1. Crime in Britain has certainly got worse. In London a lone 27 teenagers were muredered in 2007 and this is unpresidented. In many parts of the country violent crime is rising at a horendous rate.

2. The murder rate is uncomparable to the states as only our murders which the states would conider ‘1st degree’are recored as murder. Most killings are consdiered ‘man slaughter’. If some one was to attack you in the street and you pulled out a knife and stabbed them, in the UK it would propbably be clasified as man slaughter as it was not pre-meditated. Manslaughter figures are not published.

3. Parts of the USA are very, very dangerous, but these parts tend to be segregated off from the large section of the States and in these post code areas a major part of the crime stats for the whole country are represented. In the UK there is not this separation and it is very hard to escape the chav mentatlity. It is far easier to find a safe haven in the states with large christian populations etc. I don’t believe any town of a uch exists anymore within the UK.

4. We live in a backwards society in Britain. It is wrong to speak correctly to many. Surely doing the correct/right thing should not be frowned upon. I do not understand why it has become so common place to break the laws of speach. But the message it does send out is breaking the rules is fine. Childeren watch this on TV and it is acceptable and the cool thing to do.

5. Someone here ctirised the BBC for having snotty newsmen. Most of our news reporters have been the most pleseant people to bring into the living room. They speak corectly, present themselves well and come accross as thoroughly descent people, who I’d prefer to have on the news. Its not the BBC fault if most of our population are below par with the civilised world idea of how a normal person should behave. If you go to the states or Australia or New zealand, you will find it very hard to distinguish between someone who is privately edcated and someone who is essentially working class if the don them out in the same clothing.

Sadly our whole system is floored that our kids who are not privatey educated (in many cases in the south) can’t string sentences together and speak a terrible form of cockney – unpresntable to any news and this means that the privately educated will steel the jobs.

It has nothing to do with the schools, just that as a nation we let chavism and cockney be tolerable, when really all childeren shouldbe given the right to a fair education and that means being able to speak correctly!

emma: hello and welcome. I have experienced it myself on the occasions I travelled to America. I got the ‘aww I looove your accent! which part of england are you from?’ so many times and I just played along, not having the heart to tell them that I was in fact brazilian. who am I to shatter their fantasies? I’ve decided that next time I fly over I will be wearing the puffed out shirt and grow my sideburns too…

As for Timbo’s comment: “How many Brits have a pre-concieved notion that America is ridiculously dangerous?” Well, it kind of is, people are allowed to carry guns in the streets you know. America is definately much more dangerous than the UK however you slice the cake…and for that maybe you Brits should count your blessings. Although I agree the state of Britain does sound a bit like it is up shit creek and hopefully things will get better.

enidd: lol you say it in such a beautifully succint way. but you’re right too in that britain does have so much to be proud of.

mr. x: I don’t disagree with you there. I doubt it’ll ever end though. oh and thanks for nominating this for POTW, it’s very kind of you.

alley: it’s nice to know that places like that still exist. you are indeed lucky.

sally: hello. and thanks.

cream: for real?

nicki: whenever I go to italy, it’s the first thing I notice: complete strangers will just start chatting to you, it’s so friendly. whenever I come back, I start thinking up ways that I could move there but haven’t yet come up with anything concrete.

maryam: yes, I was once a ‘touchy-feely’ south american but after years of living in britain, I do always think twice before touching someone.

timbo: you make some very valid points there, and I agree with most of what you say. when I say these things though, I’m not saying them as the paranoid middle-englander looking through the narrow window of the vile and scaremongering daily mail. these are things which I see all the time up and down the country with my own eyes.

as for the bbc, the thing that gets me is how they use clones of presenters all the time – not only the usual middle class types but also they often look like each other, especially people on breakfast tv. what’s that all about?

oh and yes, richard curtis has a lot to answer for with the ‘romantic comedies’, although I still find it hard to criticise someone who co-wrote blackadder.

cubana gringa: hello there. I can imagine you must see some pretty gruesome stuff. that’s amazing work that you do.

oh and I think that’s precisely the point timbo was making: that not everyone in texas is a dullard oil baron – only some of them…

And for the record, Timbo, everyone who lives in Texas isn’t a dullard and an oil tycoon…just the ones who make it into office are.

But this also works the other way around. How many Brits have a pre-concieved notion that America is ridiculously dangerous? Or that everyone who lives in Texas is a dullard or an oil baron? And how many people think that as soon as you step foot in Israel you’re going to get murdered by a suicide bomber? These are all simple one-dimensional pictures that the media paint in order to perpetuate a train of thought that keeps them in business.

After all, crime in the UK isn’t that bad, and it’s certainly no worse than it has been in the past. We are just force fed news that tells us “everything is terrible”, “you’re going to die!”, etc. So what are we going to think?

Yes, this nation is going down the pan, but when was it ever any good anyway? These attitudes have been around for centuries and will still be around long after I’m gone. That’s just the way people are. And are we any more homophobic as a nation than, say, the French? Or any more racist than Americans? God knows.

We have been very lucky to have found a little village in North Wales where time has stood still. People know each other by name, we know who all the kids are and they mischievous sure but they’re also ever so polite.

I love it and I’m glad that it is this type of behaviour that my kids will be exposed to first.

A

Where will it all end?

PotW’d.

enidd, imperialist that she is, wondered what was coming next. the land of shakespeare? birthplace of the greatest physicist, isaac newton? heartland of the industrial revolution?

england, said the father again. famous for your football hooligans.

cut down to size, and rightly so.