I have never had to apologise for my Head of State or Prime Minister. (Yet!)
I have never seen anyone in the street and felt that I should give them money for their healthcare.
I have rarely met an American in Great Britain, even having worked for IBM for 20 years. (I have worked with thousands of people and regularly encounter many varied nationalities, yet Americans are conspicuous by their absence. I would like to meet more. I have encountered 1 American in the UK during the last ten years. I have met several Icelandic people, less than 350,000 of those and someone from Belize, just this past weekend.)
I have never felt the need to reassure myself of how free I am and how much better this country is than any other. Nor do I know anyone else who would do this. They would get short shrift if they did.
Go to sleep at night, never having to prepare for, or to actively worry about an armed, or unarmed intruder coming into our house and harming my wife or our two young boys. We live in a very rural area. Yes, we lock the doors. No, we do not keep cricket bats or other weapons close to hand. Just talking about it makes me feel more paranoid and think that perhaps we should. (We all know that it can happen, yet I have never met anyone personally that has had this happen to them. Firearms were used in 0.4% of crimes last year.)
I have only ever seen armed police officers at the airport, walking in pairs. That always seems like a major 'wow' event to me.
I would have to justify, to the police, why I need a rifle or shot-gun. I can never own a pistol (our Olympic pistols teams have to practice away from these shores) and we will never be able to buy a weapon, under any circumstances, such as a Barrett 0.50 that could take down an airliner. Even in America, you might need a good reason?
From my perspective, a lot of the differences in culture and what you can do would appear to be about the two different views on guns, the need for them and the perceived threat.
In different regions and in towns, of course there will be different experiences, these are just mine of living Great Britain. (Oh look! I have reminded myself of how great we are. Sorry about that. Absolutely dreadful behaviour, terrible.)
Read other answers by Tim Leonard on Quora:
- What do British people think about Corbyn's plan for Falklands?
- How do British people feel about World War II?
from Quora http://ift.tt/2lVtPob
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