SonnyVabitch

Sewage has long been a problem in UK rivers and on UK beaches.

The current regulations are not enforced, so introducing stricter standards would have precious little impact unless the regulators grow some balls and teeth. Right now, sewage companies are allowed to dump raw, untreated waste water (yeah, poop) into the environment under certain extreme circumstances, however, in their interpretation, those circumstances include it being a Wednesday..

They are probably referencing their vote in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, in which they presumably voted yes, but which ultimately failed.

I don't have any skin in that particular game, but if I were Scottish I would be absolutely livid with how they were treated. Just one example:

Scotland is by and large in favour of the EU. During indyref they were told that leaving the UK means leaving the EU, they chose to stay in the UK, then England dragged them out of the EU a mere two years later anyway.

They're just happy to sell their cidre and calvados to someone, anyone.

In the seventies and eighties the communist leaders of Hungary, when talking about the realities of the time introduced some terms to explain the difference of the real world from the ideals.

"Socialism that exists"
"Socialism that works"

The jokes immediately started coming, pointing out that the socialism that exists does not work, while the socialism that works does not exist.

French is too generalised, in my experience.

Paris, they'll pretend they don't understand neither your English nor your 100 words of French.

Towns in the country, you meet indifferent professionalism and you kinda get by in English.

Rural areas, you encounter the greatest of enthusiasm for your knowledge of the local language, and just as well, because those 100 words are all you can rely on for the entire duration of your stay.

Just a note of caution, while your observations may be valid, there could be other factors that influence the outcome. In my geography, the number of private passenger vehicles went from about 30-31 per 100 of the total population to just under 40* in the last ten years, meaning there's about a third increase of car traffic around those new e-bike riders compared to a decade ago.

* It's an odd phrasing, I admit, but I wanted to share the numbers without suggesting that 30% of the population has cars or drives regularly, which may not be the case. Some families have multiple cars, some of those vehicles are company cars, etc.

Flour is a common ingredient for thickening stews etc. Not OP, but if I had to guess I'd wager that the flour soaked up all the moisture in the pan, then dried out and started to burn.

Don's tongue between Uncle Vova's cheeks.

He is not the same.

Oh so that's why it's buggered! Bugger..

Having just a very basic vocabulary in German, translating one word at a time would have been fine, except my brain just decided that what this man was contemplating on this Nepalese train, and what he had just pushed through the juicer was in fact a Gurkha.

Of course childhood bullying is never justified or acceptable, and victims of it should always be protected against unjust violence, physical and psychological..

.. but maybe, this little shit has always been an insufferable twat, and had it coming.