What do you love/hate about living in the UK

[CutToChase]

Please, PLEASE, for the love of Christ, try and be more creative/insightful than "I hate the Tories/Brexit/this governments management of coronavirus"!

I'll go first. These are all in contrast to other places I've lived.

LOVE:

• Pub culture
• That living in houses with gardens in town centres is common (rather than apartment blocks)
• High energy feel, always lots of community stuff, groups, etc
• Lack of red tape
• Undercurrent of a sense of humour
• Generally friendly staff in banks, government offices, etc
• The weather!
• Long opening hours for shops (Sundays etc)
• Can do attitude
• Pretty low tax compared to other places
• People generally feel friendly

HATE

• Expensive transport - ridiculous train prices
• Puritanical streak (cf. Smoking)
• Things are overelevated: you cant just go for a simple nice meal like in Spain, France, Italy etc. Its either overly elaborate and self conscious or Spoons
• Impossible house prices
• Excessive rights given to landlords
• The NHS I have so much respect for the people who work for it and the founding idea, but it needs to be overhauled IMO and it may be free, but I believe they cut corners (lack of funding) and wait times are ridiculous

Love
The history
The NHS
The BBC
The Royal Family
The market town I live in
London - the museums, culture etc
The countryside. Beautiful scenary
The people (most of them)
The seasons

Hate
Some elements of the NHS
Lack of mental health provision
Lack of care for the elderly/ vulnerable
Traffic jams
The cost of childcare

Love
The countryside
Mixture of housing
Live music
Pubs
Festivals
Motorcycle rallies
Fair amount of animal lovers
Seaside
History
Food
Access to clubs, hobbies.

Hate
Too soft on criminals especially knife crime and young people.
We allow ourselves to be divided by those it suits- young/old. Rich/poor. Instead of sticking together and helping each other.
Judgy/snobbery class bollocks and looking down on people who haven't had the same chances.
Nepotism and " I did it all myself" children of celebrity/sportsperson/business parents/those having huge bank of mum and dad handouts.
Lack of opportunities and encouragement for most poor kids who are not interested in Uni and we still wonder why the girls have a baby and the boys become nuisances.
School system.
That pensions aren't simpler and state pension keeps being messed with.

I forgot about our wonderful museums and galleries, most of which are free.

I am usually shocked at the admission prices in other countries. In Sweden they cost a fortune

Love:
Defined seasons, they all merge into one in other places I have lived.
Multi-culturalism
History everywhere
Free education and health care
Respect for other cultures and beliefs
the seaside
lush green vegetation
How well we treat animals
SEN recognition and support
A critical media
Pubs, pub grub
Incredibly high quality of TV and entertainment

Hate
Snobbery
Rise of nationalism and division
How full everything is, especially roads
Short winter days
Wind!
Litter

Defined seasons, they all merge into one in other places I have lived.
I don't know where you lived but there are not defined seasons here by my standards😂 I grew up with 4 proper seasons. Tbh I am liking this on UK (England actually, lived in few places) because it's kind of samey with kind if samey temp throughout the year. Not -15 in Jan and +30 in July.

Love
Attitudes towards women's rights
Seasons
Green landscape
TV programmes
Vast array of culture
Variety of cuisine on offer in restaurants
Satire

Dislike
Rain/grey skies
Obesity
Housing market
Chav culture

Love:
(I'm an EU citizen living in London so it might very well be more London than UK)

• Diversity
• Art is everywhere and for everyone. There are world renowned art schools, galleries and museum are mostly free, as an artist you can have the ambition to make a living.
• Kids in uniforms
• Emerging urban cycling culture (emerging as opposed to established as in Netherland for example)
• The importance of music (lot of record shops, venues...). I've been exposed to UK at a yound age through music and I feel like music is part of the british identity
• The balance of modernity and tradition.
• BBC
• NHS
• Cards for Christmas and birthdays
• It's a beautiful and green country
• The architecture is brilliant, even when it's grim, there's beauty in it.
• Variety of accents. I'm still learning to differentiate them, there are so many.
• Book stores are beautiful and so inspiring, because publishers put a lot of thoughts in book cover design.
• The weather (in London). Yeah it's raining a lot. But the weather is always changing, you can have a sunny morning and a grey afternoon, and sunset will be sunny and dramatic again. And it's never extremely cold or hot.
• Shops are generally opened all the time.
• Work ends quite early. Dining is at 6-7. afterwork drinks are at 5. Bars close at 11. I love that.
• Food is cheap in the supermarket.

Dislike:

• Social class thing.
• Drinking culture
• A certain conformity on how you should live your life (house, marriage, kids). In my country, it's perfectly ok to live like I do, here, I think that people do feel sorry for me, even people who can be considered a bit edgy or quirky
• Not impressed at all by broadband quality.
• Weddings. They finish too early, people are drunk by 2pm, and you have to pay for your drinks?!? Maybe it's not standard and just the ones I've been to though. I also found that they weren't really sophisticated.
• Council tax is sooooooo expensive
• There's a real fly tipping issue
• Mince pies. Seriously, what is that? Why do you put that in your mouth?
• Never been able to find a good Moroccan couscous. I'd kill for a couscous now.
• Chocolate isn't really good.

Love:

1. The weather
2. How easy it is to visit quaint little towns from London on day trips on the weekend (curtailed due to covid, but look forward to visiting soon).
3. LONDON- architecture, vibrant cosmopolitan feel, free museums, culture, food from all over the world
4. Generally quite tolerant, esp in big cities and probably overall esp compared to some countries on the continent.
5. love for animals-
6. Period housing- my flat is a 1930s period block and that is amazing to me.
7. politeness
8. welfare state - mark of a civilized democracy.

Hates:

1. Traditional british food can be quite bland and stodgy but this isn't a problem in a big city as there are plenty of alternatives and its been improving.
2. Tabloids and how they blame immigrants and benefit claimants for everything under the sun.
3. cost of public transport/lack of quality public transport in towns and villages
4. Cost of property in London (and the lack of willingness of the government to build affordable homes, as well as the NIMBY syndrome).
5. cost of childcare
6. the way the government handled covid and the anti-maskers, anti lockdown people.
7. the class system and how some people (thankfully not most) can be snobby about silly things, for example looking down on people who live in flats and don't have gardens.

Also. 8. drinking culture.

But to balance it out, I do like fish and chips. and i feel people do care more for the environment here and are more connected to nature, even if they live in cities.

Love
Pubs
Spring
Proper gardens, non of this plain back yard stuff
The countryside! It's beautiful.

Dislike
Antisocial behaviour
When it's cold it really gets into your bones
Train prices (and journey times)

Forgot to add:

Love
PIES.

@SchrodingersImmigrant I didn't understand the love for the NHS either but then I watched Call the Midwife and its supposed to be quite realistic- it also corresponded with my DH's grandfather's stories of growing up in the East End in the earlier half of the 1900s.

And then I understood, if you were in such a deprived situation, nothing short of free healthcare would be adequate. If there was even any hint of a co-pay or requirement for proof of insurance, that would leave healthcare to be inaccessible to such people. And sadly there are parts of the UK who are in quasi Victorian era squalor; not in the sense that they don't have indoor plumbing but the level of inequality is Victorian era. I think for as long as there is an underclass, the NHS needs to exist. Continental Europe and Australia have better living conditions in the first place.

Love :
The sense of humour
The freedom, in normal times.
The amazing coast and countryside.

Hate :
Ridiculous house prices
Awful public transport.
The NHS. This is absolutely not a criticism of NHS workers, most of whom do a good job in difficult circumstances. It’s a criticism of the system itself. It is underfunded, over-beaureaucratised, inflexible, unaccountable and far too often offers a crap service with ridiculous waiting times and poor outcomes to the public who pay for it. The fact that it has become a sort of sanctified national secular religion is a huge part of the problem. The Right don’t care about it because they & their families don’t use it. The Left won’t criticise it because public sector workers vote for them, and disingenuously present the NHS vs the American private healthcare system as a binary choice. It isn’t, and it never was. We need to look at other countries who have far better healthcare systems & models than we do, eg Germany, France, Italy and learn from them.

@onlychildandhamster I still don't get it. Uk isn't the only one with free healthcare at the point of entry. It's not THAT special to warrant this level of obsession.

Love
Good range of organic produce and other items in the supermarkets
Cheaper food than where I am from
People are polite and funny
The variety of people you can find to do little jobs for you (like window cleaners, bin cleaners, oven cleaners, gutter cleaners etc). we don't have those types of trades where I'm from
Beautiful countryside
Lots of dogs and dog lovers

Dislike
All the rubbish, broken glass and vomits on the streets
The binge drinking culture
No proper winters
General asbo behaviour
And, the worse one, all the boys in trackies walking around with their hands down their crotch

@kavalkada

I don't even live in UK, so maybe it is not very wise from me to write about this, but I used to visit often before COVID and love your country a lot, so:

Love in UK

Don't need to worry too much about natural disasters - I'd give anything to live in a country where earthquakes can't happen

Kindest people I have ever met - I don't know how Brits are behind closed doors, but in public you're amazing. Last time I was in UK I was pregnant and people were giving me hand to help me enter the bus - that is something that will never happen in Croatia

BBC and ITV - I know Brits do not like them very much, but in Croatia BBC is the measure of quality television - and Only Fools and Horses is probably the only television show everybody has seen at least once in life

Your literature - all my favorite books are from British (and Irish) authors

Your parks - there is nothing in the world like park in the UK

London public transport - I fell in love with underground first time I was in UK and that love never left me

Pub culture - especially pubs with wonderful gardens on lovely spring and autumn day

Department stores - there is only one in my country and nothing like your beautiful department stores

Ready meals in shops - so many of them and so cheap - in my country ready meals are rare and damn expensive

Yellow stickers - first time I have seen a price on the yellow sticker item I was confused because I couldn't believe something can be so cheap

Lack of red tape - all my friends who moved to UK are amazed how easy it is to open the business

Hate in UK (this is probably too harsh to tell, but things I wouldn't like if I lived there - experience gained from reading mumsnet and watching british real estate show so take it with a pinch of salt)

Cost of childcare - I haven't known about this before reading mumsnet, but it is so high in UK. A single mum in croatian capital on minimal wage is going to pay around 5 per cent of her wage for childcare from 7.30 am till 5.30 pm, four meals included. There are places where childcare is free, somewhere is more expensive but even in most expensive cities you're never expected to pay more then 15 per cent of minimal wage. With each next child price is lower, and childcare is paid upon your salary and mortgage or the price of rental. The more you earn, more you pay. I have never met a woman who had to give up her job because of childcare.

Lack of ID card - I love my ID card and it makes my life so easy. Getting a passport in UK seems the work of the devil, I just have to show my ID.

Very narrow hallways in houses with no place to put wardrobes for coats and shoes - all right this is not personal experience but something I have picked from British real estate shows, but every time they show a house I wonder where you keep your shoes. Every Croatian hallway in houses and apartments is full of wardrobes for jackets and shoes

Chains while buying house - never heard about this before and always feel sorry for people stuck in them.

Please, don't be mad for me for writing things about country where I don't live.

It's often those looking in who can see what's good.

Love:
Pubs
the NHS
the BBC
London, which ishome for me in a really deep way even though I am resident abroad
Availability of wonderful Indian food
Public transport
Hates
Increasing attempts to undermine NHS and BBC
The current government
Brexit and the xenophobia it has unleashed
Expense of public transport

Love:

• Civil rights and strong institutions. The UK's constitutional make-up is imperfect and has been under attack by this administration but it still works.
• History. My marriage certificate is issued by a church listed in the Domesday Book, and in many parts of Britain there is constructive respect for the past.
• Elite education, possibly our only remaining world-leading industry
• Cosmopolitan food and drink (baffling, given the level of xenophobia here)

Hate:

• Poor mass education - literacy, numeracy, understanding how the world works are all really, really poor here, and the pride many have in their own inability is even more baffling
• Rentier capitalism
• Eye-watering cost of almost everything
• Terrible infrastructure
• Dreadful public services (including the benighted NHS)
• English exceptionalism
• Xenophobia
• Never getting over the demise of the Empire
• Not being able to cope with a dusting of snow every single winter

Things I like:

• Tenants have more rights and a more secure stay (at least in Scotland) than back home
• Availability of a good variety of hot food from different cultures (I especially like Indian). Even in fairly small towns. Relatedly, lots of take away options.
• Less social pressure/expectation for women to be feminine in appearance/wear make up etc.
• Little involvement in politics by Churches.
• Decent returns policies.
• Customer service in general friendlier/more courteous. Sometimes at home in shops they refuse to give you your full change back. More courteous medical staff as well.
• Mild weather all year around. No real winter.
• Flu vaccine direct at (some) pharmacies (my country has a cumbersome system for this)
• Free prescriptions (Scotland)
• Decent fishmongers.
• Those late night fast food places I associate with students that have fairly cheap burgers and the like.
• Entry to swimming pools is done on a single-entry basis, not a time-limited one. Stay as long as you want if there aren't other activities scheduled.
• Barbers.
• In my experience, less busybodying about what people you don't know (well) are doing.
• Better and safer driving than back home.
• Walking across on red light is okay and your responsibility using common sense. You can get fined for that in my country.

Things I don't like:

• Difficulty of direct access to medical specialists - in my home country, I can go direct and pay an approachable amount, whereas private care prices in the UK are eye-watering.
• GPs who think the only cure for anything is time and paracetamol. If you get a particularly innovative one, they'll have heard of ibuprofen.
• Quality/type of bread/rolls available. To a lesser extent, same with pastries.
• That thick sickly icing people put on lots of cupcakes and the like (butter icing?)
• Homeless people and beggars everywhere.
• Customer service in banks. Frontline staff seem to be almost entirely for managing the machines. If you need anything else, they make you sit for a nebulous amount of time until someone deigns to see to you, no clarity (in my non-UK bank, you queue or go straight in smaller branches, take a number in bigger ones, much more indication of how long you wait).
• Length of time taken at pharmacies to dispense prescriptions.
• Overspecialisation in school education in early teens. In comparison, standard education here is poorer/of a lower level than in my home country (judging by material).
• Limited language teaching/learning. In schools, too little hours. More broadly, too much of an approach of "everyone will speak English".
• I find many people's views on expectations of relationships between parents and their adult offspring very cold and detached. Both in terms of what young adult children can expect from their parents and what elderly parents can expect from adult children.
• Swimming pool facilities often dirty.
• Two taps are a nightmare! Those terrible taps where they're simultaneously cold and hot also dreadful. I'm so glad I have a normal tap, that would drive me insane.
• Houses that are badly built. Walls often very thin, poor insulation. Many people's houses are cold.
• Supermarkets have a lot of vegetables all packaged up rather than letting you buy by weight. Excessive packaging and a limitation on the customer.
• Monarchy and aristocratic titles/honours system.
• First past the post electoral system.
• People do not talk directly enough. A lot of waffle, hinting around the issue and passive aggression. Relatedly, I've genuinely been in situations where I couldn't tell if "Do you want to" was an offer or a request.
• Attitude that if you live(d) long enough here, you're now British/Scottish etc. Presumably they're intending to be welcoming and not racist, but it's annoying to have this identity pushed on you. Feels like an attack of the Borg.
• School uniforms.
• In cities visited by tourists, often city centre/high street is full of tourist kitsch stores and not actual normal shops for people living there.
• Harder to find (and if you do, comparatively much more expensive) repair, clothes adjusted or made from the fabric.
• 5 flakes of snow and everything stops.
• Car insurance system. I don't have a car, so I might be wrong, but I think here you can't drive a car that's not yours/not specifically insured for you. At home, the car needs to be insured and you need to have the papers of insurance and registration (after a new change, to be shown in a short time; previously, on the spot).
• 'Equality monitoring' everywhere. I consider things like my sexuality, religion in particular, ethnic background a little less so but often when it comes up, to be private information.
• Outside of multicultural influenced stuff (like British Indian staples), I think "traditional British" food is not nice.

[quote PopsicleHustler]**@kavalkada

You sound so sweet. There was nothing wrong with what you wrote![/quote]
Well, except that many people love the BBC, not hate it. Me, for example.

@kavalkada I'm curious about not having a house buying chain. How does it work in Croatia if there are several people all buying and selling their homes?

OP - interesting, my list is exactly the same as yours, bar the weather. As I get older I hate the cold more, and do dream of living somewhere like Spain.

I like the gov.u.k website
I managed to apply for sons passports online today
I’m grateful for little things like that
And having all tax data online
No more offices
Phone numbers !

Love:
Culture, our theatre, galleries, museums, public events.
Festivals: bonfire night, regattas, well dressing etc
NHS
Diversity of fabulous landscapes: Lake District, Norfolk, moors, mountains etc
Irreverent humour
Diversity
London

Hate:
Materialism. High focus on flash cars, ever changing shallow fads and fashions, ostentation. Low regard for thrift, function, authenticity
Chains in every high street
Tea

@kavalkada I thought your post was lovely.

There is so much I love about living here, but my favourites are:
-The different seasons and our weather
-The architecture in lots of our cities and the mix between old and new

• The British humour
• queues
• museums, art, theatres, Shakespeare, ballet, opera, the creativity
• music, singers and musicians of so many genres
• British swear words
• our landscape. Our countryside, our coast, little villages and lots of our cities are just beautiful
• our history and traditions
• our food
• Miss Marple, James Bond, Hammer Horror, Ealing comedies
• Our love of an under dog
• David Attenborough
• Our actors
• the NHS
• a peculiarly British belief that if someone doesn’t speak English then you simply need to speak louder or add an ‘o’ to the last word in a sentence
• the way we all understand what is meant by phrases like ‘with all due respect’ and ‘we must meet up some time’
• our sarcasm, irony, self deprecation and general piss taking
• multiculturalism
• our accents and the differences in such a short distance
• on the whole, we have no animals that could kill us

There isn’t much I don’t like about Britain. I don’t think we’re perfect by any stretch of the imagination but the things that I really don’t like are:
-the ‘cancel culture’ that has emerged in the last couple of years

• the separatism caused by Brexit and Covid, with people turning on each other rather than our politicians
• the lack of interest in prosecuting sexual offences against women
• having supported the underdog, we then decide they’ve got too big for their boots and so have to be knocked down again

love -
Being able to live a completely religious free life.
Freedom to dress as I please. No pressure to wear high heels, make up, etc. No need to cover up.
The seasons.
The greenery, lots of trees and grass.
Cheap food, eating healthy is affordable
London

Hate -
Litter
Light sentencing for serious crimes