Scotland, anyone?

[Irbis]

Quick and painless?

Plumbing work?

My parent changed taps in the kitchen and toilet four times. Took less than hour, we even did it twice ourselves.

Heck, Poland in the past 20 years changed everything, from currency (twice) to the law system, and we somehow survived the experience :P

Not in the UK, they weren't, and why would we be losing economically from driving on the left?

Simply: let's start with people from the rest of the world crashing into things in the UK, and the islanders crashing in the things in the rest of the world. Damaged cars, street lights, pedestrians and drivers requiring medical attention, doctor bills, loss of work.

I have drivers licence, but I can't even imagine how hard it is to fight your instincts and muscle memory from inside a car when I have problems simply walking, always looking in the wrong direction when trying to cross the road. Stick a wheel on the wrong side, and the reference points switch multiplying problems thousandfold.

A side rant - why are your streets so unfriendly to pedestrians? When I push the button, a horribly long amount of time passes before the damned lights change Back home, they would have switched 3-6 times in meantime. I noticed most of the natives simply piss straight at this and walk on the red lights, while I usually wait unless I'm really sure it is safe and there are no policemen around Really, for a country with such an amount of ecology initiatives thinking about 'less than 10 minutes passing before lights switch after pressing the button' would have been simple

On a plus side, most of the time drivers stop if you try to cross street without lights, but I also saw *******s without any regard for bystanders. Better overall, though.

Back to topic, there's also economic difficulties: factories having to develop two versions of the cars, out of which UK car will always be inferior due to the less attention given to small market, having to have two assembly lines, lack of opportunities to shift the stock around from UK to US/EU in case of shortages, larger stock costs, need for specialized mechanics, stiff job market (you can't import good bus drivers from Portugal, for example, without expensive training first), etc, etc. The same also concerns UK electric plugs - UK being walled off island means UK customers shoulder all the inefficiency, stiffness and small scale production costs with their own money bleeding it in a thousand different ways.

The plugs are another issue. The reason our plugs are so big and bulky is because they have to be individually fused because of the way our houses are wired. If you change the plugs to something that doesn't have a fuse then you have to rewire all the buildings in the country as well, which I don't think would be quite as quick and painless as you appear to think!

Um...

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I'd have to research this more, but European plugs have grounding (the hole on picture) as well, some even have fuses build-in in them. The grounding works the pretty much the same way, and back home, even old, soviet-era buildings have rooms individually fused, it's better in the new ones. I've looked at schematics, and the only big difference seems to be the switch on the outlet in the wall. But, it's just a switch, it can be built in in our outlets, too.

Perhaps I'm really missing something, in which case I'll do a bit more research, but your system seems only to differ cosmetically.

and the UK's plug system is "argueably" the safest as the individual fuses allow for single point failures where as a unfused system alows for the full current draw in the event of wire failure which is downright dangerous!

Ech, in 26 years in Poland, I remember only one broken device, and even in this case, all it took was to unplug it, push a button on central fuse meant for this room, as the electricity in the room went dead the instant the short-circuit happened, and that was all.

Our systems are fused, a month before arriving I changed the outlet in my wall on my own with no problems whatsoever, in 40 year old soviet era apartment block. Flip the fuse, unscrew out outlet, pin the wires, screw new one, flip fuse, done. No points of failure.

Again, I'm no expert, but I don't remember electricity accidents happening in Poland with any regularity :P

i hated my trip to america & the continent as the sockets always FZZZT when you plugged something in... something i'm just not used to and as a electrical worker something that scared the bejusus out of me!

They do?

Huh, I never noticed it. Were they of old construction? The EU ones, of course, I have no idea how it looks in the US but with their lobbies I wouldn't put anything past them

Maybe you just can't hear the sound in UK plugs due to their bulk blocking it?

I don't get what the problem is. Sausage has all that stuff plus gristle.

Ech, it's also much more finely ground, isn't packed in stomach, and cooked/smoked/baked/spiced for longer. Central Europe, the world's centre of sausaginess, yo! I have three in the fridge at this moment, fourth was for dinner.

Yup, Ku indeed suggested waiting for haggis, which is why I'm taking replacement suggestions instead

I'd be more turned off by England's jellied eels.

Ewww. We have something similar, except it's beef/vegetables in more solid jelly, and I hate it with a passion (for the 'jelly' bit). I'd have to eat a few eels first to steel myself for the jellied version