Yes, absolutely. British people don't like - fake friendliness - rushed familiarity - invasion of privacy and what Starbucks do (did?) breaks all three of these.
the ones I can remember which do are staffed almost exclusively by foreigners who might have some pronunciation issues
Depending on the region, anywhere between zero and 100% of the staff will be foreign; but I don't think that's an issue here. The non-English-named customers will be more difficult (it's easy to learn most English names if you're Polish, say. But it's not easy for anyone to learn all English, British, European, Asian, African etc names, whatever your native tongue).
The complaints in the article were never about people being too chummy or fake, or trying to talk to anyone, but mainly for thinks like Paul saying he prefers to not be called Pole
Those are quotes from Americans, the article seems to have been written prior to the introduction of the new policy into Britain.
Try googling your full name and see what happens. You'll be shocked at what you find. Ever buy a house? If so, your full name is on the internet.
With a Google Image search, I found my Facebook profile picture and my Google Plus profile picture -- but not on Facebook or Google Plus. They were on a "people directory" website that has scraped the public content of lots of social networks (etc).
Since being born, married, or dying is a matter of public record in the UK, on the same website I also found basic information about my birth (full name, place and year, the exact date is public but the website charges). Of course, it looks worse to me that it really is: there are 17 births with my name, and about eight social network profiles. Other people don't automatically know which links to which. (They also have some very out-of-date information.)
In Europe, they're being investigated as a privacy issue:
Hi-tech monitors that track households' energy consumption threaten to become a major privacy issue, according to the European watchdog in charge of protecting personal data.
The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has warned that smart meters, which must be introduced into every home in the UK within the next seven years, will be used to track much more than energy consumption unless proper safeguards are introduced.
A modern roundabout has spiralling lanes, that guide you to the correct exit. Remembering the UK drives on the left, follow a car through a right turn -- the innermost lane when entering the roundabout becomes the outermost lane when the car reaches the correct exit (or next-but-outermost, sometimes, if the outgoing exit has two lanes).
Roundabout aficionados may wish to follow the main road (above) east a little, to see this. I can see eight.
That's not just Japan. At peak times many of the central stations in London have more people waiting on the platform that can get on the next train (generally you can get on the one after, and they're every 2-5 minutes, depending on the line).
At exceptional times, like after a large event somewhere not-so-central (e.g. rock concert in a park), or a exceptionally large event somewhere central (maybe Gay Pride this weekend, which I think is the biggest event in London, although that doesn't have a "finishing time" as such) they have to restrict people from going onto platforms. You can fit about 1200 people on a tube train, but you need more space on the platform for people to be safe. (And if you have an island platform, with tracks either side, the safe capacity is lower than if one side of the platform is a wall.)
The age of criminal responsibility in the UK is 10 in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and 12 in Scotland. (There are ongoing debates over whether the age should be increased.)
However, it's still possible some younger people were identified but not prosecuted.
There's no need to go to the US -- Google and Microsoft (etc) recruit from other top universities.
While I was at Imperial College Google came about twice a year. Their London office was less than a mile away, but I'd be surprised if they didn't visit Cambridge, Oxford, UCL etc etc almost as often.
Well, you better avoid holding meetings in all of the US then since the documentation requirement was based on the federal requirement.
Avoiding holding meetings in the US is not unusual. There are plenty of more friendly countries, and unless many people live in/near the US it's a lot less hassle to hold the meeting elsewhere.
(At the last conference I went to one of the speakers was refused entry to the US, which was obviously a combination of racism and anti-immigrant panic. It was quite embarrassing for the American hosts.)
I once "accidentally ingested" a liquid in a factory. A moderately pressurised line blew, and squirted the liquid in a line over my face, including my mouth.
Fortunately, this was a food factory, and the liquid was food-grade alcohol (used as a preservative, roughly vodka strength) mixed with natural flavouring (cherry, I think). The line manager was standing opposite me, and asked me to swallow it -- had I spit it out they would have had to stop production and clean the area.
Hopefully places with actually dangerous chemicals have better equipment, but accidents do happen.
There is only one person who can be put to the wall for failure to control your own finances.
Most people in the UK are paid by an electronic transfer of the money into their bank account. If your bank is NatWest you can get £300 from them by proving you should have been paid, but I'm not sure what you can do if your employer's bank is Natwest.
You know, typo's aside, this is tragic. Many people live paycheck to paycheck. I used to, up till fairly recently, and I'd still be hosed if this happened because my rainy day money is not in a bank fund.
I would be calling for people to be put against the wall for this.
If you can show you should have been paid (e.g. payslip, last month's statement) they are giving you £300 if they can't access your account. The bank branches stayed open extra late yesterday, opened at 8am today, and will be open for long hours all weekend.
They are absolutely not allowed on Facebook. Period. This has been a major issue for the older one.
I'm not surprised. That's essentially the same as saying "you can't communicate with your friends". In the 1990s, you may as well have banned him from using the telephone. Having had parents who didn't ban me from using the phone, but insisted on sitting next to me while I was using it, I urge you to reconsider your decision. The result was I avoided using the phone, since I'd get criticised if my friend swore (etc), and I felt I couldn't speak freely. I did not turn out all right, and at least part of this is because my parents restricted my privacy and freedom so much.
I look at it the same way I look at real life. I wouldn't let them walk the streets (even in my nice neighborhood) alone
Yeah, my parents did this. They lived in a tiny, safe village. My friends were allowed to walk around alone. Since I wasn't allowed to, I wasn't given any advice on how to walk around (how not to get lost, how to stay safe, etc). When I was about 11 I told my mum I'd joined a couple of after-school clubs. I went a few times (so the teacher knew me), but most weeks I'd walk round the city for an hour (the school was in a big city) and be back just before the club finished.
Another time, I said I was going to a friend's house after school. Most people used the normal public transport to get home, so there was no need for my + friend to get a particular bus. We wandered round the shops for a while. When we got to his house, my mum was there screaming at his parents for being bad parents and imagining rapists. They were shrugging "they're 13, what's the problem? they probably went shopping".
Little kids should be running around, playing with legos, learning how to socialize, etc.
And how will they do that, when there's always either an adult present, or when they can't join in with the other kids' socialising (on Facebook)?
I should add that nothing in the list was particularly unusual for people I knew growing up. Locking up things that might be harmful to children just didn't happen.
Did you have younger siblings?
I remember my parents installed some kind of safety catch on the cupboard under the sink. I'm sure I could open it when I was about 4 (got to help mummy with the cleaning!) but my sister, who would have been 2 or 3, couldn't. The catches were removed by the time she was old enough to bypass them, and to understand the danger.
That was only on the cupboard with the cleaning chemicals though, beer was easily accessible (just ask daddy, he'd let me sip, but *yuk*! Put me off beer for decades...).
> Notice that they end with ".UK", I'm in Europe too.
UK is really not representative of European culture in general.
No single country is.
So teach your kids about body-ownership. Teach them that conformity is evil and it's important to be true to yourself.
That's fine, but remember they get influenced by more than just their parents. From the main PDF here (which I linked to before):
43. Opinions are divided about the robustness of existing academic evidence that exposure of children to pornography directly causes harm, although Papadopoulos is strongly of the view that it is detrimental to young people’s development (Papadopoulos, 2010; see also Flood, 2009). However, many contributors to the Review, including child protection organisations, schools, local authorities, child psychologists, youth workers, agony aunts, women’s organisations and internet safety organisations amongst others, provided compelling examples to illustrate their concern that pornography has a negative impact on children and young people. For example, children became convinced that they had to behave and look like the on-screen participants in order to have ‘proper’ sex; which generally meant sex without any basis in love or display of affection or equality; and to conform physically to some very narrow gender stereotypes.
My links weren't very good, but I don't think you read them anyway. Notice that they end with ".UK", I'm in Europe too.
I have no problem with fetishism. (Also, the quote isn't from a "shrink", it's from the editor of the letters page for a crap newspaper.) What is a problem is when outside influences (pornography, media, etc) normalise certain behaviours, which pressures teenagers into doing things they don't want to do.
Here's a quote from a report by the NSPCC (British charity, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty for Children)
Our research into young people’s experiences of violence in their intimate relationships clearly demonstrates the very high levels of violence that some girls experience from their male partners. A third of girls reported some form of sexual violence and a quarter experienced physical violence, with many reporting controlling behaviours from their partners. The very detrimental impact of such violence on the welfare of girls is clear. In contrast although boys did report experiencing violence from a partner, only a minority reported any detrimental impact. Some boys in the interviews showed very negative attitudes to girls, often objectifying them. This was especially prevalent in their attitudes towards pressuring girls into sexual contact and their lack of awareness regarding the impact of this on their female partners. For example, in one group interview with three boys, when they discussed their sexually coercive ‘tactics’ the other boys in the group responded with admiration. It was clear that some boys predominantly viewed girls as primarily sexual objects, and that sexual coercion was seen as normal and acceptable. Little regard was held for the girls’ feelings. In other interviews boys were either unsure or unaware if their behaviour constituted sexual pressure. The pressure on boys from peers and the media to portray a dominating sexual persona is also an issue. In contrast, for girls a disembodied and passive sexuality predominated where sexual pleasure was mostly absent in their discussions. Many girls stated that the sexual aspects of their relationships primarily consisted of attempting to resist the pressure they experienced from male partners. They found this aspect of their relationships hard to negotiate and worried that their partners would finish the relationship if they confronted them about their behaviour. These girls derived a great deal of peer status from having a boyfriend – a key protective factor would be to ensure girls were able to gain self-esteem from other aspects of their lives.
Is that acceptable? I doubt many of them discussed their relationship with their parents, and I doubt their parents had that kind of relationship.
It is not unreasonable to want to prevent your children from being exposed to hardcore pornography at the age of 7.
Why? Not only will they likely discover it anyway, but it is highly unlikely they'll be hurt by it. In fact, I've seen no evidence to reach such a conclusion.
At the age of 7, perhaps, but at 13+ hardcore porn can have an effect on what teenagers see as "normal".
Here's one bad example: http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-18282560 and here ""Certain behaviours that I only used to have bored 40-year-olds asking me about goes now right down to the under-16s asking me about it."".
This report might include some research, I don't have time to read it right now.
Given the current political climate as concerns teachers and other school employees these days in the states, I doubt there would be very many taxpayers out there that would support actually hiring Nutritionists to run the lunch rooms and give them the autonomy to purchase and prepare lunches according to their own judgement.
In the UK most taxpayers support providing good meals to schoolchildren, although not necessarily giving the school autonomy -- it's probably better to have a few nutritionists define what's good and make schools stick to that (which is what has happened). I think they recognise that the investment is well worth the expenditure, or else that it's simply the right thing to do.
Here's the standard right-wing paper's summary from last week (before this story broke). They write "more significantly secured Oliver a meeting with Tony Blair, and eventually £280 million over three years for schools to invest in proper kitchens" -- that's £280M from tax. They don't seem to be complaining.
The Human Rights Act applies to everyone (not just adults, not just British people, not just in British territory) and includes the right to Freedom of Expression.
from 15 January 1992, when the treaty came into force, every child in the UK has been entitled to over 40 specific rights. These include: * the right to have their views respected, and to have their best interests considered at all times
1 Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2 The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
That's good news. I wondered why they told this girl to stop in the first place because the food she photographed actually looks both healthy and tasty, so what was the problem?
The council's response in the BBC article claims that there are often better options available. However, that a child can choose an awful option suggests there is still a problem (at least, it is if you think the school should only provide healthy food).
Or you could take the card to a ticket office and exchange it for the remaining credit plus your deposit. I know someone who visits London every couple of months and does this every time.
Why? He'll have to queue up when he wants to travel again, and I doubt he'll miss the £3 before he next goes to London.
I have smartcards for a few cities. The London system is the only one I've used in Europe where the balance on the card never expires.
Note: This recipe works well for broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, spinach, and many others.
Why poke fun at broccoli -- is it unusual in the US?
It's probably one of the top 5 vegetables sold in the UK (I'll guess: onions, potatoes, carrots, broccoli and cabbage). I buy it pretty much every week.
(Also, spinach is my favourite leaf vegetable, especially uncooked in a salad or sandwich.)
Middle-endian dates like MM-DD-YYYY are still meritless and perverse, though.
They correspond to spoken English. People say "June 4th", not "4th June"
They correspond to spoken American.
Today is the 5th June, in Britain (often spoken as "5th of June"). In every other European language I've come across it's e.g. 5. Juni (German), 5e Juin (French).
It sounds (or looks) a bit odd when I hear an American muddled-order date. It's pretty common, so it's less odd than saying "I'm 6 inches 5 feet tall", but you get the idea.
Slashdot Mirror
So people were serious about that?
Yes, absolutely. British people don't like
- fake friendliness
- rushed familiarity
- invasion of privacy
and what Starbucks do (did?) breaks all three of these.
the ones I can remember which do are staffed almost exclusively by foreigners who might have some pronunciation issues
Depending on the region, anywhere between zero and 100% of the staff will be foreign; but I don't think that's an issue here. The non-English-named customers will be more difficult (it's easy to learn most English names if you're Polish, say. But it's not easy for anyone to learn all English, British, European, Asian, African etc names, whatever your native tongue).
The complaints in the article were never about people being too chummy or fake, or trying to talk to anyone, but mainly for thinks like Paul saying he prefers to not be called Pole
Those are quotes from Americans, the article seems to have been written prior to the introduction of the new policy into Britain.
Try googling your full name and see what happens. You'll be shocked at what you find. Ever buy a house? If so, your full name is on the internet.
With a Google Image search, I found my Facebook profile picture and my Google Plus profile picture -- but not on Facebook or Google Plus. They were on a "people directory" website that has scraped the public content of lots of social networks (etc).
Since being born, married, or dying is a matter of public record in the UK, on the same website I also found basic information about my birth (full name, place and year, the exact date is public but the website charges). Of course, it looks worse to me that it really is: there are 17 births with my name, and about eight social network profiles. Other people don't automatically know which links to which. (They also have some very out-of-date information.)
In Europe, they're being investigated as a privacy issue:
Hi-tech monitors that track households' energy consumption threaten to become a major privacy issue, according to the European watchdog in charge of protecting personal data.
The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has warned that smart meters, which must be introduced into every home in the UK within the next seven years, will be used to track much more than energy consumption unless proper safeguards are introduced.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/01/household-energy-trackers-threat-privacy
A modern roundabout has spiralling lanes, that guide you to the correct exit. Remembering the UK drives on the left, follow a car through a right turn -- the innermost lane when entering the roundabout becomes the outermost lane when the car reaches the correct exit (or next-but-outermost, sometimes, if the outgoing exit has two lanes).
Roundabout aficionados may wish to follow the main road (above) east a little, to see this. I can see eight.
That's not just Japan. At peak times many of the central stations in London have more people waiting on the platform that can get on the next train (generally you can get on the one after, and they're every 2-5 minutes, depending on the line).
At exceptional times, like after a large event somewhere not-so-central (e.g. rock concert in a park), or a exceptionally large event somewhere central (maybe Gay Pride this weekend, which I think is the biggest event in London, although that doesn't have a "finishing time" as such) they have to restrict people from going onto platforms. You can fit about 1200 people on a tube train, but you need more space on the platform for people to be safe. (And if you have an island platform, with tracks either side, the safe capacity is lower than if one side of the platform is a wall.)
The age of criminal responsibility in the UK is 10 in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and 12 in Scotland. (There are ongoing debates over whether the age should be increased.)
However, it's still possible some younger people were identified but not prosecuted.
There's no need to go to the US -- Google and Microsoft (etc) recruit from other top universities.
While I was at Imperial College Google came about twice a year. Their London office was less than a mile away, but I'd be surprised if they didn't visit Cambridge, Oxford, UCL etc etc almost as often.
Well, you better avoid holding meetings in all of the US then since the documentation requirement was based on the federal requirement.
Avoiding holding meetings in the US is not unusual. There are plenty of more friendly countries, and unless many people live in/near the US it's a lot less hassle to hold the meeting elsewhere.
(At the last conference I went to one of the speakers was refused entry to the US, which was obviously a combination of racism and anti-immigrant panic. It was quite embarrassing for the American hosts.)
I once "accidentally ingested" a liquid in a factory. A moderately pressurised line blew, and squirted the liquid in a line over my face, including my mouth.
Fortunately, this was a food factory, and the liquid was food-grade alcohol (used as a preservative, roughly vodka strength) mixed with natural flavouring (cherry, I think). The line manager was standing opposite me, and asked me to swallow it -- had I spit it out they would have had to stop production and clean the area.
Hopefully places with actually dangerous chemicals have better equipment, but accidents do happen.
There is only one person who can be put to the wall for failure to control your own finances.
Most people in the UK are paid by an electronic transfer of the money into their bank account. If your bank is NatWest you can get £300 from them by proving you should have been paid, but I'm not sure what you can do if your employer's bank is Natwest.
You know, typo's aside, this is tragic. Many people live paycheck to paycheck. I used to, up till fairly recently, and I'd still be hosed if this happened because my rainy day money is not in a bank fund.
I would be calling for people to be put against the wall for this.
If you can show you should have been paid (e.g. payslip, last month's statement) they are giving you £300 if they can't access your account. The bank branches stayed open extra late yesterday, opened at 8am today, and will be open for long hours all weekend.
They are absolutely not allowed on Facebook. Period. This has been a major issue for the older one.
I'm not surprised. That's essentially the same as saying "you can't communicate with your friends". In the 1990s, you may as well have banned him from using the telephone. Having had parents who didn't ban me from using the phone, but insisted on sitting next to me while I was using it, I urge you to reconsider your decision. The result was I avoided using the phone, since I'd get criticised if my friend swore (etc), and I felt I couldn't speak freely. I did not turn out all right, and at least part of this is because my parents restricted my privacy and freedom so much.
I look at it the same way I look at real life. I wouldn't let them walk the streets (even in my nice neighborhood) alone
Yeah, my parents did this. They lived in a tiny, safe village. My friends were allowed to walk around alone. Since I wasn't allowed to, I wasn't given any advice on how to walk around (how not to get lost, how to stay safe, etc). When I was about 11 I told my mum I'd joined a couple of after-school clubs. I went a few times (so the teacher knew me), but most weeks I'd walk round the city for an hour (the school was in a big city) and be back just before the club finished.
Another time, I said I was going to a friend's house after school. Most people used the normal public transport to get home, so there was no need for my + friend to get a particular bus. We wandered round the shops for a while. When we got to his house, my mum was there screaming at his parents for being bad parents and imagining rapists. They were shrugging "they're 13, what's the problem? they probably went shopping".
Little kids should be running around, playing with legos, learning how to socialize, etc.
And how will they do that, when there's always either an adult present, or when they can't join in with the other kids' socialising (on Facebook)?
I should add that nothing in the list was particularly unusual for people I knew growing up. Locking up things that might be harmful to children just didn't happen.
Did you have younger siblings?
I remember my parents installed some kind of safety catch on the cupboard under the sink. I'm sure I could open it when I was about 4 (got to help mummy with the cleaning!) but my sister, who would have been 2 or 3, couldn't. The catches were removed by the time she was old enough to bypass them, and to understand the danger.
That was only on the cupboard with the cleaning chemicals though, beer was easily accessible (just ask daddy, he'd let me sip, but *yuk*! Put me off beer for decades...).
> Notice that they end with ".UK", I'm in Europe too.
UK is really not representative of European culture in general.
No single country is.
So teach your kids about body-ownership. Teach them that conformity is evil and it's important to be true to yourself.
That's fine, but remember they get influenced by more than just their parents. From the main PDF here (which I linked to before):
43. Opinions are divided about the robustness of existing academic evidence that exposure of children to pornography directly causes harm, although Papadopoulos is strongly of the view that it is detrimental to young people’s development (Papadopoulos, 2010; see also Flood, 2009). However, many contributors to the Review, including child protection organisations, schools, local authorities, child psychologists, youth workers, agony aunts, women’s organisations and internet safety organisations amongst others, provided compelling examples to illustrate their concern that pornography has a negative impact on children and young people. For example, children became convinced that they had to behave and look like the on-screen participants in order to have ‘proper’ sex; which generally meant sex without any basis in love or display of affection or equality; and to conform physically to some very narrow gender stereotypes.
My reply to the other comment has a better quote and a link, I was rushing when I finished my original comment.
I looked at porn when I was a kid and when I was a teenager. I suspect most people do. Now, how many go out and rape others because of it?
Did you have as much porn as you wanted (and more), of all kinds, freely available 24/7 on a personal device you carried with you? No.
Now, how many people who do have this will have unreasonable expectations about a sexual relationship?
There is room for debate here, but yet again the rest of Slashdot sees this as an all-or-nothing issue.
My links weren't very good, but I don't think you read them anyway. Notice that they end with ".UK", I'm in Europe too.
I have no problem with fetishism. (Also, the quote isn't from a "shrink", it's from the editor of the letters page for a crap newspaper.) What is a problem is when outside influences (pornography, media, etc) normalise certain behaviours, which pressures teenagers into doing things they don't want to do.
Here's a quote from a report by the NSPCC (British charity, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty for Children)
Our research into young people’s experiences of violence in their intimate relationships
clearly demonstrates the very high levels of violence that some girls experience from their
male partners. A third of girls reported some form of sexual violence and a quarter
experienced physical violence, with many reporting controlling behaviours from their
partners. The very detrimental impact of such violence on the welfare of girls is clear. In
contrast although boys did report experiencing violence from a partner, only a minority
reported any detrimental impact.
Some boys in the interviews showed very negative attitudes to girls, often objectifying them.
This was especially prevalent in their attitudes towards pressuring girls into sexual contact
and their lack of awareness regarding the impact of this on their female partners. For example,
in one group interview with three boys, when they discussed their sexually coercive ‘tactics’
the other boys in the group responded with admiration. It was clear that some boys
predominantly viewed girls as primarily sexual objects, and that sexual coercion was seen as
normal and acceptable. Little regard was held for the girls’ feelings. In other interviews boys
were either unsure or unaware if their behaviour constituted sexual pressure. The pressure on
boys from peers and the media to portray a dominating sexual persona is also an issue.
In contrast, for girls a disembodied and passive sexuality predominated where sexual pleasure
was mostly absent in their discussions. Many girls stated that the sexual aspects of their
relationships primarily consisted of attempting to resist the pressure they experienced from
male partners. They found this aspect of their relationships hard to negotiate and worried that
their partners would finish the relationship if they confronted them about their behaviour.
These girls derived a great deal of peer status from having a boyfriend – a key protective
factor would be to ensure girls were able to gain self-esteem from other aspects of their lives.
Is that acceptable? I doubt many of them discussed their relationship with their parents, and I doubt their parents had that kind of relationship.
It is not unreasonable to want to prevent your children from being exposed to hardcore pornography at the age of 7.
Why? Not only will they likely discover it anyway, but it is highly unlikely they'll be hurt by it. In fact, I've seen no evidence to reach such a conclusion.
At the age of 7, perhaps, but at 13+ hardcore porn can have an effect on what teenagers see as "normal".
Here's one bad example: http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-18282560 and here ""Certain behaviours that I only used to have bored 40-year-olds asking me about goes now right down to the under-16s asking me about it."".
This report might include some research, I don't have time to read it right now.
Given the current political climate as concerns teachers and other school employees these days in the states, I doubt there would be very many taxpayers out there that would support actually hiring Nutritionists to run the lunch rooms and give them the autonomy to purchase and prepare lunches according to their own judgement.
In the UK most taxpayers support providing good meals to schoolchildren, although not necessarily giving the school autonomy -- it's probably better to have a few nutritionists define what's good and make schools stick to that (which is what has happened). I think they recognise that the investment is well worth the expenditure, or else that it's simply the right thing to do.
Here's the standard right-wing paper's summary from last week (before this story broke). They write "more significantly secured Oliver a meeting with Tony Blair, and eventually £280 million over three years for schools to invest in proper kitchens" -- that's £280M from tax. They don't seem to be complaining.
The Human Rights Act applies to everyone (not just adults, not just British people, not just in British territory) and includes the right to Freedom of Expression.
There are also extra Children's human rights http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/parents/parentsrights/dg_4003313
from 15 January 1992, when the treaty came into force, every child in the UK has been entitled to over 40 specific rights. These include:
* the right to have their views respected, and to have their best interests considered at all times
ECHR, as implemented in the UK in the Human Rights Act. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1
Article 10 - Freedom of expression
1 Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2 The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.
That's good news. I wondered why they told this girl to stop in the first place because the food she photographed actually looks both healthy and tasty, so what was the problem?
It's variable. Scroll through the May page from the bottom: http://neverseconds.blogspot.co.uk/2012_05_01_archive.html -- some is fine, some is pretty bad.
The council's response in the BBC article claims that there are often better options available. However, that a child can choose an awful option suggests there is still a problem (at least, it is if you think the school should only provide healthy food).
Or you could take the card to a ticket office and exchange it for the remaining credit plus your deposit. I know someone who visits London every couple of months and does this every time.
Why? He'll have to queue up when he wants to travel again, and I doubt he'll miss the £3 before he next goes to London.
I have smartcards for a few cities. The London system is the only one I've used in Europe where the balance on the card never expires.
Note: This recipe works well for broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, spinach, and many others.
Why poke fun at broccoli -- is it unusual in the US?
It's probably one of the top 5 vegetables sold in the UK (I'll guess: onions, potatoes, carrots, broccoli and cabbage). I buy it pretty much every week.
(Also, spinach is my favourite leaf vegetable, especially uncooked in a salad or sandwich.)
At some point not too long ago your "proper" British English language had the month first.
I don't know if/when that was, and it wasn't necessarily all "proper" British English -- perhaps just in some contexts. Legal documents say things like "on this 5th day of June in the 2012th year of our Lord". Here's one from 1806: http://www.pdavis.nl/Legis_06.htm and one from 1679: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_9_2s2.html
Middle-endian dates like MM-DD-YYYY are still meritless and perverse, though.
They correspond to spoken English. People say "June 4th", not "4th June"
They correspond to spoken American.
Today is the 5th June, in Britain (often spoken as "5th of June"). In every other European language I've come across it's e.g. 5. Juni (German), 5e Juin (French).
It sounds (or looks) a bit odd when I hear an American muddled-order date. It's pretty common, so it's less odd than saying "I'm 6 inches 5 feet tall", but you get the idea.