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?

Definitely this. We get this with relatives who moved to London from the North, for flips sake. They are astonished when we've heard of the (really quite famous and mainstream) bands they like, or have read the same books as them.

@leamington66 how strange. Out of those I would expect that Loblaw delivers ( don’t use the others) but maybe you’re more remote? They may just have a website and not an app?

My DS has grown up in the US, and he thinks that the trains in England are fantastic! He can't believe how fast they go, and that you can get wifi on them. And how clean they are.

This is definitely a thing! I think when people move away, the UK gets frozen in time in their heads and they expect it to be exact tiny how it was when they moved away! My colleague lives in Spain and talks about how easy it to get Botox or fillers and how aesthetics practitioners have sprung up on every high street. I don't think she believed me when I said it's exactly the same here!

I'm in a "Brits in Portugal" type of Facebook group and see this attitude all the time.

Remember about 6 months ago when the newspapers were going on about shortages in UK supermarkets? Brits in the FB group were taking all the sensationalist headlines at face value and saying things like "at least we have tomatoes over here!"

What they didn't realise was that Britain with 'shortages' still had far more variety of foods (and, well, everything) easily available than Portugal without shortages.

I truly think it's the media. There's so much anti-Britain sentiment in the main newspapers that it makes Britain sound like a developing country to people who don't live there.

Plus the reporting on Brexit really damaged the UK's reputation abroad. I get asked by Americans "did you move to Portugal because of Brexit?" as though Britain is some unliveable place. I think the papers portrayed Brexit voters as totally dysfunctional and narrow minded, and therefore that's how the country is now seen.

Whaaaat

Sorry that's not my experience at all. I am in an area of average population density and broadband speeds are, erm, adequate. Drive into semi rural and rural areas and there are large areas with no Internet at all.

Every time I had to take train in north I ended up staring at the same tree for half an hour minimum 😑
Costs less to get from Vienna to Prague than from Man to York last time I checked 🙄

I am asaumong it's the "fibre optic" which is that normal line runs to your house then it's fibre. Virgin and couple local have actual fibre optic network afaik

I'm in NZ, which is definitely less techy than the UK. Arriving in the UK from NZ is like stepping into a great humming machine. It has an effect on the respective cultures too - in the UK what the machine says goes.

I'm not from the UK but have lived here for a very long time. Yes I arrived here with the perception that the UK was a bit behind with its technology. Particularly banking technology seemed a bit behind where I had come from. So yes the perception is real. I've been here so long now I'm a part of the furniture and wonder of I'm now my view is more British i.e. not aware of advancements?

Nope, we have fibre to the door, there was a big push by the govt at some point over the past few years to modernise fibre infrastructure, and a bunch of smaller local telco’s have been awarded funding to get fibre to the premises for residential properties in rural areas.

There is a word for this which I can’t remember- it’s common to all emigrants. it came up in a conversation with a friend of mine who was saying that her Pakistani parents ( living in Surrey) are way more conservative then a similar demographic in Pakistan because Pakistan has moved on but they are still stuck in the time when they left in terms of what they think is appropriate behaviour/ values.

I lived overseas for 14 years and some things about the Uk surprised me a lot when I moved back, especially the extent of contactless. My kids were excited that in the Uk they let you use the petrol oump yourself 🤣

I suspect banking has been an outlier. Twenty years ago NZ banking was light years ahead of the UK. While I still have a UK bank account and find NZ banks far, far, far more customer friendly I think the gap has closed.

That sounds like France!

In the last couple of years city fibre put in fibre optic broadband everywhere locally even in villages. I thought they were doing it all over the UK?

I agree with this. My parents are very pro-EU and subscribe to the annoying view that there's nothing outside the EU except wailing and gnashing of teeth

Now I do think that Brexit, Johnson etc have done damage to the UK's reputation but tbh our shortages (due to being comparatively remote) would have caused them an aneurysm.

Haha yes!! This is my mother in law! She seems to think the whole
of the UK is still like the small town she lived in in the 90’s.
’In Australia we have cafe’s that serve brunch, you don’t get brunch in the UK‘ or ‘Australia has dog walking parks and dog groomers’ etc 🤔

@SiennaSienna they may. The point is it’s well behind the U.K. who have been doing it for years and have great functionality and service.

I haven’t even mentioned the banking :-)

"I bet you don't get this in the UK," said a smug relative in Oz, about some pretty mediocre Lebanese food.

Yeah it’s different but I’d still never move back. 🤷🏼‍♀️ ( long term I’d recommend Halton though esp B & O )

My aunt, who emigrated to Australia from the UK in the 1960s was horrified when we moved to Brighton in the mid-1980s. Weren't we worried about all the fights and clashes between the Mods and the Rockers, she asked?

@TomPinch it was NZ that I came from . You're right it was the banking that was advanced in NZ. Assume it's all caught up now!

My gripe is the ones who when they come back to UK moan about how cold it is. Been on the tip of my tongue several times to tell them to shut the f up. You lived here for years before you moved abroad.

I read somewhere recently that the Gov.UK website/interface is admired around the world!