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Really minor annoyances


Often thought that the bad accents on Frasier were done on purpose. The programme sets the bar so high elsewhere so can't believe they have overlooked this
Well they are American. So they probably don’t notice or know fine well that their audience won’t. They are a nation who seek to believe that all ‘English men’ are gay, but then when presented with one who doesn’t speak like Quentin Crisp they somehow subconsciously place that into a compartment in their brain labelled ‘does not compute’ and ignore it. I mean: have you seen the ‘Castle: Geordie episode’. Google if not.

Digression: I was scrolling YouTube shorts and felt the need to comment on a video of an obvious American complaining that, because “I’m Italian” she was shocked to find that “people” think “Italians are a different colour. Like green or something”. My comment was “You’re American. Also; by ‘people’ you probably mean ‘other Americans.’”
 
A long time ago I lived in London for a few months. Hated it.
I was in a tube station and saw a blind lass with a guide dog. The dog walked under one of those chrome barrier fences and the lass kept walking till she whacked into it hitting her in the lower abdomen. She had to stop and haul the dog back. I saw all this happen a good distance from me and thought “I’d go and help that lass out but by the time I get near her surely someone else will have seen she’s in trouble and help her out”. Naah. I finally reached her and asked where she wanted to go and walked with her to her platform and set her straight. I said “this must be a nightmare for you down here” and she said she tries to avoid rush hour but couldn’t this time around. That was like the last straw for me and London, couldn’t wait to get out. Only been back a handful of times since and as a tourist or passing through with some spending money there’s loads to like about it but as a broke student trying to work a summer job and make a bit of coin it was shite. All big cities have this sort of problem to some extent I suppose. I love New York and they’re not exactly known there for politeness and consideration either!😀
I don't know if it is a big city thing, a southern thing or what.

I grew up in the North East and it was friendly. I found York as a small city pretty friendly too, and I lived there for 10 years. In the middle of that I did a years work placement in Bristol and that was grumpy. People behind bars and shops, you would walk in and say good morning, make a small chit chat comment etc. Nothing. They would just tell you how much you owed and that was it. All with the exception of the woman who worked in the coop next door. She would always chat, but she was from Houghton.

Then I moved into a small town in Kent, but I have found it really friendly down here too. Southerners, migrated northerners, all pretty friendly. At the minute my conclusion is big cities south of Yorkshire are grumpy and anti-social.
Well they are American. So they probably don’t notice or know fine well that their audience won’t. They are a nation who seek to believe that all ‘English men’ are gay, but then when presented with one who doesn’t speak like Quentin Crisp they somehow subconsciously place that into a compartment in their brain labelled ‘does not compute’ and ignore it. I mean: have you seen the ‘Castle: Geordie episode’. Google if not.

Digression: I was scrolling YouTube shorts and felt the need to comment on a video of an obvious American complaining that, because “I’m Italian” she was shocked to find that “people” think “Italians are a different colour. Like green or something”. My comment was “You’re American. Also; by ‘people’ you probably mean ‘other Americans.’”
That is a minor annoyance.

Americans, 4th or 5th generation Americans, claiming to be Italian or Irish, because a great great grandparent came from a country they could not point to on a map.
 
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I don't know if it is a big city thing, a southern thing or what.

I grew up in the North East and it was friendly. I found York as a small city pretty friendly too, and I lived there for 10 years. In the middle of that I did a years work placement in Bristol and that was grumpy. People behind bars and shops, you would walk in and say good morning, make a small chit chat comment etc. Nothing. They would just tell you how much you owed and that was it. All with the exception of the woman who worked in the coop next door. She would always chat, but she was from Houghton.

Then I moved into a small town in Kent, but I have found it really friendly down here too. Southerners, migrated northerners, all pretty friendly. At the minute my conclusion is big cities south of Yorkshire are grumpy and anti-social.

That is a minor annoyance.

Americans, 4th or 5th generation Americans, claiming to be Italian or Irish, because a great great grandparent came from a country they could not point to on a map.
Most people don't live in Central. They commute in, do a job and commute out. Where I am on the London Kent border everyone is very friendly. Saying hello when out in the woods, neighbourly etc.
 
I don't know if it is a big city thing, a southern thing or what.

I grew up in the North East and it was friendly. I found York as a small city pretty friendly too, and I lived there for 10 years. In the middle of that I did a years work placement in Bristol and that was grumpy. People behind bars and shops, you would walk in and say good morning, make a small chit chat comment etc. Nothing. They would just tell you how much you owed and that was it. All with the exception of the woman who worked in the coop next door. She would always chat, but she was from Houghton.

Then I moved into a small town in Kent, but I have found it really friendly down here too. Southerners, migrated northerners, all pretty friendly. At the minute my conclusion is big cities south of Yorkshire are grumpy and anti-social.

That is a minor annoyance.

Americans, 4th or 5th generation Americans, claiming to be Italian or Irish, because a great great grandparent came from a country they could not point to on a map.
I’m of north west County Durham origins. Can’t say I ever thought about it until experiences in life taught me that not everyone had the same approach to interacting with strangers.

Interestingly though, I discovered that although people in the North West were friendly (I lived on the East Lancs corridor and worked in Liverpool, so I noticed differences in that region, not just in accent* but in the type of friendliness you’d experience. Don’t ask me tovv BBC explain. I can’t) when I moved east of the Pennines things changed a bit.

I lived/still live in fairly rural East Yorkshire and worked in York. Everybody in York was invariably friendly except the tourists and students. When I walk to the high street in my town now, however, virtually everyone will say hello or respond positively to a greeting, a nod of the head or a smile. It’s universal. And people will chat. I had a conversation about roadworks and diversions with a random woman in the street about a month ago after she’d said hello and I responded. It happens often. And people I make victim of a pathetic quip or an observation don’t shy away or make the sign of the cross at you. They actually engage. After swimming this morning I had a conversation with two blokes about renovations to the car park which meandered into stereotypical jokes about Australians for some reason.

* a local line train ride from Manchester to Liverpool is highly entertaining. The accent noticeably develops as you make you way west. It gets less Mancunian as people disembark and get on around Newton Le willows, gets really rough and gutteral around st Helen’s area and goes all ‘calm down, calm down’ as you near Lime Street.

Another aside: I worked at a place that was nominally said to be in Aintree but it was actually in Fazakerley. I found it highly entertaining to get the locals to say “Fazakerley” at me, although I had to be careful to wear a waterproof bucket hat for the more effusive locals.
 
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Someone did that in the Arnison Centre the other day. The car park was gridlocked and everyone had to wait because they were waiting for one of the spaces on the side in front of Boots (a normal space, not a disabled or parent and child space). I parked about 10 meters away from them in a row with loads of empty parking spaces.
Been to the Arnison Centre today, car park gridlocked, it really is the worst designed car park on the planet.
 
Get this all the time at work. People who suddenly stop their trolley and decide to rearrange their shopping bags or handbag in the aisle at the bottom of the tills or the store doorway, blocking everyone else who wants to leave the store.
Post office in town has people do that, normally older folk who have just taken £500 (or some other large sum of money out) and instead of standing at the desk and making sure it’s in their purse they do it at the doors so anyone walking by can see they have a decent amount of cash on them.
 
Teesside park takes that award. Way too many zebra crossings so you’re constantly stopping.

It was better when the main flow of traffic was down the middle and cars/ people flowed outwards toward the shops.

Always a queue to get in, but loads of spaces and not gridlocked at all once you’re past the start of the shops.
 
Companies who advertise "order before 2pm for free next day delivery", so you do. Then 24 hours later you check your order status and it says "152 in stock awaiting dispatch".

Less annoying that ebay Chinese scammer companies who say "3-5 days delivery, location UK" then it arrives 6 weeks later from Shanghai.
 
It was better when the main flow of traffic was down the middle and cars/ people flowed outwards toward the shops.

Always a queue to get in, but loads of spaces and not gridlocked at all once you’re past the start of the shops.
Once you are in theres always spaces I agree but I only ever go for Nike or M&S so have to go right to the bottom, as soon as you come off the A66 its a nightmare, people go through the lights and stop on the grid after the lights which stops people coming the other way and then too many lights, roundabouts and zebra crossing. Never used it when the traffic went down the middle but its too big for the current entry/exit imo.
 
not
Often thought that the bad accents on Frasier were done on purpose. The programme sets the bar so high elsewhere so can't believe they have overlooked this
Bad but not not as bad as this.....
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The actor that played Fraziers dad is english originally so must have been pissing himself laughing ..i have nee idea what castle producers were thinking!
 
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not

Bad but not not as bad as this.....
You must be logged on to see media items

The actor that played Fraziers dad is english originally so must have been pissing himself laughing ..i have nee idea what castle producers were thinking!
Post #1622.

Also: I have a recollection that the writer of the show said something like they were pleased they’d ‘nailed it’

Correction (I googled): ‘… he (the writer.
Somebody called ‘Nick’) tweeted: “I got to do a bunch of the Geordie research and I gotta say @gregryb crushed it”’

The British press (The Chronicle?) weren’t having that.

‘We’d have to politely disagree Nick and by the looks of it many others do too as Nick has been busy replying to people not happy with the accent.’ They said

In a series of tweets, he responded: 'Hi new Castle friends from Newcastle. I gather some of you are upset about the portrayal of the Geordie on last week’s episode.

'We always wanted to have a Geordie be part of our ESL Class, and we worked hard to make the vocab/grammar authentic in the script’

Wot a f***ing arse. Such a condescending and utterly ignorant attitude. I can’t get my head around how some American’s (sorry but it is Americans) experience/perspective on the rest of the world (let alone England… where they speak… err English…) is soooo limited that they actually believe that it’s not just that the accent (or opinion, or lifestyle, or perspective) of somebody from elsewhere isn’t just ‘unusual’ or difficult for them to understand. They believe that it really is incontrovertibly nonsensical, impenetrable or incompressible. And that an accent renders somebody incapable of composing or uttering a coherent sentence.

The actor, you would think, might know better, because although he was born, and raised in Los Angeles. He is a graduate of Pitzer College and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

His name is Greg Bryant

(Obviously I can’t sleep. 😉)
 
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