

There are plenty of things the world knows about the UK and the British in general. Our weather is awful, we drink tea and we bend over whenever the US gets a little frisky. Apparently we also live in castles too which would be fantastic, if a little cold in the winter.

The point of this article isn’t so much to brag about how useless this nation is, as every country has its own problems, but think of it as merely venting my displeasure at how things have changed in recent years. Yes I am proud to be British, but these days I am getting pretty frustrated with what goes on here, and rarely a day goes by nowadays where I don’t wish to live in another part of the world. Maybe a country that functions properly and doesn’t break when it snows, and a paradise city where the grass is green and I stop spouting 80’s rock lyrics.

So without further ado, here are my reasons why living in the UK sucks!

1. Everyone’s an alcoholic

The UK is like the dude who wants to be the life and soul of the party, except he can’t hold his drink, gets into a fight and then collapses in his own filth. Which to be fair sounds like a great night out but you wouldn’t want a reputation as someone that wets the bed, which is exactly the type of reputation the UK is receiving now.

In 2005 the Government brought in the 24 hour drinking legislation in the hope that it would reduce the amount of alcohol related crimes. Many of which were the result of a large number of people gathering in town centres at ‘kick out time’ around 2am.

They failed to consider that increasing the amount of drinking time would just lead to drinking more alcohol.

Well duhh!

To be fair efforts are being made to reduce the amount of hours that we can buy alcohol but the damage has long since been done. Britain is the binge-drinking capital of Europe, with 12 per cent of the population admitting they have up to ten drinks in a single night out. This along with the supposed 1 million violent crimes committed due to alcohol per year and the 25% increase in liver diseases, suggests we can’t handle our drink either.

2. Everything is ridiculously expensive

No wonder the rest of the world think us Brits live in castles and pop round the Queens house for tea. Only the stupidly rich can afford to buy stuff on this island of ours and still have enough change to buy all that hard liquor. The cost of gadgets for example cost 32% more in Britain than America and this is one of the reasons why we’re all up to our eyeballs in credit card debt.

I remember buying my current guitar in 2006 for £650 which is a good price considering the exact same model now retails for over £850. The issue I had back then was that this guitar sold for $799, which you don’t need a degree in maths to figure out is a lot cheaper. In fact I imported one over for the sole purpose of re selling it on eBay for a hefty profit.

I should thank the UK for bringing out the hidden entrepreneur in me, but I won’t because that would be stupid and I’m still in the ‘moody’ part of the article, maybe later.

3. The weather

I’m not going to harp on about how much it rains over here as I think anyone with half an eye and a quarter of a brain will already know this. My major gripe is that the weather has no idea what it is doing. One minute it will be sunny and calm and 10 minutes later there will be torrential rain, closely followed by hailstones and then back to sunny again.

You can chuck a rainbow and some snow in there too if you want. It happens, I’ve seen it!

Of course this is something that cannot be changed due to our geographical location and the jet stream from the Atlantic. The irony is that without it, our little land would be genuinely cold instead of a bit chilly, and yes our weather would be more stable but if you think we moan about the weather now, imagine the misery if we didn’t get our three days of summer.

4. Chavs

If you aren’t from the UK and you have no idea what a Chav is then look below.

You see that? They are Chavs and I don’t like them. I don’t even know if the term ‘Chav’ should be or deserves to be capitalised. Well there is no point changing now, I don’t want to be labelled as indecisive as well as a moaner.

They loiter on street corners wearing their fake Burberry clothing intimidating old people and the confused. If you’re extra lucky you might even see one of them with their socks pulled up over their tracksuit bottoms.

I remember walking home from a night out and I had to pass through a big group of them, maybe 15 or so. They were stood there doing their thing, which is pretty much just staring at the floor occasionally spitting and saying the word ‘blud’. As I walked by, one of them turned to me, and as I braced myself for the inevitable beating, said these fine words;

“ha nice clothes”.

A teenage boy with socks pulled halfway up his legs was mocking the fact I wore jeans and a plain white t shirt. I’m not entirely sure if I can be part of a society where this is allowed to happen.

Oh if you’re American I suppose the closest thing to a Chav over there is what you would call a redneck or trailer trash, but with you know, the sock thing.

5. Health and safety gone mad

Being part of the European Union has many benefits and I’m sure that when I think of some I will let you know about it. One of the many drawbacks is that their health and safety laws become OUR health and safety laws. The problem being that these are not created for the purpose of improving our health and our safety, but for annoying the hell out of everyone and causing immense frustration.

In February 2012 a drowning man couldn’t be saved because, and get this, the Fire-fighters and police on scene were not allowed to attempt a rescue. Now this wasn’t some rough stretch of coastline or a pool of water with the depth of infinity, but simply a lake that was 3ft deep.

THREE FEET!

This country allowed a man to die because of the health and safety law. What would have happened had one of these people tried to save him? They would probably lose their job. Madness. This is definitely one of the most infuriating reasons why the UK sucks.

6. We’re generally ignorant towards other cultures.

I wish I could see the stats for how many British people can speak another language as I’m fairly certain the number would be somewhere between 4 and 9. Compare this to Sweden or Germany where a large portion of the younger population has achieved a decent level of fluency in English. Now I know many of you will say something like, “yes but you don’t need to speak another language as English is spoken around the world”. It is you’re right, to an extent.

We will actually travel to places like Japan and Brazil and genuinely find it weird that almost nobody speaks English, at least to a fluent level. We will also happily go abroad on holiday or even to work and not put in the effort to mingle with the natives, yet when we meet a foreigner in our homeland who can’t speak English, we accuse them of being lazy and disrespecting us.

7. We hate ourselves

It’s true. The north and south hate each other, the Scottish hate the English, the Welsh hate the English and the English hate everyone else. This is even before we get into city rivalries and the racial tension. Okay maybe hate is a strong word and I might be going all ‘Daily Mail’ on you here so replace the word ‘hate’ with ‘gently mocking’. Yes that sounds better.

Regional rivalries are common all over the globe and in the UK they are largely harmless, but where it gets serious is when we enter the topic of gang culture and knife crime.

The UK and London in particular is now the knife crime capital of Europe and this is a large part of the gang culture that is infesting our streets. One study for the Home Office found that up to 6% of 10-19-year-olds belonged to a gang in England and Wales. Of course a lot of these gangs will be non-violent but you only have to look at the recent London riots to see the kind of tension that is bubbling under the surface.

8. Cricket

Has there ever been a more pointless sport in the history of the universe? Those of you who are thinking of Snooker can shut up, at least that doesn’t last for days on end with the possibility of nobody actually winning. By the way, If you’re unfamiliar with Snooker then just imagine Pool but with a bigger table and tighter pockets.

Cricket is just the Britain’s version of Baseball in the sense that you have someone with a bat, someone bowling the ball and a load of bored people standing in the field waiting to catch something. If I’m displaying a certain level of ignorance here, then it’s definitely intended. I have friends who love the sport for some inexplicable reason, and I’ve tried to work out why, believe me I have.

It’s British to its core and maybe that is why it is so unfathomably popular over here. I don’t know. I give up.

9. Nothing works properly

I’m not exaggerating here, nothing actually works. Everything breaks eventually and when there is the smallest of disruptions, society crumbles and all we’re left with is Thunderdome!

I’ll give you an example. About once a year, we will have snow that actually settles on the ground. Nothing major, certainly not a blizzard and we can forget about calling Mr Plow too. I’m talking about a few inches of snow, which while barely enough to build a decent snowman, is more than enough to close all schools and shut down our whole transport network.

You can thank our health and safety regulations for this too.

We’re just very good at being incompetent in general. I dread to think what people think when they visit our land of hope and glory and wonder why they have been stuck in a queue for 3 hours because we’re short staffed.

10. The Daily Mail

The chances are that if you are human and you have some degree of reading ability (not to worry you don’t need much) then you will know all about our most infamous newspaper. Actually to be ahead of The Sun in the infamy stakes is quite an achievement.

So why does this deserve to be on the list? Well gather round kids, I have a story to tell. You’ll be hard pressed to find another newspaper as awful as this. Every other week they will publish a story on how a certain food will give you cancer, why the immigrants are ruining our nation, how the entertainment industry is warping our children’s minds and that is before we get into the subtle undertones of racism and homophobia.

Basically it’s a fun read for all the family.

Their website is even worse as most of their articles are written by ‘journalists’ who rarely give their real names. It’s no wonder they hold on to their anonymity given a lot of these articles contain basic spelling and grammar errors. Not to mention many of these stories aren’t actually factual at all and are obviously opinion pieces covered up as news.

It’s not all bad though. While their website is now the most visited news site on the internet, they are heavily in debt so let’s all cross our fingers and hope they go away.

On the plus side, they employ Martin Samuel who I consider to be the best sports journalist around.

On the upside

This being a light-hearted article means it wouldn’t be fair to talk about the UK without mentioning the positive aspects of living here, of which there are many. Here is a quick list;

The National Health Service is perhaps the best in the world.

Relatively speaking it is a safe place to live.

Our military is world renowned and highly respected.

Only a tiny percentage of the population could be classed as genuinely poor.

We have some of the world’s finest universities.

The UK is one of the most culturally diverse places on Earth.

The 2012 London Olympics was perhaps the greatest yet.

We are the birthplace of Football. (the most important obviously)

So there we go. If you have your own personal thought’s about why the UK sucks (or even if you love the damned place) then please leave your opinions in the comment section below.

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Jamie Flexman – Google +