There's nothing wrong with speaking out against the Queen, or making fun of her. Criticism is healthy. Actually plot against the country or threaten her life and THAT would be high treason, and you would be arrested for that. The last person who comes to mind who got arrested for that fired off some blanks at her during the Trooping the Colour ceremony to mark her official birthday. What would you think of someone who did that to the President? I bet the Secret Service would be right on the case! The Queen was riding a horse at the time and it scared the horse - fortunately she is an experienced horsewoman and knew how to calm it down.
Guns are not banned (though handguns are), just very heavily restricted and you have to show a good reason for needing one. We just think that's right and makes for a safer country. The police are unarmed too and that seems nicely civilised. If they need to, they call out their firearms unit.
We are not anti-democracy. Our general elections take place every five years on the same basis as you elect the House of Representatives. The leader of the largest party as a result of that becomes Prime Minister. Currently the government is a majority Conservative coalition. We are certainly not socialist - but you need to understand the meaning of the word to see why. The Labour Party has even given up its commitment to socialism, which is now causing it a problem as it's getting harder to see where it's different from the Conservatives. The next general election, by the way, is on 7 May and it looks like being a really interesting one now that there is a 4th party that is getting popular and worrying the other three main ones.
You are a little out of date if you think there is a lot of punk music here. There's far more of a variety than that and we appreciate American bands. Punk was a late 1970s phenomenon.
Tea time in terms of afternoon tea is something that was invented by the Duchess of Bedford in the 19th century because it was the aristocratic fashion to have dinner late and she felt she wanted to have a little something between lunch and dinner. So she came up with the idea of inviting friends round for tea, sandwiches and cakes. NO WAY do we have time for that. If I want a drink while I'm working, then I will get up from my desk and make some tea, then get back to work. You only get "afternoon tea" in the aristocratic manner in expensive hotels. And we LIKE tea. It is the usual British contention that nobody else knows how to make it properly. (Except the Irish, who are the only nation in the world who drink even more of it than we do.) When everyone likes a good cuppa, how is it a sign of weakness? Ever heard of "builders' tea"? I bet not.
Because the entire political spectrum in the UK is to the left of what it is in the US, it looks nuts to us, especially with the concentration on personalities rather than policies. In our election campaigns, it's all about "what are you going to DO?" And the last thing any party leader will do is have their wife making speeches. What IS that about? She's not standing for election. We know our Prime Minister has a wife called Samantha and that's about it.
Your history is your history and there it is. And we have ours. It's not something to have an opinion on.
Of course your armed forces are stronger. You're a bigger country. As for being allied with you, it's nice, but what we don't like is being dragged into wars we don't agree with. Tony Blair was not popular for sending our armed forces into Iraq when it was clearly against UN resolutions. The British Foreign Office, after centuries of experience and having run a quarter of the world at one point, finds that the best policy in almost every situation is "do nothing".
Religion is a sort of minority hobby, and paradoxically, this is the result of having establishment of religion. Less than 10% of the country regularly attends church, but the rest aren't atheist either - that would imply having thought about it and decided against religion. Most just haven't and are best described as non-religious.
Patriotism is natural and of course most of us feel proud to be British and would defend it. In the First World War, young men volunteered in their thousands. Of course they didn't know then what a bloodbath it would be. It's in wartime that the monarchy, with a non-political king or queen as head of the nation, can be a really bonding thing. In the Second World War, the King and Queen made a point of visiting bomb sites to just be with their people bombed out of their homes. It was a real boost to morale and when Buckingham Palace got bombed, the Queen said "now I can look the East End in the face". She meant the east end of London, which got most of the bombing, and now it's happened to HER house too. (Of course that wasn't the current Queen, this was her mother - the current Queen was only a girl at the time!)
UK is a democracy with free speech. If somebody spoke out against the queen, they would be entitled to their opinion. If they seriously threatened the queen, they would be subject to the same laws about threatening anybody else.
The Monarch is Head of State. However, we are governed by an elected parliament. The current government is not socialist.
Guns are banned because we don't want every Tom, Dick and Harry to have access to one. We only have a handful of gun related homicides in UK, compared to thousands in USA each year.
The Revolutionary War is only a minor part of our history. Nobody gives it a thought. If an American living in UK wants a 4th July party, we are quite happy to join in.
Punk music is just one style. It went out of fashion years ago.
Some people stop for tea, or coffee. Not everybody likes tea.
We see many of your politicians as fairly ignorant of World affairs. We don't like our own politicians much either. We think your history is very short. Ours goes back thousands of years.
Your military is huge. However, it appears trigger-happy. Quite a few of our soldiers have died because of American "friendly fire". However, our countries have been allies for a long time now.
Religion is not a hot topic. People keep their religious beliefs to themselves.
We have a long history of fighting invaders.
Sorry.??...Call what part what IT is..."The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" is England,,Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland..UK or BRITAIN....SHOW respect and get in return...Also you getting freedom is a LONG time ago..NOT BOTHERED over here....
Where do you get your silly ideas from Comic books?
Punk music stopped in the 1970s.
No one has tea in the afternoon.
and very few people in the Uk have any interest in the USA.
No, there is a thing called free speech. For the record, We invented it.
What a load of clueless rubbish
