British Things That Make You Go Hmmm #3

What's up with the dudes out collecting scrap metal in Birmingham? Are they like this all over Britain?

In case you do not have a clue what I am on about basically every other day (or so it seems) some guys in a British version of a pickup truck drive up and down the streets really slow playing some trumpety sounding tune while screaming something that I for the life of me cannot grasp over and over and over...


Do they expect me to run out waving my hands emphatically in the air because I heard their bellows?

I mean if I have some scrap metal I leave it out in front of the house for them to take anyway. I have put things outside and had people come and take them literally right after I plopped it down.

I have also came close to having a physical altercation with one of these brutes a couple years back. He basically wandered into a private area of my property and decided he was going to help himself to some metal items I had there. I saw him from upstairs and came down as he was putting it into the back of his truck and asked him what he was doing trespassing on my property and stealing my belongings.

He got really pissed and took the piece out of the truck and said, 'Here, take it!'

To which I told him its not the point of the item its the fact that he opened a door and walked into my property and removed something without asking first. And I jokingly informed him that where I come from you can get shot in the back for something like that...

So he looks at me and says, 'So why don't you go back there then!'

And I told him frankly that I was here doing research on the 2 wars America whooped Britain in and the other one that we saved their ass in...

Don't think he knew what I was on about...

And I guess I could consider the following to be 'Hmmm #4' but I don't want to because it is so small...

But is the proper way you secure a towed vehicle here in the UK??

British Things That Make You Go Hmmm #2

I am still having problems with my internet stick but have a dial-up like capability until I can get into the city centre to visit the T-mobile shop and get my stick fixed.

Today I went to a local take-away to get some fresh bread for my lunch of canned soup and was given the bread wrapped in tin foil and placed in a plastic shopping bag also known here in the UK as a carrier bag. I now there is nothing special in what I have just wrote. The thing that made me go hmmm is displayed here in this photo.


The logo on that bag is very familiar to me yet it is probably not known by 98% of the people living in this country. This is a shopping bag from a Belgian supermarket named Delhaize that I used to shop at while I lived in Luxembourg. So how did the plastic shopping bags from a Belgian supermarket chain end up in my local take-away????!!!


First off I should mention that they had a whole bunch of them. The local take-away has obviously bought them in bulk from some supplier. I have likewise seen shopping bags from French supermarket chains such as Cora and Auchan in the past year or so in Birmingham.

It makes me wonder why? Either a supplier is stuck with a whole lot of extra bags that were produced for these shops yet were not bought or the stores themselves purchased too many and are trying to offload them here in the UK (and probably other places).

This particularly makes sense when you know that Auchan and Delhaize charge 2 to 3 Euro cent for the bags in their shops while they remain free from major supermarkets here in the UK. Is it that far fetched to think that most people are no longer buying the bags in these European supermarkets and they decided they can still make money off them by selling them in bulk here in the UK?

British Things That Make You Go Hmmm #1

In the UK they call a car's liscence plate a 'number plate' and they are a big business.

Normal number plates are issued to a new car when it is registered by the car dealer with the DVLA and they tend to stay with the car for its entire 'life'.

The front plate here in the UK is white and the rear one is bright yellow but that varies from country to country around Europe. The thing that is totally unique about UK plates is that the two numbers you see in the photo above indicate the year that the car is manufactured. So the 51 you see in the example above tells you that the car was made between September 1st, 2001 to February 29th 2002 and the plates issued by the DVLA from March 1st 2002 would have had an 02.

The impact of this on an economic level is that people desire to have the latest number plate and tend to upgrade their car just for that reason. As for used cars then you could have the same car with the same mileage and even made in the same year yet one has an 07 plate and the other a 57 plate and the 57 plated car would be worth more on the market.

There is also custom plates that you can pay for from the DVLA and they remain the property of the individual. Desire your initials? How about a nickname? Well there are two ways to get it. First you can hope that no one has ordered it already from the DVLA and pay about £250 for it OR if you are not so fortunate you will have to try to buy it off of the individual who already owns it.

In the case of the above plate, which belongs to footballer Cristiano Ronaldo's Bentley you would probably have to pay him millions of dollars or pounds to get him to sell that to you. You up for it?