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

I love the UK for its

Pubs
Universities
Stunning countryside
Beauty & community in most of our cities
Creativity in music, TV & fashion
Irony & wit
No poisonous insects or snakes
Very few guns
Animal welfare
Freedom to do almost anything
Greenery and temperate climate

And dislike.....
Vast faceless housing estates
Long commuting times (hopefully WFH will stick)
School bullying
Drivers speeding in residential areas

Love
Animal welfare is quite high priority
Ppl are generally friendly and helpful
Free health service
Diverse and multicultural place to live
Freedom
Benifit system not the best but a lot better than most other countries.
Hate
Class divide and to much snobbery
Over crowded especially in london/south east
House prices_ seems impossible to ever get on the housing ladder
We do not respect the elderly clearly identified by comments on mumsnet. Also to many stuck in care homes and families don't seem.to care.
The acceptance of men leaving their children / families and then paying sod all Not helped by useless csa.

Oh and also hate that renting is so expensive .

Love:

• Overall sense of community, even if it doesn't feel like it sometimes
• British humour that feels like in-jokes the rest of the world wouldn't understand
• TV, I think we have cracking shows
• Almost always being close to the countryside wherever you are
• Public transport, as bad & inflated as it is sometimes
• Free healthcare
• The food! So much variety and independent gems everywhere
• Amazing diversity of cities, quaint ones like Bath and Winchester and huge ones like London and Manchester
• National Trusts & Parks
• Autumn, it's such a beautiful season
• Dog lovers everywhere

Hate:

• Prevalence of casual racism, sexism & classism (and overt, too)
• Lad culture
• Newspapers like the Daily Mail
• Massive, ugly housing developments shooting up constantly and still somehow being so unaffordable despite housing crisis
• The price of train tickets
• Littering
• Idiot drivers everywhere

British Humour
Rural area's/countryside etc
The fact we don't mostly have to work out our own taxes
the ideology of free healthcare and schooling

Dislike
That healthcare could be so much more if partially privatised
The class system
The fact certain health conditions that are of vital organs are still charged within healthcare and prescriptions
People jumping on the bandwagon to protect brands when actually the idea is wrong and the accusation itself is offensive and racist/derogatory ie a certain movement.
The voting system and government currently
The fact we have a poor quality of theme parks etc.
The discrimination of any other country or people on here telling people with other cultural diversities about their own cultures and other countries, especially ireland.
People wearing the sunflower lanyard when it has already been stated the disabilityid lanyards are the only to prove someone has an exemption or disability

Love - free healthcare at point of use. Free education at point of use. Free libraries and museums. Gorgeous countryside and beaches and right to access them free.

Hate - underfunding in public sector which undermines the things I love.

Love
Tv
Humour
Proximity to Europe
Summer

Hate
Winter
Racism

Love:

• our good comedy is better than anywhere else;

• the mountains of Scotland and Wales;

• lax and easy alcohol buying laws compared to other places I've lived;

• the vibes of August Bank Holiday weekend when it's actually sunny (maybe I just mean Carnival);

• how our streets aren't on a grid system (mostly)

• the nation's posties. Ya mad shorts wearing bastards, I've never met a postie I didn't love.

Hate:

• our confusing quiet contemplation with competitive poppy fuckery on Remembrance Day and slapping giant plastic poppies on every lamp post in town and MPs wearing increasingly larger poppies each year on TV;

• a broad refusal to accept that we were murdering land stealing colonial cunts and most of the stuff in our museums was stolen and should be returned;

• rampant transphobia;

• our collective inability to drive in snow resulting in 1028392929 accidents when there's a light dusting of the stuff. We don't need snow chains lads, just maybe don't attempt handbrake turns on the M6 and you'll be golden

I love nothing about living in the UK, although I appreciate that I live in a largely safe and civilised country (by comparison).
I would move abroad in a heartbeat.

I loathe the weather; the deductions from my wage packet; the fact we have fewer national holidays than many other countries; the tightly packed cities and towns filled with tiny box type houses; the fact we have few interesting species of wild animal living here; the fact the sea is cold; the high cost of living and below average standard of living/ work-life balance; the fact I will never be allowed to drive a Ford F-150 in the UK unless I have a special reason to; the crappy entertainment on offer and how grey everything looks.

My favourite place is Florida...not for the parks...I like the open space; the nature; the weather; the beaches; the warm ocean; the more laid back native attitude; the fact you can own a detached house on a huge plot of land, a Ford F-150 and a small boat on a normal wage. And then there’s K92.3 and Giordanos pizza.
I’m willing to overlook the negative aspects of Florida as I think they are outweighed by the positives above.

Well I don't live in the Uk any more, but here's mine

Likes

Proximity to Europe
Good pubs (but not as good as Ireland)
M & S Food hall and Waitrose
Great history and architecture (especially London)
Newspapers, especially the weekend editions
Great festivals, especially Glastonbury
Good sense of humour
Great restaurants

Dislikes.
The weather! It's usually grey and shit for about nine months of the year.I used to hate that even planning a bbq in summer was a gamble.
Housing is generally cramped and expensive.
The obsession with class, so bloody boring.
Too many people, the cities are so busy and grubby.
The NHS isn't all it should be, too bureaucratic and inefficient, other countries manage healthcare much better. I'm not criticizing the healthcare workers, just the system.
Traffic everywhere.

Love
Friendliness of neighbours( I live in Yorkshire) perhaps would differ in London.
The sense of humour we have
We are surrounded by history- stone circles and medieval buildings
Music scene and comedy scene- the talent
British TV - fantastic quality of dramas and the choice available.
The countryside- we cam amble around it and camp in so many great places.
The food- in one city we have any nationality of food to choose from
Our universities

Hate
Chav culture
GP practices that seem constantly irritated by their patients who are their customers
Our government including government departments like OFSTED
The class system. It makes many very intelligent and capable people feel worthless and other less talented and unintelligent get an over inflated sense of their ability
Too many dogs- it's become ridiculous
Cold beaches and seas apart from 1 month a year
High streets and shops in which one town resembles the next
Isolation of the elderly

Love
Decent dramas on tv
Polite driving ie saying Thankyou and waving at other drivers
The fact our roads curve and aren’t just straight boring blocks
Our high streets with small independent shops
Death row doesn’t exist - I would be petrified if that was a thing here
Our architecture and preservation of it
Countryside/national parks/forestry
The seasons
Sliced bread
Culture
Our history
London and all the sights/west end
Our soaps

Hate
Large companies taking over - Tesco, sky, Netflix, Starbucks, Costa.. the list goes on..
People who take advantage of our benefit system
The building of cheaply built houses on any scrap of land available with postage stamp back gardens (I live in a new build)
Grumpy old men who think they are entitled
Work life balance
The expense of a food shop

Love
The seasons and long summer days
Our respect for old buildings
London is a great city and Edinburgh is a beauty
Our respect for animals
The BBC
Banter

Hate
Our coffee chains are unbelievably bad really
Our high streets are dying and need to be re-purposed, not left empty
Dog mess, litter and the attitude that someone else will do it
Lack of public toilets now - I am far too good at finding places to hide and pee, and I shouldn't be!

Appreciate due to living / working outside the UK
Our work culture is successful compared to many other countries, because it's healthy to admit you made a mistake. I have worked in places where people would go to elaborate lengths, or throw performative tantrums, to avoid admitting they were wrong.

Like

• acceptance of the principle that healthcare should be available to all

Hate

• the reality that healthcare is not available to all (if you're disabled, good luck actually accessing healthcare)
• shit NHS
• the way the NHS routinely fails and harms people with impunity
• the NHS culture of disregarding patient consent, assaulting and traumatising people then blaming them for the harm they've suffered
• the acceptance of the NHS dehumanising and degrading people
• the idiotic worship of our toxic NHS like it's some kind of gift from the gods
• people who defend an institution that kills people and destroys lives then covers it up
• people who collude in silencing those who have suffered harm at the hands of the NHS

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.

Well put.

I've lived in Japan, so my comparisons are based on that, but I love our freedom in the UK, our eclectic food and people, British people's kindness, relative openness. I hate our unclean streets, our filthy and unreliable public transport (which is utterly embarrassing compared with Japan), our drunken people in the streets at night, our lack of business efficiency.

@Lemonpiano had a bad experience by any chance 🥴

Love:
Love my London
All the seasons
Our collective creativity
Our talents in film and television

Hate:
The blatant Racism and prejudice from the PM, right through the media, to bigots on the street. Imagine if this second pandemic wave happened after Eid? We know what the narrative would have been. I just remember after Eid in July, the articles that were published using old photos of families meeting up and presenting them as if they were recent -even the BBC did this! I don't recall any photos of families meeting up over the festive period in the papers. Absolute hypocrisy.

Toconclude, why Croatia doesn't have chains in real estate? This could turn into a history lesson, but there are few reasons why they do not exist. So if you're prepared to read...

First, we're a much smaller country, just four millions people, so less activity on that account. But, that is not the only reason. I'll try to explain on my personal experience and one of my parents because they're good examples for all country.

We bought our flat four years ago from people who wanted to downsize after their children left home. In Croatia you usually sign two contracts. We signed the first contract and gave five per cent of price of our flat. In that contract is the date when previous occupants have to move out and that is the day you sign the final contract and give the rest of the money. It passed two months between those two contracts. During that time, people rent. All my friends rented while selling or lived with their parents.

Important to say that lot of people sell real estates without the help of real estate brokers so they save that money for rent.

Also, you have to remember that Croatia is ex communist country. Home ownership rate is usually much higher in ex communist countries because that is where people invested their money. They built houses. It is hard to find in Croatia somebody who doesn't have a second home in the countryside. So when older people sell, they live for few months in their second home which is usually a village of their birth and wait till something they like appears on the market.

Histories of our two countries are different and that shaped lot of things that are different in both countries.

Ten years ago I was at a mixed British-Croatian wedding (wedding happened in Croatia). Talking about clash of cultures. I could write a very funny screenplay about it).

And just to straight out one thing for all those who watched Last Christmas with Emma Thompson and saw the outside of that over the top decorated house during Christmas. There is not one Croatian family who would do that (ok, maybe one but they're so strange they ended in the news). Croatians do not decorate their houses on the outside during Christmas. You can maybe see a light or two one the windows, but that's it. Real picture of Croatian Christmas is crazy mum who does two dozens of different types of cakes in a week before Christmas and then we go from friend to friends with boxes full of cakes because nobody in the world can eat that amount of sugar. Sorry, I just had to say that because when I was in the cinema all movie theater started to laugh because they knew how unrealistic that scene was.

It's safer than many other countries.
I love the long light summer evenings sunset after 10pm here
The NHS
The great free schooling.
Good standards of food safety and hygiene
No nasty poisonous insects or spiders
No where it too far from the coast.

Some parts of the UK don;t have chains in property purchase either.
In Scotland chains don't exist. We have different ways of buying homes.

Love

The sense of humour about life
Politeness of people in general
London has great shopping, nightlife and restaurants

Hate

Everything is too expensive, especially housing
People are two faced
NHS is not fit for purpose and no amount of praising it will make it so. There are other countries where you don't have an NHS in the same way but you still wouldn't need to pay if you got sick. Look it up, other health systems are not as cut throat and extreme as the US. People seem to think unless there is the NHS, you would be left to die like in the US. That's not the case. Look at some EU countries.
The drink culture is just too extreme. People don't know how to socialise without it
The innate superiority over Europeans that some people think they have by being British ( Brexit )
council estates, they're eye sores
Dirty houses, dirty windows you can see from the street / messy front gardens
People are generally messy/ scruffy and it shows
The ugly shop fronts everywhere in London for example. The tiny shops that are everywhere and the shop fronts are so unsightly. It gives the UK a ' third world ' look in certain areas, when compared to some other countries - Switzerland / Germany
A lot of houses on the outskirts are just so run down and ugly and still cost and arm and a leg !
How tight people are with their heating. Go to the pub a bit less and spend that money on turning on your heating, it's ridiculous. No I will not put on several layers in my own home to keep warm
Children's food menus. Get your child to eat what you eat. They don't need to eat just chips and fish fingers. Teach them about food and stop giving them just ' children's food '
Put some socks and shoes on your child and while you're at it, a jacket too- might prevent them from being all snotty constantly. You don't see half naked children running around in the winter anywhere else
Girls standing naked waiting to get into nightclubs is also so cheap and British

These are all generalisations and obviously there are well dressed, tidy people in this country who dress their children appropriately for the weather and who put their heating on. My comments are tongue in cheek and really general. Generally I love the UK.

LOVE
the British sense of humour
The seasons
Pub culture
How old so many of our buildings are - my friend from the US is fascinated that our home is over 100 years old and has the original fireplaces etc.
Respect for Queuing - hate it in other countries when people just push in
British tv
The fact we have so many different cultural influences in our food, traditions

HATE
the drinking culture and unhealthy relationship with alcohol that is so common
The increasing tendency towards wanting to ‘be like America’
Low rates of tax and hence often poor (underfunded) public services - OP do you not see the irony in the fact that you say that you like the low tax in the UK but don’t like the nhs because it’s got long wait times etc?! The two are linked!! You want decent services? They’re not free.
Lack of respect for experts/people who know what they’re talking about, also how undervalued education is amongst quite high proportions of our population
Train prices and train services
The traffic