What is it like living in the UK?

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Half Pint

Awful where I live. Leicester, Midlands, England.

Its cold.
It rains all the time.
People drive like fools.
There's horrible council houses that make one street look like a bomb hit the place.
The parks are took over by chavs.
Half the countryside is becoming a blank canvas for bypasses.
The other half is a home for all the travellers.
The fuel costs a fortune.
The prices of everything is going up.
The house prices are going down.
People are becoming jobless over this 'crisis'.
Police are pedal to the metal up and down the main roads all night.
All teenagers do is fight and make others' life hell.

I really could go on forever!

Although I wrote all this, I am actually proud to be British. How bizarre.

munchkins revenge <3

yeah the weather can suck but at least we dont have any crazy big insects and almost nothing poisonous that bites you.
its very grey though lol
living in the UK there is a slight
"anti-authority/establishment-common- sense-vibe" that runs through a lot of TV and radio shows. There is a bit of a "lout" culture (i.e. being actively commended for being rude and drinking a lot) that dosent (so ive heard) exist in the US, and compared to the USA we are talk less about our emotions and also less about psychology. Gender roles are slightly less stereotyped than in the US, but compared to France and Germany, we are still more stereotypical. We also get ripped off as the UK is one of the most expensive countries in the world, more so than the rest of Europe and also more so than the USA. We pay around Â£1.10 for a 500ml bottle of coke (thats around $2.20) whereas I have heard you get 750ml for around $1.25 in the USA, I have also heard that we pay about 4x as much for gas (or petrol as we call it lol) for our cars.
Its a LOT less religious here in the UK with only 10% going to Church and we have nothing like the Bible belt and we dont really have any really fundamental Christians.

MeatEater

As a place to visit the UK is stunning but to live here and to be British means working for long hours for little pay and being treated poorly, being taxed on everything and worrying that the tax we pay is all going to the unemployed instead of the military effort in the middle east or rescuing some bank so that they may reposes our home at a later date.
To live in the UK successfully you must learn to moan about everything, money, work, public transport, taxes, politics, kids etc. but do absolutely nothing about it. You must also learn how to queue, the expert queuer will moan about queing also. At least once a year, to dry off from all the rain we have, you must holiday in a hot country and moan about the heat and the bloody foreigners.

Bo P

less repressed than usa, more expensive. lol

The Broken Jesterâ„¢

i live in Central London and its ok here but (like in any other country) it has its really bad places.
its always cold and rainy here pretty much but thats not a bad thing to me really since i love the rain.
some things are expensive here too and the prices are going up.
but the worst thing is...its full of people like Vicky Pollard... http://www.kotaku.com/assets/resources/2006/12/vicky-pollard-l-poster.jpg
other than that...its bloody great ! =D x

braap2222

cold and rainy

"Delete that pizza"

S h i t

Booboo

Come to Scotland, we are made out to be fat drunks, but that ain't true, we are warm, friendly and welcoming. Although it is cold and wet, but the scenery is amazing!

Psycho

It's pretty great, I think.

The weather can be a bit bleak but personally I like walking in the rain; maybe I'm just a tad eccentric though.

What you call 'gas' is called petrol, and chemically it should be called petrol as gasoline is a different chemical (calling petrol gas is like calling bricks 'mortar').

Stuff is expensive but not unaffordable. Lots of freedoms and liberties you don't get in other countries, and people are generally quite polite although you will rarely talk to someone on the street.

You will want to avoid the chav nests, where most of the crime takes place. 'Chav' is a name given to the uneducated violent people who are responsible for ruining the gentlemanly image of our nation.

So all in all it's a pretty great nation, but bear in mind it is in British genetics to moan about weather and prices.

Rebecca

Believe you me it's a lot different to visiting a country for a holiday for a few weeks/months than it is to actually live there.
I'm English and used to live about 30mins outside Manchester, until March 08 when i moved to Australia.
The UK has a lot of good points - lots of competition in goods, services, shops etc which make it fairly cheap (esp compared to Oz, not sure about the U.S), close to Europe for lots of mini breaks, great culture, musuems, galleries, castles etc that you don't really appreciate when you live there (again especially compared to Oz where the most culture i can find is in a pot of yogurt!), great restaurants/bars and pub food, lovely countryside.
But it also has lots of negatives - petrol (gas) is v expensive, the chav culture is taking over with lack of respect for people, lack of summer, people can be very negative, asylum seekers are everywhere and the general feeling of society deteriorating.
Saying that living in Oz is v different to just visiting (and i had been here twice before). Most people think Oz is cheap - ha ha - the only thing really cheaper than the UK is petrol. Most things cost more due to a major lack of competition and sometimes i really miss the UK, which i never thought i would say as i couldn't wait to get out of there. But if you are young then it is a great place to be. If you have a family - i'm not so sure??

BronzedPete

The UK is now a shithole. Steer well clear.

Y!AaDdIcT

the weather is crap

Charlie

Its nearly always cold and miserable and we all moan about everything so to hear you say people were complaining is not surprising . We have a lot more freedom of speech in the UK as opposed to the US as we are given the true news and facts and to a degree are allowed to voice our discontent . We are well looked after as regards the welfare state and our Health service is the pride of the world . The country is very diverse and the differences in the people's attitudes can vary so much . Compared to the US the UK is very expensive , but not many people in the UK know what it is to have to pay for medical health care .
A lot people in the UK look at the US and think of gun toting lunatics , but the UK has its problems in that department . I live in the US now and i feel safer here as i don't get drunken yob's wanting to fight . To leave things in the back of your Truck in the states is usually pretty safe , in the UK its an act of pure folly .
The UK is great but i have chosen the US , the weather in South California swung it for me.

Sophie â™¥

Its rubbish.

David S

What a miserable lot!. I suspect most of these answers tell you more about the depressed state of these individuals than what living in the U.K. is actually like. True like many other countries crime levels in big cities are worrying as are incompetent politicians feathering their own nests. Of course it does not rain all the time. In South East England we barely had a drop of rain during the whole of December and although the summers of 2007 and 2008 were very wet, the overwhelming trend since the mid 1980s has been hot dry summers with endless temperature records being broken. Britain has the most varied and beautiful natural landscape in the world, from the rugged beauty of the Highlands of Scotland to the gentle chalk downland of Southern England such as the Chiltern Hills, the North and South Downs etc, the weird shaped hills of the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire, the cliff tops of the Jurassic Coast in Dorset (a world heritage site), or the wildness and weirdly shaped rock formations of the Long Mynd and the Stipperstones near Church Stretton in Shropshire. Towns with wonderful architecture are everywhere - Ludlow in Shropshire is my favourite. Music, art, theatre
of all types is available in London and other major cities and London in particular now has some of the best restaurants in the country

Manic-Productions

i live in london.
u get used to the rain.
the wet no.
some laws are gay like 3 years for threatening to kill some one
but some are not :)
Football is amazing, soccer to you
you dont need to worry about alot
Every single place in london is amazing
Especially the east
any things else u wana know?

ALSO
its reaaly not full of people like vicky pollard
the are loads of social groups
gang members are to be feared but u will propbly never encounter any unless u cause trouble with them in any area of london, particiulaury the east or south

â™¥â™¥Mummy â™¥â™¥Sarahâ™¥â™¥

Ummmm let me see

-weather is grey and rainy 98% of the time

-immigrants get first pick of cheap housing

-immigrants can claim our tax money and so can lazy people.

-Husband and i work 120 hours per week Between us and still can't afford a mortgage!.

it's a crap place to live!!

although, cornwall and devon is lovely i live near to southampton in a small town called Romsey which is ok but there is a lot of unemployed people who are too lazy and the government gives them our tax money, Â£800 a month to be exact!.

Carrie S

I lived in Texas for 2 years when growing up and the main things I noticed that were different were:

Obviously the accent and a lot of the words are different so I basically had to learn a foreign language to be understood 100% properly.

I found that in the USA they had basic or no knowledge of the politics / geography of the world outside America. In the UK, we're far more interested in the world as a whole and our news reports reflect this.

There is so much space in the US which means that when people visit here they are often struck by how close we live together whereas even poor people in most areas in America have a house, we mainly live in flats (apartments) in cities.

We don't drive everywhere unless we live in the countryside. The public transport system in London is great and a great many people don't drive to work. The public transport system is for all and not just for people who can't afford a car. We have pavements and tend to walk/cycle quite a lot rather than jumping in the car. Our cars are smaller and we're aware of the environment so tend to get a hard time if we buy a large gas guzzling car.

Most pupils at schools wear a school uniform in green/navy/grey etc. rather than their own clothes until they are 16.

We are not as patriotic as the Americans. We love our country but we also love to moan about it too. We don't wave flags, have anything similar to independence day and the only people who love the flag are on holiday in Spain and usually a bit of a lout.

We have a monarchy and a prime minister rather than a president.

It does get very cold in the UK and we suffer from flu and colds during the winter. We are Scotland, Wales and England and London is basically completely different to everywhere else in the UK so I recommend doing a tour and seeing the beauty of the highlands (in the summer) and all the different areas of the UK.

rod s

london and the uk are very different; for starters i grew up in an unnamed city in the east midlands (a clue as to which: 5th most violent city in europe, not nottingham). the police are ****. you're twice as likely to be a victim of crime than in america. everything is really expensive and nobody is nice.

however; london has benefits - for a starter you're in the most amazing city in the world, unbelievable history, culture, population, facilities, the mash of cultures, the money! and the classyness of the whole place (including the suburbs) anyway - i live in south tottenham (dangerous area, high unemployment, high crime, low productivity) however it's still better than anywhere else in the uk outside of london, in terms of cities at least.

dreamer

Come to South Africa and experience the wild life that we have here.Beautiful scenery and beautiful cities.

Angel

People in England don't know they are born, they just moan from Morning till Dawn,

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