You are not so great, Britain. Chapter 8: Trains, buses and everything.

One of Elisa’s English language students said that “Britain is the country where everything is organized and buses are always on time”. Oh, how wrong she was. With the bus and rail strikers, the government accuses trade union leaders for “making the public transport unreliable”. But perhaps they should go on strike, because it can […]

You are not so great Britain. Chapter 7: British Universities. Are they really so good?

  We invited professor Jan Čulík, lecturer in Czech from the school of modern languages and cultures at Glasgow University today. We decided to ask him if the British universities, so famous around the world for their teaching quality, are really as good as their places in the rankings show. Turns out, not everything is […]

You are not so great Britain. Chapter 5: British bureaocracy.

This week Elisa and Tomasz discuss why British bureaucracy is so dysfunctional and what can be done to improve users’ experience in contact with the government, banks, and other institutions. To illustrate problems when talking to automatic voice recognition systems, we used a fragment of a clip from a TV show Burnistoun: https://youtu.be/HbDnxzrbxn4 Related posts: […]

You are not so great Britain. Chapter 4: Home, sweet home. Tiny, mouldy home.

Britons are pround of being one of the richest economy. But are standards of living really that great? We lived in a few countries between us, and we can’t remember topics like “mould”, “leaving rooms unheated to save money”, “single glazing windows” and “struggling to fit double bed into the bedroom” to be topics of […]

You are not so great, Britain. Chapter 3: Britain is a world-leading democracy. Or is it?

Britain is very proud of its democracy. You can often hear soundbites like “world-leading”, “well-established” or “historic”. Sure, Magna Carta and other things were good – for their time. But it’s the XXI century. Is Britain’s democracy suitable for the times we live in? Can it be even considered a modern democracy at all? Related […]