Is Mumsnet an English forum?

[Purpleturtle43]

Seems like pretty much every poster and responder assumes everyone on here is from England.

When asking questions regarding schools, health care, tenancy etc surely it would be useful to say what country you live in since the rules and laws are different all over the UK/world.

Good place to hang out if you're feeling fragile then, but otherwise a bit boring. fairy nuff.

That's why we have the report button & mn towers discretion.

I hope they werent driving whilst over here 😳

I mean - that’s the sort of major difference people know about. It comes up in conversation/jokes/news items etc. Plug differences just aren’t in the same league.

We used to enjoy the language differences & that Americans mostly assumed I was Australian. The tone of spoken UK English is quite flat after American English

Why so serious! Anyway I don't think I've ever been abroad without checking what type of plugs they use if its my first time somewhere completely new. Pretty basic stuff.

You’ve missed the point entirely. You check to see what plug sockets countries use before you visit because you’re aware that plugs can vary between countries.

This American family wouldn’t have known to check what plug sockets a country uses, because they weren’t aware that plug sockets are different in different countries. This was a family who had never left the US before and the majority of their social circle, if they’d travelled abroad, had only been to Mexico or Canada, which use the same sockets as the US.

My point is there are some things we all take entirely for granted, because they seem so basic and standard, that it doesn’t occur to us that other places do things differently. Until a friend of mine moved to the US and went through the house-buying process there, I had no idea that in many other countries, people buy and sell houses without forming chains. When she told me, I couldn’t even imagine how that would work. It’s not something that would ever have occurred to me would be different.

Yes exactly I'm aware! Ive been aware since my teens of the fact different countries have different 'things' and customs and laws and so on. That's why I made the jokey comment about being worried about this family potentially jumping in a hire car from the airport, i had visions of them doing a Del Boy (in the campervan in Miami!)

Mumsnet was started in Kentish Town in NW London, its office is still there. Of course it’s a UK website and largely based in England.
it’s also very supportive, funny and caring. Unless you head straight to AIBU

Let’s say around 10% of posts actually matter what system you are in (a LTB thread is a fairly universal leveller)

As prh said, around 70% of all posts are from England, 7% Scotland.

(England and Wales are much closer in their systems than either is to Scotland)

So there really isn’t a high proportion of posts where the “local system” matters and - as the OP seeking advice - it makes sense to give relevant information such as the background, actions taken so far and where you are based if it is relevant.

I always think there's loads of scots on here!

“My point is there are some things we all take entirely for granted, because they seem so basic and standard”

this is the crux of the issue and is the bit I don’t agree is true. I can’t think of anything where I would ever have presumed that the way we do thing here - in NI - is the same all over the world. And what some other posters are saying is that they are also from e.g Scotland but do not make the assumption, but that they feel like it is generally English posters who make this assumption.

I think that people from big/dominant/“default” cultures have more of a tendency to presume that what they do is some sort of global or national constant. You can see how it happens: I am exposed through media much more to English culture than most English people are to NI. And the same for the Americans - nearly all English speaking countries are exposed to US when the reverse isn’t true.

i think that that is why some posters (including me) find it annoying, self centred and ignorant - we genuinely do not presume that anything we do must be the same everywhere.

People can learn about others on here which is a good thing.. I think the English lawyers on here are good at pointing out on divorce and wills etc threads that Scottish law is different. Plenty of posters also know that Wales and Scotland have their own different kinds of stamp duty these days and my bug bear that there are free prescriptions I think in some places other than England - Wales and Scotland? and I think in Wales there is also a bigger university finance provided which seems very unfair on the English to me. Scotland of course we do know has a different educational system as well.

The UK is quite an outward looking country which we have always had to be because we are a very small island which even by the 1500s had loads of sailors going abroad, coming back etc perhaps more so than many places and we are interested to hear how things are done in other countries.

“I think that people from big/dominant/“default” cultures have more of a tendency to presume that what they do is some sort of global or national constant. You can see how it happens: I am exposed through media much more to English culture than most English people are to NI. And the same for the Americans - nearly all English speaking countries are exposed to US when the reverse isn’t true.
i think that that is why some posters (including me) find it annoying, self centred and ignorant - we genuinely do not presume that anything we do must be the same everywhere.”

You have just explained how it happens, yet people in the dominant culture are “self-centred and ignorant” simply for not being aware of information they are not exposed to. They are ignorant not because they are self-centred but because they haven’t been exposed to it.

It was only quite recently I realised how different some laws are in NI compared to England, we’re supposedly one country so I thought that major things like abortion would be nationally decided. I now wonder what else is different.

I didn’t say that they ARE, I said that that explains why I, and others, FIND IT to be self centred and ignorant. I’ve explained why I think it happens and also explained why it gets a negative reaction. It’s clearly not a personality defect, it’s cultural. Other cultures are still allowed to find it annoying.

Why are you being so dictatorial? Start your own forum with your own rules.

It’s more annoying and arrogant to try to impose your own rules on people. Other forums are available.

? I didn’t mention any “rules”?

The whole school holiday thing …

It’s reasonable that English posters might not know the school holiday schedule of other parts of the UK. Or anywhere else in the world. That’s fair enough. But often - very often in fact - someone starts a thread and mentions that something happened when they were at, say, the beach with their kids. Some poster invariably accuses them of making it all up because it’s not the school holidays. A dog couldn’t possibly have eaten your tuna sandwiches and run away with your strawberry cheesecake because why would you be at the beach at 11 o’clock on a Wednesday morning when all children are in school? You just hate dogs. Or whatever.

.....well let's not be arrogant and ignore all the people who home school, the beach is a very educational environment.....

Yes - the one I was thinking of was a similar thread where a commenter insisted “no school in the UK is on holiday right now”. Fair enough not to know when holidays are elsewhere but I can’t think of an explanation for such ungrounded confidence other than some sort of unthinking arrogance.

Fair point!

This reminds me of the Engish girl on Love Island who thought that Spain was part of the UK.

Island isolsation, brexit and the attitude that the UK is better than other countries is leading to some very insular attitudes, and a lack of awareness about the rest of the world.

A similiar thing i think happens in the USA. I was chatting to a woman from the USA recently.

She said that when they are children and teenagers they are taught to view the USA as the best country in the world. She said that they are taught very little about other countries. She said also when they become adults - ths US media primarily focuses on US news. It doesnt talk much about other countries. She said that a lot of people in the USA start to think of the USA as being the whole world.

Some people are very rigid thinkers which could be nature or nurture. Hard to know how serious anonymous internet users are as the tone of posts isn't always obvious.
Best to let AIBU wash over you like water off a duck's back, unless you're in a bad mood and need to vent. Usually it's not personal it's the internet.....for most boards.

You do know love islanders aren't chosen for their intellects right?