r/AskBrits

Do behaviours that are, in fact, demonstratively prejudice and racist, get a pass because they are considered “cultural norms?”

For example, a family member refuses to meet a new partner because of his or her race or religion.

I am a little confused if English isn’t an ethnicity then are the white English people who would get 90% plus English DNA in a 23 and me simply “white” they are the same as anyone from Portugal to Russia? Just “white”

I find this confusing as an ethnic Han Chinese person with an interest in anthropology.

For example you have Malaysia names after the ethnic Malays but not everyone born in Malaysia is ethnic Malay

Or you have a country like Somalia when not everyone born or living there belongs to the Somali ethnic group?

We don’t really call China “China” but westerners do after the largest ethic group (Han Chinese) but there is lots of ethnicity’s living within China would those same people say that we are just yellow and put ethnic group doesn’t exist either?
So we wouldn’t really call a Turkic person Chinese even if they had been born for many generations within the mainland

I am confused by the logic.

Could someone explain for me.

Thank you.

Whenever benefits come up, people complain about "scroungers" and people who could work but don't. But why is the State Pension almost completely exempt from the same conversation?

We spend around £150bn a year on it, despite 69% of pensioners receiving private pension income, 62% receiving investment income, and 19% of pensioners are already in the richest 20% of the entire population. Only around 5% rely on the State Pension alone.

I'm obviously not suggesting taking it away from pensioners who depend on it. But why not means-test wealthy pensioners who clearly don't? Even if you cut off the 19% who are already in the richest fifth of the country, you're talking roughly £30bn a year in savings.

Why are we so obsessed with means-testing working-age benefits while by far the biggest benefit in the country is treated as politically untouchable?

Some rich pensioners complain about young people "scrounging", while taking a benefit they absolutely can do without, that's paid for by young people.

It seems ridiculous to me that in the same time period that the threshold has remained fixed (£12,570 since April 2021), the minimum wage has risen from £8.36 to £12.71 per hour; an increase of 52%.

That means in 2021 the minimum wage was £16,051.20 per annum, leaving people paying tax on £3,481.20 - or giving back £696.24 from their "minimum" wage.

But now the minimum wage is  £23,386.40, but people are paying tax on £10,816.40, or giving back £2,163.28 from their so called "minimum" wage.

So although tax remains at 20%, the "net" minimum wage after tax has gone from £8.34 an hour to just £11.75.

Tax is still at 20%...but people on minimum wage have gone from paying are paying just £0.38 tax per hour to a whopping £1.18 per hour.

I know that many people in Great Britain, especially in Scotland and Northern Ireland blame Margaret Thatcher for nowadays's Great Britain's problems.

I want to ask you: is there someone who consider positively her government? And what are their arguments in favour of her reforms?

Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives are proposing a £10bn 'British Iron Dome', but I'm struggling to see how £10bn would pay for a project of that scale.

As outlined in the article I linked above, General Sir Richard Barrons told MPs earlier this year that "the cost of an Iron Dome at entry level is probably £80 billion over 10 years." And that's before you get to the cost of maintenance and consistent procurement of interceptors!

So the figures don't add up to me. If £10bn is enough, what exactly are we getting out of this money? And who ends up paying when the bill inevitably starts creeping up?

I keep seeing it in the media and in comments online and in person backhanded remarks about people with ADHD or other neurodivergent conditions especially whenever benefits come up. What strikes me is how little most people seem to know about how these conditions actually affect day to day life.

For one, ADHD rarely comes alone. Most people with it have at least one other condition and up to 50% have more than two. It's also hugely underdiagnosed. Estimates suggest around 2.6 million people in the UK have ADHD btu only a fraction of them have a diagnosi so the people being sneered at even undiagnosed are a fraction of the population.

Also wiht something like PIP, you dont get that context as they only report whatever they decide is the primary condition or if youve only been diagnosed with one thing, someone could well have ADHD reported as their primary condition but be a wheelchair user.

Where does the hostility come from? Is it the media framing, a lack of understanding, a belief that it's all overdiagnosis or something else? And what do you think would change attitudes?

Do you combine it all and split down the middle once bills are paid? Do you each keep your finances seperate? Or something else. I just got ripped apart in another sub for saying we keep our money separate and now im curious what the norm is?

A mate of mine runs a fairly large construction business with around 50 staff. A couple of years ago HMRC investigated him, saying he hadn't paid the correct amount of tax over the previous five years. What surprised me was the amount of information they had collected about him. Cars he'd owned over the years, travel, online purchases, bank and credit card transactions, tons of information involving his ex-wife, current wife and family.

I was reading an article about some other guys investigated by HMRC and it turns out they're already using AI and data analytics for compliance, and are expanding it quite significantly. They are testing private-sector AI systems aimed at identifying tax evasion, making greater use of third-party data from banks and other places.

HMRC already has access to huge amounts of financial and other data, AI seems like an obvious way of cross-referencing it and flagging people whose declared income doesn't make sense compared with their spending, assets and business activity.

It made me wonder if people actually realize this is happening and what do they think about it.

I'll start but would love to hear other people's input!

I think Britain has an incredibly rich oral tradition, a massive literary canon spanning centuries with works in several languages (some slowly being lost). My mother and I have been attending local folk music nights for many years, some of which have been in pubs (also part of British culture). I like reading and reciting poetry from this country, which is largely why I studied English literature at university. I love to visit places of historical significance such as neolithic and megalithic sites, standing stones, abbeys, churches. Several of these sites are gladly being maintained while others are in disrepair and will not exist years from now as a result which makes me sad. Recently I visited a local Cave Studies Trust where there are lime kilns! And in the cave system there are ancient fossils, some of which were sadly stolen several years ago.

Something I'm particularly proud of are the contributions Britain has made to musical culture, especially electronic music coming from the UK rave scene and Jamaican sound system culture. There are more obvious contributions to music but I am more fond of electronic music :)

So which parts of British culture do you guys participate in or simply enjoy? I feel like so much I've forgotten and can only remember what I personally love. I look forward to hearing what you guys are into.

Quite a few people in my office have been complaining about headaches today and it has me wondering if it has something to do with atmospheric pressure and maybe we are all suffering and maybe just some of us are more susceptible than others.

I absolutely understand that working life is highly demanding for many these days.

I have a long term chronic fatigue illness myself so I personally am no metric- and I'm also particularly concerned about people being affected by post viral fatigue, based on my own experience. So I'm wondering about incidences of Long Covid, and the overall effects of repeat Covid infections, and how government might track health data on an elusive mystery condition wherein people get bloody exhausted and it doesn't go away, but they kind of manage to keep going and/ or don't get a diagnosis? I thought it might just be my little corner of the world and age group, but I've heard comedians etc saying everyone is exhausted now, too, and am curious about how we would collectively know if there was a quiet medical epidemic.