Things that Americans find incomprehensible about the UK

You go to the swimming pool and try to pay your 3 pounds to go swimming, but they can't give you the blue armband for the 10:00 session because it's only 9:40, but they can give you the yellow armband for the 9:00 session, but that means you'll have to get out of the pool when the 9:00 session ends, but you're free to go upstairs and have a cup of tea until 9:55.

Me: "But that's insane. The pool is open all day"

Woman: [look of non-understanding, since this is how they've done things for 30 years therefore it is unquestionably correct, and nobody has ever complained before, and certainly one should know not to come to the swimming pool near the end of the hour, and who wouldn't welcome the opportunity to have a nice cup of tea?]

Me: OK, I'll take the armband for the 9:00 session, and keep 3 extra pounds in my trunks in case somebody asks me to leave in ten minutes so that I can walk back here and pay you again then.

Repeat that experience for every interaction with every business or government entity you deal with ever. You just want to give up and never leave the house. Until the internet goes down and you have to deal with British Telecom, at which point you start looking for property in France.

Also, check out his channel, he does loads of amazing videos. http://www.youtube.com/user/CGPGrey/videos

Couldn't agree more about the problems with freedom of expression in the UK. Something the US should be proud of in comparison.

http://reprog.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/things-that-brits-fin...

in Poland we call it 'picnic'.

> That is very strange to me; but it’s far from being a characteristically British problem, and is more pan-European.

it's more pan-almost-everywhere-except-usa. take f.ex. football violence in South America, in Europe we at least don't spray visitor team fans buses with uzis. throwing stones and knives onto the guests sector is also less popular than in, say, Turkey.

It's not unusual at all:

"Whilst TV licensing is rare in the Americas, half of the countries of Asia and Africa, and two-thirds of the countries in Europe use television licences to fund public television"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence

    First, jwerpy is right to point out the ubiquity of surveillance,
    not only in London but in most British cities.

I'd find it hard to call on anti-intellectualism but anti-exceptionalism is certainly a lot stronger in the UK than the US. It even has a special name, "tall poppy syndrome": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome

Some of the bureaucratic things they do is just absurd. For example, I have to purchase annual road tax for my car. Usually its no probs, you can phone a call center and pay over the phone after they do some "background checks".

I phoned to renew as usual yesterday, but was told they could not give me road tax because my car is due for an MOT (road worthiness test) in May. Now my current MOT is valid until 30th April, but because they can't predict whether it will pass or fail, they won't sell me my road tax renewal (or let me pay tax to them for the upkeep of the roads :-o )...which they sold me last year no problem with similar circumstances, seems they have just added a little more red tape to be sure :-)...

I could list several other interesting bureaucratic nuances, in fact you could probably write a book on it....

The Canadian legal system is derived closely from the British system (except in Quebec, where civil law follows the Justinian tradition). The major difference is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was ratified 31 years ago.

At the time, there was a furore in England over the fact that the Charter would supersede statutes (which, in turn, supersede common law). Some lawmakers considered it unconscionable that the courts could strike down a law for violating the Charter. Apparently the fact that Canada wanted to patriate its Constitution almost triggered a constitutional crisis in England.

Since then, Canadian courts have indeed struck down a number of laws, including restrictions on access to abortion, restrictions on religious expression and dress, denial of collective bargaining rights, prohibitions on same sex marriage, and the right of convicted prisoners to vote.

The Charter enshrines human rights protection and equality for women, minorities and other vulnerable Canadians - including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Canadians, through court decisions that extended the list of prohibited grounds for discrimination in Section 15.

The sections on legal rights have also driven changes to the way police services operate, strengthening protections for personal privacy, freedom from unreasonable or arbitrary detainment and seizure, and due process on arrest.

In the years since the Charter was signed, legislatures still have the right to pass laws - but thanks to the Charter, those laws must be so constructed that they do not curtail our rights and freedoms. Where they do, courts now have the power to strike them down.

I don't think I would want to live in a system where legislators were not bound by a charter of rights and freedoms to ensure that statutes do not violate them.