Tag: UK
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Living in the UK: Things They Don’t Teach You – Part 3
Britain is a wonderful, quirky country. When I left the Netherlands in order to move to the United Kingdom over 11 years ago, I was fully prepared to getting used to eating baked beans and to finally have a go at being part of an orderly queue, but I there were a great many facets…
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Farting under the covers – How the English language is unkind to the Dutch
If you didn’t know any better after reading this article, you’d believe that the British harbour a particular dislike towards the Dutch. I must admit that after living in the UK for 11+ years, I have never encountered such sentiments among the British. Quite the contrary, I’ve met a great deal of Britons over the…
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The English Lesson You Never Had
Are you a foreign national and you have a decent English vocabulary? Good. Do you have a good understanding of English grammar and do you shudder at seeing the words ‘should of’ appear together in a sentence? Good. This means that you’re fluent in English, right? Wrong. A common mistake is to assume that knowing…
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British Tabloids (are) For Dummies
“Ghost of Jacko bummed my monkey”, “Is THIS the most dangerous chicken in Britain?” and “The EU wants to ban our kettles”. These are ridiculous headlines that I’ve made up, but they could have been genuine tabloid headlines. Actually, one of them is real, but the other two could have been real. Well, in the…
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Living in the UK: Things they don’t teach you – Part 2
Britain is a wonderful country where some wonderfully strange observations can be made. However, nobody will teach you any of these things when you move to the UK; it is up to you as the ‘outsider’ to find out about all of these remarkable things by yourself. Below is Part 2 of the observations that…
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“It’s First Past The Post wot done it”
The British electoral system is rather useless, but if you believe its proponents this system is keeping a second Hitler from seizing power (yes, really). But as it often happens when it comes to Hitler: as soon as you need him to get your point across, you may as well give up. For whoever is…
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The Prophecy about One Fat Englishman
Let’s face it. Some books are just profoundly shit. Many people have the common sense to stop reading books they have identified as such and they will divert their attention to a different book instead – one that they might enjoy. For better or worse, I don’t do that. Once I’ve committed to a book,…
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Living in the UK: things they don’t teach you – Part 1
Citizenship tests are useless. I tried to answer the questions of a Dutch citizenship test online once for a bit of a laugh. It turns out that I don’t know enough to function as a citizen in my country of birth. For instance, I had never heard of the Dutch word for ‘checkout divider’ before,…
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Guaranteed job security? Why not consider a career in British politics?
Job security is a rare commodity these days. An increasing number of people are lumbered with zero-hour contracts or are pressed into fake self-employment, and many ‘business-minded’ people would certainly love it if it became easier to sack employees. Add the Covid-pandemic to the mix and voila: a perfect storm. But fear not, there’s still a sector in which…
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Gegarandeerde Baanzekerheid? Ga de Britse politiek in!
Baanzekerheid is tegenwoordig ver te zoeken. Steeds meer mensen worden opgezadeld met een nulurencontract of constructie van schijnzelfstandigheid, en de woorden ‘versoepeling van het ontslagrecht’ doet menig ‘ondernemingsgezind’ hart sneller kloppen. Tel daar de coronacrisis nog eens bovenop en de ontslagen die daar nog bij komen kijken, en dat geeft op het eerste gezicht genoeg…
The Dunglishman 