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.

The PP said British, I extended to the wider whole UK, I'm not stupid

The onus is on NI/Scot/welsh to declare their country rather than the English which does make it English by default although that is also the vast majority of the population

it is UK based so I do find it annoying when other counties don’t specify

The population of London is more than that of Wales and Scotland put together. The vast majority of the UK population lives in England. It's not an unreasonable assumption to make in the absence of information to the contrary.

Yes.
England is 84% of the UK. So it becomes a default.

The same way it is default assumption that people are able bodied, people are women, people have complete basic education, people aren't homeless - if your situation is different and relevant for the thread, you have to specify.

It’s based in London, so I always assume that every one is referring to England when it comes to law, school holidays, house buying.

If people are out of England they should just say.

It’s basically why the scotsnet board was created, to stop the constant assumption and thr op having to spend half the thread being like okay but none of this is relevant as I’m in Scotland

Why is that the onus?

Not only do people presume you are English and talking about England, they will
actually correct you. Or make statements like “it is not the UK school holidays” and then when Scottish or northern Irish posters say, errr, yes it is, they say “well I presumed we were talking about England”. So why say Uk then if you mean England and know fuck all about other bits of the UK?

personally I find it arrogant. The doubling down, rather than saying “sorry, I should have specified England rather than UK”.

Agree

What exactly is your issue? It doesn’t matter whether the site is British, Turkish, Australian, Chinese or whatever - it’s the bulk of the users on a forum that is the crucial information.

And as it appears that the vast majority of active posters are English, generally speaking everyone will assume the OP is English/living in England unless they declare otherwise.

Should they have to? Yes and no. Yes because it’s very clear the majority are making that assumption. So if you wanted useful responses then include it. No because people shouldn’t make assumptions. That said, if you turned up to a mum’s and toddlers group in a town, people would assume you are from that general area unless you tell them you’re actually visiting your parents for the whole summer and are actually from x. People make assumptions all the time like this.

It would be helpful if all posters started a post (OP not every commentator) with some basic information - country they are located in when asking for advice that would have different answers in different countries being one of them. If the advice is the same worldwide, then it isn’t needed unless you want to provide it if you want to know about local support or something (eg if a woman is escaping Donestic violence).

So what is it you want? Are you trying to say Ah ha! To all the English posters? Caught them out because this is a British site and they are all terrible because they didn’t consider you might be from somewhere else?

But the post you called ignorant said:

Is it surprising that the majority of people are talking about England when it has roughly ten times the population of Scotland?

The majority posting probably are English. Because it's a British website and the largest population of the combined nations is in England.

It's not ignorant to state that fact.

Ignorance would be to assume it's 100% English all the time.

It's correct to use British as an adjective for the UK.

Most people on this forum do assume people are English 100% of the time.

You get ignorance and arrogance everywhere though. A lot of people hate to admit they are wrong.

I also see a lot more people using England/UK as interchangeable in a way you wouldn’t see them doing for Scotland, Wales or NI. Even globally this happens, so it isn’t just an English thing.

But this is well known. So when someone says “It is not the UK school holidays” you know they mean English. Just keep calling them out on it if it means that much to you.

Ah - so it is an 'I hate the English because' thread.

I think it's time we had a separate board for them.

I'm so terrible sorry to exclude the 3.something million population from Wales and 1.9ish million in NI 😉 What about IoM, or the Channel Islands?

If you're in Scotland, NI or Wales then just say so in your OP, it'll help you get the correct answers.

I wasn't sure if it was a British website as it's .com not .co.uk. Assuming people are correct and it is a UK or British website I would think it would make sense for people to state which country they live in in the UK or Britain if the answers to the question will be influenced by it e.g. schooling, tenancy etc.

I am on a few Facebook forums for tenancy/landlords and posts are only approved if they state the country which makes sense to me.

I agree with you OP but still think YABU for being surprised as presumably you have met English people before and should know what they are like.

I’m Irish and we have our own board too😁. But sure we’re all going through the same things really, illnesses, child birth, buying/renting houses, raising kids etc. but I agree that it would be helpful if people stated where they are from so they can get advice related to their specific country in the original post.

@MauraLabingi Sadly the English aren't blessed with as many islands as Scotland, though I suspect if he'd gone to Bryher instead it too would have had to be qualified for many British people.

The only time it really annoys me is when someone talks about their kids year class, because I can never work out what age they should be. It would be easier if people said, my 10 year old in p6.

Who?

Oh, we’re having a we hate the English thread, are we? I’ll get my Anything but England t-shirt out….

This exactly. Population of UK 68m, population of England 57.6m.

So it is high likely that the majority of posters will be English rather than Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish.

It’s like saying that every poster should specify that they have 2 legs when posting asking for shoe recommendations, because there are some people that only have 1 leg through accident or genetics.