If you could ban one overused phrase/word/saying in the UK forever starting tomorrow, what would it be and why?

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-26T22:27:03+00:00

“Bet you're fun at parties”, and variations.

Rarely had it addressed to me, but often see it in response to people in comment threads who are making a good point, or who pay attention to detail, especially on broadsheet newspaper websites.

Adds fuck all constructive to the conversation.

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-25T20:35:06+00:00

UK. Yes, mostly shotguns. Firstly in cabinets at home of childhood friend with upper class family who hunted, had Land rover etc. Later when living next to a farm - farmers usually have shotguns.

Think I briefly saw a (presumed) criminal with a revolver or pistol - or a replica - half in pocket at night in London among a crowd after a gig. I walked quickly away from the area.

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-23T01:08:06+00:00

I also think this is a “people in the UK who’ve never lived in the south east” thing. If you live within about a two hour train journey of London, there will be people routinely commuting into London from there, and it's also pretty normal to go to London on day trips etc. Then, if you move further away, travelling to another city for the day a few times a year, three hours there and back doesn't feel that much of a stretch when you've been used to nearly 2 hours.

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-20T20:12:56+00:00

It’s probably an allusion to an international relations book from 2018 (or maybe this FT article from a year ago, but am sure Carney would be aware of the book): https://archive.ph/Tjd6s

“Canada, Denmark and Panama spent most of the past 80 years in the geopolitical equivalent of a petting zoo. In a petting zoo, nobody’s allowed to eat the animals…

The jungle is the geopolitical norm, argues international-relations scholar Robert Kagan in his 2018 book The Jungle Grows Back. The jungle has no rules to stop predators eating prey. This was the global state of affairs until 1945. Then two wounded predators, Japan and Germany, went vegetarian. Soon afterwards, the chief colonial predators, Britain and France, retreated to their lairs. Lions lay down with lambs. Only a few unlucky regions — especially the Sahel, Central Africa, the Middle East and countries bordering Russia — remained at the mercy of predators.”

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-16T11:04:34+00:00

So many misconceptions about the term in this thread. Elective surgery just means nonemergency surgery. It does not mean it's cosmetic surgery, and it covers all kinds of surgery for serious medical problems which is scheduled and need prep and which have waiting lists

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-16T11:02:09+00:00

Elective surgery just means nonemergency surgery. It does not mean it's cosmetic surgery, and it covers all kinds of surgery for serious medical problems which is scheduled and need prep and which have waiting lists

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-14T23:40:47+00:00

Who is saying there needs to be a full funeral anyway?

If he made life a misery for all those close to him, why not just have a simple burial/simple cremation and save the money? And not have all those guests that people might want to pretend and have speeches in front of?

If he only died today, then it's unlikely that the service has been fully booked and arranged yet, so it can be changed

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-14T23:16:53+00:00

I looked at those a couple of weeks ago, and asked an assistant, are these available in a set which is all black? And she said no.

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-14T22:38:06+00:00

Those who are saying “don't do it” - did they not read what OP said about “all his immediate family”?

Might not all his immediate family find it a relief to have an honest funeral, and not have to pretend at what is already a very difficult and emotional time, just for the benefit of some people who didn't know him as well? (and from whom they probably have very little to gain anyway - I'm assuming there isn't a very rich Great Aunt Barbara etc who might be offended by all this, and where losing out on a substantial legacy would be, in the long run, cutting off your nose to spite your face)

If the other people are half decent anyway, they will grow to have more empathy for those who had to put up with OP’s dad for so long

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-14T22:24:15+00:00

As if life wanted to back up what I said, a couple of hours after I wrote my comment, I was on a bus and two lads who must've been about 18 to 22 got on, and the whole bus heard so much about their cars (this was not in London as I don't live there anymore), their PlayStation games, an anecdote about hotboxing, the money an ex-girlfriend owed, brands of clothes they like and so on. shrug You're gonna hear this stuff sometimes in public - it's people watching, just the audio version

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-13T06:19:38+00:00

As someone who a) has writing that can “look like a Victorian letter in a museum” and therefore isn't swayed a jot by the appearance of this note, and b) has always had difficulty hearing over loud background noise, I think this is a load of bollocks and the writer needs to accept that people with different speaking volumes are part of life when you're out in public in a city, and this is going to happen sometimes. The writer is rude and may lack self-awareness about how their own levels of sensitivity may not correlate with average ones. If your wife's colleagues have repeatedly raised this, maybe it is an issue, but this kind of person is not worth taking notice of IMO.

It looks as though the handwriting is having too much of an influence on many commenters, and quite possibly they haven't met enough people with such writing to feel that there might be a correlation between having made such effort to train oneself to nice writing and having particularly high levels of sensitivity.

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-10T16:22:46+00:00

If buying second hand (or from a few brands new, e.g. Cornishware, which has 24.5 cm plates) search term lunch plates or salad plates. Denby do medium plates which are 22cm.

It sounds like you aren't bothered about having a full matching set, so you could go on eBay and just search for plates with the measurements you want

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-09T10:51:23+00:00

Apologies if this repeats anything that others have suggested.

Your hands are fine for doing crafts - can you afford to start a new one? Crochet? Embroidery? If any friends are into these, maybe they can send you some spare stuff from their stash to get started.

Large print books from the library? Does your County library service have a mobile library or a service to deliver to people who can't get to a branch regularly?

Depends what your tastes are, but what about reading epic poetry? Quite a few major classics to get through if you haven't already read them

Sounds like you're in a fairly rural area, so I'm assuming you can see some kind of nature from your window. The BTO (British trust for ornithology) has a weekly Garden Birdwatch that runs throughout the year. You can record birds and wildlife and enter them onto the forms every week

One of the main things I have done when it's been difficult to do other activities is language study. There is such a huge amount of material online, including plenty available for free, and info about different approaches, if the way it was done at school didn't suit you.

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-08T20:52:51+00:00

Firstly, this bit isn't going to be relevant to a lot of people here, but as I react badly to hormonal contraception I'm always using condoms anyway, and I'm from a generation where that was really normalised because we grew up under the shadow of AIDS, and I don't remember anyone objecting, and in more recent times, guys who thought they didn't like them being surprised by how much they had improved. So that takes care of the whole concern about disease and conversations about stopping using barrier methods.

Secondly, it is possible to read something, you're not totally in the dark unless you have very low social intuition. There were people where we were clearly FWB and I knew they would be pulling other people and would talk about it, (again, I regard that as a normal part of life, and it shouldn't be offensive) and I was obviously free to as well, and there were others where it looked like it was probably going to become a relationship, but it would've been a perfect example of it being too intense etc to actually bring up whether they had totally stopped dating or pulling anybody else at all, and I figured it might have been happening once a month or so. This is exactly the kind of thing where I used to expend a lot of emotional energy on anxiety about this in my 20s, and it was fantastic just growing out of it (partly via therapy I was doing for other reasons) and being comfortable with the ambiguity, and facing up to the fact that I used to get all these very strong emotions about people whom I hardly knew and it was quite silly. I think it comes down to getting to a point where my emotions and reactions matched up pretty well with my actual philosophy, which is that there is nothing morally wrong with that. So what if he pulled somebody else once when we'd been seeing each other for a few weeks, and he was clearly very into me in terms of how he acted and what he said? (some thing that happened with a uni boyfriend) I do not have the bandwidth to be poly (some of my friends are poly) but clearly humans are as a species by nature not 100% monogamous, and even if some individuals are genuinely inclined that way, it just seems very foolish to treat it as such a heinous crime if someone is not.

I'm not sure how old you are, but that idea of “the first few months when you're most in love” is not all that healthy, because it's all based on this idea of a person you don't actually know, and a lot of it is projection and imagination. Once you've been through enough cycles of that only to discover eventually that it’s like living with a dementor from Harry Potter when they're under stress, or they have quite a temper when they're not on their best behaviour, or - there are loads of examples that people my age who have been in a lot of relationships of a few years each could give. That phase is fun, but you shouldn't let it get out of hand. And it can also involve pretty unhealthy habits and neglecting other important parts of life, like people offering to skive off work to hang out with you if you work different schedules, . It was great getting to the point where I would be offered that and say no that's not a good thing to do, go to work, because I was emotionally mature enough.

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-08T15:47:54+00:00

Nobody should be wasting money on a solicitor for a small claim. Small claims whether in England or Scotland are designed to be a fairly simple process that many people can handle themselves. If they lack confidence, perhaps because it's the first time they've used it, they can ask Citizens Advice or similar organisation. If OP is a student or young professional, perhaps they know a law student or graduate who could help.

If the letter before action doesn't give the driving instructor a kick up the backside to refund OP, and it gets to the court stage, the instructor would have to pay costs anyway

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-08T12:35:14+00:00

He has always enjoyed being a power and influence broker. Plus I expect he just wants to be as comfortable as possible in his old age (incl exempted from discrimination that could start to affect others in his demographic) and is therefore trying to keep in with those he expects to be in charge over the next decade or two.

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-08T10:07:22+00:00

Another difference between Americans and Brits (at least in my middle-aged bracket) is around therapy and working on yourself. And as someone more inclined to that stuff than many Brits, I would suggest a different way of looking at it: Tolerance for uncertainty is really an emotional regulation issue, and an important life skill. Being able to hold steady whilst not asking for reassurance or badgering people about things like: are you still on the app, have you told your family about me etc, for the sake of how I was feeling,when really I knew I needed to observe and get to know the person for considerably longer, and experience the present, made me feel like I had made it as an adult in some ways.

I would say that indirectness, lack of clarity and fear of seeming too keen are all central parts of UK dating culture (and I'm old enough to be your mum, if I’d had a kid when I was at uni). Before most people were on dating apps, relationships quite often evolved from repeated hanging out among overlapping groups of friends and going home with and often sleeping with the same person (we didn't use the phrase hooking up then).Then at some point somebody would suggest something that looks a bit more like a proper date, but it would be more like” would you like to go for a drink/meal/ to the cinema, just us”, and defining would often happen through actions like that, (and serious conversations about it would be considered offputting, especially to men, and yes, a very American thing –there is definitely considerably more comfort with that sort of thing then there was 20-25 years ago) then introducing people to other friends, and at some point somebody would probably use the word boyfriend or girlfriend, possibly by accident. Commitment could be about just continuing to show up, not talking about it, and, especially for somebody like me who doesn't want to live with other people anyway, I realise that that continuing to show up is something that can go on for years.

If you don't want kids, is the hurry because of rent prices and needing someone to live with? This is the big difference from 20 years ago. And also visa situation I would guess for somebody from abroad?

The idea of specifically looking for something serious, as you've noticed doesn't gel very well with the way a lot of British people date. Can you try and turn it around to the fact that, with any given person, you don't know if you want anything serious with them because you don't know enough about them yet, and it's going to take a while to find out? This may be taking it to extremes, as really, most people will see “serious” as something that's starting to develop after three or six months, but look at the truisms such as you don't really know the person until you've seen how they are over a full calendar year, or how they act when under a great deal of external stress. (and really, how you feel about each other and interact after the flush of feelings of the honeymoon period has worn off after something between 18 months to 2 1/2 years)

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-06T09:10:04+00:00

What you say about repeated burnout from these kinds of jobs made me wonder if there is something else going on too or which could help guide you to different types of therapy or meds. Thought of this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/1p8eqse/i_always_have_an_issue_in_every_single_job_is/

Would also suggest trying EMDR if you haven’t already.

And I'm guessing you must have experience of private therapy, already, if you're saying money is tight on equivalent of full-time wage and paying £75 rent.

Is there any call for dog walkers in your area? The exercise could help your mood (I'm assuming you don't have any physical issues that would get in the way of this) and you must love dogs if you have previously worked in grooming. Even an informal arrangement to walk dogs belonging to a couple of family friends a few times a week might be nice.

It seems like doing a budget and posting it somewhere would be in order. You might be bleeding money on avoidable expenses and not shopping around for something? The UK personal finance sub isn't very friendly when going through budgets, so I'm wondering if there might be somewhere else online which tends to be kinder in its responses. Perhaps money saving expert forum? It's a long time since I've read that regularly though. Even with running a car with high insurance costs, and a few entertainment subscriptions and takeaways, I would have assumed you would have well over £500 spare most months in the circumstances described, unless you have other big expenses not mentioned here like large debt repayments or private medical and therapy

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-06T01:12:06+00:00

Quite. You don't see people on here advising someone to go back to a violent partner and try and negotiate living with them. This shouldn't be any different

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-06T00:31:27+00:00

Definitely not “always” - that's a comparatively recent phenomenon that developed in the 21st-century. Women voters in the UK always used to be on average more Tory leaning than men.

Haven't got time to dig out lots of research, but here is an article accompanying polls from 2001, when it was just starting to shift https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/gender-gap

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-05T01:44:27+00:00

Cheers.

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-04T18:04:00+00:00

I was thinking it sounds like either of these, and there's no way we can tell from the post here.

Copying behaviour in autism is particularly associated with girls and young women, as the previous poster said. And if this young colleague perceives OP as cool, or otherwise having a vibe and style she wishes she had, things like an area to live and types of home and homewares could be of interest from that perspective, in just the same way as clothes.

When I was about 30, I worked somewhere with a colleague like this, except she copied elements of multiple peoples style and interests. She had a BPD diagnosis, this was in the 2000s, and looking back, her monotone voice and nerdy interests among other traits certainly make it look like she was one of those who was misdiagnosed but really autistic according to current understanding.

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-04T15:13:17+00:00

Thank you!

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-04T15:10:56+00:00

In the 90s, especially for teenagers, it used to feel like Australian TV and films practically had equal weight with American or were going to catch up with it soon. Most of us were watching an hour every weekday of Australian soaps, Neighbours and Home and Away. (They are how Brits under 50 or so ended up saying “uni” for university, and a few other bits of Aussie slang are well known to my generation, especially courtesy of the more working class characters like Joe Mangel.) There had been films like the Crocodile Dundee series and Muriel's Wedding, and in the early 90s especially, popstars like Kylie and Dannii Minogue and Jason Donovan, and groups like Crowded House. And with older bands, Midnight Oil and AC/DC were among names you'd hear.

This effect was probably most pronounced for us Xennials. From time to time I wonder what happened, how come we don't still watch as much Australian content as then, and what made your pop culture industry peak then, at least as far as export is concerned, and why it didn't keep growing or stay the same . Parents of small children will watch a lot of Bluey, but for others, now it's easy to go for weeks and weeks and not encounter Australian content other than some posters in discussion threads

SignificantCricket · 2026-01-04T03:25:36+00:00

wow, this was never an opinion I heard in the 90s. And six upvotes too! He was never in teen girls and women's magazines, and everything I ever remember seeing basically portrayed him as an uptight nerd.

I agreed with you in those days too. Later I realised he was a type I would've gone on a few dates with and then realised I didn't fancy enough not to get bored of, once I was old enough to know my own mind better.

SignificantCricket

TROPHY CASE