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...

Spoiler

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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

[Prime32]

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

You're right, packing sausage into intestines is much better than packing haggis into stomachs. And "finely ground" depends on where you get it.

Just pointing out - we also use three-pronged plugs and drive on the left over here. But who cares, most people don't realise we're a separate country.

[KuReshtin]

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.

Doesn't actually happen as often as you seem to think.

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.

It's actually not really bad. It took me about 15 minutes to get accustomed to driving a car with the steering wheel on the right side.

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

I've seen lots of times when pressing the button at a zebra crossing have turned the lights straight away.
It's got to do with the fact that the priorities for the zebra crossings are that before the lights change, they'll let the cars go through and wait until there's a break in the traffic. If there's no break in traffic, it'll change after a little while anyway, but it's just a priorities thing.
It might differ slighty from what you're used to, but it's something to get used to.
Not worth getting riled up about.

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.

That's just not true. There are only a few parts that are different from a right-hand drive car compared to a left-hand drive car.
When I moved over here, I didn't have to completely re-learn everything I knew because the car had the steering wheel on the other side from what I was used to.

When it comes to the comment about importing bus drivers, I'm pretty sure that even if you have a bus licence from Portugal, or Poland, or France, or the UK, you'd still need to retake the licence in Sweden before you'd be able to get a job as a bus driver.
Traffic laws differ enough between countries that you need to get a local drivers licence for you to be able to get acquainted with the local laws before you can get a job as a professional driver.

Ech, it's also much more finely ground, isn't packed in stomach, and cooked/smoked/baked/spiced for longer.

More finely ground? depends very much on the type of sausage.
Not packed in stomach? True, but traditionally, sausages are packed in the lower intestines of pigs.
Cooked/spiced/baked/smoked longer? Again, depends entirely on the different types of sausage we're talking about.

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

There is no 'replacement' for haggis.

[LightsOnNo1Home]

There is no 'replacement' for haggis.

This, this a thousand times this. Besides, it's highly unlikely that you will find it in a genuine sheeps stomach these days. Mostly the bag is going to be synthetic.

Irbis, you sound like you're feeling a little homesick though, which is understandable. To be fair, Paisley is not the most scenic part of this place, and it reckon it could seem quite oppressive having just landed in it like this.

You should totally take the time to travel around the place a bit if you get the opportunity. There's a lot of places worth visiting within an hour of Glasgow by train (not least of all Largs. I'm jealous by the way Ku, of you living there. I try to get down to the coast as often as possible and I love Largs and Millport, but I can't afford to move there)

Anyway tourism ambassador crap aside, I've been a resident of central Scotland all my life, so if you need info about stuff Irbis, feel free to ask, and I will do my best to answer.

[factotum]

|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.

You appear to be under the impression that BS1363 plugs are only used in the UK. According to Wikipedia there are quite a number of countries that use it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BS1363

Even if that were not the case, there are tens of millions of the things around in the UK--how is that in any way a "small scale production"?

Oh, as for the car thing, I agree with Kureshtin--the actual number of different components required on a right hand drive car as opposed to a left hand drive one is not that great. In most cases you only need to change the steering rack and the dashboard, plus switch the wipers to the other side; I wouldn't be surprised if the changes required to make a car legal on UK roads (there are rules for the colour of indicators and lights that are different from, say, the USA) cost more. Oh, and once again there are considerably more countries in the world that drive on the left than you're giving credit for, including such tiny little unimportant countries as Australia, India and Japan!

[LightsOnNo1Home]

The plug thing is easily solved, you can buy adaptors in Maplin stores for a couple of quid. (or for some reason, larger Boots pharmacy stores also tend to stock them) quick google search should show you the nearest one.

As for driving on the left, as has already been said, doesn't make that much of a difference. You do get the odd car where the conversion from left to right hand drive has been lazy (a good way of telling is if the bonnet release catch is on the passenger side) and they can be uncomfortable to drive. It's easy enough to get a decent one though (buy a Japanese car. They drive on the correct side of the road too )