigs. Learned that on the thread mentioned in th OP.

Yes! "They" eat raw pork made me cringe. Some people do but even they probably don't do so every day.

Everyone wears Lederhosen and drinks beer all the time.

You can't go on a beach holiday in Germany (um, look at a map).

On the other hand, lots of Germans think it rains all the time in Britain and that we all live in tiny terraced houses.

@GothamGirl1970

I have citizenship in 4 countries including America. There seems to be a widely held belief that if you’re not armed with super expensive health insurance then you can’t get medical care. This is 100% not true. If you receive what Americans call welfare (benefits) you get free health care. We also have Medicare and Medicaid for OAP over 65 as part of government pension. The folks caught in the middle are usually people like working jobs just over qualifying for benefits and their cheap employer doesn’t provide it. However even if you work12 hours a week at places like Starbucks they give you free platinum coated private medical.

Yes this annoys me. Or they’ll see some article where a British tourist has to pay an astronomical amount for medical care (why are they traveling without travel insurance?!) and assume that it’s like that across the board.

@onlychildandhamster

Thanks to all the media reports about 'Singapore-on-thames', a lot of people think that Singapore is a kind of Ayn Rand liberatarian paradise. Nothing can be further from the truth. yes taxes are very low and no capital gains/inheritance tax but singapore citizens are made to save 20% of their income (employers contribute an additional 16%) in a government fund that can only be used for housing, healthcare and retirement. If that isn't government intervention, I don't know what is.

The state literally builds housing for people, 85% of singaporeans live in government built flats but it isn't like the soviet union either, you have to save a deposit and get a mortgage like in any other country, but the difference is that the government doesn't sell for profit. Healthcare is also subsized (50%-80% depending on your situation) and primary/secondary education is free or very cheap.

So when they are talking about deregulation post brexit, we are talking about UK adopting singapore tax laws without the benefit of CPF (government savings and pension fund) or HDB (our socialized housing). These 2 factors mean that singaporeans have 92% home ownership and also savings for old age which make a big difference in how much state support people require. None of the articles ever mention this.

Is the fund put into safe investments? This seems a kind of smart way to go about things, but there has to be a downside to this somewhere—I suppose you never get the full value of your savings back? Better than taxes though ...

@Firstbellini

I reckon international knowledge and U.K. knowledge about the workings and culture of the USA are probably more accurate than they are for any other country in the world.

No, we don’t have an anthropological level knowledge of the US but compared to knowledge of Poland, Taiwan, Argentina or Iran, I reckon we’re doing pretty well at knowing about life in the US.

The difference is that Brits think they know something of America (usually through TV shows). They kind of know they don’t know anything about most other countries. Ime of course

@SWnewstart oh sorry. I mean Nigeria. Didn't realise that about Americans too.

My stereotype of Nigerians is that they think school / education is about quantity rather not necessarily quality.

This is from teaching, I'd mark a piece of work and find a small error, instead of correcting the error I would receive another essay.

I did learn from this and have a discussion about how things are different in the UK, not better or worse, just different so if you have put that we breath out carbon monoxide you only need to change one word, not write 3 pages.

@Blyatiful OK I need your name, number and address. Lockdown be damned!

Seriously, that's a lovely story. Free homemade meals + boarding school kids always go well together. I'm sure Baby Blyatiful was popular for a while, at least.

@HelloToMyKitty It is guaranteed by the government of singapore and the interest rate is generally higher than what the bank can give you in this era of low interest rates- 2.5%-5%.

The controversy is that there are a lot of rules on how the money can be used. The healthcare account is relatively easy to access- people use it to pay insurance premiums and for ad hoc medical treatment. But there is a cap on how much you can use for housing- as the money for housing is drawn from the same account used for retirement so the more expensive home means less money for retirement. The most controversial thing is that if you don't have enough in your retirement account, you can't withdraw it at age 55 and the government pays you an annuity for the rest of your life instead, but you can pass it on to your descendants. The justification is that in the past when people used to withdraw at 55, they blew through their retirement savings within a year (esp the old men + bar girls were a toxic mix, as is being an hour from thailand) cos even for low income people, its in the hundreds of thousands.

But even with all these factors, i would still consider the scheme as an asset as its a source you can use to fund basic needs. Its better than the people who have nothing but state pension of £175.20 per week. Its better than being uninsured in the USA and not having any savings for healthcare

Yes to the poo-inspecting-Germans myth (I'm British but have lived in Germany most of my adult life and have citizenship). I don't think I've seen a loo with an inspection shelf for well over a decade. The last time I lived in a place with one was 1998.

All the stuff on here about how Germany's Covid rates were so low because they're so good at following rules made me too. (Though tbf I do think that the complete and utter fucking hash Germany is making of its vaccine programme is in part down to a certain pedantry. I don't mean the EU procurement issues, but the fact that doses of AZ are now actually backing up in the vaccine centres, at least in part because it's not being given to over-65s, while the (older) priority groups are worked through with stoic calm. I'm in a priority group - not a very high one, but still - and I would quite like one of those vaccines, thank you very much)

Most of the German misconceptions I encounter are not about Brits per se, but about English. That it's such an informal language, that using first names means your relationship is always informal (e.g. you would say 'du' to that person in a social setting), and that the present simple and progressive are basically interchangeable. Also that words such as 'shit' and 'fuck' aren't rude.

@sashh Weird stereotype, to say the least - the first I've heard of it. It's definitely not my experience or that of anyone I know.

[quote onlychildandhamster]@HelloToMyKitty It is guaranteed by the government of singapore and the interest rate is generally higher than what the bank can give you in this era of low interest rates- 2.5%-5%.

The controversy is that there are a lot of rules on how the money can be used. The healthcare account is relatively easy to access- people use it to pay insurance premiums and for ad hoc medical treatment. But there is a cap on how much you can use for housing- as the money for housing is drawn from the same account used for retirement so the more expensive home means less money for retirement. The most controversial thing is that if you don't have enough in your retirement account, you can't withdraw it at age 55 and the government pays you an annuity for the rest of your life instead, but you can pass it on to your descendants. The justification is that in the past when people used to withdraw at 55, they blew through their retirement savings within a year (esp the old men + bar girls were a toxic mix, as is being an hour from thailand) cos even for low income people, its in the hundreds of thousands.

But even with all these factors, i would still consider the scheme as an asset as its a source you can use to fund basic needs. Its better than the people who have nothing but state pension of £175.20 per week. Its better than being uninsured in the USA and not having any savings for healthcare[/quote]
It seems like a really solid system! Wish the US could have something like it but the government would probably be tempted to raid it every now and again 😑

@HelloToMyKitty Isn't it quite similar to an American IRA? Except that its mandatory and is used for other purposes in additional to retirement like housing and healthcare -hence requiring a greater percentage of pay.

like the IRA, its a savings account that is personal to the user, rather than a generic pension fund. For example, if you earn 6000 dollars per month, $1200 of that would go to your CPF, on top of 16% employer contribution which is in addition to your salary. You receive a statement every year which indicates how much you accumulated and the interest you earn. So the government can't take it away 'technically' as people would notice but due to ageing population, it is natural to expect that they would want to delay and limit withdrawals (when it was first set up, 55 was a perfectly decent age to retire, but it isn't now when the average singaporean lives to 83 years old).

Tbh before i moved to the UK, i didn't know what a pension was as very few people in singapore have them. the rich and middle class tend to invest in stocks, shares,unit trusts, property, gold etc to supplement their CPF.