AIBU to hate these things about England vs Italy?

[ItalianPoster]

As an Italian who has spent the last decade in England, I have grown fond of the country, but there are also a few bugbears which totally drive me nuts. Clearly a light-hearted rant, not a profound economic, sociological and anthropological analysis!

1.  No bidet. I. Will. Never. Get. It. You don’t clean your hands, or a baby’s bottom, with a dry towel, right? You wash the parts! Ideally with water, or at the very least with a wet wipe. Why should an adult’s bottom be any different?
   

2. No ID cards. I will never get it. You are opposed to ID cards because you don't want a compulsory document but you have made the passport practically compulsory. Don't say you don't need a passport - Windrush proved you wrong. Note that a system of ID cards, like in most of the civilised - and developing - world, would have avoided the Windrush scandal.

3.  Leasehold. The middle ages are over. Ius primae noctis has been abolished. Why does leasehold persist?
   

4.  Carpets. I understand them in offices. I understand them in flats with no noise insulation. But in houses? Whether you like them or not is subjective. That they are filthy and almost impossible to clean effectively, compared to wooden or tile floors, is not – that’s a fact.
   

5.  Separate hot and cold faucets. Why, oh, please someone explain why!
   

6.  Rodents. No, they are neither normal nor harmless. They carry diseases. In many continental European countries, having rodents is shameful and dealt with swiftly – here they are just accepted passively. Councils don’t seem to conduct periodic exterminations like abroad, and most homeowners seem happy living in properties full of rodent-friendly holes, or just accept with a shrug that, when a house is being refurbished, mice will move to the neighbours!
   

7.  State schools. Admission by distance, ie by whether you can afford to live close enough. Faith schools funded by the State! It would be outrageous to have hospitals for Christians only but funded by all taxpayers, yet this is what happens with State schools.
   

8.  School uniforms. Why are you so obsessed with them? While they might have some merit, the obsession with which some schools apply their dress codes is shocking. Every September there are stories about repressed,  control-freak headteachers who check whether pupils are wearing the right shade of grey etc.
   

9.  Construction standards. Even without bringing up the Greenfell tragedy, construction standards are incredibly low compared to continental Europe. Is there maybe a tax for building stuff straight, not crooked, and for sealing holes? I had never seen crooked angles or ceilings in Italy, Germany or Spain – here they seem to be the norm. And doors? Why do your doors almost never seal the entrance properly? Having an energy performance certificate which looks at whether there any energy-saving light bulbs, but ignores that the front door is all bent and allows lots of draught in, makes no sense at all! Ancient Greece used to build straight stuff - why can't modern England, too?
   

On the plus side:

1. English mother-in-laws don't seem as overbearing as the Italian ones. Extended families are, in general, less "suffocating". Italian families tend to give more financial support, but that support tends to come with huuuuge strings attached. English kids are brought up to be independent, unlike their Italian cousins.

2. Work. There's much more of it, and the country is incredibly more open and meritocratic. In Italy, you'll struggle to find non-white non-Italians who have progressed in their career and are heading teams of white Italians. Not here. Foreigners for very high-profile jobs (Carney)? Forget it.

3. There is no concept of "concorso", these huge, theoretical exams which are needed to hire people in the civil service, and which, idiotically, totally disregard soft skills. A job "concorso" typically involves thousands of applicants locked in a huge gym answering mostly irrelevant and theoretical written questions.

4. The immigration bureaucracy is shameful (Windrush), but, in general, English bureaucracy is miles ahead the Italian one (I know, it doesn't take much!). Receiving a new driving licence, for free, in a few days, or receiving a tax refund 3 days after filing your tax return are unthinkable and cause the envy of our friends in Italy.

5. Green spaces and kids' activities. At least in London, there are so many, mostly well-kept gardens, parks, green spaces and play grounds; the difference with the large Italian cities is shocking.

6. Free motorways. Privatised railways have been an utter failure (Govia/Southern Fail), but at least you didn't privatise the motorways and gave too good a deal to a bunch of well-connected local entrepreneurs like we did (by the way, the fact they are the key investors in the Italian motorways is one reason why I never buy Benetton).

Can we add to the driving list, driving at people at speed while they are crossing their road with a green man. There is no sense of security and a “safe place” whatsoever.

Yes i did wonder why anyone had taken the time to paint zebra crossings as they were completely ignored!

@Kewqueue, you make a good point about budget cuts to schools since I left Italy.

To the people getting so worked up, FFS, I was talking about some bugbears of mine; you do know the meaning and etymology of the word, right? It means minor annoyances, it doesn’t mean “fundamental flaws which make one country inferior to another”!!!! It doesn’t mean a peer-reviewed socio-anthropological comparison of England vs Italy! If I have decided to stay here and bring up a family here it’s because I am fond of the country and, all in all, I like it better than Italy. However, this doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t be able to say I dare dislike some things without people jumping at my throat and pointing out the many flaws of my native country (some true, some factually wrong).

@Hermione, “yep as a foreigner you aren’t allowed to say ANYtHING that couldn’t be taken as a criticism of the country where you are living.”
This. Just this. To be clear, I have no doubt that if a Brit had posted something similar about what she finds crazy about Italy on an Italian forum, she would have probably been similarly abused – for the very reason you mentioned.

Since this is another thing that wasn’t clear enough, I do love that in England there is less corruption at the individual level, and a stricter sense of following rules. In Italian there is no single world to translate “accountability”: the concept itself is so alien that one must resort to long, convoluted phrases to describe it! Here we have ministers who lose their post and get sent to jail for lying about a speeding ticket; sending him and the wife to jail was, IMHO, a bad use of taxpayers’ money, but at least the concept that people pay for their mistakes is clear – in Italy the opposite is!

I said less corruption at the individual level because, at a macro level, many commentators believe the UK, with its crown dependencies (or whatever the appropriate legal term is) like the Channel Islands and the Cayman Islands, is too lax about large-scale money laundering, but that is a separate point.

Yep, also agree about driving. Driving can be shameful in Italy but, cyclists aside, tends to be way more civilised here.

When I spilt some coffee or tea on a carpet, I spent probably £100 trying different cleaning products. None worked. I also had the carpets professionally cleaned with one of those huge machines – nothing. I also noted that, despite having cleaned the carpet regularly, the professional cleaning revealed lots and lots of dirt that our regular cleaning, with a £200 dedicated carpet-cleaning machine, never managed to get rid of. That’s why carpets are filthy – they conceal the dirt, but the dirt is there and much harder to get rid of than on wooden or tile floors. Or maybe I simply had the wrong products and contraption to clean the carpet, right?

Been living in Italy since 1994 and love my adopted country.

On a light-hearted (ish) note, I was gobsmacked yesterday to be told my my colleague that it was my fault that my teenage students were caught shoplifting in London this summer, because I didn't tell them not to.

crooked doorways in houses built before 1940 are often due to ground ripples as a result of bombs falling nearby.

Very old houses were sometimes built with re-used timbers (especially near the coast) which may not be straight, or the house may have moved with age.

Houses built after 1945 should not have crooked doorways.

I remember one living room (the only room where we could eat) where we spilt some coffee and never managed to get rid of the stain, even after a professional cleaning with one of those huge machines.

Well if you didn't drink coffee that appears to have the consistency of tar

Yeah I agree, carpets probably aren’t as clean as wooden or tiled floors. Much warmer though, and I’ve never heard of anyone getting ill from a carpet.

I like the fact that, faults and all, men in Britain are less likely to murder their wives or girlfriends, especially when they don't like that they've been dumped.

OP- I see we cross-posted. I think, interesting though the thread is, you're being a bit disingenuous with your "minor annoyances". They clearly aren't, to you, and that's fine. Like the being asked to accept that teenagers will shoplift is not really a minor bugbear of mine, and neither is the horrific rate of domestic abuse and feminicide. If you'd not wanted to ruffle feathers, perhaps the "v" bit of your OP would have been better left out, along with the "wtfuckery" about bidets and carpets.

(btw, carpets are less likely to release allergens than not scrupulously clean hard floors, hard floors release the dust back into the air, and not being a casalinga, my floors ain't going to be mopped twice a day by anyone...carpets retain the dust- not a perfect solution either, of course, but just proof that a hard floor is not necessarily less minging than a carpet)

Odd and apparently pointless post. Particularly when you consider recent Italian disaster!

PPS Brits prove their citizenship, should they have to, like Italians do, by their birth certificate and/or passport. I have an Italian ID card, but I'm not Italian. The ID card doesn't prove anything. A passport does.

Did you mean how they prove their identification?

The ID card says whether you are a citizen or not.

Can I ask one thing as I agree with the Bidet massively. Do Italian kids suffer from the awful norovirus as much as they do here every winter? Sometimes up to 2-4 times a year?

My Grandmother is Italian and she swears blind that kids here are always sick. Not all but so many.

Italianposter

Thank you for the insight - I had never thought of that till you enlightened me. Could you also please enlighten me on how Brits prove their citizenship without a passport, which is not compulsory, especially in the example I made about a kid born in 2018?

I don't know. It's not something that concerns me because I live in NZ.

We don't have ID cards in NZ either. In part, this is because government ministries don't share personal information in order to negate the ramifications of identity theft.

Generally if a person needs to prove their entitlement to some service, they can produce their passport, birth certificate or (if they're a NZ citizen by grant) their citizenship certificate.

I believe Australia is the same but I await correction.

I do get the feeling that a lot of Europeans get puzzled because the UK doesn't do things quite like them and frustrated because the UK doesn't fall into line. In reality, there are other countries outside Europe who share those apparently odd habits and do just fine.

I agree with most of your points.
I don't move house too often, but each time I do, I change the hot and cold taps to a mixer tap. And whip out disgusting carpets and put in nice clean tiles or wooden flooring.

I don't think that we usually tolerate rodents, so you may have a local problem - I must say that I was shocked on a recent visit to Southern Italy that more wasn't done to remove standing water re. mosquitoes and malaria. Maybe some areas just don't cope with hygiene issues so well as others.

You will get much better building standards in the UK if you have a house built for you, or if it is a very small development. I totally agree that standards can be shocking in large building developments.

I've been brought up in the UK so not used to the bidet. Of course, if you have a bidet, it should definitely be cleaned after UK people have visited because we think it is wonderful for soaking our feet in! 🤭

Agree with uniform this country is a baby state you have to obey and be programmed from an early age. Ridiculous but loads defend the system. Are mental health rates as high in Italy? Not saying uniform do that but the whole totalitarianism of school in this country to comform causes more trouble in later life.

My Brother and his DW live in Italy with their DC and we visit often. The employment where they are (northern Italy) is awful and there's a noticeable change in certain areas nearby because of this compared to 10-15 years ago when we initially began to visit yearly.

The main thing my DB misses from England is the freedom. He says the family is the absolute epicentre of everything and there are certain parts of parenting which have almost been 'taken away' from him (though I'm sure he could have fought a little harder for them if he'd tried) like choosing his DCs schools/activities/holidays simply because his DW's family govern everything. With the economy the way it is, they relied heavily on his family for support with their DC and the result was that there was a definite sense of 'owing' them and forfeiting some rights.

I love Italy and love our holidays there. I do have to shout "no pooping in the bidet" though every time we visit at DS2, who feels compelled to crimp one off each time he nips over to see SIL's parents.

ThenCameTheFools, things like bidets carpets and crooked walls are bugbears in the sense of minor annoyances. Things like the State funding religious schools which discriminate on the basis of faith is something I feel very strongly about, because I feel very strongly about any interference of the Churches, anywhere (and Italy has many such examples to offer, unfortunately).

I don’t know what the exact numbers are for violence against women in England vs Italy, but Italy certainly has a problem. Culture and religion have played a big role in that, too. Machismo, less female independence, a certain Catholic stigma against divorces and separation, all these things have had some influence. When I was little, I remember a huge discussion with a priest who was a religious education teacher and who was basically applauding one woman who had decided to get back with his cheating and abusive husband.

I also love that English parents are more relaxed – Italian parents are more likely to always worry about little Mario hurting himself or catching a cold, and tend to overprotect them and to layer them with too many clothes. A little part of me always dies inside when I hear an Italian child complaining it’s too hot and the parents insisting he must wear a jumper in May “or you’ll catch a bad cold”.

On proving citizenship: the birth certificate does not prove citizenship by itself! In the example I made, the child, the father and the grandfather were all born in England at a time when being born here was no longer sufficient to become citizen. So how do these people prove their nationality? By going back to the documents of the great-grandparents? And what if they can’t find those documents? What if the great-grandparents were legally settled foreigners, but the documents proving they were legally settled cannot be found?

harvester- there is a uniform of kind at nursery and elementary school- a sort of cover-all smock thing which definitely has to be adhered to.

I would imagine, given the stress of the Italian school system- students will be expected to do probably as much homework as they do hours in schools, with written and oral tests in most subjects several times a year, the results of which count towards their end of year grades- grades which can be "insufficient" and mean the student "fails" and has to stay down a year- rates of depression among young people are much the same as the UK. I certainly know for a fact that a lot of my students see psychologists for various reasons.

On proving citizenship: the birth certificate does not prove citizenship by itself! In the example I made, the child, the father and the grandfather were all born in England at a time when being born here was no longer sufficient to become citizen. So how do these people prove their nationality? By going back to the documents of the great-grandparents? And what if they can’t find those documents? What if the great-grandparents were legally settled foreigners, but the documents proving they were legally settled cannot be found?

What is the relevance of this? Why is it important?

I used to work in the Nationality office in the UK before I came to Italy. I could give you chapter and verse on the BNA 81 and subsequent laws but wouldn't want to. In your example, a quick phonecall to the Home Office and they tell you whether or not you are British. (in possession of a passport you can ask for a status check on that ppt which means that the relevant office looks at the file to see how that person acquired their BC status)

Dunno about the zebra crossings, since the 8 points in the licence rule came in I find more people tend to stop. Gone are the days when cars just whizzed past while you were actually crossing.
Then again, maybe it’s just Milan. I do find I have to be a bit more insistent with starting to walk across in Rome. You do need to look like you want to cross though, like putting a foot on the crossing (or giving the driver a hard stare while they approach). I expect non residents are more reluctant to do this

OP, while I agree with you that Italian state schools are nominally laiche, it’s a bit of a bugbear if mine here that the state partially funds the paritarie, which are in the whole religious schools.

And don’t get me started on all the tax exemptions on Church owned buildings and businesses. There probably would be a much lower public deficit if the church paid the same taxes as everyone else

@Idontbelieveinthemoon , I totally get what you’re saying. I mentioned it in my OP, too. It’s one of the things I appreciate about England, and, since to many people this wasn’t clear enough, it’s not a minor point at all, and is way more important than the partially irrational annoyance at the lack of bdiets and at crooked walls.
Many Italians love to complain that Italian families provide more help, financial and non, but I am always reminding them that this help comes with huge strings attached. Huge. I hate that. I know Italians whose parents bought a flat for them, and then insisted they shouldn’t have gone look for a better job in another city “because the flat…”. Or grandparents who feel compelled to interfere in every decision affecting the children. When I was little, one grandmother made huge pressures for me to choose a specific school. And there are many other such examples, some too private and specific to mention here, but you get the gist.

@Melassa, yes, the tax exemptions the Church gets in Italy are shameful! Especially when it's purely commercial enterprises like bed and breakfasts run by the Church!