The state of the British Nation

tis why i won't leave work til 7.

ha, ha

we-ell, you know: protestant reformation/failure to have french revolution and conventional bourgeois democracy/failure to go over to fascism.

If anything my rant is pro-Europe. I agree we are physically part of Europe but there are a lot of people in Britain who would like to think that this little mud slat in the middle of the Atlantic is a continent unto itself.

Care!

i knew this was a doglatin thread after about 3 paragraphs (and noticing how little my scroll bar has gone down)

do you work in the pub?

*this is a lazy, sweeping generalisation. You know who I'm talking about, though.

My experience of Hitchin is merely passing through it on the train. A lot of kids with skateboards, sez me.

Maybe DL could POST THE PICTURE AGAIN.

POST PIX KTHX

it's all like ingrained in british culture and drinking and fighting go back long long way shakespeare n all y'know and 24 hour drinking isn't going to make a blind bit of difference one way or another and all the towns that are going to get slightly more horrible were so horrible anyway so who gives a fck?

Tissp!, posh accents that suddenly go all cockney and skateboarding are exactly what make Hitchin what it is today.

It might be like that in Hitchin, but it's very easy in London to find pubs open til 1 or 2 or 3am at the weekend. And there's always clubs open until stupid o'clock in the morning.

We rush to the pub with barely a scrap of food in our stomachs then proceed to cram as much alcohol down our necks within the measly amount of time between getting to the pub and closing time.

People only go to the pub early if it's midweek after work. Not many people would race down the pub at 5pm without food on a Saturday. And loads of pubs serve food nowadays. And people could always go to a restaurant and eat (and drink) there.

Our social lives suffer too. In Europe and America, people generally have time for a sit down dinner and a coffee before leisurely leaving to go out and enjoying their evenings (about this time exact time, we're rolling home pissed out our trees). Notice how families in Europe stick together? It's because they, believe it or not, talk to each other every day at the dinner table. This is sociable living.

This is a bit of an oversimplification. A lot of southern European countries are very socially conservative compared to Britain for various reasons (the power of the Catholic church, relatively recent urbanisation, facist dictatorships). Families don't just have meals together, they stick together forever. When I lived in Italy it wasn't considered remotely unusual for a 30-year-old man to still live with his parents, having never washed his clothes or cooked a meal in his life. Also, the bars are pretty much deserted until 10 or 11 at night - but what use is that on a week night if you've got work the next morning?

In Britain we need pubs because they're the only places that will serve us enough alcohol in such a short time. In Europe I noticed that many people hardly ever visit the pub when they go out - they don't need to.

Different countries in Europe have different tastes / cultures. We like getting pissed. A lot.

Also, if we're required to work till 6pm, then why do the shops close at 5pm?! What's up with that? Even in the smallest French towns the shops will stay open quite a bit longer than they do in the UK. To make up for these later hours, shop employees will get a longer lunch break or they will employ part time staff (more jobs for more people).

Hmmmm. To use Italy as the example again, I found it incredibly frustrating. The shops would open at 9 or 9.30, once everyone was at work, they would then close for lunch from about 12.30-3 at precisely the time everyone had their lunchbreaks. They would then reopen just as everyone went back to work, and close again at 7 when everyone finished work. When I first went there (1998) this was true even for big supermarkets. At least in this country nothing closes for lunch, and things are open on Sundays, and there are 24 hour shops and garages.

.........as an american, this statement baffles me. now, im a college student, so i try to do as little as possible, but growing up my family rarely even had a sit down dinner, even though i suppose there was time.

London, Schmondon. Sorry, but you can't talk about Britain and only refer to London. London's a cosmopolitan city and lives in its own microcosm.

People only go to the pub early if it's midweek after work. Not many people would race down the pub at 5pm without food on a Saturday. And loads of pubs serve food nowadays. And people could always go to a restaurant and eat (and drink) there.

But I'm talking about going to the pub at a reasonable time like 9pm (or even ten). English eating habits accomodate that many families eat their dinners as early as five in the afternoon. Growing up in England under a French upbringing we would hardly ever eat before 8pm and when I went to friends' houses I couldn't believe they ate so early on.
Don't you agree that it's a shame that you can't really go out for a meal and then go for a drink? You have to do one or the either and then home by 11.15?

This is a bit of an oversimplification. A lot of southern European countries are very socially conservative compared to Britain for various reasons (the power of the Catholic church, relatively recent urbanisation, facist dictatorships). Families don't just have meals together, they stick together forever. When I lived in Italy it wasn't considered remotely unusual for a 30-year-old man to still live with his parents, having never washed his clothes or cooked a meal in his life. Also, the bars are pretty much deserted until 10 or 11 at night - but what use is that on a week night if you've got work the next morning?

Yes this is mostly true, particularly in Catholic countries. Still even non-religious families in France tend to have one sit down meal a day. TV-dinners are a very British invention. And also, I may have work in the morning but I really don't like to think I HAVE to go home to bed at 11.15. I'm not talking about wanting to go home at 5am every night but it would be nice to have the choice.

Same as licensing laws that say we can't buy alcohol in shops before 11am - what the SHIT is that about then? Why the fuck not? If I want to drink for 24 hours straight then I could very easily, except I don't because, well I don't. And even the most hardened alcholic eventually leaves a pub.

Hmmmm. To use Italy as the example again, I found it incredibly frustrating. The shops would open at 9 or 9.30, once everyone was at work, they would then close for lunch from about 12.30-3 at precisely the time everyone had their lunchbreaks. They would then reopen just as everyone went back to work, and close again at 7 when everyone finished work. When I first went there (1998) this was true even for big supermarkets. At least in this country nothing closes for lunch, and things are open on Sundays, and there are 24 hour shops and garages.

True, true but still the shops do close at 5.30 here and that's before anyone's out of work, innit? I'm not tlaking about closing the 24hr garages or anything like that, but surely it wouldn't hurt to extend shop licenses too?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v284/jamiefake/Picture17.jpg

And yes, what Grimly said.

Well, to get geographical on your ass, we are separate from Europe, I find it rather annoying that other Europeans can't quite grasp the significance of this

If I want to sit in and drink super tennants in the day I will,
no ones going to fucking tell me jack.