Many people (but not nearly as many as I expected) were angry, annoyed or confused about yesterday’s post attacking Spain, and suggested I should write a similar list about the UK. I’m in favour of a balanced approach to life, so here we are. 10 of the things which often annoy, appall, and shock me most about the UK:

1. The number of children with guns (you don’t see that in Spain) - Some UK parents are buying body armour for their kids!!!

2. All the alcohol-fueled violence on Friday and Saturday nights (don’t see that in Spain either).

3. How obese many British teenagers are getting.

4. Overcrowded hospitals that leave patients in beds in hospital corridors and people seeking important operations abroad.

5. CCTV everywhere - Big brother is watching you… there are far more cameras in the UK than in the rest of Europe or the US, and I think it installs more civic fear than confidence.

6. How run-down a lot of inner cities look (based on a recent drive through various parts of North London).

7. The government sucking up to American foreign policy instead of having the balls to do what’s right, and what the population wants… but I guess that’s the same everywhere. How long before Gordon Brown joins Bush on the march into Iran?

8. A general degradation of morals amongst children - just listen to British kids talking next time you are on a train or a bus - it’s like a scene from The Clockwork Orange (maybe the whole country is becoming like a scene from A Clockwork Orange… or 1984 - see point 5).

9. The sensationalist press - e.g. treatment of Madeleine McCann case.

10. A Superior, island mentality that means most Brits still talk about ‘Europe’ (aka ‘The continent’) as if it had nothing to do with the UK. The decline of language teaching in schools is not going to help…

I could go on, but frankly there’s been enough negativity on this blog for one week. I adore Spain and the Spanish and I love the UK and the British. The point is that both have their faults. Unfortunately pointing these out makes some people uncomfortable and for that I apologise - it gives me no pleasure to make people angry. Have a good weekend

See also: - The 10 BEST things about the UK

Comment of the week:

Ben - aren’t you spending a little too much time on this web-site hobby of yours? Shouldn’t you be relaxing somewhere with a recently-emptied six-pack of once-cold beer at your feet and a guitar in your hands?

Which got me thinking: yes, I wish I’d spent at least a couple of hours yesterday enjoying my guitar instead of staring at this piece of glass we call a monitor and the (admittedly quite interesting) totally 2D world it presents.

Let’s follow that thought for a moment:

Most of us spend most of our days staring at a dynamically shifting piece of glass.

Of course, it gives us news, correspondence, a wealth of information beyond our great-grandparents’ wildest dreams, even fun stuff like naked celebrities and this incredible website.

But do the math: for an 8 hour working day (forgetting leisure time on the net) that’s 40 hours a week screen time, 2000 hours a year, 90,000 hours in a typical 45 year working lifetime… which corresponds back to a total 10.27 years of our life, minimum, staring fixedly at a piece of glass.

What would our great-grandparents have made of that?

OK, so this only really affects people that work with a computer - nurses, gardeners, truck drivers, teachers, postmen etc all largely escape the screen - but not for long, soon technology will probably find better ways to get them staring at screens too.

I think a brighter future lies in areas like podcasting, that use the same technology that delivers pixels to glass (i.e. the internet), to put the interesting stuff in our pocket, giving us the chance to get away from the screen and into the garden or park, to have an enhanced, 3D, multi-sensual and simultaneous knowledge/life experience, instead of waring our eyes out and narrowing our perceptions down to this 17″ (insert your monitor size) window on the world.

So here’s hoping that technology and the net works harder on giving us back our 3D life, focusing less on sucking us in and more on spitting us back out into the world, so I for one can spend more time in the great outdoors with a podcast, or with that six pack and my guitar.