To think that only English posters would do this?

[beautyspot]

Now and again a thread appears with questions about "the north east" or "the south west" etc,

From my observations of life I've never seen a Welsh, Scot or N Irish person talk like this ie assume that everyone knows they are talking about their home country.

AIBU to think that English people are a bit presumptious.

I never thought about that. But I know for sure I would NEVER assume anybody would be talking about "north east Norway".

Also because there IS no north east norway. Only NORTH, Mid, South, South East and South west. North east and north west just would not make sense

sorry. as you were.

gets coat.

yanbu

but its not worth getting upset about. Weather forecasts are the worst, detailed info about various areas of England then something like 'in scotland it will be rainy'

If you actually look at a map the area covered by scotland is not that much smaller than England, and yes there are people living even in the far corners of scotland!
But they will routinely be ignored by news/weather people who are London based and very London-centric

got irate enough once at the weather forecast (had had a few) to phone and complain cos the dizzy weather guy gave the weather for London and the south in detail and then added ' and for the rest of the country....' meaning everywhere else north of London. There is a fair bit of presumption as the english (mostly London and south) are the majority and don't really care about the rest of the UK. As for mumsnet being based in London so it's english - that's like saying the Queen, Government and BBC etc are all based in London so are english - many english folk actually believe this and were rightfully concerned and outraged when a Scot had the gall to be Prime Minister of their country (bloody foreigners!).

Genuine question, why would you call it Eire if you don't speak Irish? Its like saying Deutschland or Espania when speaking English!

YANBU

Happens all the time, along with national meaning England, or British meaning English. Apparently (and this one really winds me up, given that we pay for the idiots too) we're going to witness the future king and queen of England get married next year. It's the assumption by UK wide media that the SE refers to the SE of England that grates.

I'm from Kent, now living in Scotland btw and it's interesting to view the ignorance (or lack of real concern) from up here.

Wow, this whole thread was inspired by someone wondering to go for Christmas lunch.

put your eyebrow away, If you have a spanish mate you don't switch to espania for the rest of your life do you? Doesn't make sense. Still, you can call things whatever you like, whether they make sense or not.

Oooh, can we all join in with the

Love a good eyebrow exchange

North East! Bah! To us Scots you're ALL saft southerners

My English geography is appalling. I have a vague impression of rain in Manchester and a few service stations outside Newcastle that were like, a reeeaally long way away from London. Other than that SE/NW etc are fast becoming nothing but London postcodes for me, now that I live here. I have friends from exotic places like Yorkshire and Bognor Regis but they're all just filed under 'miscellaneous English'.

Back home I would say a person was east coast (Edinburgh, probably posh, bit weird, talk funny), west coast (Glasgow, like me so normal) or 'from the North East' (essentially an alien who lives in a windswept shack).

Generalisations, I love 'em

HA - have yet to meet a normal weegie. You're all mad as a box of frogs - the result of too much inbreeding and drinking the dirty water from the Clyde.

Us east coasters are the normal ones - well, maybe not so much the Aberdonians as I found out when I lived there. Too much glint off the granite and no sunshine = another box of frogs.

Bonnie, what skeleton said isnt so hard to understand, now, is it?

She has irish relatives, she calls it Ireland OR Eire. Her relatives prefers her to say "Eire". And so she does with them, I gather.

Not sure why it doesnt make sense!

We should all start to give map references when talking about a particular place.

So OP would read:

People near NZ247638 - can you recommend a child friendly cafe?

or

Anyone live near SX495583 and fancy a meet up?

I am a yokel from Devon, so ALL you lot are northerners to me (apart from those inbred Cornish).

Midlands is Birmingham or thereabouts.

South east is London.

Far north is anything above Birmingham

Scotland and Northumberland etc are so far north you may as well be peopled by vikings.

My knowledge is restriced to the west of the UK - god only knows what goes on over the east of the country. Where the bloody hell is Lincoln, Peterborough etc?

I am joking (ish) of course. I did go to Peterborough omce (but thought I was going to drive off the end of the known world).

I have never been to Scotland, bizarrely, despite being half scottish. I have been to more places round the world than I have in England.

Where the bloody hell is Rutland, for instance?

Rutland is east of leicester, west of peterborough. It's not far from melton mowbray - home of the pork pie.

Eire should technically only be used on an address when the rest of it is written in Gaeilge.
Doesn't really make much sense otherwise.

I would probably write Republic of Ireland.

Careful Getorf - I am not inbred - I thought that happened near Barnstaple!!!

Made me laugh one day, I asked some of my students what they were doing for the weekend. 'Oh, we're going upcountry Miss'. 'Where, London?' 'Oh no Miss, Plymouth' !!!!

People in the Republic of Ireland call it Ireland. We never say Eire unless we are speaking Irish which for most of use is only when we are helping our children with their homework.

Have been thinking about this. If you were on an Irish forum, you would usually specify what county you were in rather than saying you were "in the east" for example.

We do say "going up North" when we mean going over the border and "in the Wesht" for Connaught and the "Sunny South-East" for Wexford and Waterford, though.

Although my Mum is in Wexford and seems to have a permanent cloud over her house so not sure how sunny it really is!

We are peopled by Vikings, GetOrf - I have the boat parked outside and the horned helmet hanging from the back of my chair

I didn't know Devonshireites had access to a computer. Is it one per village?

"I'm sure the inhabitants of Ulster will be thrilled to hear of themselves as "the bit thrown in" - a sort of BOGOF possibly?!"

Just to confuse things slightly further, MardyBra, the province of Ulster (one of the four Irish provinces) has nine counties (not six) and is not the same as "Northern Ireland" even though it is sometimes used erroneously as an alternative shorter term for it.

Three of the nine counties of Ulster are 'in the South' and the other six are in N Ireland.

And while the term 'Republic of Ireland' is used widely in the UK to refer to the 26 county Irish state, that state's official name is just 'Ireland' (or 'Éire' in Irish). So the whole island is 'Ireland' and the state that currently occupies 26 out of the 32 counties is also called 'Ireland', just to avoid confusion... :)

And part of "the south" is actually further north than "the North".

Rutland is Englands smallest county. It should really be one of the home counties I'm sure it doesn't like being in the midlands. It was much to posh to be part of Leicestershire. I can't remember which of it's small villages twinned with Paris!

scots have terms too.sheepshaggers dont live in glasgow..