Things you dislike about your country.

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I'll start.

1. The Religious Right.
2. The War on Science.
3. The fact we do not have a single payer helathcare system.
4. Fox News.
5. CNN.
6. Pro life and Pro choice groups.
7. The War on Drugs.
8. The main thing that bugs me not allowing gay men and women to get married.

1. Our multiple failures on the aboriginal file.
2. The americanization of our political discourse
3. The emasculation of Parliament by four decades of PMOs

That'll do for a start.

1. The Repbulican Party
2. The Democrat Party
3. And the fact that they are our only choices to vote for when I dislike both parties.

France is drowning in bureaucracy and bureaucrats. This is my greatest hate of the country. The people here love nothing more than filling in endless forms and waiting months for bureaucrats to lose them or otherwise screw up and give you more forms to fill in. The French people adore paperwork, they must do to employ so many people who's job it is to shuffle pointless pieces or paper around and pass them on to other equally useless bureaucrats to do their bit of shuffling too.

If an ocean liner is sinking and the captain gives the order for all the passengers to abandon ship, the French people will first gather together and form an evacuation committee, then hold ballots and vote on who should lead this committee. The committee will then get together (but not between 12:00 noon and 2 pm because they are at lunch) and discuss the creation of further sub-committees to examine the lifeboats and check that:

a) They were made in France. If not, a sub-committee will be created to purchase some more.
b) They are painted and colour coordinated with the passengers clothing.
c) The Germans haven't already taken them all and if so to create another sub-committee to protest to the European parliament.

The life-boat sub-committee will then accept nominations from amongst the French passengers to go on a training course on lifeboat usage and safety. Only upon receipt of an officially recognised certificate of competence from Paris will these people be allowed to coordinate the abandonment of their fellow passengers. Previous similar qualifications from England, Germany and the US will not count.

A sub-committee will also be created to organise the issuing of life-jackets and their deployment, after the mandatory three week course in life saving techniques at sea, again with the appropriate Parisian certification.

Existing crew on the liner who are feverishly trying to get the French passengers onto the life-boats will be ignored because they do not speak perfect French.

A group of French passengers will get together and complain that they are not being paid enough for their participation in these committees and hold a sit-in demonstration for several days burning tyres on the deck of the ship in protest. Several farmers will appear from nowhere and park their tractors in the ship's bridge.

A further sub-committee will be created to help organise the French passengers clothing and make sure they all look sufficiently fashionable while wearing a life-jacket. Tips will also be given on how to stop your make-up running and hair getting wet while you drown.

Finally a French dignitary wearing a blue, white and red sash around his neck and a military brass-band will be flown in to the ship from the mainland by helicopter to open an official ceremony marking the abandonment of the ship by the French passengers.

Independent Voters Fed Up With Entire Political System
We are angry with the two-party political system and do not believe it really represents them. A number of people thought a third- or multi-party system might work better in representing a wider number of political views.
Independent voters believe the two parties are too polarized and can't work together to get things done for the American people.
We believe campaign contributions from special interests and lobbyists and political ads control and pervert the system, making it extremely hard for the average citizen to make his voice and views heard.
Independent voters dislike negative campaign ads, which they say discourages their political participation.
We believe most politicians are simply interested in getting re-elected and will do whatever it takes to accomplish that.
We feel most politicians and the political system are lacking common sense and civility which is what they would like to see in solving the nation's problems.
Job creation, federal spending and getting the economy moving again were cited most often as the most important problems facing the nation and the ones they want elected officials to focus on.

These come to mind right off but not necessarily in this order.

Not enough national pride/patriotism.
Unstable economy.
Too much reliance on world market and foreign industry.
Too many liberals (more than 0 is way too many).
Too much greed/ selfishness.
Not a firm enough hand in diplomacy.
Not enough industry.
Too much of a nanny state.

The lingering aftereffects of Rogernomics.
The ozone hole.
Auckland's bad public transport and general lack of central planning.
The cultural tendency to deny mental illness.

When someone from here is talking about their country, that can mean one of two things: either Scotland or the UK. If someone asks me which country I'm from, I'll say 'Scotland', but my passport says I'm 'British'. If I'm talking about Scotland, there's not very much I don't like about here. I'm glad we have our devolved parliament, as it means our MSPs can make decisions about how the Scottish budget is spent. So, further education is free for all, which I feel very strongly about and I'm happy with that. Consumerism has gone mad here, just like everywhere else and people do tend to care more about what they have and how good their fake tan looks than they do about experiencing life. Housing is much more affordable than some of the places further south. I could not live this lifestyle in SE England, as I would be up to my eyes in mortgage payments, for a much smaller house (not that my house is big). However, public transport is extortionate (£1.80 for a 10 min bus ride to the other end of town, although Edinburgh is much cheaper). The cost has gone up disproportionately with the rising cost of fuel. But, I can't complain about my lot here, it's definitely one of the better places to be.

1. Government invading the private sphere.
2. Politicians who no longer represent the agenda of their voters but the agenda of their party.
3. Too much bureaucracy and too much incompetent bureaucracy.
4. Conformity being overvalued.

1 News is ALWAYS depressing
2 The Government is kissing the ECC's feet
3 People in power tend to be hypocritical
4 The Government BEGS the people to agree with them on EVERYTHING

PS I'm Irish.

Sometimes I think America can seem overly competitive and insecure and we have a confused sense of national identity.

One way I see this expressed is the yearly Black Friday stampede. So many people pushing and shoving to triumphantly get the latest popular widget or toy.

I also see this a little bit as the more twisted side of our sports culture when people get to drunk or get into really malicious fights and put someone into a coma.

There's not a lot I can say that I legitimately dislike about the U.S.A, since it mostly represents the logical consequences of certain freedoms being treated as absolute (freedom of speech enables holocaust deniers, for example). With that being said, there are a few things I feel could legitimately be worked on:

1. Education is undervalued, underfunded, and run on obsolete systems whose worth continues to plummet daily.

2. Culturally, many citizens of the U.S.A. are content to be ignorant and to dismiss facts as irrelevant or as being part of a conspiracy without engaging in their own sourced research.

3. Food, water, shelter, and medicine are treated as commodities to be purchased instead of basic human rights. Those too poor to purchase these things for themselves are metaphorically or literally left to die.

4. American Exceptionalism, full frakkin' stop.

EDIT: Fixed horrible spelling error.

The biggest thing? That we're pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol. And just our general failure to cut CO2 emission.

Also, just Stephen Harper and his Reform Party heritage in general.