Tell me the bad things about living in the UK

[alwayscrashinginthesamecar1]

In the interests of equality, as we have had other threads for other countries, I thought I'd start this thread.

I'll start it off with

Bloody awful weather
Obsessed with class
Racist and in some places sectarian too
Filthy cities.

I love the uk. I moved here 6 years ago with an 18 month old. I have been treated with respect, my daughter has free school and medical care. If I could change anything it would be the size of my garden and house. Back home I could have a mansion and big big garden for the price I paid for our current house. Also my government back home would never furlough people and pay them, my friends back home are in lockdown with no income, maternity leave is only 3 months and so on. Women are free to wear what they want, back home women get stripped on the streets for wearing a mini skirt. Basically Ild happily live in a shoebox in the uk than anywhere else

Frankly, anybody who thinks other places are less racist than the UK are either sheltered or dont speak other's languages. Things I have heard and seen in other countries you couldnt imagine here- a couple of black guys cuffed to a fence and beaten with nightsticks by the police in france whilst people stood around watching, refusing service to black people in eastern european food places, not letting them in swimming pools etc ect.

itstrue thank you. Every country has its problems but to constantly criticize but get defensive when talking about the UK is funny.

That study doesn't refer to the UK as being the least racist country in the world, or even the least racist in Europe.

Of course there are more racist places, there always will be. But hate crimes in the UK are actually growing quite significantly, so it's not at all helpful to say "other countries are more racist".

The class system, anyone who thinks it doesn't exist needs to ask why 2 of the last 3 prime ministers went to the same school.

I live in Scotland, it was light around 5am today but come midwinter it won't be light till 9am and dark by about 4pm. I love the long summer nights and hate the dark winters.

Public transport is shockingly bad and hideously expensive.

The obsessions a lot of people have over house prices.

The fact that foreign languages are not taught in schools properly so we can all only really speak English.

That's not really why we can only speak English. The main reason is that most people only really want to speak English, partly because they have almost no cultural exposure to other languages (unlike the masses of exposure to English that many many countries have) and partly because they simply don't really need to. And I say that as someone who's been an MFL teacher for over 20 years and loves learning languages.

Im a brit living in Denmark. The negative things I notice when I visit/reflect:
The quality of the roads
Too many roadsigns - its really distracting
All the children seem anxious
Obsession with education
The amount of drama because people dont know how to confront in a constructive way
Misery top trumps
Binge drinking
Lack of long term planning at local and national level
Ingrained prejudice - class and race particularly
Tabloid press
Trade unions with almost zero influence
Working conditions and pay. I wish all women would stop going above and beyond their hours. Why are you giving away hours of your life for free? Why do you need to work at the next level before being paid to do so? Collectively thrre is a very low selfworth. There seems to be an acceptance of thats the way it is. Well it doesnt have to be.
Marmite.

There are an awful lot of things that I love and miss. I have commented on those on previous threads.

I'm in London, and some of this may be London rather than the country.

Poor quality and expensive housing.
Ludicrously expensive childcare.
Poor quality and expensive public transport.
Littering and lack of pride in civic spaces.
Poor governance. The current lot are acutely bad, but I think there's something almost inherent in the structure of government in this country that doesn't result in consistent good governance.

... and none of these things apparently being a priority to address.

Anyone who doesn’t think the UK is racist has completely bi-passed the Meghan Markle debacle (that rhymes).

Oh....and Brexit.

@StrictlyAFemaleFemale you articulate a lot of what I wanted to say.

The lack of long-term planning really pisses me off. Everything seems to be held together with sticky plaster. For example how the whole housing system works here is just awful but there seems to be no political will to sort it out.

Of course there are more racist places, there always will be. But hate crimes in the UK are actually growing quite significantly, so it's not at all helpful to say "other countries are more racist".

It's just yet another excuse to do nothing about something, isn't it?

People can't argue that racism isn't an issue. It is. And the fact that there are countries with worse racism problems, doesn't mean the one here isn't a problem which needs to be dealt with. It's rising.
Of course there are more racist places, there always will be. But hate crime in the UK is actually growing quite significantly, and saying "but other countries are more racist" is just an attempt to minimise it.

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2019/oct/15/hate-crimes-double-england-wales

@StrictlyAFemaleFemale - I'd genuinely love to hear the negative things about living in Denmark!

All the children seem anxious - really? That's not my experience.

@StrictlyAFemaleFemale yes, interested in the anxious kids remark. Admittedly I live rurally and kids (prior to lockdown) are mostly out swimming in rivers and climbing trees...not much sign of anxiety there however I do think mobile phones and social media have contributed enormously to anxiety levels. Just wondering what your experience has been?

@OmgThereAreNoPlanesAboveMeNow this is the same attitude as people saying ‘well, there are countries with a worse death toll than ours’ so it’s all fine then? Although, actually, there isn’t really...

@Kittenlicker yup. Very much so.

No matter how good the place is in general, and uk is, issue like this can't be swept under the carpet. That's where it grows. Hiding.

Has anyone said racism isn't an issue?
But to list it in a thread about worst things about the UK, it seems odd, because you're presumably making an international comparison.

Actually it was an observation and knowing it is worse or better elsewhere doesn’t help. I still have to live with it. Here. In the UK. And it’s one of things I don’t like about living here so that appears to be a good reason to mention it in a thread on that particular subject.

Actually it was an observation and knowing it is worse or better elsewhere doesn’t help.

Actually I think it does help.
Ideally it wouldn't exist anywhere, but given that it does exist everywhere, I know where I'd rather live.

Well. The thread is about bad things (not the
worst compare to others) in the UK. Racism is bad. It's very much present in UK. So it does belong on that list.

I don't understand why everyone piled on the Australian and USA ones but suddently this thread is sowing negativity and taking offence!

I'd say the littering, lack of care for the environment

Loud mouth chavs - Never see them outside the UK

House Prices

No protection for renters

The horrible grey ugly post-war buildings and houses

Whinging. The British nationals constantly moaning the the UK is the worst place in the world on any given measure. You'd never find any French person who would admit that their country was anything less than perfect so why is there so much self-loathing in the UK?

I am going to add to my list:
-defensiveness. Knee jerk overreactions to any criticism of anything about Britain at all. A lack of understanding that one can both list things that are bad about Britain and at the same time identify many, many things that are good about it!

See, I know a lot of Brits don't speak other languages, but it's not the fault of schools! Schools teach languages

I would say it is the fault of who ever decides how the language would be taught.

I used to speak French pretty well.
I hadn’t been to France for sometime when we went a couple of years ago.

Within a day of being there it was coming back to me.

I was taught through books where you did a double page per week.

It was quite childish looking with lots of pictures with labels attached.

E.g. On The Beach, in the kitchen, at the greengrocers where there would be a scene and the names of things labelled. We were given the list of labels to learn and the following lesson there would be a test.
You worked on those pages for the 2 lessons per week. Making sentences etc. Looking at the open pages for probably 3 hours per week. You sort of learned the vocabulary through osmosis

Ds and Dd went to different schools. Both had books that hardly had any visual clues They looked to be the most boring books of prose.
I don’t think they had a single picture in.
The lessons seemed more concerned with learning how to make sentences than with. the basic vocabulary

I think that is why neither can speak anything other than English
They are very willing to learn and were picking up a bit of Spanish whilst we were on Holiday

I would look at the books used to teach language and steer clear of anything that didn’t have pictures in it if I wanted to teach a language.