UK and America are two countries separated by a common language, UK and US Q&A

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Continuation of the previous thread where posters from the UK ask questions like 'what the hell is going on with the gaps in US toilet doors'; and posters fro the US ask things like 'what is with wearing stripes'

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/a2149133-to-think-there-is-something-wrong-with-Americans?msgid=48969042#48969042

People around here use their years/decks all the time. We grill and have bonfires frequently and have a trampoline and a pool in the back so are out frequently.

It's my dearest wish to have a big front porch with a swing! :)

The majority of students in most (probably all) colleges and universities are not in sororities or fraternities. It is definitely not for everyone. People who don't join them make friends the way most people do, meeting other people in class or in student housing, joining a club for particular interests, etc.

It's possible the families were around the back of their houses on their backyard decks. Your grill would be in the back and that's where you would eat if you grilled. Front lawns are mostly for show.

I don't think it's hard to make friends without joining a sorority, if DD2's experience is anything to go by. You have your roommate for starters, and all the people on your floor. If that fails you have people in your classes, and failing that, there are activities to participate in.

DS didn't join a fraternity but one of his friends did, so DS is pretty much an honorary member..

My daughter did not join a sorority either, and she had a very close, and diverse, friendship group at her university. Most were people she met in her classes.

I tried to find some stats on percentages, but could only find numbers for individual institutions. I did find one cite to 10 percent of American students belonging to one, but that would include the many colleges and universities that don't have sororities and fraternities. The very quick survey I did shows a range of 9-35 percent membership among students in institutions that have sororities and fraternities.

Do we have shared rooms in our UK student halls of residence? I've always thought it was strange when I've seen it on tv. How do you get matched up?

At my US university (admittedly this was a few years ago), they obviously sorted roommates by stated religious preference. We began to figure this out early on, and it was pretty funny. Turns out it's not a good way to determine compatibility. My second year, I requested a single room. I never shared after that.

Littlefiendsusan glad you had a great trip! I know what you mean - often I walk around our little town and sometimes you don't see a soul in their gardens (although you seem to see dozens walking). I guess they are all out back...

We are actually just about to go for an evening swim in the sea then go for ice cream :-)

Not everybody gets their childcare paid for in the UK Melissa if you earn just over the limit for assistance through the tax credit system you have to pay for it yourself I,m a nurse dh works in a warehouse so not on huge wages but are over the limit for help we can't afford child care so we do opposite shifts and my parents help out picking the boys up from school etc

Can I ask if you have to be on welfare for whatever reason what happens if you go back to work and thensay ten years later get made redundant but previously have used your limit for welfare assistance do you get any help?

I live in the UK and I go out for ice cream, but then we have a good ice cream parlour a walk from our house.

Anyway, further to the class question earlier, I am prepared to get flamed for this, but these are my personal views on class in the UK.

Working class - people who do jobs where you get your hands dirty, where you are likely to work standing up, less skilled manual work. Most likely to rent rather than own houses.

Middle class - People who sit at a desk. More qualified. Professional jobs. Likely to own their houses.
Upper middle classes - Higher up in the jobs than the middle classes. Some inherited money.

Upper class - Highly qualified job - doctors, lawyer, judges. Likely to have trust funds or inheritances.

Gentry - Lords, Ladies and royalty - inherit their houses - not as rich as people might think.

In my experience it is possible to move between working and middle classes. It is very possible to come from a working class background and to gain all the trappings of the middle classes.
However travelling from the middle to the upper class is impossible. I am, I guess, middle class. I went out with a very upper class guy when I was younger. His parents were a doctor and a lawyer, he had been privately educated at a very good school and was at Oxford. I felt completely out of place with his family and friends. I just didn't fit in.

In his youth my father, who was working class, had a 'dalliance' with a Lady. (Think Lady Chatterly). There was no way that anything could have come of it. Granted that was back in the 60s but I don't think it is much more different today.

Debutants aren't presented at court anymore but there is still a certain level of young ladies being found someone to marry. The problem at the core of Downton, that women can't inherit, still stands.
The gentry are not a rich as people think. I have been in many houses of lower ranks of the gentry and they are falling to pieces. People inherit houses and all the contents. They cannot afford to heat or run them. Big houses require staff but the money is not there to pay for them. Just think how much Downton costs to run each month. Often the family estate become a millstone round the neck of the eldest son. No one wants to be the one to lose the house on his watch.
It does open doors, but it's not like life in Downton anymore.

However travelling from the middle to the upper class is impossible.
You might want to ask the Middletons about that, a certain Miss K Middleton (as was) in particular! :o

And the laws on Primogeniture are being changed (mainly in case the Middleton-Windors had a dd, I wish they had).

but the Middleton family are constantly mocked in the British newspapers for their middle class-ness

Just because she has married into the gentry it doesn't mean she has been accepted.
Or may be I'm just a little old fashioned.

there was even a reference in some papers to the naff/middle class-ness of Prince George's first birthday party as if Kate had infected the Royal Family with middle class ideals

Can I ask if you have to be on welfare for whatever reason what happens if you go back to work and thensay ten years later get made redundant but previously have used your limit for welfare assistance do you get any help?

Cash assistance has a lifetime limit of 60 months, but you can get hardship extensions. If you were made redundant, though, you would likely be eligible for unemployment compensation for a period of time (they were doing it for 99 weeks, but I'm not sure now), which would be a lot more money than cash assistance.

Food Assistance, Medicaid, and housing assistance have no lifetime maximums, you can recieve those whenever you qualify.

But male primogeniture still applies for titles of nobility, right? And usually the whole estate goes with the title.

I appreciate the sorority question was answered earlier, but please can someone let me know what happens if you don't join one - is it hard to make friends?

My son just started uni and his has the biggest greek (sorority/fraternity) system in the country. 30% of his university are greek. So no, it isn't hard.

I didn't hear anything about the Prince's birthday, what was wrong with it?

They seem to assign a roommate randomly in all the universities my DCs have gone to. They have you fill out a questionnaire when you apply for housing where you are asked about your sleeping and study habits and a few more details abut volume preference for music, whether you are comfortable with a roommate having friends in the room for socialising, etc. DS managed to be assigned to two terrible roommates for two of his three years so far (one who rapped in his sleep and embraced the hip hop lifestyle lock, stock and barrel, and one who had a metabolic disorder that caused the most rank farts ever, every ten minutes, and watched reruns of I Love Lucy until 4 am every night), but the DDs were luckier.

DD2's university has a general housing questionnaire and also a sort of meetup forum where you can go if you are neurotic about roommates and their habits; the aim seems to be to let people find someone whose neuroses complement theirs. DD2 thought this would be a quick way to cut out the middleman and find someone sympathique but recoiled in horror. There are some truly weird, indulged, and un-self-conscious people going to her university.

I think throughout history there has always been a certain amount of mobility via marriage or in the case of the Henrician Reformation and the installation of the Hanoverian dynasty through political alliance. Money has always been welcome among the ranks of the aristocracy. Even American money (see Winston Churchill's mother and many other examples of heiresses becoming aristocrats).

There has always been a tendency for some classes of Brits to turn up their noses at the blow-ins, but there are very few aristocratic families that have managed to hang on through the vicissitudes of history and the generational roulette of primogeniture. Many aristocratic families are upstarts -- if you look closely at their pedigrees you will find money a few centuries in the past, and ambition.

There has also been a tendency on the part of some sections of the British aristocracy to sniff in distaste at the middle classness of the Royals since the reign of Victoria.

It strikes me sometimes that the Middletons would have felt very at home in the US. (Usually after a phone call from my mother, who frequently regales me with all sorts of details about the Royals).

Can I ask if you have to be on welfare for whatever reason what happens if you go back to work and thensay ten years later get made redundant but previously have used your limit for welfare assistance do you get any help?

There is an alternative loophole. You go on disability. The same people who were never going to work and did not use Welfare simply as a safety net are now on permanent disability instead of welfare and still never working and abusing the system. And also what someone else said...you generally get unemployment for 1-2 years when you first get laid off.