going to try marmite. serving advice?

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Being half Glaswegian and part Irish, and having grown up in Northern Ireland, Lancashire and Yorkshire I agree. And I am now off to say 20 Hail Mary's, drink a bottle of whiskey, swear violently at some English people and restart the Wars of the Roses.

yeah we do it too - we make fun of people from all regions. Albertans are rednecks, Newfies are stupid, British Columbians are hippies, Saskatchewanites are hick farmers, Ontarians think they are the centre of the universe, Quebecers are lumberjacks etc. but it's still mean when we do it too.

Have you noticed that most of our derogatory stereotypes relate to violence, terrorism, theft, provincialism, incest, drunkenness, a love of bad food and bestiality?

Your stereotypes seem positively mild in comparison.

Last edited by Tequila on 27 Jun 2011, 12:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

thats out of order tho theres some truth in that about Londoners now

I've had English people make jokes about sheep with me. I usually just pretend it's true and take the joke to a totally new disturbing level . Otherwise I'd have to explain that I'm more insulted by the fact that they couldn't be bothered to put some decent effort into insulting me.

yeah, we don't take it to that level. we don't have well-defined regional identities yet as we are still a baby country.

I can't remember if anybody has mentioned this already, but if anybody really loves marmite in Missouri, they might want to visit The Missouri Marmite Museum:
http://www.missourimarmitemuseum.org/

You'd probably have to really love it to visit it from anywhere else.

hyperlexian - inspired by your example, I picked up some Marmite today. I like it! It reminds me of miso, but it's more intensely flavored...

w00000t! yeah!! !! !

hyperlexian for my anglophile foodie, I remembered hearing about a British food shop for expatiates. http://www.britishcornershop.co.uk/ might be use for other things and especially if your looking to get the bigger jars of marmite.

It really depends what sort of foods you like as well. More often than not, the food that British expats really miss when they're outside the UK is the bad food that is difficult to replicate in their new country. Like fish fingers or Findus crispy pancakes or things like mint sauce or baked beans.

Most of the stuff they say they can't get abroad, they can - it's just that usually there's a price tag on it. And British TV can be watched (almost) live anywhere in the world now, although I'd suppose that it would lose its novelty after a while because TV in the UK isn't that good - in fact, it's dire. It would probably help if things were in English though.

Or even things like British pubs and so on - they miss them, but if they came back they'd see that a lot of them have either closed down, have become 'eating houses' that serve beer, are unwelcoming, nasty, scummy places or aren't good with their beer. You get this sometimes in parts of the UK - "this is our pub, and what are you doing in it?" There are still some very good pubs around, though, but they often aren't just on your doorstep.

There might also be regional cultural things they miss too, which I'd say is more likely. I mean, how many people can honestly say they miss the likes of The Jeremy Kyle Show? Anglophiles, I suggest you watch stuff like this because this is more like much of Britain today than the high culture you think Britain's like. No-one studies or even knows about this any more. It's not unusual that foreigners know more about our country's history than do the people of that country themselves.

British radio can be listened to anywhere in the world.

I agree with that our TV is most of the time thick crap for the masses.

I agree with that as well there's a mix bag of pubs around. Our pub culture has changed a hell of lot Just our of curiosity mate, have you visited any of the real ale pubs in Liverpool?



Please listen to our radio its better that our TV, Also stay clear of the UK's own Jerry Springer Show The Jeremy Kyle Show as IMHO its staged emotional gladiatorial blood sport and voyeuristic psychotherapy at its worst.

VEGEMITE!! !

nostromo, I actually looked for Vegemite, to do a comparison/contrast, but alas my supermarket does not carry it. Interestingly enough, though, Stop & Shop had a variety of British foods, many of those mentioned by Tequila. Surprising, considering I'm in the middle-class suburbs of Boston. I can probably find Vegemite at a gourmet shop. I shall report back.

Of course, we have a ton of Irish immigrants here in Boston, and that's the same, right? {ducks for cover}

We don't want to sit there and be lectured to by the BBC on what to eat, how to stay cool in the sun and all that stuff! Really, some people must be incredibly stupid if they think this is actually worth repeating. Either that, or the people at the BBC are justifying their existence whilst frequently providing very biased news.



Yes - there's the ultra-traditional Listed Building type of alehouse like The Crown Liquor Saloon in Belfast or the Black Horse in Preston. There aren't that many of those.

Then there are the traditional boozers that don't serve food but major on real ales. Unless they get a lot of custom, they die out. The ones in the countryside have been dying out at quite an astonishing rate in the past few decades due to the drink-driving laws. People used to take the car out and have four or five pints on the regular, then drive home. Enforcement of these laws is probably not that much stricter than back in the 1970s but the social attitude has changed comprehensively. Now, even going to a pub and having a pint of bitter - within the legal limit - is considered to be too much of a risk by many people. So people don't drink at all. Pubs close because, unless the food is extremely good, people simply won't drive out of their way if they can't drink. A lot of these pubs in the sticks have become Indian restaurants but even some of these have floundered because there just isn't enough demand for Indian food, despite 'Indian' cuisine being extremely popular in the UK.

Then you've got the likes of the town-centre drinking barns - very impersonal places, like JD Wetherspoon. These sell a wide range of less expensive drinks than regular pubs, who are hamstrung by beer taxes, rates they have to pay to the pub companies plus a lack of choice in what beers they can stock (and having to pay far more for their beer than JDW do). Fights frequently break out at weekends in these sorts of places but in the middle of the afternoon they're generally safe, full of older people - often with drink problems, sure, but I don't blame a lot of them! - having a few beers. It's very impersonal but there is no sound.

For instance - a pint of bitter in JDW might be £2 a pint. In my local that same might would be £2.60. There aren't always cask ales, and the quality of the beer (and how well it is kept) varies a hell of a lot from branch to branch. If you pick one of the better ones though you can be OK.

There are also the city-centre bars and clubs but these aren't really under this rubric.

Then you've got the village and town pubs. A lot of these have closed because the people in them don't go out any more. A lot of these places were massively affected by the smoking ban.

There are lots and lots of reasons why the pub industry is under massive, sustained strain, but it's too complicated to go into here. Those that really want to find out about the subject will do their own research.

I go to the pub less and less these days, principally because the beer isn't too good and my tastes have changed.



I've never been to Liverpool but I'll be in Merseyside in a couple of weeks. I might visit Liverpool then and check them out. Apparently Liverpool is a cracking night out.



I sometimes listen to BBC Radio 4 but even then I take it with a pinch of salt.



It's a nasty, nasty little show, with phony "aftercare" experts, the use of obviously very broken and troubled people and a deranged, shouting bully as its host. Horrible.

Last edited by Tequila on 28 Jun 2011, 11:40 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, and some of them are charming people, donating heavily to people that blow up pubs and town centres, Remembrance Day services and the like.

(Note: I'm not referring to all Bostonian "plastic Paddies", just those scumbags that donated to IRA terrorists. How would Americans like it if Irish people started openly donating to American anti-abortion terrorists?)