I'm in the midlands. We start off the day friendly and approachable but by the afternoon we're all grumpy and avoid one another. Unless there's a dog. Or beer.
Hey welcome back! Spot on aboot Canadians' - was kind of a culture shock to me when people said hi, walking past on the street in Toronto. Here in London, everyone's eyes are averted and ffs DO NOT bloody talk to or smile at someone, they'll react like they just met a weirdo/creep/psycho. I gotta agree that northerners are a lot more like Canadians; less "Stush" (snobbish or stuck up) than Londoners/Southerners...haha! Glad to help support on Patreon, will check out Twitch streams!
A friend of mine drove from France to the UK using the tunnel. When entering the UK, there was a sign saying keep left. My friend asked a local how long to stay on the left and was told "forever". LOL.
Traffic in the UK sucks! No no. The M25 is a beautiful serine calm where nothing happens for hours at a time. An opportunity for inner reflection an re-engagement with the inner self. And that's a beautiful thing.
Sir, you are too modest. Indeed the M25 has an atmosphere akin to an isolated Tibetan Monastery on a perfect May morning but you`ve failed to mention the facilities on offer. The sublime eating experience that can only be fully appreciated at somewhere like South Mimms, even the name conjures up Elgar at his most whimsical. Of course any such heavenly experience has to include that central hub of British culture, I refer of course to that magnificent collection of stunningly beautiful buildings known as the Blue Water shopping centre.
Ideally a friday rush hour morning in mid december, the dazzling beauty of the winter sun reflected from spilled diesel, the cheerful, patient, contented drivers with their happy go lucky pre Christmas spirit....ah yes, sublime.
I have a friend who's Scottish but has lived in England for years. You wouldn't think he is Scottish listening to him talk, but if you hear him on the phone to his Mum he unconsciously goes back into a Scottish accent. I'm a southerner and northerners are definitely friendlier.
It’s weird because I never really notice American or Canadian accents online or on tv. It doesn’t register because I’m so used to it and uk is constantly being exposed to American media. However, when I encounter an American or Canadian in real life (for example when I’m at work because I meet a lot of people due to working in retail atm) my reaction is oooooh an accent 😂
Hi Molly. Visited England in 2008 and really loved meeting the people. Started in London and worked north. I didn't notice any difference. Clerks and waitresses were all friendly. What I did notice is that the people I was with (relatives by marriage from Liverpool) were constantly putting down the people that served us. Peace and Love dear.
As a second comment... Isn't it spooky to realise that Canada and England are EXACTLY the same size? You think Canada is much bigger BUT it takes you 18 hours driving to get to the next city in Canada and it takes exactly the same time to do that on the M25 😂
@@ashiko7376 yes Canada is a huge country in terms of land mass.... But thankfully for them it doesn't have our very small roads that are totally gridlocked during peak hours
@@dbp-wv1hs it's what passes for humour here in the UK (or at least my bit of it) Canada is a huge country in terms of land size and it takes many hours to drive from 1 place to another place because they are so far away from each other. Here in the UK towns and cities are really close together in terms of actual distance but it still takes many hours to drive to them because our roads and motorways are so poor. So my joke was to say that both countries are the same size because it takes many hours to travel from A-B in both of them. Although having to type this explanation doesn't seem so funny 😜 In terms of population the UK has almost double that of Canada but only a difference of 30 million so not hugely different
Adam Flynn the roads are no worse than anywhere else ,it's just that they have to cope with much more traffic. It's the same on the railways , the travelling population is enormous in a very small area. Canada has about 55% of the population of the UK in an area about 40 times larger (4,000 %) it also has about 7 times as much rail track and 3 times as much road mileage.
People watch cos of you! You are really natural in front of the camera and have a wonderful sense of humour. You make me laugh out loud which is something I seldom do when I watch TV. x
It's difficult seeing you being a socially awkward introvert when you have so much confidence in your videos. So many others on UA-cam are just like you. You thrive in this reality. :)
Great observations Alanna! I too found plenty things in England weird when I moved back to the UK after more than two decades away. I still can't understand why houses are not air-conditioned in England; I hate the pull-chord light switch in bathrooms and the fact that there are no electrical outlets in bathrooms here. But I did miss the dawn chorus, church bells, country pubs and how easy it is to get anywhere in Britain.
Nigel Haines historically aircon hasn't been necessary in the uk as the normal temperatures are pretty low , they have been increasing over the last 20/30 years but are still pretty tolerable .We just don't have the extremes of weather that other countries have so, for example, it's not worth investing billions in snowploughs and snowblowers as they would only be useful for a couple of days every 20 years or so.
I remember hot days as a kid in the Midlands and we didn't have a refrigerator until around 1972 and it was horrid not to be able to have a cold drink. We used to go crazy when we heard the ice cream van. We survived without a fridge but life in England has advanced since then. I have an air conditioner in my bedroom and I use it regularly from May through to September. I have air conditioning in my car and I use it much more than I do the heater. I wouldn't buy another car in England without A/C. I have a central heating radiator in my bedroom but I haven't turned it on for since 2010. I remember, as a kid, scraping the frost off the inside of my bedroom window but this same house, five decades on, is better insulated and we hardly had any frost this last winter. This is a temperate country but it still gets hot. I feel that there is a general conception that folk believe we live in a cold country. It's nice to have some heat on in the winter but it's also nice to escape the heat in the summer. Old folk here often complain that there is a draft running through their house and that's why they have doors on all the rooms, but we don't see so many of those "draft excluders", sometimes fashioned like a sausage dog, that used to lay at the foot of the door in the living room to keep the freezing air out. My grandmother's house had a heavy velvet curtain to exclude drafts that was hung on the door and cleverly articulated as the door swung open. I haven't seen one of those in decades. Thank heavens most of our supermarkets are now air conditioned. We are getting there slowly but I think we are way, way behind. Another funny thing I noticed when I came back to England was that we still have plugs on chains in many of our sinks and basins. It just seemed primitive to me when there are better, neater solutions. And don't get me started on garbage disposal units... is that what they're called in the UK? We'll get there one day.
I used to think that too. It wasn't till I had lived on three different continents that I came to accept all that was wrong with life in the UK back when I was a kid. I grew-up in a house built in 1960. It had three bedrooms and one bathroom and that was considered modern and even slightly luxurious. A friend I had, from the next street, lived, like everyone in his street, in a house that had no bathroom. An outside toilet was down the garden a little way. There was only one sink in the house, the kitchen sink. It wasn't until the 1970's that my friend and his neighbours started to have a bathroom built in their houses. I used to think their house was "cosy" because they had a fireplace upstairs in the one bedroom. They only had two bedrooms, one for the parents and one for all the kids. In my modern house we only had one source of heating the house and that was the fireplace in the living room... and that is how it stayed until the mid 1970's. Then we got a fridge and we may also have had a colour TV with push buttons rather than a tuning dial. We still had no phone, no central heating but a washing machine, with a mangle, that lived on the upstairs landing and would be dragged from against the wall and filled from the taps of the bathroom sink and it would walk across the landing during use and would have to be dragged back nearer the electrical socket. If you think that the rest of the world were living like that in the 1970's then you may have imagined that we were the most advanced nation on earth, but I know other countries had higher living standards at that time.
So without further ado you're slowly becoming a Brit girl and it's so nice to have you back! Canada looks gorgeous on your previous video but what's bags of milk all about you know pints in plastic is the way forward! All joking aside you're becoming a very popular Canadian girl here in the UK with 19k subscribers proof of that and I for one look forward to your funny humorous and informative videos and it's hard to believe that you say you're a shy introvert girl as to me you always seem very confident Keep posting weekly as your so likeable and slightyly addictive so there was a UA-cam void when you missed a week or two!
Whenever I have been away for holiday or work abroad, I always find it more of a culture shock coming home than the country I have visited. Yeah, visiting a strange and new place/country is always fascinating, but the getting back home bit is the eye opener... Love your vids Alana! :)
Having spent so much time in Canada and The US coming from London. Your observations are spot on. One tip I would recommend is keep the steering wheel to the centre of the road.
welcome back Alanna, great vid. just for reference, when you say GMT, remember that the UK in summer is in BST (GMT+1). I know confusing, personally I would just say London or UK time to avoid confusion.
I live in Wales , UK and from Perth , Australia and shall be heading home for the first time in three years next year in October! I know I will be in for a cultural shock after this time away from home!
I'm from northern Ontario Canada! My cousins from England visited this past summer for a music festival and were shocked cause random people would just talk to you! Some little old man gave me a signed autograph of Sloan and ended up sitting next to us 2 days in a row and would just talk to us like they knew us and my cousins couldn't believe it but loved it!!
I love your stronger Canadian accent. Noticed it straight away! I don't know if I'd prefer Canada, with it's big wide roads, but super long drives, or here, where everything is close but SO congested.
“…with this random woman we found in the woods” Brilliant! ☺️😂😂 Welcome back Alanna. Loved your “from our own corespondent" reports from Canada 😊. Greetings from Liverpool 🕊
Totally get all of it. My accent and annunciation is totally dependent on who I am with and where I am. It's so comforting to slip back into your own cultural setting. I can go from an pseudo-American accent to proper northern accent depending on who I'm with and where I am.
I'm planning to work in England with the Youth Mobility Tier 5 Visa and I want to say thanks for your videos they are really helpful for me! De Québec.
Another very funny video Alana. Yes, in the urban areas you're not likely to get much acknowledgement. But out for a walk in the countryside, surely people say hi to each other? The driving bit about not killing any one.... killed me!
To the “up north, down south” thing, up north might have one general rule, I don’t know, but there’s definitely a south - east, south - west divide when it comes to friendliness.
Do some driving lessons with an established school like AA. It DEFINITELY helps. I learnt to drive in a country with similar driving laws to the UK, but then while in uni hadn't driven for years. So the lessons were handy to refresh my skills and having the instructor was useful getting accustomed to the more complex setup in the UK. I did about £200 worth of sessions.
Born in the West Country, ( Exeter )you must visit Devon and Cornwall, Do you put the cream on top of the jam, or the jam on top of the cream? when eating a cream tea scone? 'That will open a whole can of worms! 'Then I spent half my life living in Eltham, South London/Kent for 23 years, where my wonderful children still live today and I now live for 14 years in the valley's of South Wales. Just found you video's on you tube and spent the whole afternoon watching you. I love you. You show me, "never to judge a book by it's cover" You shown me, how someone else may see us, how they may feel. I shall watch more of you, keep it up, I love your honesty. Alanna, "not to judge a book by it's cover! and open up a whole can of worms!' Something else for you to get your teeth into. Enjoy the Englishness of the English.
I''m moving to London this coming Sunday with my girlfriend who will be studying at Royal Holloway after watching every "Canadian to London" video on youtube, including yours! Haha ! Thank you for the content!
Hi Alanna, I love this type of video, cultural difference are fascinating. I live in the southeast and relate to what you say. I guess if I lived in the north, and I wanted to embrace their way of life I would change my ways! In order to feel really comfortable and enjoy where you live I think you have to feel the area defines you and you define it!
I find it enlightening that a such a lovely confident and assured looking girl is really nervous and socially inept , it reinforces one of the things I learnt in therapy for social anxiety after having suffered for 40 years
Welcome back. I totally agree with similar things in UK and Canada. Visiting and living in another country apart from the bag o' milk thing. I still enjoy the vlogs. Thanks.
"Stay on the RIGHT.. Stay on the RIGHT" Made me chuckle. Don't put yourself down, You are very good at this and very intresting so keep it up. Love the way you Canadians say "Out" like "Ooout" Haha and a great way to tell the difference between an American and a Canadian ;-)
My problem with driving was when I was in the Military I lived in Germany (drive on the right) and visited here (the opposite) I found one-way streets to be a problem, because when I had to turn at the end of the one-way street I reverted to driving on the opposite side of the road. To (my later) amusement.
This is not from a big headed perspective at all, but up North you will come across more people on the street who are not really in employment or business, because more people drive to commute up here rather than use public transport, usually if they are out for leisure etc. then they’re more likely to approach you. The rule of northerners being friendly does not always apply, usually a Northern person would say hello - but I find the south Welsh more likely to start a convo. Also - when walking - it’s something nationwide that like when you’re in a forest or something, you’ll say hello. Just thought I’d try and give a level headed or evidenced outlook, rather than some arrogant comment that a lot people tend to make 😊
After almost 15 years of driving in Canada I had minimal difficulty adjusting to driving in England again. I had no trouble staying on the right (left!) side of the road. The hard part for me was that the roads in Yorkshire were so damn narrow, more so when there were lots of cars parked on both sides of the road.
So right about the traffic in the south east. Particularly rush hour! Loved this video and good to hear how you react going back to Canada. I think you are becoming British! LOL
Wahay ! 2OK Friday :) I wondered if you’d get there this week…. You have! A Great Channel that deserves every one. Pat yourself on the back & enjoy the weekend. Onwards and upwards girl :-D
Bagged milk does have a few benefits. For one, you’re opening a smaller amount of milk at a time, so even though the opened bag goes bad faster, the remaining sealed bags in a 4-liter three-pack stay fresh for much longer. For another, bagged milk tends to be a little big cheaper, simply because plastic bags are cheaper to make than cardboard cartons or plastic jugs. I would never use bagged milk because enclosed milk picks up smells present in the refrigerator. But then I only drink organic, whole bottled milk, preferably unhomogenized. I grew up in the NY City area and I had a serious accent. I left home at 17 and I've lived in New England, the Philadelphia area, and California. By age 30, my accent had softened to the point where it wasnt discernible accept with certain words. Yet when I visit NYC in a few days my accent returns. Ii suspect this is normal.
Nice to hear you saying autumn and not fall. Personally I think the reason people don't talk to each other in southern England is because the population density is so high that people have learnt to avoid each other. In the north of England the population density is much lower.
Welcome home, I just love your videos and how you view things about us Brits and your driving " Stay on the right"...lol. I know us southerners are a bit more reserved, I do a lot of countryside walking and I find if you have a dog (which I don't), they always makes a great conversation piece. Anyway great vid, look forward to the next.
Thanks for a great vid. Interestingly I’ve noticed there is just one place in the U.K. that does the add the tax on at the till thing, and that’s Five Guys. All the menu prices are pre tax and when they hit total on their till they hit you with the tax bill. I think Five Guys do it more as a gimmick over here. Also with bagged milk when I was a kid in the 70’s they didn’t sell milk in the shops you had to buy it in glass bottles from the milkman and when we went on holiday to like small camping sites they would have a little shop that sold bagged milk. More recently Sainsbury’s in the last 3-4 years was trialling selling bagged milk with the plastic jugs, I don’t know if they’ve stopped that now.
We drove in France a lot when our son was young - and next week we go to Europe for a month to drive around - and sometimes back in England I inadvertently drive on the right side of the road. But it’s so easy to get back into driving on the other side abroad again. Good video. You really think about your feelings and express them. I live in the North! You are right; Americans and Canadians are just more open and overtly friendly (although the Americans might have guns...). We live in the countryside and always say hello when out walking. But only in the ‘village’ area. We wouldn’t in the town of Huddersfield, or Holmfirth. Just where it’s quiet really. But... we’d only say hello, not chat about the dog.... I’ve always it it down to a lot of people living on a smallish island; respecting space. But, we are more reserved too.
I live in Kent. By and large we are friendly to strangers. I live in a village near Tonbridge and we always say good morning/afternoon. Generally townies I find don't often say hello. Theyre not being rude its just the way things are.
I remember sainsbury's started selling bagged milk several years ago. I think the main benefit is the reduction in plastic and cost a little less. Shame it didn't catch on really. I've just seen carex came out with bagged liquid soap to refill dispensers which is a really good thing, it says it saves 85% plastic and is quite a lot cheaper.
The principal benefits of bagged milk are economic. For producers, it is easier to vary portion size when sealing bags than cartons, as well as lowering the cost of packaging. Milk bags also take up less space in garbage. For consumers, bags typically allow for smaller portion sizes, reducing the risk of spoilage.
Wondered if you were away on travels, like Japan or something as per a prior video where you mentioned it I think, but of course you went to visit home. Missed you but the wait was worthwhile. Nice to have you back in Blighty, Alaana. "Lovely Jublee"
I love and agree with your point about the accent. I know exactly what you mean because I'm Canadian and studied in Portugal for half a year. Lots of european friends all with different accents, and my Canadian friends asked me "what are you saying, MATE?"
it's also so funny I notice your Canadian-ness in the way you speak, but you have a british accent on certain words now too (like the endings of certain words). Very interesting, not sure if you noticed!
The bags of milk thing is probably an environmental issue, so as not to have the milk in other glass or plastic containers that get used once and then thrown away, whereas the jug is bought just once or given away and retained. I know the bags are still plastic too but presumably are easier to dispose of. My Dad comes from Galway on the west coast of Ireland and the last time I was there and went to get a newspaper, I passed one old boy walking his dog who said hello and so I said hello back and he was the only person I saw out on the street on the way to the paper shop. I live in Peckham in south London and would see numerous people on the way to the paper shop and so if I greeted every one of them I'd be doing it constantly. I also saw the same man the next day too but probably another reason we don't say hello to strangers in the street in London is because it would seem so random and you will probably never see that person again in your life. There's a scene from Crocodile Dundee where he's in a taxi that stops in traffic and he looks out of the window and shakes hands with a total stranger, telling him he's in town for a while and will probably see him around. If I didn't know you Alanna from Adam (or should that be Eve?) and I passed you in the street then I wouldn't really say hello for some of the reasons already mentioned, plus from fear of you thinking that I was trying to chat you up and/or coming across as a pest but if say by some chance we were the only two people in a certain place, then I would say hello to be friendly, just to acknowledge you as well as trying to put your mind at rest that I wasn't someone you should be wary of. I had that in my gym once in the very early hours of the morning, when I got there and there was only one girl with the whole gym to herself until I arrived, so I smiled and said hello and then got on with my workout and left her to hers, as again I didn't want her to feel anxious considering we were the only two people there at a 24 hours gym which wasn't being staffed at the time.
The UK has toyed with bagged milk but it didn't really catch on. Bagged milk will allow less wasted space when delivering. Bottles have wasted space, the shape , the handle. So it will save money on delivery (and in theory has less pollution) but I don't think the bags used are easily recyclable.
Hiya im a Canadian in England to the difffrense is ive been over hear for 53 years i went back when i was 18 for 6 months with the intenshion of returning but i didnt make it. Loved your vr take care x
Exactly. I lived in Leeds for uni and would get a pretty bad attitude from a lot of locals. It's very hypocritical to judge me with reverse snobbery considering how much they go on about being friendlier.
The driving on the left/right thing is simple. In countries that drive on the left, the steering wheel is on the right, putting the driver on the side nearest to the centre of the road, and in countries that drive on the right, the steering wheel is on the left, putting the driver on the side nearest to the centre of the road.
I haven't actually researched it but if I had to wager a guess I'd say the key reasons would probably be space and longievity. Like you'd be able to pack more product into the same space if the packaging is flexible than you would if the packaging is rigid like the plastic bottle we tend to use in the UK. Also I reckon it would be easier to remove oxygen from a bag (like shrink wrapping) than it would be from a the plastic cartons that we tend to have in the UK, which eould improve the milk's shelf life which is useful if you have to transport something perishable like milk. Also I have seen some chain store coffee shops and cafes in the UK use bagged milk, so I think milk can be bagged in the UK but it's sold more to businesses who need to bulk buy milk rather than to the general public.
Bagged milk was widely available in the Channel Islands in the 80s, you'd get a jug to stand it in. In the UK I think Unigate tried to introduce it but it didn't catch on. No big deal.
I love it. I kept thinking the same thing when I was driving in the US. Hills were the scariest for me and I kept checking with my sister that I was on the correct side of the road for the first 30 minutes of driving. Indeed, no one died. 🙈🙊😂
True story. Had a fly drive to Florida where I drove without incident for a fortnight. When we got back and needed to go for milk etc, the Mrs said "I'll drive because you've been using the wrong side of the road". She proceeded to drive on the right out of every junction because she'd been sat on that side of the car in the States. I drove back.
When you recognize England is slightly smaller than Alabama, then look at the whole country traveling from one place to another takes a long time. Once when I lived in Western Massachusetts we drove to Florida it took two days of highway driving and two days back that's four days out of your vacation including weekends.
We did have bagged milk in England for a while in the 1970's. The purpose of it was obvious, it was to keep the birds well fed with milk the birds used to peck holes in the bags left out on the door step. Also car valeting companies liked it as the bags very often burst in the car boot on the way home from the shops.
UK: single tax (VAT). Canada: different taxes in each province. If each county of the UK could tax things separately, it'd be like that in the UK as well. When North America went away from glass milk bottles in the 1960's, the States switched to paper cartons, while Canada switched to plastic bags. Just how it happened. No real reason for it being better or worse (unless you don't like plastic waste). I find that in rural areas anywhere, it takes 20 minutes driving to get anywhere you want. That's a long distance in kilometers, but taking the metro in Toronto takes like 2 hours to get 5km, so it's all relative, right? England's towns tend to be more dense, don't they? There's a video of a guy who invented a bicycle that reverses the direction of turns. That is you turn the steering to the left and the tire moves to the right! So not that complicated, right? Except he couldn't ride the bike... at all. It took him over a year to finally be able to re-learn how to ride it. Then, as an experiment, he offered others to try to ride it and it turns out that no one can ride it... So then he teaches his son to ride this bike instead of a regular bike and his son gets it immediately. However, his son cannot ride a regular bike. Also, when after a year and a half of riding his custom bike he got on a regular bike (he thought, "no big deal, like riding a bike!") he couldn't ride it! His experiments proved that your brains slowly remaps things for you to get comfortable with doing them subconsciously and it takes a while to remap it again. Here's the video: ua-cam.com/video/MFzDaBzBlL0/v-deo.html It's fascinating! Totally applicable to driving!
While that could work just fine for an independent mom & pop store, it doesn’t work for chains because they purposefully keep prices advertised the same, so their price tags must reflect that. It’s the same in every country where local taxes are applied. If I operate stores in multiple provinces/territories, each one can change their tax rate at any time and that would place a burden on my business to change all of the pricing signage, tags, software programming and even advertisements in the media. The government doesn't refund you those costs. It would be unfair to require businesses to do that. In a smaller country that only collects one single rate VAT tax, that rate isn't changed often due to the recognition of that burden on businesses. This is the same difficulty international businesses face when retailing in many countries. It often causes companies simply not to do business in other countries. It's that much of a burden. This issue is also magnified in the United States, where there are 50 separate state tax rates, no national VAT tax, but each county in each state is able to add to the tax rate as well, so for example, there's no tax on clothing in NYC (as long as the item of clothing is priced under $110), but go outside the city and depending on which county you go to, the tax rate might be 8.25% or 8.87% or just 4.25% because the New York State tax is just 4%, though it's waived for NYC for non-luxury clothing and shoes. The rest of the tax rate is from the county/town. It gets too crazy to quickly and impossible for a national chain to keep up with accurately unless they separate the price of the good from the tax rate. It's a bit simpler in Canada, but still... not like it is in the UK, where there is just one VAT tax rate.
By the way, we had bagged milk here in the city of Worcester for a few years in the 1970's and 1980's. It didn't seem like a bad thing. I could understand how the dairy found it more economical to transport the bags of milk which would weigh a good deal less than milk in glass bottles; and boxes full of bags would stack better than milk crates , but now that it's all plastic I can't see that much of an advantage, just a disadvantage for the end user. However I used to love drinking a pint of milk from a plastic sachet on my way to school because I could squeeze the cold milk into mouth under pressure and it was the most refreshing drink in my small world at the time. Here's a link to the history: www.worcesternews.co.uk/features/thislife/3686477.Remember_milk_in_bags__Now_the_supermarkets_are_sold_on_the_idea_too/
Plastic bags are considered more eco-friendly than plastic bottles because they use much less plastic, they cost less to produce, transportation costs are lower. I know the milk carton, one without a plastic lid, uses even less plastic since it is mostly paper-based but I am not sure how much energy is used in manufacturing. For sure the plastic bottle is a good practical solution for us but if you want to save the world the carton or the plastic bag is probably worth the extra bother.
I was surprised to see Costa Coffee using bagged milk in my local store the other day - I've only ever seen it in Ontario before, though I just read that Sainsburys were doing it in 2010!
Really surprised you find people ignore you here. My girlfriends mother is currently over from the USA and she always comments on how friendly people are when she meets them in the park and damn near steals their dog (she loves anything fluffy). As for the accent, i agree that i dont notice my girlfriends american accent as she just sounds like her exactly as you say. What i do notice though is if she says something with a british intonation or says one word (usually one not used commonly in the US) with a british accent. That sticks out a mile!
I'm a northerner living down south and at first thought southerners unfriendly, until I realised the place is so crowded, you bring your personal space, including no eye contact, with you everywhere you go, just to get some time to yourself.
Have you tried taking a ferry or Euro Tunnel (which is so easy from here in Kent) to drive a right hand drive car on the wrong side? That will either make you the best most relaxed driver ever..or utterly freak you out!
Sales taxes vary between areas so it would be a logistical nightmare varying the price between different (nearby) jurisdictions. If memory serves, bagged milk is the result of changing the measurement and bottle factories would have had to spend millions adjusting machinery etc so bags were the cost effective solution. Happy to be corrected on this one.
I'm in the midlands. We start off the day friendly and approachable but by the afternoon we're all grumpy and avoid one another. Unless there's a dog. Or beer.
Dogs and beer, society's lubricants.
also from midlands. you are correct.
😁😄😃😄😁
I live in the same place as you but I improve as the day progresses. I'm not a morning person.
Definitely agree from Staffs
Hey welcome back! Spot on aboot Canadians' - was kind of a culture shock to me when people said hi, walking past on the street in Toronto. Here in London, everyone's eyes are averted and ffs DO NOT bloody talk to or smile at someone, they'll react like they just met a weirdo/creep/psycho. I gotta agree that northerners are a lot more like Canadians; less "Stush" (snobbish or stuck up) than Londoners/Southerners...haha! Glad to help support on Patreon, will check out Twitch streams!
Video hasn't even started and i've already hit the like button. I'm that confident.
I've hit the like button on next week's video and it hasn't even been uploaded (or made); that's how confident I am.
A friend of mine drove from France to the UK using the tunnel. When entering the UK, there was a sign saying keep left. My friend asked a local how long to stay on the left and was told "forever". LOL.
yay! my weekly portion of ' without further ado, let's go'
You are so natural and always so entertaining and informative. So glad we have you here to brighten up our Tuesdays.
Neat trick eh?
Traffic in the UK sucks! No no. The M25 is a beautiful serine calm where nothing happens for hours at a time. An opportunity for inner reflection an re-engagement with the inner self. And that's a beautiful thing.
iNDEED. .....I have no idea why so many motorists complain !
Name another FREE car park in The Uk ?
I rest my case :(
@@Isleofskye The M6.
Sir, you are too modest. Indeed the M25 has an atmosphere akin to an isolated Tibetan Monastery on a perfect May morning but you`ve failed to mention the facilities on offer. The sublime eating experience that can only be fully appreciated at somewhere like South Mimms, even the name conjures up Elgar at his most whimsical. Of course any such heavenly experience has to include that central hub of British culture, I refer of course to that magnificent collection of stunningly beautiful buildings known as the Blue Water shopping centre.
sheikhyaboooty I am of the opinion that no one can truely appreciate magnificence until one has witnessed sunrise at the Dartford crossing.
Ideally a friday rush hour morning in mid december, the dazzling beauty of the winter sun reflected from spilled diesel, the cheerful, patient, contented drivers with their happy go lucky pre Christmas spirit....ah yes, sublime.
I could listen to you for hours and never get bored.
I have a friend who's Scottish but has lived in England for years. You wouldn't think he is Scottish listening to him talk, but if you hear him on the phone to his Mum he unconsciously goes back into a Scottish accent.
I'm a southerner and northerners are definitely friendlier.
It’s weird because I never really notice American or Canadian accents online or on tv. It doesn’t register because I’m so used to it and uk is constantly being exposed to American media. However, when I encounter an American or Canadian in real life (for example when I’m at work because I meet a lot of people due to working in retail atm) my reaction is oooooh an accent 😂
Hi Molly. Visited England in 2008 and really loved meeting the people. Started in London and worked north. I didn't notice any difference. Clerks and waitresses were all friendly. What I did notice is that the people I was with (relatives by marriage from Liverpool) were constantly putting down the people that served us. Peace and Love dear.
As a second comment... Isn't it spooky to realise that Canada and England are EXACTLY the same size?
You think Canada is much bigger BUT it takes you 18 hours driving to get to the next city in Canada and it takes exactly the same time to do that on the M25 😂
The population of the UK and Canada are the same. Just the country size is different.
@@ashiko7376 yes Canada is a huge country in terms of land mass.... But thankfully for them it doesn't have our very small roads that are totally gridlocked during peak hours
I don't understand this comment? Canada and England are not comparable in either land mass or population?!
@@dbp-wv1hs it's what passes for humour here in the UK (or at least my bit of it)
Canada is a huge country in terms of land size and it takes many hours to drive from 1 place to another place because they are so far away from each other.
Here in the UK towns and cities are really close together in terms of actual distance but it still takes many hours to drive to them because our roads and motorways are so poor.
So my joke was to say that both countries are the same size because it takes many hours to travel from A-B in both of them.
Although having to type this explanation doesn't seem so funny 😜
In terms of population the UK has almost double that of Canada but only a difference of 30 million so not hugely different
Adam Flynn the roads are no worse than anywhere else ,it's just that they have to cope with much more traffic. It's the same on the railways , the travelling population is enormous in a very small area. Canada has about 55% of the population of the UK in an area about 40 times larger (4,000 %) it also has about 7 times as much rail track and 3 times as much road mileage.
People watch cos of you! You are really natural in front of the camera and have a wonderful sense of humour. You make me laugh out loud which is something I seldom do when I watch TV. x
It's difficult seeing you being a socially awkward introvert when you have so much confidence in your videos. So many others on UA-cam are just like you. You thrive in this reality. :)
Great observations Alanna! I too found plenty things in England weird when I moved back to the UK after more than two decades away. I still can't understand why houses are not air-conditioned in England; I hate the pull-chord light switch in bathrooms and the fact that there are no electrical outlets in bathrooms here. But I did miss the dawn chorus, church bells, country pubs and how easy it is to get anywhere in Britain.
Nigel Haines historically aircon hasn't been necessary in the uk as the normal temperatures are pretty low , they have been increasing over the last 20/30 years but are still pretty tolerable .We just don't have the extremes of weather that other countries have so, for example, it's not worth investing billions in snowploughs and snowblowers as they would only be useful for a couple of days every 20 years or so.
I remember hot days as a kid in the Midlands and we didn't have a refrigerator until around 1972 and it was horrid not to be able to have a cold drink. We used to go crazy when we heard the ice cream van. We survived without a fridge but life in England has advanced since then. I have an air conditioner in my bedroom and I use it regularly from May through to September. I have air conditioning in my car and I use it much more than I do the heater. I wouldn't buy another car in England without A/C. I have a central heating radiator in my bedroom but I haven't turned it on for since 2010. I remember, as a kid, scraping the frost off the inside of my bedroom window but this same house, five decades on, is better insulated and we hardly had any frost this last winter. This is a temperate country but it still gets hot. I feel that there is a general conception that folk believe we live in a cold country. It's nice to have some heat on in the winter but it's also nice to escape the heat in the summer. Old folk here often complain that there is a draft running through their house and that's why they have doors on all the rooms, but we don't see so many of those "draft excluders", sometimes fashioned like a sausage dog, that used to lay at the foot of the door in the living room to keep the freezing air out. My grandmother's house had a heavy velvet curtain to exclude drafts that was hung on the door and cleverly articulated as the door swung open. I haven't seen one of those in decades. Thank heavens most of our supermarkets are now air conditioned. We are getting there slowly but I think we are way, way behind.
Another funny thing I noticed when I came back to England was that we still have plugs on chains in many of our sinks and basins. It just seemed primitive to me when there are better, neater solutions. And don't get me started on garbage disposal units... is that what they're called in the UK? We'll get there one day.
I used to think that too. It wasn't till I had lived on three different continents that I came to accept all that was wrong with life in the UK back when I was a kid. I grew-up in a house built in 1960. It had three bedrooms and one bathroom and that was considered modern and even slightly luxurious. A friend I had, from the next street, lived, like everyone in his street, in a house that had no bathroom. An outside toilet was down the garden a little way. There was only one sink in the house, the kitchen sink. It wasn't until the 1970's that my friend and his neighbours started to have a bathroom built in their houses. I used to think their house was "cosy" because they had a fireplace upstairs in the one bedroom. They only had two bedrooms, one for the parents and one for all the kids. In my modern house we only had one source of heating the house and that was the fireplace in the living room... and that is how it stayed until the mid 1970's. Then we got a fridge and we may also have had a colour TV with push buttons rather than a tuning dial. We still had no phone, no central heating but a washing machine, with a mangle, that lived on the upstairs landing and would be dragged from against the wall and filled from the taps of the bathroom sink and it would walk across the landing during use and would have to be dragged back nearer the electrical socket. If you think that the rest of the world were living like that in the 1970's then you may have imagined that we were the most advanced nation on earth, but I know other countries had higher living standards at that time.
I suppose crossing the Mountains of the Moon, and trekking across Utah does that for one, Sir Richard.
Very clever! You are the only one who knows of him, as far as I can tell.
Same pressed like before watching , you can't say nothing bad about this young lady she's so honest and down to earth 👍
yes we are a tiny country but train fares are huge
So without further ado you're slowly becoming a Brit girl and it's so nice to have you back! Canada looks gorgeous on your previous video but what's bags of milk all about you know pints in plastic is the way forward!
All joking aside you're becoming a very popular Canadian girl here in the UK with 19k subscribers proof of that and I for one look forward to your funny humorous and informative videos and it's hard to believe that you say you're a shy introvert girl as to me you always seem very confident
Keep posting weekly as your so likeable and slightyly addictive so there was a UA-cam void when you missed a week or two!
Whenever I have been away for holiday or work abroad, I always find it more of a culture shock coming home than the country I have visited. Yeah, visiting a strange and new place/country is always fascinating, but the getting back home bit is the eye opener... Love your vids Alana! :)
Love your videos, such a bright and happy person!!
Having spent so much time in Canada and The US coming from London. Your observations are spot on. One tip I would recommend is keep the steering wheel to the centre of the road.
You said maths! Glorious!
Agreed, it's about time Alanna learned English lol
I love the aboots
Autumn, not Fall.
Now here's a funny thing, Fall is an old Dorset dialect word for... Autumn :)
welcome back Alanna, great vid. just for reference, when you say GMT, remember that the UK in summer is in BST (GMT+1). I know confusing, personally I would just say London or UK time to avoid confusion.
I don't think this really matters very much at all.
if a few more people watch her live stream, it might matter to Alanna
I was going to say this. I’m glad someone is as pedantic as me
I didn't kill anybody, that's a win!
I live in Wales , UK and from Perth , Australia and shall be heading home for the first time in three years next year in October! I know I will be in for a cultural shock after this time away from home!
I'm from northern Ontario Canada! My cousins from England visited this past summer for a music festival and were shocked cause random people would just talk to you! Some little old man gave me a signed autograph of Sloan and ended up sitting next to us 2 days in a row and would just talk to us like they knew us and my cousins couldn't believe it but loved it!!
Great to see you back. And congrats on 20K subscribers. Woo hoo
Hurray , Tuesdays are entertaining again. So pleased you are back.
I love your stronger Canadian accent. Noticed it straight away!
I don't know if I'd prefer Canada, with it's big wide roads, but super long drives, or here, where everything is close but SO congested.
“…with this random woman we found in the woods” Brilliant! ☺️😂😂
Welcome back Alanna. Loved your “from our own corespondent" reports from Canada 😊.
Greetings from Liverpool 🕊
Hello! Fellow Liverpool resident. Nice to see she has more than one follower from around here.
Totally get all of it. My accent and annunciation is totally dependent on who I am with and where I am. It's so comforting to slip back into your own cultural setting. I can go from an pseudo-American accent to proper northern accent depending on who I'm with and where I am.
I'm planning to work in England with the Youth Mobility Tier 5 Visa and I want to say thanks for your videos they are really helpful for me! De Québec.
Thanks so much, hope you have a great time in England!!
Another very funny video Alana. Yes, in the urban areas you're not likely to get much acknowledgement. But out for a walk in the countryside, surely people say hi to each other? The driving bit about not killing any one.... killed me!
To the “up north, down south” thing, up north might have one general rule, I don’t know, but there’s definitely a south - east, south - west divide when it comes to friendliness.
Do some driving lessons with an established school like AA. It DEFINITELY helps. I learnt to drive in a country with similar driving laws to the UK, but then while in uni hadn't driven for years. So the lessons were handy to refresh my skills and having the instructor was useful getting accustomed to the more complex setup in the UK. I did about £200 worth of sessions.
Born in the West Country, ( Exeter )you must visit Devon and Cornwall, Do you put the cream on top of the jam, or the jam on top of the cream? when eating a cream tea scone? 'That will open a whole can of worms! 'Then I spent half my life living in Eltham, South London/Kent for 23 years, where my wonderful children still live today and I now live for 14 years in the valley's of South Wales. Just found you video's on you tube and spent the whole afternoon watching you. I love you. You show me, "never to judge a book by it's cover" You shown me, how someone else may see us, how they may feel. I shall watch more of you, keep it up, I love your honesty. Alanna, "not to judge a book by it's cover! and open up a whole can of worms!' Something else for you to get your teeth into. Enjoy the Englishness of the English.
I''m moving to London this coming Sunday with my girlfriend who will be studying at Royal Holloway after watching every "Canadian to London" video on youtube, including yours! Haha ! Thank you for the content!
Ahh thanks so much, hope you enjoy London!!
The wallpaper (or lack thereof ) actually looks quite cool with the forgiving lighting and lack of detail :).
Hi ya Alanna welcome back.
I hope you don’t start to lose your accent too much as it sounds so cool fresh from Canada.
Each video you make has such a warm center .
Let's hope you keep you're natural voice .
Hi Alanna, I love this type of video, cultural difference are fascinating. I live in the southeast and relate to what you say.
I guess if I lived in the north, and I wanted to embrace their way of life I would change my ways! In order to feel really comfortable and enjoy where you live I think you have to feel the area defines you and you define it!
I find it enlightening that a such a lovely confident and assured looking girl is really nervous and socially inept , it reinforces one of the things I learnt in therapy for social anxiety after having suffered for 40 years
Welcome back. I totally agree with similar things in UK and Canada. Visiting and living in another country apart from the bag o' milk thing. I still enjoy the vlogs. Thanks.
Welcome back home...... (Sort of). You are son funny - in a nice way. You always bring a smile on my face.... So thank you for that. Ciao.
I love how your (beautiful) hands participate so much in your videos!! I think I'm getting addicted to watching you already!
"Stay on the RIGHT.. Stay on the RIGHT" Made me chuckle. Don't put yourself down, You are very good at this and very intresting so keep it up. Love the way you Canadians say "Out" like "Ooout" Haha and a great way to tell the difference between an American and a Canadian ;-)
Really interesting observations. I did notice the accent was a little stronger today . Love these videos, please keep making them.
My problem with driving was when I was in the Military I lived in Germany (drive on the right) and visited here (the opposite) I found one-way streets to be a problem, because when I had to turn at the end of the one-way street I reverted to driving on the opposite side of the road. To (my later) amusement.
This is not from a big headed perspective at all, but up North you will come across more people on the street who are not really in employment or business, because more people drive to commute up here rather than use public transport, usually if they are out for leisure etc. then they’re more likely to approach you.
The rule of northerners being friendly does not always apply, usually a Northern person would say hello - but I find the south Welsh more likely to start a convo.
Also - when walking - it’s something nationwide that like when you’re in a forest or something, you’ll say hello.
Just thought I’d try and give a level headed or evidenced outlook, rather than some arrogant comment that a lot people tend to make 😊
Bagged milk saves packaging weight for transport and allows more units to be displayed in the cooler.
Never heard of it sounds yuck
"And now we are left with these disgusting, messed up walls."
Oi! My walls look like that!
The problem is she will have you tube viewers saying "do you realise its been 22 days since you stripped your walls" 😝
After almost 15 years of driving in Canada I had minimal difficulty adjusting to driving in England again. I had no trouble staying on the right (left!) side of the road. The hard part for me was that the roads in Yorkshire were so damn narrow, more so when there were lots of cars parked on both sides of the road.
Your "keep on the right" thing reminded me when I got a car with an automatic and in my head I was going "no clutch, no clutch" for weeks.
Yes, subscribed today, binged and now watching today’s offering, love the counter view, just love these art observations!
That’s wry not ART, autocorrect gone mad!
Your pronunciation of 'out' is much more pronounced and Canadian. I hadn't noticed that before.
So right about the traffic in the south east. Particularly rush hour! Loved this video and good to hear how you react going back to Canada. I think you are becoming British! LOL
Wahay ! 2OK Friday :) I wondered if you’d get there this week…. You have! A Great Channel that deserves every one. Pat yourself on the back & enjoy the weekend. Onwards and upwards girl :-D
Just so glad the world is safe and no one died while you was driving 🙌😂 good to see you back on home soil
Bagged milk does have a few benefits. For one, you’re opening a smaller amount of milk at a time, so even though the opened bag goes bad faster, the remaining sealed bags in a 4-liter three-pack stay fresh for much longer. For another, bagged milk tends to be a little big cheaper, simply because plastic bags are cheaper to make than cardboard cartons or plastic jugs. I would never use bagged milk because enclosed milk picks up smells present in the refrigerator. But then I only drink organic, whole bottled milk, preferably unhomogenized.
I grew up in the NY City area and I had a serious accent. I left home at 17 and I've lived in New England, the Philadelphia area, and California. By age 30, my accent had softened to the point where it wasnt discernible accept with certain words. Yet when I visit NYC in a few days my accent returns. Ii suspect this is normal.
Nice to hear you saying autumn and not fall. Personally I think the reason people don't talk to each other in southern England is because the population density is so high that people have learnt to avoid each other. In the north of England the population density is much lower.
Welcome home, I just love your videos and how you view things about us Brits and your driving " Stay on the right"...lol. I know us southerners are a bit more reserved, I do a lot of countryside walking and I find if you have a dog (which I don't), they always makes a great conversation piece. Anyway great vid, look forward to the next.
Welcome back nice to see you nice, And keep up the great Clips xx
Thanks for a great vid. Interestingly I’ve noticed there is just one place in the U.K. that does the add the tax on at the till thing, and that’s Five Guys. All the menu prices are pre tax and when they hit total on their till they hit you with the tax bill. I think Five Guys do it more as a gimmick over here. Also with bagged milk when I was a kid in the 70’s they didn’t sell milk in the shops you had to buy it in glass bottles from the milkman and when we went on holiday to like small camping sites they would have a little shop that sold bagged milk. More recently Sainsbury’s in the last 3-4 years was trialling selling bagged milk with the plastic jugs, I don’t know if they’ve stopped that now.
Costco is another one..
We drove in France a lot when our son was young - and next week we go to Europe for a month to drive around - and sometimes back in England I inadvertently drive on the right side of the road. But it’s so easy to get back into driving on the other side abroad again.
Good video. You really think about your feelings and express them. I live in the North! You are right; Americans and Canadians are just more open and overtly friendly (although the Americans might have guns...). We live in the countryside and always say hello when out walking. But only in the ‘village’ area. We wouldn’t in the town of Huddersfield, or Holmfirth. Just where it’s quiet really. But... we’d only say hello, not chat about the dog.... I’ve always it it down to a lot of people living on a smallish island; respecting space. But, we are more reserved too.
"With this random woman we found in the woods" LOL
I live in Kent. By and large we are friendly to strangers. I live in a village near Tonbridge and we always say good morning/afternoon. Generally townies I find don't often say hello. Theyre not being rude its just the way things are.
I remember sainsbury's started selling bagged milk several years ago. I think the main benefit is the reduction in plastic and cost a little less. Shame it didn't catch on really. I've just seen carex came out with bagged liquid soap to refill dispensers which is a really good thing, it says it saves 85% plastic and is quite a lot cheaper.
You’re now the only person I can be arsed to follow on patreon. You’re not getting rich off me but I hope you’re able to continue to make videos.
Another brilliant vid, keep them coming. 😂😂😂😂👍👍👍👍
The principal benefits of bagged milk are economic. For producers, it is easier to vary portion size when sealing bags than cartons, as well as lowering the cost of packaging. Milk bags also take up less space in garbage. For consumers, bags typically allow for smaller portion sizes, reducing the risk of spoilage.
i'm sure somewhere someone will actually believe this crap, but your either a moron or have the greatest sense of humour ever.
Wondered if you were away on travels, like Japan or something as per a prior video where you mentioned it I think, but of course you went to visit home. Missed you but the wait was worthwhile. Nice to have you back in Blighty, Alaana. "Lovely Jublee"
great to have you back x
I love and agree with your point about the accent. I know exactly what you mean because I'm Canadian and studied in Portugal for half a year. Lots of european friends all with different accents, and my Canadian friends asked me "what are you saying, MATE?"
it's also so funny I notice your Canadian-ness in the way you speak, but you have a british accent on certain words now too (like the endings of certain words). Very interesting, not sure if you noticed!
The bags of milk thing is probably an environmental issue, so as not to have the milk in other glass or plastic containers that get used once and then thrown away, whereas the jug is bought just once or given away and retained. I know the bags are still plastic too but presumably are easier to dispose of.
My Dad comes from Galway on the west coast of Ireland and the last time I was there and went to get a newspaper, I passed one old boy walking his dog who said hello and so I said hello back and he was the only person I saw out on the street on the way to the paper shop. I live in Peckham in south London and would see numerous people on the way to the paper shop and so if I greeted every one of them I'd be doing it constantly.
I also saw the same man the next day too but probably another reason we don't say hello to strangers in the street in London is because it would seem so random and you will probably never see that person again in your life. There's a scene from Crocodile Dundee where he's in a taxi that stops in traffic and he looks out of the window and shakes hands with a total stranger, telling him he's in town for a while and will probably see him around.
If I didn't know you Alanna from Adam (or should that be Eve?) and I passed you in the street then I wouldn't really say hello for some of the reasons already mentioned, plus from fear of you thinking that I was trying to chat you up and/or coming across as a pest but if say by some chance we were the only two people in a certain place, then I would say hello to be friendly, just to acknowledge you as well as trying to put your mind at rest that I wasn't someone you should be wary of.
I had that in my gym once in the very early hours of the morning, when I got there and there was only one girl with the whole gym to herself until I arrived, so I smiled and said hello and then got on with my workout and left her to hers, as again I didn't want her to feel anxious considering we were the only two people there at a 24 hours gym which wasn't being staffed at the time.
The UK has toyed with bagged milk but it didn't really catch on.
Bagged milk will allow less wasted space when delivering. Bottles have wasted space, the shape , the handle. So it will save money on delivery (and in theory has less pollution) but I don't think the bags used are easily recyclable.
Why wouldn't people watch you ? you're lovely and a real breath of fresh air , good luck with the patreon venture
The reason for bagged milk is so that you can freeze it. You can freeze a bag but not a plastic bottle.
Hiya im a Canadian in England to the difffrense is ive been over hear for 53 years i went back when i was 18 for 6 months with the intenshion of returning but i didnt make it. Loved your vr take care x
Northerners are really friendly....until you open your mouth and they realise you’re not local!
Exactly. I lived in Leeds for uni and would get a pretty bad attitude from a lot of locals. It's very hypocritical to judge me with reverse snobbery considering how much they go on about being friendlier.
@@me-ln4pd You can't include Leeds as part of the north. They are the Northampton of the north.
Totally! I live in Sunderland. I’m to the point where I’ve tried everything to integrate but just can’t.
The driving on the left/right thing is simple. In countries that drive on the left, the steering wheel is on the right, putting the driver on the side nearest to the centre of the road, and in countries that drive on the right, the steering wheel is on the left, putting the driver on the side nearest to the centre of the road.
I haven't actually researched it but if I had to wager a guess I'd say the key reasons would probably be space and longievity.
Like you'd be able to pack more product into the same space if the packaging is flexible than you would if the packaging is rigid like the plastic bottle we tend to use in the UK.
Also I reckon it would be easier to remove oxygen from a bag (like shrink wrapping) than it would be from a the plastic cartons that we tend to have in the UK, which eould improve the milk's shelf life which is useful if you have to transport something perishable like milk.
Also I have seen some chain store coffee shops and cafes in the UK use bagged milk, so I think milk can be bagged in the UK but it's sold more to businesses who need to bulk buy milk rather than to the general public.
The quote of the clip - "I didn't kill anybody - so that's a win, I think"
Interesting video..its funny you going back and being so shocked. The secret tax prices at till & bagged milk would drive me crazy
Fair play for trying to make some money out of it, you do great videos and are a lovely person:) and deserve every subscriber👍🏻
Bagged milk was widely available in the Channel Islands in the 80s, you'd get a jug to stand it in. In the UK I think Unigate tried to introduce it but it didn't catch on. No big deal.
I love it. I kept thinking the same thing when I was driving in the US. Hills were the scariest for me and I kept checking with my sister that I was on the correct side of the road for the first 30 minutes of driving. Indeed, no one died. 🙈🙊😂
True story. Had a fly drive to Florida where I drove without incident for a fortnight. When we got back and needed to go for milk etc, the Mrs said "I'll drive because you've been using the wrong side of the road". She proceeded to drive on the right out of every junction because she'd been sat on that side of the car in the States. I drove back.
13:22 I saw and physically felt the fear of what the future holds
Same! I immedately went 'Awwww bless!'.
I always say morning or hiya etc when I'm delivering the newspapers in a morning here in West Cumbria
When you recognize England is slightly smaller than Alabama, then look at the whole country traveling from one place to another takes a long time. Once when I lived in Western Massachusetts we drove to Florida it took two days of highway driving and two days back that's four days out of your vacation including weekends.
We did have bagged milk in England for a while in the 1970's. The purpose of it was obvious, it was to keep the birds well fed with milk the birds used to peck holes in the bags left out on the door step. Also car valeting companies liked it as the bags very often burst in the car boot on the way home from the shops.
UK: single tax (VAT). Canada: different taxes in each province. If each county of the UK could tax things separately, it'd be like that in the UK as well. When North America went away from glass milk bottles in the 1960's, the States switched to paper cartons, while Canada switched to plastic bags. Just how it happened. No real reason for it being better or worse (unless you don't like plastic waste). I find that in rural areas anywhere, it takes 20 minutes driving to get anywhere you want. That's a long distance in kilometers, but taking the metro in Toronto takes like 2 hours to get 5km, so it's all relative, right? England's towns tend to be more dense, don't they?
There's a video of a guy who invented a bicycle that reverses the direction of turns. That is you turn the steering to the left and the tire moves to the right! So not that complicated, right? Except he couldn't ride the bike... at all. It took him over a year to finally be able to re-learn how to ride it. Then, as an experiment, he offered others to try to ride it and it turns out that no one can ride it... So then he teaches his son to ride this bike instead of a regular bike and his son gets it immediately. However, his son cannot ride a regular bike. Also, when after a year and a half of riding his custom bike he got on a regular bike (he thought, "no big deal, like riding a bike!") he couldn't ride it! His experiments proved that your brains slowly remaps things for you to get comfortable with doing them subconsciously and it takes a while to remap it again. Here's the video: ua-cam.com/video/MFzDaBzBlL0/v-deo.html It's fascinating! Totally applicable to driving!
While that could work just fine for an independent mom & pop store, it doesn’t work for chains because they purposefully keep prices advertised the same, so their price tags must reflect that. It’s the same in every country where local taxes are applied. If I operate stores in multiple provinces/territories, each one can change their tax rate at any time and that would place a burden on my business to change all of the pricing signage, tags, software programming and even advertisements in the media. The government doesn't refund you those costs. It would be unfair to require businesses to do that. In a smaller country that only collects one single rate VAT tax, that rate isn't changed often due to the recognition of that burden on businesses. This is the same difficulty international businesses face when retailing in many countries. It often causes companies simply not to do business in other countries. It's that much of a burden.
This issue is also magnified in the United States, where there are 50 separate state tax rates, no national VAT tax, but each county in each state is able to add to the tax rate as well, so for example, there's no tax on clothing in NYC (as long as the item of clothing is priced under $110), but go outside the city and depending on which county you go to, the tax rate might be 8.25% or 8.87% or just 4.25% because the New York State tax is just 4%, though it's waived for NYC for non-luxury clothing and shoes. The rest of the tax rate is from the county/town. It gets too crazy to quickly and impossible for a national chain to keep up with accurately unless they separate the price of the good from the tax rate. It's a bit simpler in Canada, but still... not like it is in the UK, where there is just one VAT tax rate.
I've unlearned what the rest of your comment is after watching that fascinating video.
I lived in South Africa when i was a Kid and they had a Nature Reserve that was bigger than England,so i get where You are coming from.
By the way, we had bagged milk here in the city of Worcester for a few years in the 1970's and 1980's. It didn't seem like a bad thing. I could understand how the dairy found it more economical to transport the bags of milk which would weigh a good deal less than milk in glass bottles; and boxes full of bags would stack better than milk crates , but now that it's all plastic I can't see that much of an advantage, just a disadvantage for the end user. However I used to love drinking a pint of milk from a plastic sachet on my way to school because I could squeeze the cold milk into mouth under pressure and it was the most refreshing drink in my small world at the time. Here's a link to the history: www.worcesternews.co.uk/features/thislife/3686477.Remember_milk_in_bags__Now_the_supermarkets_are_sold_on_the_idea_too/
Plastic bags are considered more eco-friendly than plastic bottles because they use much less plastic, they cost less to produce, transportation costs are lower. I know the milk carton, one without a plastic lid, uses even less plastic since it is mostly paper-based but I am not sure how much energy is used in manufacturing. For sure the plastic bottle is a good practical solution for us but if you want to save the world the carton or the plastic bag is probably worth the extra bother.
I was surprised to see Costa Coffee using bagged milk in my local store the other day - I've only ever seen it in Ontario before, though I just read that Sainsburys were doing it in 2010!
Sainsburys used do it in 010 wow
Really surprised you find people ignore you here. My girlfriends mother is currently over from the USA and she always comments on how friendly people are when she meets them in the park and damn near steals their dog (she loves anything fluffy). As for the accent, i agree that i dont notice my girlfriends american accent as she just sounds like her exactly as you say. What i do notice though is if she says something with a british intonation or says one word (usually one not used commonly in the US) with a british accent. That sticks out a mile!
Yeah that was one thing I couldn't get used to when I went to the US on vacation - the thing about adding the tax on at the end.
I'm a northerner living down south and at first thought southerners unfriendly, until I realised the place is so crowded, you bring your personal space, including no eye contact, with you everywhere you go, just to get some time to yourself.
Have you tried taking a ferry or Euro Tunnel (which is so easy from here in Kent) to drive a right hand drive car on the wrong side? That will either make you the best most relaxed driver ever..or utterly freak you out!
Bagged milk was a thing over here for about a year. We still have the jug to prove it! But no more bags in the shops now... :/
We had pint bags of milk in the mid 70's. I loved them. It tasted creamier for some reason.
Sales taxes vary between areas so it would be a logistical nightmare varying the price between different (nearby) jurisdictions.
If memory serves, bagged milk is the result of changing the measurement and bottle factories would have had to spend millions adjusting machinery etc so bags were the cost effective solution. Happy to be corrected on this one.