Whinging pom?
One of the few people that writes constructive comments on my blog has made me realise that I do slag off the UK quite a bit in my blogs. Does this mean that I have become a whinging pom? Probably, but it's just because there is so much stuff that you can whinge about: the weather, the cost of living, the weird people, the weather, council tax, tv tax, limescale, dog poo, litter, the weather, overcrowding, people that spit on the street, etc etc etc.
Compared to Australia, all you had to complain about there is how hot it is, how sweaty you are and where the next bush fire is.
Compared to Australia, all you had to complain about there is how hot it is, how sweaty you are and where the next bush fire is.
posted by U2J at 1:22 am
2 Comments:
It is no wonder the poms whinge so much - There is a book here called "is it just me or is everything just shit?" This is so true - it took me 1.5hrs to get from hyde park corner to west norwood yesterday - that's about 8 miles or 12K - what a joke! Nothing ever gets better here and probably won;t until there's a coup... but that's probably too much to hope for!
Bro
Two brief points on this post:
(i) You appear to be making a slightly erroneous comparison - it reads as if you are comparing London to all of Australia, but really you should compare like with like - e.g. London with Sydney. But maybe beyond that, you should almost consider comparing individual suburbs with individual suburbs. Is West Norwood, for example, a more or less pleasant place to live than Dulwich Hill? Are they equivalently-populated suburbs in terms of socioeconomic strata (this would have a hell of an effect on some of the parameters you list, such as weird people, dog poo, litter, overcrowding, and people that spit on the street).
Even weather comparisons can depend on geography. For example, it would be interesting to discuss whether a year spent in London was better or worse than a year spent in Port Hedland, for example. Very different climates in each, but I'm not sure its immediately obvious that one is more favourable than the other.
But on the whole there ARE certain things that seem indisputably better in Australia. Better beaches. Better natural environment in general, certainly more immediately accessible space. Better 'universal' healthcare, slightly less racial/ethnic tension - I'm sure there are plenty of others too.
Who knows, this could be a function of population density, and sooner or later Sydney and Melbourne will be indistinguishable from London in this regard. Both are already heading that way in terms of the high cost of living...
and
(ii) I suspect most people are probably better at seeing the bright side of other people's lives than their own. So whereas it is possible for a non-resident to view living in London as an opportunity to e.g. travel to the many and varied countries of Europe almost at a weekend whim; or see an insane number of favoured authors who you simply would not have a chance of meeting at anything like the same rate in Sydney (the latter is an example your aforementioned constructive correspondent apparently was drawing on), this doesn't take into account the day-in day-out reality of coping with the dreary, dreary weather that pervades November to February, the cost of living, the weird people, council tax, tv tax, limescale, dog poo, litter, overcrowding, people that spit on the street, etc etc etc.
ZoC
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