Rip off Britain .. 2

For the first time in about 10 years we’ve just returned from a good old British holiday. With kids in tow any holiday gets expensive and having found it cheaper to go abroad in the past we weighed up our options for this year before giving the good old UK a try.

The options looked very much like this.

France - I like France; you can drive there, its easy to get to, its cheap, and with the major exception of Paris the French have not really caught on to this commercialisation stuff. I like this lack of commercial awareness as your not digging into your pockets every half hour to feed parking meters etc. Plus they like families, and as long as you give the toilets a miss (how can such a so-called sophisticated race of people think shitting through a plank of wood into a hole in the ground is normal?) it’s a great country.

The US - well the new airport security measures are now laughable and the Presidents a total fucking a dick but the Dollar is dirt cheap and you can have a holiday at half the cost of virtually anywhere else. Plus you can be guaranteed the sun in Florida (although you might get shot, mugged, or eaten by crocs) but you won‘t be able to purchase any food as nobody in the entire State that works in a shop or restaurant speaks English, and you‘ll have to take the kids to that evil empire called Disney.

Spain - the Costa’s make it a fucking arsehole of a country that’s full of all the English people you went on holiday to avoid.

Turkey - largely like spending two weeks living in a hot sweaty sock and (with a few notable exceptions) generally in my experience a shithole of the highest order

… you get the general picture. Options were narrowing.

This led to the “fuck it why don’t we just drive down to the English Riviera” decision. Its cheap, we can take the car, and the weather can’t be any worse than it is at home. So there you go. A good decision made; not counting on the fact that Britain is not really Britain any more - its some third world network of useless motorways, speed cameras, and shit service stations that's home to a million and one different ways of skinning your finances alive before you even realise.

Well to be fair the weather was great but when I came back and counted up the pennies I sat down to write a letter to the English Tourist Board explaining the reasons why I thought that nobody in their right mind would take two children on a two week holiday in the UK. It went something like this:-

Britain’s road system is completely fucked.

It took 12 hours to drive to Devon from the North West through some of the fucking worse tailbacks I have ever experienced. At one point it took over an hour and a half to drive 10 miles with a sign suggesting that this sort of delay was normal. Furthermore I’m convinced the M5 through Bristol is just a fucking car park and that you could actually run past the town quicker than drive.

Its just, shit, shit, shit

Even though the road network is fucked its stuffed full of fucking stupid camera’s.

Despite hardly being able to move in places we accrued one camera fine (three points, fuck you Devon and Cornwall Police). I’m guessing that most people having spent several hours in a fucking traffic jam might be tempted to drive at 6mph over the speed limit to make up some fucking time. Suddenly I’m fucking criminalized by some shit box camera for 6mph because I was over 2 hours late getting where I was going because of the fucking state of the roads.

Motorway service stations

They are all pretty bad but the Michael Wood’s service station on the M5 Gloucester was the worst “comfort” break I had ever had. On a hot day the smell of shit was overpowering thanks to dodgy sewers, the place was a filthy fucking disgrace, and the service totally non existent.

Second place was Burton Wood services on the M62 that actually had illegal immigrants living in cars in the car park. Pure class. I do love the new UK we live in.

When you get off the road you pay to park absolutely fucking everywhere

We used roughly £100 ($220) in diesel to drive 1,200 miles there and back but laughingly paid over £75 ($160) in “pay and display” parking fees in two weeks so it cost nearly as much to park as it did to get there. Every local authority in Britain’s tourist resorts should remember that we’re there putting money into your economy - you greedy, greedy fuckers. We even had to pay to park overnight on the road outside our hotel. What a crock of shit.

I hate most things American, but even there if your spending money in a town they usually don’t charge you £7 ($15) to park there for the pissing day because they want your trade. In France paid parking would cause a national strike; but were just conditioned to cough up.

Piss take prices

Some of the best rip off items of expenditure were (in order or rip-off-ness)

1. £12.50 ($27) for 4 lemonades at the Eden Project. I’ll repeat that twelve quid for 4 soft drinks. Who do they think I am Donald Fucking Trump?

2. £45 ($95) for two adults and 2 kids to enter a fucking petting zoo. A fucking petting zoo and then the miserable FUCKS made the kids pay 50p to buy food to feed their fucking animals. I hope they get foot and mouth the greedy, greedy bastards.

3. £6 ($15) for the worst fish and fucking chips I have ever eaten. There was a big sign outside that said “caught locally today” but the only thing caught locally that day was probably pubic lice from the girl behind the counter.

Disappointing “attraction’s”

The worst was the Eden Project. Looks impressive but there’s actually fuck all there and the prices inside for anything are disgusting. I recycle and take an interest in the environment and this reinforces all that is wrong with the organic / ethical movement. They deride people for not shopping ethically or organically but have the audacity to charge £3 ($7) for a glass of “organic” fucking lemonade, or £5 ($11) for some organic chocolate. That’s why they don’t shop organic because when you have kids its too fucking expensive you fucking imbeciles, and with these sort of tricks you reinforce the reasons why they don‘t you greedy bastards. Try selling affordable organic products and they’ll shift.

Plus they picked us up and took us around on diesel buses and the £4 ($9) glossy brochure telling you all about the place is not even printed on recyclable paper (strange environmental message guys?). Having driven for 4 hours to get there I have to say that I should have conserved fuel miles and not fucking gone.

It didn’t however stop thousands of sandal wearing Middle Class accountants called Nigel wondering around the place sighing "This is absolutely bloody marvellous” before buying some shitty ethic tat for fifty quid and getting back into their BMW‘s.

Service

Its sad but the UK has now fully gone down the USA route in the service industry and being served by surly Eastern European former prostitutes did not add to my holiday experience.

So there you have it, don’t come to Britain for your holiday go somewhere nice instead.