Do emigres from the UK imagine the UK is stuck in the dark ages?

[livingunderskirt]

I have quite a few relatives who have moved overseas to places like Australia, Canada and Denmark. Something that I notice when they visit is that they seem to assume that in the UK we are stuck in the dark ages, I had one relative from Australia try to explain to me recently what an ipad is and does, when I have my own ipad. My aunt who now lives in Denmark tells me about how in Denmark they are very advanced with recycling much more so than the UK because they have special bins for paper and glass/plastic. We have all that too but at the time we had food waste recycling too and they didn't. Lots of things like that, like being surprised to learn we Malaysian, Korean, Sri Lankan restaurants locally and not just Chips or Chinese places or that we have podcasts and smart watches.

Its not a big deal it doesn't wind me up or anything but I do wonder why this is? I suppose they might assume that the UK has stayed the same since they left in the 80s or 90s. I just think it's kind of odd. I have lived overseas myself and never felt this way and I sort of expect lifestyles / tech to be similar all over the developed world at this point.

I just wondered if anyone else has noticed this?

It may be their memories of the UK are frozen in the time they left?
It's this. Prices also freeze in your mind at the time you leave... Every time I visit I grumble at the price of beer with "well last time it was x" "no Tartare, in 2005 it was x"...

@livingunderskirt

Exactly!!! The variety of produce here is incredible, thanks to so many people coming from across the world. (I'm talking about the London suburbs, could be different elsewhere obviously )

I think a lot of countries also still think we live in permanent smog / fog or rain.

I can't understand this perception that the UK is behind the times...

The USA don't have online banking to the degree we do, it's why Venmo and CashApp are so popular there and yet don't have a base here particularly.

The whole thing about the plus 60 age group and tech is weird too. My aunt is 63 and better with tech than I am, my 75 year old uncle is as good as me. It's THEIR generation that boosted us into this world of AI.

Recycling - again, some areas are worse than others, probably a funding thing. I have all recycling apart from a seperate food caddy - but any peelins etc just go in the garden waste.

Shops, within a mile of me (a little backwards, horrid town up north) we have

Asian food shop (Chinese, that's it's name)
Indian food supplies
X3 random and wonderful food shops owned an operated by x1 Afghanistan immigrant, x1 polish, x1 Nigerian
X2 Tesco (extra and express)
X1 co-op
X1 Spar
X18 convenience stores independent.

I can get a plantain, celeriac and random fruit within 10 minutes and no effort.

It's multicultural and forward and I bloody love it.

When you move away from somewhere, if you don't visit frequently then your image of the place can get stuck in the image from your memories. Like I know logically that things aren't the same any more in my home town but every time I visit I feel a bit confused that things have changed.

Then in some ways it does feel like the UK is more behind in some areas (but also further ahead in others, like online shopping) for instance still using cheques, the ridiculous ways of proving identity like utility bills and how stupidly complicated it is to get a passport because you can't prove your identity simply.

It may be their memories of the UK are frozen in the time they left?

Yes - I met a woman in about 1990 who'd emigrated to the US in the fifties. She told me she'd visited her relatives in back in the U.K. some years later, taking as gifts various modern innovations like ... paper napkins iirc, much to their bemusement.
It probably didn't help that quite a lot of films and tv output tended to perpetuate an outdated depiction of the U.K. (eg anachronistic steam trains).

I imagine that the disgusting Nigel Farage and the fact that so many voted for him in the Brexit disaster is a big part of why other countries view the UK as stuck in the dark ages.

It's not specific to the U.K.

I had this when I moved abroad 20 years ago, I took me many visits to stop being surprised that in my home country everyone now has mobile phones too 😁

The way it works in my mind is that things in my home country are left permanently in 1996, as that's when I left 😂

What is ridiculous is to assume that everyone is fully up to speck and ready to do everything online.
Most people in the their 60's are probably still working or recently retired and so most will have a degree of tech savviness. However I have colleges who have manual roles and several of them in their 40's and 50's can't/won't engage with the online HR system and phone the office and have us log the leave etc.
My relatives in their mid to late 70's and early 80's have varying levels of technical engagement. Most are OK to use smart phones for communications etc but don't want to use online banking or to have to register for the umpteenth different parking app when they are trying to get to a Drs appointment.
There is a huge difference between no-one aged over 60 can send a WhatsApp message and everyone regardless of age, health etc should be made to use tech in every aspect of their life.

I just refuse that I said 1996, and 20 years ago

This happens constantly. My brain also does not accept that 1996 is NOT 20 years ago

Same. Sometimes we check some song releasw date and I am distraught
"but it's just ljke 15 years!" no

I've never experienced this, in fact I experience the opposite - Americans were still signing credit card slips in shops 6 years ago! It blew my American friends away that we pay for everything by bacs and dd, this was a trip in 2017.

My Australian relatives are definitely not as advanced tech wise either, might be just them though, not big city.

I think it's because your memories get frozen. Like if your DC went to nursery with another DC and the next time you bump into them they're 18 and driving a car and at uni, it's a real shock and you can't stop saying 'but you've grown up' like it's a personal insult. Or maybe that's just me.

@YorkieTheRabbit

Where do you live???

In my small town the supermarkets shut at 10pm, except Sundays governed by the Sunday trading rules, coop though 10pm daily. Never been anywhere with shops shut Saturday pm and had glass collection for 20 years, waste food for 15.

where’s that? I lived very rurally (Wales not England) and didn’t experience anything like that. One or two shops still closed for Wednesday afternoon, but not Saturday. Supermarkets and lots of other places open Sundays.

Oh and on the subject of stuck in time, I lived in the USA and got to know a local couple one of which was British who moved there aged 4, his mother was something else! She asked me how often we took afternoon tea these days, my reply was it's nice but expensive, her reply no she meant at home (so never!) she also did the little finger thing out with cups, insisted on crusts being cut off and met weekly with other 70 ish expat ladies to get raise the queen mostly

I'm 75 abd DH is 85, we both have smartphones, bank online etc. He retired 25 years ago, used computers in his practice, we're both tech savvy.

As we jockey around with France for the 5th or 6th biggest world economy it should be a given we are tech savvy.

Detracting somewhat now. Over 20 years ago I was on a very small Greek island holidaying, not one of the well known islands at all. On the way out of the harbour town I descended some steps to a small open courtyard area where children were playing outside. An elderly lady, I would guess late 80's or so dressed all in black opened the front door into her cottage to let the outside air in, then turned back to her sitting room and plonked herself down into an office chair as she searched the internet on an Apple Mac. This was around 2000 or 2001 and even in the UK getting a home PC and connected up to t'internet was rare.

I grew up in Ireland in the sixties and seventies and regularly experienced this from relatives living in the US. Was amusing but very patronising.
I think a lot depends on the age and generation of the emigrants. Young people who left Ireland, particularly small rural communities, in the middle of the twentieth century to live in London or New York must have felt like they’d landed on another planet.
Globalisation and the internet have created a more level playing field and people generally are better travelled so you wouldn’t expect those attitudes to be as common.

To be fair things like the railways have hardly changed in the UK since the 90s.

@DewinDwl I suppose that is true but in general most people have all the up to date tech, travel abroad at least sometimes and are knowledgeable about the world. Previous posters who said it is about remembering things as they were years ago are probably right!

I moved to Denmark in 2007 and was amazed by the lack of recycling! I find that DK is either 30 years ahead or behind on different, and you never know which way it's going to go.

I moved to Italy in 1994.
The UK was decades ahead then and still is.

Obviously people who move abroad remember things as they were when they left, but nobody surely thinks that things didn't then change. That would be ridiculous.

I am from Norway, and lived in England for a few years in the early 2000s.

back then England was quite far behind technologically on some fronts.

The examples I remember was that check books were still in use (when paying an exam fee at uni it was the only accepted method of payment) and using PIN to pay by card was introduced while I was living there (15 years after my country, I think).

when doing the semester registration, and signing up for classes, everything was done by hand on paper forms. And when getting grades on essays/exams, you had to check a piece of paper on a notice board. All this was done online in my country.

By now, the UK might have caught up, and things are pretty much the same in both countries, but the impression have stuck with me,
so now after not having lived there for 15 years, I might be guilty of thinking the Uk is still a bit behind.

the thing with the iPad is ridiculous though.

I'm in England and our local council has had separate household collections for food waste, recycling and garden waste for over 20 years. There are numerous bottle and clothing banks, and the council tips will take anything that can be recycled.

Depends on where you are. I live about in a Scottish town (called a city)

We have 4 bins but no glass bin. The recycling bins are once a month and the feral and food waste is fortnightly

24/7 shops including all the supermarkets

But only (one) Chinese, Indian or Italian restaurants. Have to go to Glasgow or Edinburgh for anything more exotic

And there are still plenty of areas that basically don't have internet

No deliveroo or Uber or anything like that here.