That being said, here are some more differences that have come to our attention as Denise and I continue our quest to find out what it means to be Scottish.
Starting out small, we must look at the bread twist-tie situation. Sorry to say that they are definitely Doing it Wrong here. The bread comes with a bit of tape wrapped back onto itself. I believe this tape is meant to be peeled apart and used again, as it is of a hearty variety of tape, and I have seen it done on other peoples' loaves of bread. However, I have neither the dexterity, nor the patience, to work with such a system.
All I ever end up with is a botched up piece of tape and a slightly messed up bit of plastic bread bag. I swirl the bread, wrap it under, and let the gravity of the bread itself work to keep the loaf fresh. A bit barbaric, I know, but this tape use idea is beyond the pale.
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| I had to stretch out and nearly ruin the plastic just to get the tape off and get to the bread! |
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| What can a sane person possibly do with this? |
I'm hungry when I'm opening bread, I can't be fussing with cantankerous tape situations.
As is often the case every yin has a yang. Just recently, when looking for an envelop in the faculty office, I came across a stack of envelopes that had an odd little flap on the bottom of the opening.
Upon flipping the folded-over part up, I felt a glue like substance below it. The same glue like substance is also found in the traditional place at the top of the folding-over part of an envelop. Could it be? I tried just a little corner of it - good gravy! It is...it's a no-lick stick! Can you say sliced bread?! Hay-ooooo! I have seen the no-lick in the States, but it includes a pesky peal-off piece that has to be thrown in the recycling bin, so this is a bit better, not having to decide what to do with that peeled off part.
Moving on, holidays are a big part of any culture, and so far we have really enjoyed the offerings. It was just Guy Fawkes Day which includes a lot of bonfires and fireworks - there is less burning effigies of the Pope now than there used to be and it is now known as "Bonfire night" vs. what started out being "Gunpowder Treason Day" so much of the religious overtone is less emphasized. Perhaps you'll recognize "Remember, Remember the 5th of November" and all that. See below for more on this specifically British celebration:
http://www.bonfirenight.net/index.php
Aside from Halloween and Bonfire Night however, there is one holiday has been looming large since we arrived here in August: Christmas.
It must gonna be a pretty big deal because the stores have had the x-mas stuff out, and the restaurants have been encouraging people to "book" a Christmas Dinner with them for three months now, and there's still two months to go! Now, I understand that many commercial enterprises count on a boost during the Christmas season to make the year turn out in the black, but this is getting out of control.
Perhaps it is because there is no Thanksgiving between Halloween and Christmas, but still, the marketing has been at full throat since September 1st.
Yes, signs everywhere. Now how about some other signage? The most enjoyable signs have been the red and white ones. These are usually a "heads-up" type of sign alerting drivers and walkers to watch out for one thing or another, often signifying the type of person or people drivers should watch out for. They are meant to be self explanatory - see what you think:
There have also been some signs that leave one thinking a bit...
There was one sign that I saw while driving down a road at 60 miles per hour that read, "On-coming traffic is in the middle of the road" What the heck?! I kept driving, cautiously, but didn't stop for a picture.
There is a national effort to Recycle here that is similar to the one I see in Wisconsin. Each home has little buckets to put recyclables into. One feature that I would like to see added to our system that they use here is the "little shower cap" for each bucket, attached to the bucket itself with a bit of bungee, so that things don't get blown around or filled with water. It is always blowing or raining or both here, so I guess this feature was obvious:
The recycling centers are located at major grocery store centers throughout the community, so that when you are done with the container, you bring it back to where you got it - it seems to work pretty well. Drop off the empties, go and get full containers.
Local convenience stores (like our KwikTrips) have a nice way to collect all the used batteries to keep them out of the landfill:
Now, let's go to the grocery store, shall we? This is what my sisters really want to see anyway.
In general they are very much like our own grocery stores. Giant and crowded. Food from all over the world, over packaged and full of preservatives and genetically modified - perfect, yum-yum. They do have some organic selections, and they do promote items that are "Grown in Scotland." The latter is mostly Brussel Sprouts and Potatoes. The Scotland meat, however, is all grass fed. Corn does not grow well in this climate, so they don't waste it on the animals. This is why one sees sheep and cattle on every little patch of grass possible.
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| Sheep grazing on recently havested wheat field between two highways |
But I digress. Back to the store and my favorite part: the trolley. Yes, they call them "trolleys" not "carts." Fine. We shop at The Tesco, which is an upper-middle level grocery store. There are other chains that are of lower and higher quality, and the prices are reflective of the quality of the food - like ours at home are too. The trolley's at Tesco are of high quality, which, being the one who works the cart while Denise courageously, tries to find food that is organic, local, and non-GMO, I need a good cart to dodge and weave with.
The best part about these carts is that all four wheels spin 360. The carts that I have worked with in the states only have the front two wheels turn 360, which leaves the cart person lifting the back of the cart up to make lateral moves in tight spots. As you will see below, these Tesco beauties turn on a dime!
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| Built for Speed and Maneuverability |
One more note on the trolley, because they have invested so much research and development into this high quality food conveyance, the trolleys are rigged with electronic theft control - yea, Wow!
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| The automatic breaking system - invisible fencing for your grocery cart?! Yes. |
This is a long way to go for a high-qually trolley, but worth it to me, the follower.
Also, in the parking lots of the grocery, they have included a pedestrian lane down the middle of the parking stalls - sweet. The trip is less stressful when not dodging cars.
A definite, Doing it Right at the stores is that the check-out ladies (they're all ladies, so I'm not going to write "check-out persons") get to SIT! What a concept. In talking with the girl who agreed to have her picture taken, she said that sometimes she sits, and sometimes she stands. Why not? I did not see any losses in the performance of sliding packages over a scanner due to the scanner being in the sitting position.
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| Our Groceries: two full bags usually runs around 35-40 British Sterling Pounds, which equals about $60 US dollars. |
I am used to the feeling of being watched here as one is almost always sure to be on some sort of camera. There is prevalent use of CCTV cameras here, and it's not just me being paranoid. Check out the following quote from the The Scottish Sun newspaper:
SCOTLAND has become a 'Big Brother' state with record numbers of spy cams watching our every move up to 300 times a day.
The number of hi-tech CCTV cameras fitted by councils has almost DOUBLED in the last six years. And, incredibly, that means we have more electronic spies than Dublin, San Francisco, Boston and Johannesburg COMBINED.A special Scottish Sun investigation shows hard-up local authorities have increased the number of public CCTV cameras and mobile camera vans from 1,269 in 2003 to 2,235.
And councils here have coughed up for 253 of those cameras this year alone.
It means Scotland, with a population of just 5.1million people, now has ten times more cameras than Johannesburg — one of the most violent cities in the world — which has 214 cameras and a population of just under four million people.
Thousands of hidden lenses record our images while we shop, wait for a taxi or even go for a quiet stroll in a public park with our kids.
Scots councils and police forces have shelled out over £4million between them to maintain the costly cameras.
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/2677993/Shocking-rise-in-the-use-of-CCTV-cameras-in-Scotland.html#ixzz1d0gzRQ7J
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| Eye in the Sky |
This system of crime prevention, while I get it, I don't like. It's creepy and makes me feel less free.
However, there does seem to be freedom here in other ways. There is the "Right to Roam Responsibly Act" (see detail below). This law has been great for a rambler, and taker of short cuts, like me.
The Countryside & Rights of Way Act 2000 (CROW) sets out that people shall have the ‘right to roam’ responsibly on foot over the open wild uncultivated mountain, moor, heath, and down of Great Britan subject to certain restrictions. The Countryside Agency and Ordnance Survey have produced maps of the”access land” which came into legal force on 14th December 2004.
Certain types of land are ‘excepted land’ and will not be access land:
- land covered by buildings and their curtilage (surroundings)
- land within 20 metres of any building
- land used as a park or garden
- mines and quarries
- railways
- golf courses, racecourses, aerodromes
- land around water, sewerage, electricity and communications works
- land covered by stock pens
- racehorse gallops
One common manifestation of this expectation of one's ability to get from "A to B" is the inclusion of a step-over on most fences. It is nice not to have to rip one's shirt on barbed wire when crossing a field.
Certainly, there is more.
I could get into the right and wrong of Scotland's ruling SNP party's plan to develop and invest in renewable energy vs. investing in new nuclear plants, or it's plan to leave Great Britain and become it's own country by 2014. This is an idea that has been in the works since the 1940's - no sense rushing. Some would argue that it has taken so long because England is stalling, waiting for the oil in the North Sea to run out first. Others would point back to 1707 when the Union began as the origins of this movement. The SNP has come to power largely on the promise of Independence, but many surveys show that a majority do not back the move.
Again, I digress. Such topics are more complex than the proper way to fry an egg, so I will leave it to the Scottish to decide what Scotland is.
I am simply a humble visitor, making observations and appreciating their open lands for walking and excellent construction of grocery trolleys.
Four wheels on a shopping trolley that turn...I want to go to there. Totally sweet cart, oh, um, I mean trolley. Lots of doing it right there in Scotland. However, I think you could add putting all their fruits and vegggies in plastic to the doing it wrong category. Bananas in plastic-ouch! I love the trolley lane down the middle of the cars, quite a committment for such a small country. How does the bravehearted William Wallace fit into the whole, "We don't want to be British, damn it," thing? Or should I not have said that as I may be on spy cam? Excellent reporting...a bit more on the food please.
ReplyDeleteYes, too much packaging, but there are rules about that. One aspect of the food that I was going to include, but was already getting off the point too much as it was, is that the candy does not have artifical coloring or flavoring.
ReplyDeleteYep, no red dye #5. They use natural food dyes. The following is an article about it from the St.Pertersburg Times:
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Leave it to the Brits to trump us, again.
Last year, the British banned the unreadable and confusing fine print in legal documents that we in the United States cling to like a comfy blanket.
Now it's artificial food dyes that for the past three decades researchers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia have linked to behavioral problems and hyperactivity in children. (Lord only knows what it's doing to adults.)
Anyway, the U.K. has banned the fake dyes and is demanding food makers use natural coloring. But here in the United States, the same manufacturers are allowed to continue selling us Yellow 5 and 6, Red 3 and 40, Blue 1 and 2, Green 3 and Orange B.
"The fact that the British government, not some fly-by-night consumer group, said get rid of it, that emboldened us," said Michael Jacobson, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C., which waved the warning flag about the dyes this month and called on the federal government to make changes.
Jacobson said U.S. companies use natural products in the U.K., while continuing to use the fake ones in the U.S. "That kind of double standard is shameful."
Thanks for the comment.
Oh, America...come on. Very interesting and more fuel for my rantings. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteFrom Dan: Laugh out loud posting Tim. Love the shopping cart video and details. Lots of fun to see your adventures across the sea.