Sibling Rivalry

The United Kingdom is made up of Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland...The tiny northern part...Southern Ireland...or Ireland has their independence.
Even though all these countries make up the United Kingdom, similar to how the 50 states make up the United States to say that England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland are states is wrong. According to Wikipediea,
"They are individual countries, that have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capital cities. Devolution refers to the statutory granting of powers from the Parliamnet of the United Kingdom to the Scotish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly and to their addociated executive bodies the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive.
Devolution differs from federalism in that the devolved powers of the subnational authority ultimately reside in central government, thus the state remains, de jure unitary. Legislation creating devolved parliaments or assemblies can be repealed or amended by central government in the same way as any statute."
That's a long way of saying it's like 4 siblings sharing a house and all competing to be in charge. We fight and bicker among outselves, but no one else better mess with our family. But Scotland is like Isaac's song Esau, the independent, wild hunter, and England is like Isaac's son Jacob, tricking the older brother out of his birthright and inheritance, and Wales is like their siblings that were never mentioned in the Bible. (Poetic license has been taken here.) Ireland is a bit like the red headed step child, if the step children were twins, where one went off and got his own apartment, and is doing his own thing.

See in the past, Scotland was Independent, with it's own Parliament, and King. England historically has always tried to rule Scotland and Scottish hero's like William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, and Bonnie Prince Charlie tried to fight it. When one English king died, the closest heir just happened to be the reining King of Scotland, so he became king of both countries, and later parliament in Scotland was disbanded.

What a nasty little twist of fate. Since then Scotland has been used for it's natural resources, their political voice has been disregarded, and an independent and wild country has been placed under a rule that continuously tries to break and train them, and they are still fighting for their independence.

Next year there is going to be a vote in Scotland for Scottish Independence from England... ok technically is the UK, but really it's from England.

I'm not British, I don't have a say, but since I moved here the amount of ANTI Scottish propaganda I have seen is amazing. 

England... or should I say LONDON, doesn't give a crap about Scotland on so many levels, and I'm not even going to mention the poll tax of so many years ago.

England wanted to get rid of Daylight savings, saying that it would be better for everyone except for Scotland  who would then be thrust into darkness from about 3pm to 10am...I realize regardless it's only 5 hours of daylight anyway, but to have darkness from 3pm seems way worse than darkness at 4...kids would be walking home from school in the dark, but it's better for England.

We use pounds Stirling here. Some of the pounds are issues by the bank of England and others from the bank of Scotland...like having a penny minted in Philadelphia of Denver... except when  you go to England, often times, a shop wont take your Scottish Pound. That's illegal, but they still do it.. Can you imagine going to a store in the US, giving them some coins and they say, "Oh I'm sorry, we only except coins made in Denver." It's really annoying.

BP stands for British Petrol. One of the largest oil wells is in the North Sea...Scottish territory... lucky for England that we're part of the UK, so London pipes it down to England where they put a 20% tax on it, and ship it back to Scotland and the rest of the world. That's right, Scotland buys back it's own oil, while England makes A FORTUNE and then they give Scotland a tiny little kickback... If we get our Independence, they will lose all the money from the North Sea Oil, and they are TERRIFIED! Which brings me to the amount of ridicule they are subjecting us to in the media, like this picture here

If I was undecided before, I am for independence now! 

As an American, the best thing we did was win our independence and the freedom to govern ourselves. I don't know anyone in American who says "I wish we were still part of the Brittish Empire, where they make all the decisions for us from 5000 miles away."

Scotch Whisky

Now, I didn't drink much alcohol prior to having kids, and whisky was definately not something I would ever CHOOSE to drink, however being in Scotland, I had to try it. My first time...so painful. Burned the whole way going down, and I couldn't force myself to take a second sip.
Fast forward two years.
Paul is having a small dram of 10 year old Jura while reading in bed. He turns out his bedside lamp, and goes to drink the last little bit in has glass... he underestimates the amount in the glass and it spills down his chin and onto the bed sheets.

I smell the whisky all night long, but instead of a strong alcohol smell, it's a lovely scent of Vanilla, and honey, and cinnamon.... golden honey dripping off a vanilla blossom in the morning sun while the cinnamon fairies since and an angel gets it's wings... it was lovely.
The next time he had a dram so did I, and since then, I've been sold. I've never met a whisky I haven't liked.
For my birthday, Paul took me to Jura so I could visit the distillery there.

We have a book called the "Whisky Companion" or just "THE BOOK" as we call it, that has all the single malt scotch whisky's listed there along with all the information on it, history, distillery location, tasting notes, whisky score.
 We're drinking our way through the book! I love learning about it, and it's a wonderful little hobby that Paul and I enjoy together!

What's a Gallon?

In America, we know gallons.
We by gas by the gallon.
We buy milk by the gallon.
We get Gallon cans of paint.
We have 5 gallon buckets.

Ya know what you can by here by the gallon?

I really have no clue. In the last two years I have never purchased anything by the gallon.
We buy out PETROL by the litre.
The largest milk we can get:

That's six pints....I will do the math for you.
2 pints in a quart. 4 quarts in a gallon. 8 pints in a gallon.
So for whatever reason, they don't like to give you those 2 extra pints of milk... which when you have two kids drinking 8 cups of milk a day...you really wish you could by a gallon of milk.
I think, the reason they don't have bigger jugs of milk, is that it wouldn't fit in the normal refrigerators sold here. 
Most homes don't have room for a full size fridge, they use the small college size fridges with a little ice box at the top.
Fridge Freezers such as this one:
 
like what we have are so much better, but still...not a lot of room for a gallon of milk as you can see, however, those skinny little milk jugs fit quite nicely in the door.
It takes a bit of practice to be able to pour from one though... for about a year I spilled milk every time I went to pour milk into a cup or bottle, and I feel like I'm a relatively graceful person having mastered the gross and fine motor skills some years ago... 

Prepaid Gas and Electricity Meters

What is THAT?? Yep... exactly.
Someone had the audacity to say "Hey! We have prepaid phones and prepaid visa cards, lets make a prepaid gas meter! The home owner will have to have a key that they put an amount on and once that amount is used then the gas gets shut off and they don't have any heat or hot water or a way to cook until they add more money onto it! We will charge them extra for the key, and the meter and a few other taxes here and there as well so they will end up paying 10% more (according to the BBC) on their gas then they would if they had a normal bill, but this way there can never be any debt on the account. Nevermind if the family using the meter has two small children who rely on hot water to heat bottles and have baths and...oh yeah... STAY WARM! If the meter runs out of money at 9:30 at night when all the shops are closed, they can just go without for 12 hours. Let's only put it in poor districts too... nobody cares what the poor think if they complain and if an upper class family moves into the area on accident, because the wife is American who can't tell if a neighborhood is ghetto or not because all the houses are either hundreds of years old or look like the box a refrigerator came in covered in rocks, they can pay the £300 to have it removed, even though we installed it for free! Hey Hey! Lets do it with electricity too!  We are gonna be RICH!"

Prepaid electric meter

prepaid gas meter