THE LATEST:

phosphate report I am writing a report titled "An international perspective on the phosphate crisis" (ISBN 978-1-4658-5892-4). When it's finished, I will make it available for download for EUR 20.

Until then, you can pre-register for EUR 15 and get it e-mailed to you as soon as it's published.

I will also soon make the cyanide review available in a handier format for use in practice.

I just wrote an item on games in the water sector, have added a page with water use tips, and am working on more. The list on the right is not complete.



TELEPHONE HICCUPS

Apparently, I sometimes can be only reached within the UK, not from other countries. Anyone who tries to call and receives the message that the phone number is not in use, gets a dead line or an engaged signal all the time, please use Skype, call me on my mobile or send me an e-mail.

Such hiccups are quite normal in Britain, and one learns to live with them. Most of this has to do with the industrial revolution having started so early here. Overhauling the UK's entire old infrastructure would take a huge fortune and practical considerations make it impossible.

This goes for water mains, plumbing, electric wiring, telephony, the mail collection system, apparently even London's tube, and many more things. The overhaul takes place slowly, little step by little step. Part of the IT behind the banking system may still be is outdated, too; it caused a major hiccup a few years ago. Also, the UK's old telephony system is very different from what is used in other countries. Even features like number recognition (caller ID) basically don't work here yet (except on mobiles).

Another problem is that Britain barely has the required know-how and now depends on foreign companies to operate many of its own facilities. An example is the energy sector, and an example of that is the following. Southampton has a former thermal energy plant (which once harvested heat from rock formations in Dorset, off the top of my head). It is still part of the grid, but the British lack the know-how to run it, nowadays. A French company runs it.

POSTAL ADDRESS

Why is no physical address listed on this web site? Because an estimated 50 per cent of my postal mail currently gets lost.

I therefore want you to contact me before you send me anything, so that I can ensure that I will actually receive whatever you send me. (Existing clients do have my postal address, of course.) If I don't know that you are sending something to me in the mail, without you contacting me first, I won't even know about it when it goes missing. This also holds for certified mail and packages.

ANYTHING I FORGOT?

Yes. It is my personal experience that most Britons are not particularly fond of strong independent women - though many others secretly admire them, I am sure - and I'll leave you to ponder that.

Evening Standard columnist Helen Kerwan-Taylor was right when she said on MSNBC's Today Show, in March 2009:
"The British are terrified of Michelle Obama because they like their women to be subdued and doe-eyed and sort of modest and soft-spoken."

This is not in contradiction at all with the phenomenon "Margaret Thatcher" (husband, children and well to do) and at least partly explains why she had to be such an iron lady.

Yep, in many ways, Britain appears to be firmly stuck in the 19th century, which it loves so much.

Is there anything I like about Britain, you ask? Sure! Its flexibility, for instance. The other side of that coin is that the country is an unbelievable mess in some ways. The Netherlands, by way of contrast, is an extremely efficient and well-functioning country, and the other side of that is its ugly unyielding rigidity. It is overregulated and its rules don't even leave an inch of manoeuvring room.

In terms of organization, the Unites States is between the UK and the Netherlands. Americans get more done than the Dutch because the Dutch can lose themselves in thorough planning and discussion. That is also, however, why it creates some of the best solutions in the world to all sorts of problems. Its Maeslant Barrier is a continually tested and improved example of such ingenuity. The British, on the other hand, are masters at suddenly required improvisation, which is usually only intended to be of a temporary nature.

Americans are very sociable, friendly, positive and easy-going, the British tend to be as sociable as brick walls daring you to bounce balls off them (and who are quite willing have you arrested if you then make the mistake of forgetting that they're Britons), and the Dutch are somewhere in between. Of course, that is a gross generalization, and there are plenty of exceptions.

Oddly enough, another characteristic of Britons is stubbornness. They can be extremely persistent in either slowly creating something they want or in doggedly resisting change.

Poverty levels and inequality are mind-blowing in the UK, sadly, relative to the situation in the Netherlands. Tourists and short-term guests come here and rarely notice it because they are looking with their wallets, but don't realize it.

If you want to read some more, have a look at this UNICEF report from 2010. It investigated 24 developed countries and found that income poverty has the greatest impact on child inequality in the UK. The British class system is still very much alive. The Netherlands is an excellent place when it comes to equality, compared with many other countries.

Rest assured, there are actually many more things Britain is good at, but it tends to hide it very well. Ironically, I usually find the related information in other countries. Also, Britons have their own particular brand of ingenuity which is very hard to explain. I think it finds its roots in the class system.

Cultural differences are an endlessly fascinating phenomenon. I recommend this book if you want to explore it further:


Related to this topic are these two books, also recommended:



This page was last updated on February 13, 2012.

DISCLAIMER: Angelina Souren and her business and web site SmarterScience cannot be held liable for the results of any decisions anyone makes on the basis of anything contained in any of the web pages on this web site.


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