It really isn't a very tolerant place. It is certainly not tolerant of sexual equality and women face misogyny every day - often habitual low level stuff but every day, sometimes much nastier abusive stuff including comments about appearance, sexualised behaviours like inappropriate touching, men who talk down to women and belittle them, who pigeonhole them, exclude them from decision-making at work, have it in their minds they will have children so don't consider them for promotions. It os continual. And that's without the extreme and- the violence. 95%+ of domestic violence is male against female. Stranger violence against women is almost 100% male. Sexual violence not related to a previous relationship os 99% male to female.
The UK is a racist country- casual racism is continual. I hear it every single day. Assumptions made, ingrained beliefs and attitudes. Then there is much more discriminatory or violent racism. It's certainly not all white against other cultures, it's culture vs culture and often involves religion between some groups. I have never felt as intimidated in my life as I do in Wembley in London. We have a family member who lives there and , if I visit alone, I am often the only white woman on the station and the way black men treat me is horrible. I have been scared by it. In shops people speak wholly in Indian or Middle-Eastern languages and will just ignore a white woman. I have seen young asian men in their 20s in groups following and making sexual remarks to teenage white girls who are alone, on one occasion following her in a car and trying to persuade her to get into it.
I am lucky in that I live in the north-east in a well-off little community by the sea. One of the benefits of being ignored by our government is there is less change here but what I do see here is insularity and ignorant behaviour most often from 20-40 year olds who can be just awful- gobby, loud, shouting about what they want, rude to others, dire parenting from groups of them, wasteful, no sense of decency- of course I'm not talking about everyone, not even a majority but lots. This morning a couple threw a pile of fast food stuff from their car window in Seaton Delaval. They were mid 30s I'd say, driving an old black Range Rover, she was orange faced, he had a shaved head. Both had tattooed arms. What's going on with adults who behave like that?
I'd leave the UK if we had a choice but DH won't leave PIL. I think he would have 10 years ago but I wouldn't leave my mam then. Soon we'll be too old. I'd go to Canada or New Zealand .