to wonder why so many MNetters dont understand MN can be used by people outside England.

[BooCanary]

What with being on the world wide web and all!

So why are there constantly puzzled responses to anything that doesn't fit with the 'norm'.

Posts in 'Education' during August are often met with - 'why wait til the middle of the summer holidays to ask about this OP?' 'Don't email the school in August, noone will be there OP!'
HELLO! There are places in the world ( inc Scotland) where there is school in August.

If someone posts on a Sunday night about just speaking to a teacher about something, there's always a few 'it's Sunday OP, are you making this up, trip trap'.
HELLO! People in the world are in different timezones to the UK. It does not make them trolls!

Oh and whilst I'm at it .... the fucking weather reports.

If it's an English weather report, fine with all your 'North' stuff being Newcastle etc....

If it's a UK report, the 'North' of the UK isn't Newcastle, it's fucking Scotland!! And we don't just need one forecast for the whole country (it's actually pretty big you ignorant fucks), as the weather can differ greatly from one place to the next.

kinky - it used to make me laugh that the weather on the national Aussie news was shorter than that for the UK.

even when there were cyclones/tropical storms/bushfires etc!

I live overseas and it is a conundrum to know whether or not to mention it in posts. If you do, you can sound like you are doing some weird kind of boasting. If you don't people try and catch you out e.g. because you say you are going for lunch and it's bedtime with them.

I agree that the sensible solution is to flag location where it is relevant and to hope that people realise that if someone's times don't fit with what they appear to be saying then the most likely conclusion is that they are in another part of the world.

"but the majority of people on here are from the UK"

England and the UK are not synonymous, people!

Rollmeover totally agree with you. My working assumption is that most posters are English (I'm Northern Irish) unless they say otherwise. As that IS most likely I'm on any UK based site.

Like you I do get annoyed when reports on BBC say UK but they mean England & Wales, again I understand that's where most people live but I'd like to understand whether it applies to me or not. As half the time during the story it becomes apparent they don't mean UK they mean England, or don't mean UK they mean, Britain.

But on MN, honestly OP you have to roll with it, it's reasonable to assume for a UK website that people might make the assumption you're English (or Scottish or Welsh, they'll never guess you're from NI ). YABU expecting them to work out from context that you are in eg Australia. Tell them, if it's relevant!

I would love the flag. Can you imaging someone travelling with an iphone and the little flag auto-updating!

Oh they are in Italy, no, Switzerland, now Germany! Belgium! France! (Obv flying an odd course across europe).

I agree with you OP. I'm Scottish and it can be really irritating.

kinky actually you've got me there, BBC weather is one of my pet peeves... That bloody map that scans round faster than they talk so by the time they get to NI they are still talking about Cornwall and then they run out of time to tell me anything about where I am. Just ZOOM OUT and we can all look at our own bit!!!

And as for the "UK bakes in sunshine" headlines.... Aaahh they drive me mad, they normally mean south of England bakes but it's bloody wet in northern Ireland, Scotland and the north of England.... Don't get my hopes up and then dash them! Say "most" of the uk and I'd be happy, but they say it as if it's all of the UK!!!! Then we get nice weather and there's no mention of it as it's now wet in England.

I doubt that most people are from England. The majority are probably from the UK, but England v Wales, Scotland, Ireland and all the other places seems v unlikely.

The thread in education recently had the OP say more than once that she wasn't inEngland so it was pretty annoying that people still kept questioning her. Doubly so as they were committing the twin crimes of being Anglocentric and not reading the thread.

When I first moved to the States I used to find that after the 10 pm shut down there were very few people around, sometimes Last 15 Minutes would be empty! Now there are more furriners using mn, and the active boards fill up much quicker.

More than 50% England vs Everywhere Else?

Maybe not.

More in England than any other country? Highly likely.

More in UK than any other country. Almost certainly.

Oh that has just reminded me I can't get itvplayer in Northern Ireland either, gave me the rage when I wanted to watch I'm a celebrity live in bed on the ipad.

Oh and I really don't think we should have flags, they'd get it wrong for Northern Ireland even if they try really really hard to get it right.

As for the weather/ media then yes it is really annoying when they generalise about the UK when actually what they mean is the South-East of England.

I did look at the population statistics, about 83% of the Uk is in England and about 25% of the population is in London and the South East.

It would be interesting to see how this translates to mumsnet users, I always get the impression that there are quite a lot of Scottish people on here, but there may just be a few frequent posters who are Scottish.

Yes, they will publish the results, Kim.

You can find previous results here: 2009 Census

Not sure where 2011 is.

There are quite a few of us that post from Asia. Most of the time when I post only Australia, NZ and Asia is awake so I see a disproportionate number of posters from these places.

The most annoying thing is that I miss all the juicy interesting threads that take off during the UK evening .

Mrslyman, I quite agree that there seem to be loads of Scots on here, but perhaps they are just especially prolific posters. I'm Scottish and I think that's pretty representative of Scotland in general. We just like talking. A lot!

Scot here! As if my name wasn't obvious!

A actually I would love it if we had little flags saying where we were currently living. I'd find it very investing to know that someone living in Russia and someone Living in Norway had the same take on things, for instance. I know We are All Individuals (cue Life of Brian references) but its still interesting.

I tend to notice if someone uses a North American idiom rather than a British English idiom, but that just tells me the kind of English they learned, not where they live now.

This is my fault isn't it for the school thing.

Thing is, it didn't really occur to me to point out that I wasn't in England. I don't keep track of English school terms any better than they keep track of us foreigners.

And now I have really confused you because I am posting in the night. Ha. Inexplicably awake and on MN.

It is Tuesday here if that helps clarify my post at all.

One of the worst examples I've seen on here was London-bias, got to be over a year ago now. Someone was talking about bus fares for her DC to go to school on a thread, and a couple of posters just would not have it that there was no equivalent to the Oyster card for free bus travel where she lived. Always stuck in my mind because they seemed so vehement that there must be something because that's how it works in London.

I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with initially assuming a poster is from the UK/on the UK timezone if there is nothing to suggest otherwise, but I don't like the suggestions of trolling that are made purely because something doesn't conform to English system or the UK one, or the timezone, nor the presumption "Well this works like this where I live, so it should work like this everywhere else in England/in the UK.".

If you look at the population statistics, I'd imagine a large majority on here are English.

That was sort of my point. I could be wrong, don't really care if I am but just an educated guess says that for a UK based website, given population stats that the majority are likely English.

Would be interesting to see the census results though.

I quite agree that there seem to be loads of Scots on here, but perhaps they are just especially prolific posters. I'm Scottish and I think that's pretty representative of Scotland in general. We just like talking. A lot!

we do love a gab i talk a lot of bollox nonsense most of the time