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Comment by jimws | Hacker News Reader

This is something that bothers me a lot. I have traveled to the UK a lot and oh, what a fine nation! I love being in the UK. Good weather, amazing people, great food and drinks!

The literary culture is still very strong in the UK. But what happened to its science and technology landscape? Merely a century ago, it was at the forefront of science and technology. Where did the UK lose its steam? Anyone with historical insights into the UK care to shed more light on this?

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Good weather!? Good?! Weather!? Where were you in the UK? Gibraltar?

Why do you think the weather in the UK isn’t good? Because it rains sometimes? Why’s that ‘bad’? There’s nothing wrong with rain. What do you want instead? Just bland boring sunshine all the time? How dull.

The rain and lack of vitamin d sucks. I dont mind the dull sunshine if it means everyone is a little less horribly depressed.

Well it sort of like.. depends. Comparatively speaking UK still has less Sunshines than lots of places on earth, but compare to 20 - 30 years ago UK, ( At least in the Southern Part like London ) now has really hot summer and decent weather.

Climate Change.

Why does rain suck? It doesn’t stop you doing anything except maybe parties outside.

Certainly here in eastern Australia at the moment, the lack of rain in this early summer is quite depressing. (The widespread bushfires and smoke is likely to be with us for the next few months)

Perhaps, the poster is from Greenland? Then, it would be relatively good weather.

A good British summer really is something special - but if you're looking for "consistent" weather, the UK isn't for you.

It’s very British to moan about the weather but I personally love it.

I dont think it losts its steam. Ww 2 gave USA huge advantage (Europe had to be rebuilt) and EU is still trying to catch it technologically.

One question, from where are you, I have head a lot about UK but never about "great food"? :D

A British friend of mine always took exception to the stereotype of Britain having bad food, his line was that they had the best food in Europe giving as the example all the imported Indian dishes.

Yes, when I lived there, about a decade ago, curry had just again been voted for as favourite homemade dish.

Though, if you did your research, you could find really good, authentic, British cuisine (eg: St. John's).

OTOH, how much of a colonial, shared history do you have to have to accept Indian cuisine as "traditional" in the UK?

That probably WAS true back in the day. But then again so did NYC. It was still a center of upscale dining but there were essentially no interesting mid-level options.

The Internet changed everything. Someone starts a food trend in Austin, and two weeks later it's on the menus in L.A.

It happened during the 1990s according to https://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2016-04-22/how-london-bec..., though when I visited in 1998 it was still notorious in Americans' minds for plain, boring food.

London has great food, like most megacities. But although the quality of food across the UK has improved considerably since the mid 90s, I wouldn’t qualify the general level as “great”, especially compared to their southern neighbor...

Well the British are not good at two things, Optimism and Marketing. It is just not their way to go and shout to the world how great they are. DeepMind, ARM, ImgTech, Icera etc..

Although one may argue they are no longer "British" given all of them are no longer owned by British.

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