What Won't You Miss About The UK?

[*julez* 124]

UK's crappy excuse for bacon - ick!

That's a matter of opinion my dear! Personally I find American bacon to be terrible unless you really are picky and shop around. Too much fat, not enough meat, and back bacon doesn't exist at all!

Really? Maybe west coast bacon is decent, but the east coast stuff is rubbish - it's 90% fat. Give me British bacon any day.

West coast bacon is exactly the same as East coast bacon, believe me!

I'm going to agree with the British bacon being fabulous. USA bacon is actually streaky bacon, which is a poor man's bacon in the UK. Tends to only be used with roast dinners. All fat and no meat, in fact, it should be labelled "fatty", not bacon! Cause that is all it is in the US...

Back bacon is wonderful, makes a GORGEOUS bacon sarnie. Can't do that with crispy streaky bacon. Plus it has sh!t loads of sugar in it in the USA. Nope, UK bacon should be on the "most missed" list, not the "most disliked" list IMO!

I'm jumping on the British bacon bandwagon too!!! Its yummy!!! I can't wait until I'm in the UK a mere 17 days from today! I will most certainly enjoy the Full English the first chance I get! (minus the black pudding - which is one thing I'd never miss from the UK!)

[ajames79 0]

I don't much like british bacon...it is way to salty.

To be fair..I don't like "american" bacon either.

[elmcitymaven 9,711]

The Northern Line during the morning rush

Ken Livingstone

America bashing (seems to me to be the only sort of xenophobia which is acceptable to the chattering classes)

Council tax

Aggressive parking attendants

Whingeing, always with the whingeing

17.5% VAT

Thames Water

Sunday shopping hours

My former mother-in-law

Oxford Street any time of the day, any day of the week

Motorway service stations

"The customer is always WRONG" mentality

The faintly threatening vibe you get walking around at night in town

I'll ditto what dr_lha said about crime. I'd say over half of my close friends and loved ones over here have been mugged/been assaulted in an unprovoked incident/been spat on/etc over the years, and it really has seemed to have gotten worse in the past 5 years. Maybe it's just getting older, but it seems to me that the polite and decent society here in Britain that I genuinely used to love living in and had no intention of ever leaving has gone down the proverbial. I have no illusions about crime rates in the US -- hey, I grew up in New Haven which has a terrible (and mostly undeserved) reputation. But I have seen New Haven blossom and regenerate to a thriving little city (still with some big problems) and London? Well, I want out.

Geez, I've really started my day on a positive note! Think I'll have a bacon sarnie to cheer myself up after all this talk of bacon...

[ambientgirl 0]

* Shopping Trolley - I hate those evil things

* Hard Water (limescale) I can not wait to be able to wash my hair and have healthy hair again

* American comments like '' Everything and everyone is BIG in America or how arrogant Americans are, or '' Does every house really have a swimming pool and a gun in the house'' LOL Always makes me smile.

* Paying to Park, even if its only for 10 minutes

But, there are so many things about the UK that I will miss. I've enjoyed my years here but its time to go home and see how hubby does in another country. This should be fun! LOL

[featherB 1]

I'm going to have to agree with public transport in the summer (especially the buses... my god, you could cook in one of those things during the summer, they're evil. It's like trying to travel to work inside an oven. I was lucky enough to miss most of that heatwave last summer due to being in the comparitively mild summeriness of Ohio at the time, but coming back to endless 37 degree heat and... I forget what insane temperatures they recorded on the buses, but it wasn't good.... ugh!!!)... there are few things more horrible than feeling like you really, really need to have a shower NOW when you get to work in the morning, even though you only showered an hour ago. Sitting on the bus with sweat pouring off my face and my clothes all sticking to me... blah.

And the other one I'm going to have to agree with is the stupid damp air... I hate how it always manages to be humid here, at all times of year, without even being hot most of the time! Is it just me, or does summer mainly consist of overcast, grey, damp-aired days?! You get all hot and clammy without any of the benefits of sunshine - bah!

Oh, and I have to agree about Oxford Street, too. At any time. Although especially on a Saturday. Or in December. (Saturdays in December... *shudder*) The only time it's bearable is at about 5 o'clock in the morning (on a weekday, if it's a Saturday or Sunday morning there will be drunk people staggering around puking, of course)... not that you'd want to go to Oxford Street at 5 in the morning (or ever, in my case), but you can cycle along it without wanting to kill people. So that's good.

Um, I will stop ranting and go to bed (night shifts... ugh) now, but just have to say first: what is this blasphemy being spoken against our bacon?! We have a lot of rubbish food over here, granted, but bacon most definitely doesn't come into that category.... the crappy, thin, nasty fatty cheapy stuff they sell in corner shops, maybe, but lovely thick slices of back bacon... like the maple cured stuff you get in Sainsburys.... mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Must make a concerted effort to eat more bacon before I leave! I just finished eating a bacon sandwich 10 minutes ago, that's a start. Wonder how many more I can fit into the next few weeks...

Back later to grumble about Stuff I Won't Miss!

[Private Skylark 0]

I will not miss...

+ Chavs (Worst British-bred 'thing' EVER!)

+ London Buses/Underground (I love it as transportation, hate it because it's expensive and always packed)

+ Lack of air con (It does get hot here too...)

+ Attitude of the public (No one will stick up for another person if, say for example, a chav will start playing music out loud on their mobile phone on the bus and one person says something, only to then have a torrent of abuse hurled at them by the chav and have everyone around them completely ignore what's going on!)

+ PCSO (We need REAL Police Officers, not these civvies in uniform.)

+ Congestion Charge ('nuff said on that one!)

+ Eastenders (Just because.)

+ Being taxed to live (Too many taxes.. Just.. Too many...)

+ The Government (Because they're all... rhymeswithtankers)

+ Political Correctness (The level of PC over here is NUTS! I was genuinely not-shocked-whatsoever when told that a picture of a man/woman getting married had to be removed from a registry office as it 'may upset same-sex couples')

There are so many things I will not miss, but I think the list of things I *will* miss will be larger. As much as this Country bugs me at times, it will always have a place in my heart as 'home'.

Edited April 3, 2007 by Private Skylark

[Jennymc11 2]

I will not miss the humidity and the mold (although the humidity makes my fingernails grow better). I won't miss how every time I ask for help in a store, that person always says "you need to go ask someone else." ####### customer service for the most part!

But I will miss Chocolate Hobnobs!!

[Lizzy 0]

Won't miss the tube and buses.. BUT will miss being able to walk everywhere.

Chavs and people who sit on there front door steps in the summer in any chair they can find in their house, normally a cheap deckchair, while the kids run riot on the street. While they drink cans of larger.

The weather in the North.

Thats about it.. i love more things about it than i hate.

[elmcitymaven 9,711]

OMG -- I forgot speed cameras!!! How could I forget the omnipresence of speed cameras?

(But I will miss my darling 1968 Morris Minor, George, who makes me worry about speed cameras in the first place. Believe it or not, a Minor CAN go fast enough to worry about such things! )

Edited April 3, 2007 by elmcitymaven

[Mags 112]

OMG -- I forgot speed cameras!!! How could I forget the omnipresence of speed cameras?

(But I will miss my darling 1968 Morris Minor, George, who makes me worry about speed cameras in the first place. Believe it or not, a Minor CAN go fast enough to worry about such things! )

What are you going to do with George once you move to the US?

[elmcitymaven 9,711]

OMG -- I forgot speed cameras!!! How could I forget the omnipresence of speed cameras?

(But I will miss my darling 1968 Morris Minor, George, who makes me worry about speed cameras in the first place. Believe it or not, a Minor CAN go fast enough to worry about such things! )

What are you going to do with George once you move to the US?

George will have to be sold to the highest bidder on ebay, where we found him in the first place. We got him for £100 last year (no tax or MOT) and only needed a smidge of welding to get him street legal again. Poor old Georgie's clutch finally died on the North Circular on Saturday night (a lot of buttock-clenching moments there) and he is currently "resting" until I get enough together to have it replaced.

I'll look around when I get home for a picture of him...

Two of the other cars will follow us at some point -- Bernard is Bruce's baby, a 1971 Triumph Spitfire that he basically rebuilt from the ground up; and Ellie, a MGB GT Limited Edition (one of the last 1000 ever made) will follow too. Yellow Dolomite (so named because he is, uh, a yellow Triumph Dolomite) will probably continue to get dusty in his Dad's garage, and Barney the itty-bitty 50cc moped will follow George on the ebay circuit.

Can you guess my husband's a gearhead???

[Nikki71 0]

The Rain (bloody English weather )

Taffic Congestion

Petrol Prices

Clothes that never fit properly

I am sure there's alot more

[fozzie 41]

So's your comment about "violence" - 'cause we're super peaceful over here?!?!

In Britain, probably about 50% of my friends at some point have been mugged, probably 30% have been robbed. Go out on a Friday night and guaranteed you will see a fight. On numerous occasions I've had people in pubs try to pick a fight with me (probably because I'm a big guy). I would see an all out pub brawl approximately every month or so. When I was younger and went to night clubs, out and out brawls involving more than 5 people was an every Friday night occurance.

I've lived in the USA 8 years, and my every day experience of violence has been practically nothing. I've seen one pub brawl and a a couple of light fistycuffs. Noboby I know has ever been mugged. 1 person I know has experience a break in at their house.

I think everyone in the UK has a expectation that the USA is a dangerous place. In reality I think its the other way around.

Of course my experiences are of living in safe neighbourhoods in the USA. Then again, I did in the UK as well.

I don't totally disagree with you. In recent yuears in england there has been an increase in violence but i myself never saw any (Except the odd drunken swinging match). Yet here in america every time i watch the news that is all it is - violence. Muggings, shootings, rapes - its depressing to watch. Again though I have never been witness to such things. I guess it comes down to not going to areas where these things are more likely to happen. Common sense does have an influence in this.

I won't miss UK house prices even though new york is just as bad - will definitely move out of this city when we go to buy a house.

The biggest thing that i am glad to see the back of - even though it will chaange very soon - is going out and waking up in the morning stinking of smoke. Nasty.

[TimsDaisy 0]

In reading this thread I'm struck by the enormous similarities between the two countries. To a letter, nearly everything not-missed about the UK exists over here (with the exception of an actual difference between bacon styles).

Whether or not one country is more violent in the ways described here (muggings, fights, etc), depends almost entirely on where in the US you live. Urban centers? Muggings. Farmland? Not so much. One neighborhood in San Francisco - muggings and murder. A lot of other neighborhoods, nary a broken car window. To generalize either country is a bit foolish (though now that I've said that, I really can't imagine the UK - England specifically - being more objectively violent than our gun-crazed culture here, but that's all impression formed from years of watching US media coverage, which rolls around in blood as often as possible).

And the weather, hard water, US-chav concentration, humidity, damp, etc, are all present in various parts of the land. We're just more geographically diverse - so it's easier to find a place that's not-UK here.

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

I know it's not prevailing opinion but I love American bacon and am indifferent to British bacon -- I actually hate British bacon when they put it in a microwave (a far too common practice). #######?

The thing I absolutely do not miss at all is men pissing all over the streets and the horrible atmosphere you get at about 11:20 on High Streets across the land. When I lived outside London this was often like the seventh circle of hell. In London, it was guaranteed harassment on the tube.