This thread exists to discuss British politics.
Political issues related to Northern Ireland and the Crown Dependencies (the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man) are also considered on-topic here if there's no more appropriate OTC thread for them.
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As with other OTC threads, off-topic posts may be thumped or edited by the moderators.
- There is a dedicated thread to discuss LGBTQ+ rights in the United Kingdom. That doesn't mean it's always off-topic here, but unless something's directly linked to political events, that's probably a better thread for it.
- There's also a separate thread to talk about your favourite British Prime Ministers.
Recent political stuff:
- The vote to see if Britain should adopt Alternative Voting has failed.
- Lib Dems lose lots of councils and councillors, whilst Labour make the majority of the gains in England.
- The Scottish National Party do really well in the elections.
A link to the BBC politics page containing relevant information.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 3rd 2023 at 11:15:30 AM
Figure of Hourai
I mean, people who can't cook vegetables properly, I suppose, lead to a bad reputation. But that's not like intrinsically bad food.
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@math: I ate the best hamburger I've ever eaten in London. You should go check out the Marquise Cornwallis if you ever happen to be in Bloomsbury.
Same goes for you, Swanpride, with the added comment that you should probably try Russian rye bread before putting German bread on a pedestal.
But yeah, I haven't had a bad meal in my visits to Britain, except for that one airport hotel in... Gatwick, I think it was.
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
My dad's English so we've visited the UK a ton of times. Every other year for a while. I found that the food was mostly good. Maybe not very healthy, but good. Although we did discover there's a level of "cheap pub food" that hits "maybe this is too cheap".
Not Three Laws compliant.
The boiled meat: I think you can blame Asterix for that one. The issue in which they visit the Brit has a running gag with Obelix being depressed about the notion of boiled wild swine meat in mint sauce.
The Sandwiches: I simply think that those classic sandwiches are too flabby. In addition, I was unfortunate enough to experience what a public school considers a "sandwich" during a student exchange. Flabby bread and the choice between either white egg or artificially tasting cheese isn't exactly enticing. To be fair, I guess it is normal that school meals are not the best. But I also prefer to have NOT pieces in my orange jam. Or salty butter. Or marmite. Most of the stuff I like in the English cuisine is based either on the French or the Scandinavian cuisine.
The bread: I simply miss the variety, and in a lot of countries bread isn't particularly important in the local diet or it boils down to the white and flabby variant - or the overly hard one. But yeah, Russian rye bread is a thing I can get behind.
Thus said, it is possible to eat well in the UK, you just have to pick a restaurant lead by a foreigner or one which has adjusted to the continental taste.
edited 4th Sep '17 1:51:59 PM by Swanpride
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
It's pretty obvious you have never had a bloomer in your life, mate. Let alone a proper cob.
I'd like to remind you that most of those "bland, boiled and horrible" jokes all occured thanks to rationing continuing on well into the late 50s? Britain had a whole generation who didn't know how to use a lot of even local ingredients... because they never were taught how to, thanks to never seeing them. For almost 30 years.
Our cooking habits are only now recovering. Look at how badly our varieties of beer were hit, too. And, cheeses, too, were hit. Hard. Lots of old recipes died for over 50 years and are only just coming back, now there is a market for them.
edited 4th Sep '17 2:02:33 PM by Euodiachloris
Figure of Hourai
That is blatantly false and tautological—British food is bad because it's British. Hell, you're saying that sandwiches as a whole are poorly done because of one school sandwich?
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Or I am simply primed to have a different taste. Who knows. Thus said that the English cuisine is bad is an opinion a lot of people share. The last time I was on a garden party this actually ended up a topic, with everyone sharing the worst food which was inflicted on them while being in England.
But this is more British Culture than politics, except in connection with the Scottish Whiskey. I am wondering, one of the reasons why I took so long to have a trade deal with Japan was because Scotland wanted special status for its Whiskey. I wonder if they took this part out of the contract now that the UK is leaving, which would in turn put Scotland in disadvantage.
One??????? I suffered for weeks! I have never eat so small portions in my life. But I have been to the UK more than once. Not saying that you can't get good food, but as soon as you go typical English, it is rarely to my taste.
edited 4th Sep '17 1:57:24 PM by Swanpride
Figure of Hourai
No, it's not a matter of taste if you say that all a culture's food is bad and your reasoning for it seems to be a combination of a comic made by some Belgian guy and... cheap hastily-made school sandwiches? That's a gross mischaracterisation. That and small portions; I have no idea where people from other countries manage to go in the UK that they get small portions.
On the topic of whisky, It's explicitly whisky and not whiskey, unless you want angry Scots.
edited 4th Sep '17 2:00:23 PM by RainehDaze
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The portions were small because I took as little as possible...just enough to get me going for the day. It's not like I had much choice.
Duly noted...though I guess whisky from Japan can be called Whiskey?
edited 4th Sep '17 2:06:59 PM by Swanpride
Figure of Hourai
It's whisky if it's Scottish, and pretty much whiskey everywhere else.
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A wandering user
And Fish and Chips?
The only good fanboy, is a redeemed fanboy.
A procrastination in of itself
Thing is you just said you haven't actually tried many typical English dishes. Let's go though the classics, a Sunday roast with veg, Yorkshire puddings and some roasted meet (lamb, chicken, pork or beef); toad in the hole; fish and chips using freshly caught fish; a steak and ale pie with mashed potatoes and fresh vegetables; a full English breakfast with sausages, bacon, egg, hash browns, fried bread, tomatoes, black pudding, baked beans, ect...; a mutton stew; even more dishes I can't think off.
Some shitty school meals and a stereotype are not typical English food, if you've had typical English food and don't like it that's fine, but so far you've said nothing to indicate that you've actually had typical English food.
edited 4th Sep '17 2:19:20 PM by Silasw
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
Figure of Hourai
I mean... not liking it is one thing. But not liking it doesn't mean it's bad food. It's one of the most absurd stereotypes possible. Or when what amounts to "bad cooking" is used as a rationale—I'm sure you can find shoddy cooks in any country on Earth.
Swan, judging whole regions of varying cuisine on Compass Catering and their horrible egg and cress or "cheese"-and-forgot-the-pickle-yay-slabs-of-butter sandwiches is really not fair.
Because I'm fairly sure most Brits are in agreement that they probably also cater Hell's most boring functions. I know their "scones" can probably wind up there if you drop them from a second storey... and the less said about their quiches, the better. 
How do I know all these things? I suffered five years at school to your measly couple of weeks... And then met them again at university. And, I keep bumping into them at public functions. I know their style. And, it's not cuisine. And, it's only British if you've not tried much.
edited 4th Sep '17 2:30:21 PM by Euodiachloris
Well, those stereotypes don't come out of thin air...
But if you feel better, I do enjoy bacon. Except that I tend to see it as an American dish (and yes, I know from where they got it, but I like the American version of and English breakfast better than the English version).
edited 4th Sep '17 2:29:30 PM by Swanpride
A procrastination in of itself
No as has been pointed out they came out of rationing, in case you hadn't noticed rationing isn't a think in the UK anymore had hasn't been for a while.
What the hell is the American version of an English breakfast? Also how the hell do Americans get ownership of their version of our breakfast but we don't get ownership of our versions of Indian dishes (chicken tikka masala anyone?)
Your weird categorisation of an English breakfast as an American thing just makes it seem like you don't want to think of any English food as good, so you recategorise it as belonging to another culture.
edited 4th Sep '17 2:32:40 PM by Silasw
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
Figure of Hourai
Most of the stereotypes come from post-war rationing and a centuries long worldwide fetish for French cooking. So, Britain naturally being at odds with France most of the time and tending to be less overcomplicated, the food got stereotyped as bad.
It's a bit like reducing all German food to sauerkraut, which I don't like, and beer, where I prefer other types, but it doesn't mean the whole country's cooking is bad.
Also, the only difference in bacon between the UK and USA is that the UK generally prefers back bacon. It's not like we don't also sell the other kind (I find it easier to cut up for certain dishes, for one)
edited 4th Sep '17 2:36:15 PM by RainehDaze
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Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
We should get together to kidnap Swanpride and take them to a really good traditional pub. Blow their mind.
(Just joking.)
Not Three Laws compliant.
Then he's even less aware of the problem than he seems. This is pure ideology for them. They don't want a deal. They want WTO rules.
[[quoteblock]]Jonathan Pie on the Brexit Problem, in which he points out that nobody in the UK government seems to have any idea how to handle Brexit even now. Not Davis, whose negotiating strategy seems to be behaving like an ass; not Labour, who seem to have embraced the "have cake and eat it" mentality by wanting single-market and customs union access and no actual plan to make it happen; and not the Liberal Democrats, who want to stop Brexit, which is just not going to happen.
Labour and the Lib Dems aren't part of the government.
Okay, having watched that.... he's misrepresented Labour's position on the single market and customs union. He's also misrepresenting the Tory position.
You're sort of damning Scotland and Ireland with faint praise there. I'm not English, but I will observe that there's more to English cooking than you think.
I've never had the chance to try German breads, although I've heard nothing but good things about it. You didn't mention Wales in your list, so I don't know if you know this. Traditional Welsh bread is rough, coarse bread made from rye, barley or oats — predominantly barley and oats (rye bread was for sick people) — and cooked on bakestones or in traditional cauldrons that, in modern times, have been replaced by dutch ovens. Our climate has traditionally been far too wet for grain crops to be massively successful, making oats a big part of our traditional diet.
Wales has twenty different kinds of bread that have managed to survive to the modern day, so we've got a little bit of variety over here, at least.
Yes, the only things in the world that are as bad as marmite are vegemite and bovril.
By the way, marmite was created out of the brain-child of a German scientist.
I was going to say that mint sauce is a thing because lamb is traditionally viewed as too rich and fatty to eat without something to cut through the taste (which is where the vinegar from the mint sauce comes in). However, I then did a double-take at something you said before that...
Boiling meat? Is that a thing? I've never in my life heard of anyone boiling meat. Well, unless you're thinking of ham. Boiling ham was a way to survive the war years (rationing) but is still a thing at Christmas for some families. Ham boiled properly has to be tender, not over-cooked.
The 'standard' for cooked meat in the UK is usually considered to be rare or medium-rare. What the German standard for cooking meat? Do Germans typically boil meat?
While we're on the subject, when you refer to mint sauce, what do you have in mind?
As to cookies... that's American.
For some reason, the UK is the biggest biscuit market in the world, so we have a frightening range of biscuits, and we have incorporated biscuits from all over the world - cookies, for example. That naturally means biscuits cover an entire range of sweet and savoury as well.
Cookies are not at the top of the biscuit list for Britons, however. And they do fall at the sweet end of the scale. I'm very fond of oatcakes. There's a Welsh style of oatcake that is made with laverbread and oats (laver is a native seaweed that is closely related to the Japanese seaweed, nori).
Our cooking habits are only now recovering. Look at how badly our varieties of beer were hit, too. And, cheeses, too, were hit. Hard. Lots of old recipes died for over 50 years and are only just coming back, now there is a market for them.
This is very true. One of the reasons why some of our chefs are household names is because they had to pioneer the restoration of British food and cooking due to the long-term damage rationing has done.
Some, like seafood cuisine, have never recovered (although some of our chefs are trying to change that). We had a reputation for being seafood eaters that would rival some Asian countries, but that was destroyed during the war and rationing that followed. Remnants of it do survive in Wales, Cornwall and London.
edited 7th Apr '18 11:30:50 AM by Wyldchyld
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Oh, bother.
I keep forgetting that in the UK, just being in Parliament doesn't actually mean you're officially part of the government.
All this "shadow" cabinet stuff is just weird.
Disgusted, but not surprised
Figure of Hourai
You forgot the fish in fish and chips for seafood that survived. :P
It's just a shame that the profession of "going round to pubs with a basket of easily-eaten seafood" has died out entirely. Prawns, mussels, cockles... I remember a guy who used to do it when I was younger.
Well, it has benefits. After an election, if the government changes, the Opposition already has every cabinet position filled from the get-go and can more or less seamlessly take over. As opposed to, say, the US having up to a year-long dead period in a presidency and months taken to change things around and even more time spent filling posts.
Oh, bother.
I just think that if you're in a position where you have the responsibility of voting on actual laws as a representative of your people, you're part of the government.
Disgusted, but not surprised
Figure of Hourai
Yes and no. They're part of parliament and they have influence over the legislative process. They aren't part of the government, as they have no say in actually governing anything. That is the important part: they do not govern and do not have influence in foreign affairs and therefore it is not relevant what views they hold.
The actual responsibilities of government come down to the Cabinet and the civil service.
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Oh, bother.
It kind of sounds like what you guys call the government is what the USA calls its executive branch.
Yeah I'm curious also to what's so bad about our meat pies or roast dinner.
That and I really like a full English.
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran