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What`s Wrong with Life in Britain?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
I was speaking to an chap last night who is a native Brit, but who`s wife is French and he was commenting on how there is so little quality of life in the UK.
People basically go to work, and come home, go to work the next day and come home. You do this until you`re in your 60`s.
Then you retire and die.
He was saying in France people enjoy themselves, they gather as families and go on picnics, or have relatives around for dinner, etc.
He was also saying people here take work too seriously .. in the sense that they get a job for a big company and then end up acting as if they actually own the company and taking the company line on issues... when in fact they`re just another employee, albeit it one higher up the chain then the next guy.
Any comments? Do you think we have a quality of life problem in this country?
Do you think there are regional differences?
People basically go to work, and come home, go to work the next day and come home. You do this until you`re in your 60`s.
Then you retire and die.
He was saying in France people enjoy themselves, they gather as families and go on picnics, or have relatives around for dinner, etc.
He was also saying people here take work too seriously .. in the sense that they get a job for a big company and then end up acting as if they actually own the company and taking the company line on issues... when in fact they`re just another employee, albeit it one higher up the chain then the next guy.
Any comments? Do you think we have a quality of life problem in this country?
Do you think there are regional differences?
0
Comments
And we have picnics, invite people round for dinner... You can do that in the UK - its not illegal.
Again, who is to prepare the dinner? To be able to afford a mortgage both the man and the woman often have to work full time, especially within the stock broker belt. However, where 'm from in North Wales you tend to find families close knit rather than dispersed widely around the UK. A lot of the people who I used to serve in my pub lived in council houses or relatively cheap accomodation and got to see their family all the time, go to the pub with them, have them over for dinner ect.
Without a doubt. I've moved from working class rough town Wrexham down to middle class Kingston where some people can't believe that I've never had a passport or travelled, or that some people simply can't afford passports. There seems to be less binge drinking here and more luxiaries in the supermarket...
Being one who likes to see different places in the UK, different areas definately do have different feels to them.
Anyway, since when did going on picnics and outings and all that gay crap make the standard of life better?
We have potato waffles, Nectar points and Little Chefs. What more could any developed nation want?
no renting in this country is relatively expensive for what it is, unlike in europe where people live in same place all their life
i have come to the conclusion that from now till forever i will always value happiness above money. Yes, paying the rent is important, being a musician i will never have to worry about going hungry, i can always sing for my dinner, but i have found that some of the happiest people in the world have nothing.
I have one thing in my life that i value increadibly and thats love.
what he said!
Is living in the same place all your life a good point? I was more than happy to leave the nest and move away. Not because I didn't like Northern Ireland, but because I was ready to be independent from my parents.
I live in Essex where it is shit.
I know that.
Damn straight. I refuse to be ruled by Europe with their Mediterranean diets and all that guff.
British customer Services is largely recognised as the worst. The Customer doesn't come first in the UK.
Have you ever been to Paris????
in other words, the wealthier have a good quality of life in their pretty little houses and the deprived don't in their nasty little flats.
And I agree about customer service, but at the same time if you work behind a bar you're not respected (especially if you're female, unless you're blonde with big tits, then you get tipped because ugly men want to sleep with you) and a lot of bar staff just throw it back at people. The same in a lot of shops... Yeah if you work in customer service you should bite your tongue, but it doesn't stop you from being treated like crap by customers a lot of the time.
I have to say that British customer services are a lot better than most places in the world simply because the customer does come first rather than the staff. The British reputation for being the politest nation in the world even now, is largely deserved.
The language thing is lamentable but part of it is that we learn French as our first foreign language. What most people don't realise, is that French is a genuienely hard language to lean and even coming from someone who used to speak it fluently. If more people learnt Spanish as their second language at school, I guarantee that people in this country would be more inclined to embrace foreign languages. French puts people off becuase it's hard whereas Spanish, to get to say, GCSE, is a far easier language. Plus Spanish has about 400 million speakers worldwide compared with about 150 million French speakers and most of those are in Africa where your abverage tourist is probably not going to be visiting.
As a linguist, I rekon that would be the single change that would change the most as far as languages in this country go.
Does that not happen in Manchester or something...I've always found workers here to be quite sound, even in Belfast.
ETA:I think the reason why they learn more languages than us is because they almost have to learn English, English is the universal language, once they learn it, they learn more. We just don't see the need to learn other languages cos we don't really have to.
True. Unless you're specifically wanting a career which involves foreign language, there's no reason to study French, Spanish etc.
It's boring and useless for most people...also being Scottish it's near impossible to speak like a Frenchman - far too many oohs and la-la-la's. Introducing German as the primary foreign language in schools up here could be a way of helping somewhat.
And I'd dispute the customer service thing. You get good and bad the world over, there's nothing uniquely British about rude people.
Over here, every british person says thank you thank you thank you. The chinese are polite when they are thanked telling you that you don't need to say it, but very rarely have i heard a chinese person say thank you!
Also, customer service is poor. It's not terrible, but so much better in England. Part of this is because the people have no concept of queuing and being polite. For example i was in the train station the other day, one of the only places that i've actually seen a queuing system attempt to be introduced. Even then, from behind the barriers, some guy tried to get his tickets before me even though he couldn't get to the window as i was in the way!
As well as that, people take ages serving you and will quite happily answer the phone and chat as opposed to serving you. If you stand there and demand service, or demand that people queue, then it does tend to be done. Altho there was a funny incident in the bank the other day, there was a huge queue for the atm, we were next and then a couple of guys just missed the queue and stood next to us. so i turned round and in chinese told him to "pai dui" or to queue in english, and he looked at me incredulously. he walked away outside but then came back in on his own, with his card out, so i told him again to pai dui and deliberately stood in front of him so that he couldnt jump into the cash machine. It meant he lost the place he would have held in the queue if he'd just done it properly, as more people lined up!
I really think that in today's modern international world, there are very, very few careers which do not involve languages in some way. And what right do we have to assume that every person we meet from abroad speaks, or should speak English? The fact is that, in the business world, even though having English as your mother tongue is a boon, having more languages under your belt will take you very far.
Personally, I think German would be a bit of a waste of time in schools. Better Spanish for the fact that it's a lot easier and a hell of a lot more people speak it in the world.
I agree that Spanish would stop a lot of people being put off. It is a lot easier to speak! And we are so complacent in expecting everyone to know english, it is a really difficult language to learn!