About Cars here in the UK

As we all know, the British maintain the unusual habit of driving on the wrong side of the road, despite the fact that the rest of Europe drives on the proper side of the road, the right side. And because of this, their steering wheels are on the wrong side also. And you may also know some of the famous brand names of automobiles that come from the UK, such as Jaguar, Land Rover, and of course Bentley and Rolls Royce. Some of us remember such names as Triumph, MG and Morgan. A brand that I had never heard of until I came over here is Vauxhall, a company owned by General Motors. They are mostly reworked Opels with the Vauxhall name on them. To me, they are nothing more than British Chevys.

The average size of cars over here are roughly that of the Chrysler PT Cruiser, which by the way, is sold over here with the steering wheels on the right side of the car instead of the left like the American version. All the Asian brands are well represented here as well as most European brands, including some we've never heard of. Skoda, a division of Volkswagen, are produced in the Czech Republic. Alfa Romeo, Citroen, Renault and other brands that we used to see in the States all sell well here. The largest car sold over here that I know of is the Chrysler 300C, and yes, the Hemi is an available option over here too, for those who don't care how much gasoline (petrol) costs. The smallest car sold over here is the Smart Fortwo. Smart, a division of Mercedes Benz, sells the Fortwo, a two seat car for urban drivers. These cars are not made for driving across the Contentent, not that you couldn't, it's just not a good idea. Actually, the Smart Fortwo would be a great car for all the commuters that drive from the suburbs into the major city centers like Atlanta. Imagine how much space would be freed up if all those cars coming out of Atlanta during rush hour were Smart Fortwos. And they'll drive just as fast as anyone would need to survive on the Interstate system. And parking these little beauties is a snap in any parking lot!

Something that most Americans don't know is that here in the UK, as well as throughout all of Europe, automatic transmissions are quite rare except in the upper market cars, and even then, it's an option. If you come over to the UK or anywhere else in Europe and expect to drive, you had better be well versed with a five speed transmission! In fact, here in the UK, if you take a driving test in a car equipped with an automatic transmission, you'll be limited to driving cars so equipped! In order to be licenced to drive cars with any type of transmission, you have to test in a car with a manual transmission.

So, why is everyone over here hung up on manual transmissions? Simple . . . when your fuel costs around $10 or the equivalent, you use whatever gives you the best mileage. That's also why most cars are tiny compared to American cars. The car we had, until the insurance got too high for us to afford was a 2001 Ford Mondeo, similar to the Taurus in the States is considered to be something of a large car over here. It has a 1.8 liter four cylinder engine, a size that would never make it in the States, and a 5 speed transmission. Since they don't have as tough of emmission standards as we do, they are able to use smaller engines that don't burn quite as clean to provide decent power. With just me in the car, I could go from 0 to 60 in about 7 seconds, not bad for an engine not much bigger than what's on some riding mowers! But there are times I wish I could have brought my 1999 Ram Quad Cab over with it's 5.8 liter Magnum engine. There's just something almost musical about the sound of a big V-8, especially if its hooked up to dual exhausts. Not only that, it sounds more wholesome than the tiny little weedeater motors that some of the hot-rodders around here have. I find it somewhat ironic that I enjoyed more room in my old pickup truck cab than most people over here have in their entire car. And there is something just unnatural about a country that considers 2 liter engines to be quite large. I'm not quite sure you can buy a car with that small of an engine in the States, can you?

Choosing a school?

I always knew that the school systems here in England are different from American schools, but these past few months, I've been learning a lot about the differences. Take for instance, when we mention Public Schools in America, we are talking about the normal schools that are run by the local school board. Public Schools in England are anything but! Here, Public Schools are what we Americans would call private boarding schools. Why are they are called Public Schools, I don't know.

Here in England, they start children in schools at an earlier age than we do in America. They have their equivalent to Pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, but they start a year earlier than what we do in the States. As a consequence, their official first year of school is when the child is 5 years old instead of six. And they don't refer to each year of advancement as Grades. What we would call 4th Grade, they call Year 4. Elementary or Primary schools go up to Year 6. After that, the parents then apply to different Secondary schools, or what we would call High schools. The process is quite interesting, as I am learning.

Schools come in different types. They come as: Primary, which deals with K-Year 6 students; Secondary, which deals with Years 7-13; and Comprehensive schools which take students all the way through their education. When a student reaches Year 6, regardless of whether they go to a Primary or a Comprehensive school, the parents have to start applying for places at Secondary schools of their choice. If they make no applications, the student most likely will wind up at the school in his or her "Catchment" area, the zone for which that school is primarily responsible for. And to make matters even more interesting, some of the Secondary schools are semi-private. For instance, down where our street empties into the main road, there sits Emmanuel College. It is a Christian Secondary school that is not governed by the local school authority, but falls under a different program. It is funded by a partnership of the Crown and certain local businesses. Since they don't have "Separation of Chuch and State" over here, there is no conflict of interest. Then there are in our local area, 2 Roman Catholic Secondary schools that voluntarily submit to local authority . . . to a point. That point being where it doesn't conflict with their primary ethos for education, in this case, being Roman Catholic Christian schools. They accept students first from their Roman Catholic feeder schools, then if there are slots still open, they then accept, in this order, other Christian students and then students within their catchment areas.

Because Emmaunel College is funded by "other means," it is administered by it's own board, which then is held responsible by the laws that allow such schools to exist - a government program which I know nothing about other than it does this and pays for the student's education just as if the student went to a regular school. However, the thing that excites me about this program is that it allows the school to be a Christian school where the Christian ethos is taught in a Christian environment. The Bible is considered essential equipment for each student, even if only for the morning devotion assembly. The program was set up to address the lack of Secondary schools dedicated to high technology and business curiculum. The fact that the founders of this particular school are very devout Christians and insisted that it also be a part of the curiculum is all the better. It would be considered somethink akin to the Magnet (or is that Magnate?) school programs in various states in America.

Since it is outside the normal system, we had to apply for a slot for my step-daughter, Emily, back in July. Last week, she had to take a 2 hour assessment test and in a couple of weeks, she has to go in for an interview. One of the provisions of this program is that these schools cannot simply take the best and brightest students that apply, but must take on students of all abilities like the other schools do and in similar ratios. How they do this is a mystery to me.

This week, my lovely wife, Rebecca, has been threading her way through the application process for the schools within the normal school system. We could list up to three choices in order of preference so that this would be taken in consideration by the assignment offices. As I understand it, this year, there is a new process whereas the preferences are taken into consideration when schools are overbooked. Up until now, the preferences were a major part of what was considered when placing a child in a school. Now, it is different, but after reading the material about three times, I still don't understand it, but somehow, it still is a major consideration. We put down one of the Roman Catholic schools as our first choice and then 2 secular schools as second and third choices. We will learn the results of this sometime in March. We will learn if Emily can go to Emmanuel sometime earlier. After we get the results in, we'll make a commitment one way or another. And of course, if we don't like any of the choices given us, we can appeal.

When Emily goes to whatever secondary school she winds up in, she's required to go until Year 11, when she's 16. She has the choice of continuing her education in what's known as 6th Form, where she simply continues to go to school for another 2 years (Year 13). Students have the option of changing schools when they go for 6th Form, but this is an option rarely taken. And then when she finishes 6th Form, she simply doesn't go back to school the next year. There is no ceremony like we have in America where we graduate from high school. What a shame that there is nothing to mark the achievement of going the full course of school here in England.

A couple we know have a son who's 16 this year. Before the term finished back in July, he had to take a mandatory series of tests known as the GCSE's, which stands for General Certificate of Secondary Education. Then there are what is known as the A Levels. The A Level GCSE is taken during 6th Form and is used by universities to determine if a student is eligible for entry into that particular institution. The grades that a student gets in the GCSE's and the A Levels will follow them for the rest of their life. All applications for employment over here ask for the scores received in the GCSE and if applicable, the A Levels. In my own humble opinion, that's way too much pressure to bring on teen aged kids. If they do poorly, for whatever reason, that will follow them for the rest of their life! I can understand the need to assess if a student has learned the material taught before being allowed to leave school, but to have that grade be used to determine something in their lives twenty years down the road is too much!

I've seen some kids who don't take them seriously because they know that they won't have a chance at some really big job opportunities. But then I've also watched others who really sweated bullets on these tests because of their plans to go on to University as the phrase goes over here. Then there are the few who are smart enough and have done their homework as we say and the tests are no bother to them because they know their material and are confident of themselves. Those who have prepared themselves in the years leading up to the GCSE's and the A Levels will find a lot of opportunities ahead for them . . . providing they survive University. LOL

Christianity and England

England has a tremendously rich history of the Christian faith. The Roman Catholics look upon the beginning of that history with the arrival of St. Augustine (a different Augustine than the one most of us have heard of) in the late 500's, in what is now known as Kent, England. He set up his bishopric in Canterbury, which even today is counted as the center of Christianity in England. But Christianity was certainly here long before that. There is good evidence that there were Christian Romans living here in England during the First Century! However, the Romans withdrew from England sometime around 410 A.D.

For some time, the Angles, Saxons and the Lutes were all making invasions along the Eastern shores of England from the Danish lands they came from. They were all pagans. When the Romans withdrew completely, the so-called Anglo-Saxon invasion got underway in a big way bringing with them their pagan polytheism. Oswald, a prince of Northumbria living with the Scots while in exile, converted to Christianity when he visited the holy island of Iona just off the Western Scottish coast. When he regained power in Northumbria, he requested missionaries from the monastery of Iona to spread Christianity among his people:

"Owing to his past among the Scots, he requested missionaries from Iona, the pre-eminent monastery of the Irish in what is now Scotland, rather than the Roman-backed mission in England. At first the monastery sent a new bishop named Cormán, but he met with no success and soon returned to Iona, reporting that the Northumbrians were too stubborn to be converted. Aidan criticised Cormán's methods and was sent as a replacement in 635.^[2]

Aidan chose Lindisfarne, like Iona an island, and close to the royal fortress of Bamburgh, as his seat of his diocese. King Oswald, who after his years of exile had a perfect command of Irish, often had to translate for Aidan and his monks, who did not speak English at first. When Oswald died in 642, Aidan received continued support from King Oswine of Deira and the two became close friends.

An inspired missionary, Aidan would walk from one village to another, politely conversing with the people he saw and slowly interesting them in Christianity. According to legend, the king gave Aidan a horse so that he wouldn't have to walk, but Aidan gave the horse to a beggar. By patiently talking to the people on their own level Aidan and his monks slowly restored Christianity to the Northumbrian communities. Aidan also took in twelve English boys to train at the monastery, to ensure that the area's future religious leadership would be English." - Wikipedia

Later, the Celtic Christianity of St. Aidan and Roman Catholicism would come to a reconciliation at Whitby Abbey just north of Scarborough, and Christianity spread throughout the land. Even the Vikings converted when they started to colonize the eastern coasts of what became known as the Danelaw.

Today, two universities, Oxford and Cambridge, are considered two of the premier universities of the world. They got their start as Christian seminaries to train priests in theology. One of the first men to make a mark on Christianity as we know it today came from Oxford. John Wycliffe was a scholar and professor at Oxford. He made his mark by protesting the excesses of the Roman Catholic Church in latter 1300's. He also produced the world's first Bible written in the vernacular, that is, in English, so that the common man could read the Scriptures for himself. Until this time, the Bible was written only in Latin, known as the Vulgate translation which was completed in the 400's. He also was the main force behind a movement known as the Lollards, a precursor to the Reformation that took place about 150 years later under the guidance of such men as William Tyndale, Hugh Latimer and Thomas Cramner. The only reason Wycliffe's Bible didn't have a bigger impact than it did was that the Printing Press had not yet been invented. Books had to be hand copied in those days - a very laborious job. Another was that the English language was undergoing a major change that would not settle out until Tyndale's time.

When the Printing Press did come around, men such as Tyndale and Latimer wasted no time in spreading the seeds of the English Reformation. William Tyndale ultimately died before he could finish his complete translation of the Bible into Modern English. But his translation had such an impact that it helped in large part to shape Modern English into what it is today. Henry VIII was in power at this time too and was looking for a way to get his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled or be granted a divorce. Since the Pope was in no mood to grant either one, Henry took things into his own hands and broke the church in England away from Roman Catholicism. Ironically enough, he did this after he wrote a seminal paper attacking the German Reformation movement and in defence of Roman Catholicism earning him the title Defender of the Faith.

From 1525, when Tyndale started publishing his English translation of the New Testament until 1611, there were no less than 7 major English translations of the Bible! Most of these had the blessing of either King Henry VIII or his daughter, Queen Elizabeth I. In the time between them, Elizabeth's older sister, Mary, who was Roman Catholic, tried her best to stamp out the Reformation, having killed over 300 major leaders of the English Reformation. The most popular of these was the Geneva Bible, named so because of where it was printed during the 1540s.

When King James I came to the English throne after 1600, he was approached by officials of the Church of England for permission to render a new Bible translation to replace the official Bishops Bible translation which had not won much popularity among Christians. So from 1605 until 1610, 50 scholars worked to produce a new translation that was printed in 1611, which we know now as the 1611 King James Authorized Bible. Even it too decades to overcome the popularity of the Geneva Bible. Today, millions of Christians in the English speaking world consider it to be the first and only Bible to be used. Strangely enough, it was not published as a Protestant Bible, but to counter the Protestant Bible. Now most Protestants embrace it as their own.

During this time, we also see that the Pilgrim movement and the Puritan movement got their starts. The conflict between the Church of England, which also meant the English government since the Church of England is the State Church, and the Puritans came to a head with a civil war which cost King Charles his head after he was tried for treason by the Puritans under Oliver Cromwell. There were also major conflicts between the Crown and the Scots with their Presbyterian Church under the leadership of John Knox. The people of the United Kingdom took their Christian faith very seriously in those days! For two or three centuries, many English people died as a consequence of which faith they chose and stood by, no matter the price!

Later, a group of men at Oxford started a Holy Club that promoted a methodical study of the Bible. Out of this group, we gained the two brothers John and Charles Wesley who started the Methodist Movement, which later became a church in America. George Whitehead also came out of this club to become a major Baptist preacher in America along side Jonathan Edwards.

When you travel across this ancient land, you'll also find littered across the landscape, dozens of cathedrals that took tremendous resources to build and several centuries in most cases. Nowhere I have ever been has as many beautiful churches dotting the landscape, ranging in size from small chapels that are works of art in themselves to massive cathedrals that bring to mind the Temples of Jerusalem. Within 15 miles of my home here in Gateshead, I have seen some of the most beautiful churches that I think will stand up against any church in the world for sheer beauty. Too bad these beautiful churches don't reflect the faith of this great nation.

Today, it is a different story. When I first moved here to Gateshead in January of 2007, I was shocked at how many churches stand empty or if not empty, are used for things other than as a church. Out in the rural areas, it's not uncommon to find a fair sized church, or even a large church, surrounded by only a few houses. In cases like these, it's simply a case of villages that used to be large enough to support these churches shrank in population as people moved off to other places or to the cities following the jobs. But to find in many small towns, large towns and even the cities, lots of empty churches boarded up, or sold off to be used as offices for some company, it came as a major shock to me. In America, especially in the South, you'd never find this happening! If a church grows too large for it's building, it usually builds somewhere else a larger building and sells the original to another church looking to upgrade themselves. Or you might find where a church builds a bigger sanctuary next to their former church building and then use it as a chapel. But you'll almost never find a church building abandoned or closed up.

For a country which has a very rich history within the Christian Faith, England no longer reflects this proud heritage! England has 66 million people within her borders (including Wales). Tearfund had this to say about the state of Christianity in England today:

In 2007, Tearfund published the following results of their comprehensive review of British Christian religion in 2006:

“One in four of the UK adult population say they go to church at least once a year. [...] 59% never or practically never go to church.”

Tearfund (2007)₁₀

• 10% of the UK adult population go to church at least weekly.
• 15% attend church at least monthly.
• 26% attend church at least yearly.
• 59% never or practically never go to church.

Self-disclosure polls of church attendance are generally twice as high as reality. Actual measures of church attendance have shown that Church attendance in 1999 was 7.5%, down from 10% in 1989 and 12% in 1979 (declining by about an absolute 2% per decade)[uk.news.yahoo.com 2000]. This trend predicts that in 2007, the rate will be close to 6% who attend, not the 10% who think they do according to Tearfund. This estimate was backed up by the English Church Census 2004.

The Christian Research group's fourth English Church Census (2004) is another professional census whose authors have never shied away from reporting honest statistics, no matter how painful they have been for British Christianity. 37500 churches were invited to take part, and about half did. Some stark truths of Church attendance between 1998 and 2005:

• Between 1998 and 2005, half a million people stopped going to church on Sunday₁₃.
• Daily Telegraph's religious affairs correspondent, Jonathan Petre, says "While 1,000 new people are joining a church each week, 2,500 are leaving"₁₄.
• 6.3% of the population go to church on an average Sunday, compared to 7.5% in 1998₁₄.
• 29% of churchgoers are 65 or over, compared with 16% of the population₁₄.
• Sunday churchgoing is declining at 2.3% per year, slightly slower than the 1990s rate of 2.7% per year₁₃.
• Nearly all Church 'growth' is due to immigrants. A massive influx of Polish workers have filled some churches₁₃.
• "The Roman Catholics have recorded the largest drop [...], it has halved over the past sixteen years"₁₆.
• The drop in the 20-29 age group was 29%₁₆.

"The fastest rates of decline were among Roman Catholics and Methodists; whereas the Pentecostal Churches showed significant growth over the period. As a result, Methodism has dropped to fourth place behind Pentecostalism. If these rates continue, the C of E will overtake the RC Church within the next four years"₁₅.

"London has 11 per cent of all churches in England, and 20 per cent of all churchgoers. It has 53 per cent of all English Pentecostalists, and 27 per cent of all Charismatic Evangelicals. Also, it caters for 57 per cent of all worshippers in their 20s. "I couldn't believe that figure myself, and had to check it again," said Peter Brierley, the director of Christian Research"₁₅. - Religion in the United Kingdom: Diversity, Trends and Decline by Vexen Crabtree, July 2007

In another part of the same report Crabtree shows that after polling 1000 people, 55% consider themselves to be athiests and have no belief in a higher being. The truth of the matter is, here in England, at the most 17% of the population attend church at least once a month. In America, that number is better than 80%!

When I was in high school back in the late 70's, a history teacher of mine, Mr. Larry Harmon taught me to look to England to see where America would be about 50 years later. His theory was that if you wanted to see where America was heading in the next 50 years, study the trends that are prevalent in England today. Looking back over the past 150 years or so, this has proven true in many cases . . . but not all.

Where was it that the English people lost their faith in Christianity? I'm not certain, but if you look to see when the denominations over here changed from growth strategies to maintence strategies, you'll find the answer. I don't know when that happened, but it wouldn't surprise me if it happened after the First World War, or as they call it over here, the Great War. As I said in posts below, England lost more than 3 million people in that war, more than any other war in their history . . . including the Second World War. I'm going to look into this more and see what I can find and when I do, I'll let you know what I find so that maybe, just maybe, we can avoid the same fate.

Double-Decker Buses and English Public Transportation

When most of us think of England, one of the images that instantly comes to mind is the English Double Decker Bus. The ones that I remember from way back and what I used to see in movies looked pretty much like the one here on the left. The driver sat up front in what had to be a hot little compartment right next to the engine of the bus. Next to him was the hood (or bonnet as they say over here) covering the engine. Entry to the bus was at the back of the bus where a ticket agent/conductor stood selling and checking tickets. The stairway up to the upper deck was right at the very back end of the bus next to where the ticket agent stood. Having never rode in one of these models, I'm not sure what the comfort level was like. These buses are narrow so that they could drive down the narrow streets of London and other English cities where often cars were and still are parked parallel on the street sides leaving little room for traffic. And the upper deck gave greater passenger capacity.

The same rules apply today in English cities, especially the old parts of town. So the English Double Decker bus still lives on, but in a more modern guise. The best part, I'm sure, is that the suspension is more modern and now they have moved the engines to the back of the buses. This has forced a change in the layout of the bus. As you can see, the buses are a bit wider and much more modern looking. I can testify that the ride is . . . well it's a bus, not a limo. :-) Since the engine is in the back of the bus, the builders had to move the entrance/exit door to the front of the bus and the driver takes care of all ticket sales. When I get a chance to ride one of these buses, I like to climb upstairs and sit as close to the front bench as I can. It's like no other ride in town! The majority of bus companies still use Double Decker buses on their high volume and or inner city routes. Occasionally, we'll see one drive past our house when it is being substituted for a regular bus which may be broke down or undergoing maintenance. And in the afternoon, when the local high school lets out down at the end of our street, I can see two or three Double Decker buses, painted yellow, waiting to take students home - these are for those students who live a fair distance from the school, more than a half mile or more.

The buses that I am most accustomed to are the more recognizeable single deck buses. These buses are even wider than the Double Decker buses and the seating is not quite as cramped because of this. But as my bus driver neighbor who lives across the street can testify, the Double Deckers are easier to manuveur around the tight suburb streets where everyone is forced to park on the streets. All of these buses have something akin to an active suspension in that when they stop to take on or let off passengers, they can drop several inches to make the step up or down easier on the passenger. And for these in wheel chairs, they also have a push-button ramp that lets down to allow the passenger to be wheeled on the bus. And on the bus, the front section of the bus, just behind the front wheels, is an area where wheel chairs or baby buggies can be parked, and fold down seating for passengers accompanying them.

As you can see from the above pictures, the manufacturers have made some effort to make the bus more aerodynamic, but there is only so much you can do to make a brick shape aero-efficient and still have plenty of room for passengers. Actually, there are Electric buses (with some kind of onboard regeneration, most likely a small gas turbine) that are quite aerodynamic. The cities of Newcastle and Gateshead run these Q-Link buses (Q standing for Quay - pronounced here "Key") from one side of the Tyne Riverside to the other. These are the newest buses to join the fleets here in Newcastle and it shows in their shape. They are not only much more aerodynmic in shape, but they run on electric motors and batteries. Every so often, at the end of their routes, they have to park and let their batteries be recharged. I ran across one doing this one day and all I could detect was a small high pitched whine coming from the windowless back of the bus and I could see the unmistakeable signs of very hot air rising above the back end of the bus. These buses are whisper quiet! Pedestrians hear mostly the sound of the tires on the roadway more than they hear the bus itself when it drives by, but there is still the sound of an electric motor when it gets real close to you. In the background, you'll see the Millinium Bridge which is a pedestrian bridge built over the Tyne to commemorate the 21st Century. To learn more about this amazing structure, click here.


But absolutely the wildest bus ride in Gateshead is the X66 Express Bus from the Metro Bus Station in downtown Gateshead to the MetroCentre, the local mall. The bus pictured above is not a Gateshead bus (the driver is on the wrong side), but it's a similar model. All passengers enter the bus at the front, but can exit from either the front or the rear sections. For the best excitement, I highly recommend riding in the back section where you can watch the hinging action in the floor of the bus. There's nothing like riding a bus that's bending and twisting in ways that buses shouldn't be bending and twisting. The GoNortheast bus company chose this type of bus for this high volume route because of problems with clearances for Double Deckers. There are several places where the bus must pass under very low overpasses, thus ruling out the more economical Double Decker.

One of the reasons that the Double Decker bus is still around and popular with bus companies is that all traffic signals are mounted on poles next to the street instead of suspended over the streets as we are used to in America. Power and other utility lines are buried, so there's no worry about overhead clearances in most cases And for the most part, they get a high capacity bus that's of similar length to a regular bus with nearly the same overhead costs.

So, why am I going on and on about the buses here in England? Well, there are several reasons why buses (and trains, for that matter) still figure prominently in the English image. Even though England has a proud automotive history in such names as Rolls Royce, Bentley, Jaguar, Morgan, ect., the English population were not in a place to embrace the automobile. First and formost, they didn't have someone like Henry Ford who decided to make an automobile that the ordinary worker could afford. And at the same time, The English economy was in a shambles at that same time because of the very, very expensive Arms Race England had with Germany for the twenty or thirty years leading up to the First World War and the tremendous costs of that same war. On a side note, the reason the British call WWI the Great War is that they suffered over 3 million casualties in that war, compared to about three quarters of a million (military And civilian) in WWII.

Being that I am no expert, this is merely my own humble opinion, but I'd say that automotively speaking, the UK is about where we were in the United States in the 1950's and early 1960's. Most families that have cars have only one car. It is a rare household that has two cars permanently based there. And for a great deal of the people, the very, very well established bus lines serve them well enough that they don't bother with the tremendous costs of owning a car. By far and away, the biggest cost of owning an automobile over here is simply the cost of fuel!!! As I have said in posts before, gasoline (petrol), costs the American equivilant of about $10 a gallon! In a recent conversation with a man who is a district manager for Esso gas stations (yes, Esso still exists over here), I learned that more than 70% of the cost of gasoline is in taxes. You would think that with the North Sea oil fields, gasoline would be quite cheap. But it is some of the most expensive fuel in Europe.

Here, there are not only bus lines criss-crossing cities, but there are local bus services between all towns and villages, so if you are diligent and have enough money, you can transverse the whole of England via local bus services. I'm not talking about something like the Greyhound Buses we are familiar with that travel from major points to major points. I can go out of my house, walk about 200 yards or so to a bus stop and catch a bus that will carry me as far as Durham, England (about 15 miles or so away) and then the bus turns around and comes back to Gateshead, weaving around to the various and different villages in between, stopping at various bus stops according to passenger needs. Oh, there are long haul buses too, but they are mostly for hire, you know, private tours and such. Anyone without a car who wants to travel a great distance will catch a train to the nearest point and then work the local bus system to get to their destination.

However, this may be coming to an end in the near future with major consequences for the majority of the rural population that do not own an automobile. Recently, the fast growing bureaucracy of the European Union in Brussells has informed the Royal government that all the bus companies here in England are in violation of EU regulations and the companies will soon be facing major fines for non-compliance. Apparently, no bus route can be longer than 31 miles (50 km)! So what some bus companies have been forced to do is when the route reaches the 50 km mark, the bus driver must stop and make all the passengers disembark the bus, change the number of the bus route and then allow the passengers back on the bus only after they buy a new ticket. Some companies are afraid that the Brussells bureaucracy will not be satisfied with even this. The European Commission says that this does not present a problem in any of the other countries. But then again, the rest of Europe may not have places as sparsely populated as parts of England and Scotland.

From what I am reading here, there are many in Parliament who are not so impressed with the European Commission. But then again, the whole idea of becoming a part of the European Union is not a popular idea with most folks here in England, no matter how popular the idea is within the Labour Government now in power. Whatever the case, if the government determines to enforce the regulations, then this will put a lot of the smaller bus companies that serve the sparsely populated areas out of business and forcing the government to finance some kind of alternative transportation at, no doubt, a much higher cost that will ultimately have to be passed on to the electorate. I am very interested to see just how far the Labour Party is going to go out on this limb with the European Union before they see themselves voted out of office by a landslide election.

A Post Script to the British Pound Stirling

My habit has always get rid of change that collects in my pocket whenever I get to the Checkout lane. Otherwise, I'd wind up with several dollars worth of coins weighing me down. Today, I've had to relearn [again] that this habit doesn't work over here in England. This morning, I started out with a £10 note. When I got on the bus, I asked for a Day Pass so that I wouldn't be constantly buying tickets every time I got on a bus. So when I forked over the £10 note, the driver duly made change, all of it in coins, mostly Pound coins. One fact I forgot to mention is that some of their coins, especially the Pound coins are heavy. So when I got to my destination, the MetroCentre, I went in to the McDonald's to buy a meal and I paid for it with all those pound coins.

After finishing my meal and seeing that I had a little time before catching my next bus, I went into a bookstore and found a book for £2 that I was interested in buying. At the cash register, I found that I had not enough change to buy the book and as I was getting out my debit card, the cashier told me that I couldn't use my card there for purchases of less than £10s. However, she told me that there was a cash machine just around the corner beyond the McDonald's if I wanted to get the necessary cash. So off I dashed to get another £10 note to purchase the book. What a hassle!

The British Pound Stirling

Ever since London became a world financial center, due mostly to the fact that the British Empire was not only world wide, but was commercial too, the British Pound Stirling has been a benchmark of international currencies. The Spaniards built their colonial empire mostly to exploit the indigenous people of their precious metals, a short sighted goal to say the least, and they didn't follow up with exploiting the agricultural potential in much of their newly conquered territory. Thus it was doomed to miss out on long term success. The Dutch had better luck, but most of their colonies were in the South Pacific and there entailed a very, very long logistical trail. Nevertheless, they made up for this deficiency by establishing a large banking industry that helped finance much of the rest of Europe.

Many of us remember hearing from books we've read or movies we've watched words like "Shilling," "Six-Pence," or "Guinea." These were names of various coins that made up the smaller fractional denominations of the Pound Stirling. It was all quite complicated and very arbitrary based upon no logical divisions. This was simply the historical baggage that accumulated over the centuries. In 1972, Great Britain changed all this, I'm sure with a great deal of pain on the part of the population, but with relief too. The Pound Sterling became divisible by a series of [mostly] logical coinage based upon 5's and 10's. Now the coins make much more sense.

We Americans are used to dealing with mostly 4 coins, but we also recognize 2 that are not part of every day life: 1 cent, 5 cents, 10 cents, 25 cents, and the 2 less used 50 cent coin and the dollar coin. From there, everything else is paper money starting with the 1 Dollar denomination going up to the $5, $10, $20, the rare $50 and $100. We even go so far as to have a name for each coin. There's the Penny, the Nickle (named for the metal it's made of), the Dime and the Quarter. The 50 cent coin is known as the Kennedy Half Dollar because of JFK's visage on the observe.

Here in England, there is no paper money denomination below the 5 Pound note. Everything below that is coinage! Be thankful for what we have, because even though the coins in our pockets can add up fast, it's nothing compared to how fast and how heavy pockets get over here with coinage. It all starts with the 1 Pence coin and then goes to the 2 Pence, the 5 Pence, the 10 Pence, the 20 Pence, the 50 Pence, the £1 and the £2 coins. The £2 coin is distinguished as being bimetallic; essentially one coin surrounded by another, the inner being brass and the outer being silvery.

The one thing that they did when they changed there money that makes sense to me is that each denomination of their paper money is of a different size so that the blind can tell the difference between the denominations. The one thing that's going to cost them a lot of money every so often is that they print their paper money with some notable person on one side and the Queen on the other side. When she either steps aside or dies, they will have to start printing up a lot of money quickly, both paper and coins with her successor on the new money. Come to think of it, every time they change monarchs, they have to change the words to their national anthem for the same reason. Of course, The Bank of England may elect to do as we do and simply replace the bills and coins with the new monarch's visage as the money wears out and needs replacing.

There's something else that is unusual to us Americans that is part of the British monetary policy, they let certain banks print their own paper money! The Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland are each able to legally print up their own British Pound notes of the same denominations as the Bank of England and they are legal tender here on this island, though some merchants refuse to take them. And if I were to go to Northern Ireland, I'd have to get all my money changed to the Northern Irish Pounds. As I understand it, the English and Scottish Pounds are not legal tender over there! Very interesting indeed. So far as I know, there is no equivalent in Wales. I guess that is because Wales was conquered by the Normans and made them a part of England in the 1100's. It wasn't until the 1701 Act of Union that the English and the Scots were unified as one nation even though they had both been sharing the same king since King James I (James VI in Scotland) of the house of Stuart from nearly a hundred years before.

I am very interested to see what happens in the near future now that both Wales and Scotland have their own Parliaments, with certain powers reserved for the Parliament of Great Britain reserved for itself, of course. Sooner or later, the Welsh will want to have their own Pound notes printed up by their own Bank of Wales - if there is such and institution. Very interesting times indeed, now that while Europe is trying to unify under one government, Great Britain is slowly devolving in the opposite direction and splintering back up into very ancient borders and ultimately very ancient, but at the same time new countries of their own right.

Royal Mail Post Offices

The United States Post Offices are owned and run by the United States Postal Service. We Americans are all familiar with them and somewhat familiar with all the services you can get at a U.S. Post Office. When I came over here to England, I figured the post offices here would be similar.

Wrong!

While the Royal Mail owns the post offices here, they are run as franchises. And because of this difference, they are run as a business by the people who have the franchise for any particular post office. This doesn't mean that they get to set the rates of postal services, but that they also offer other services and/or products beyond what we would expect to find in a post office.

The first time I came to England to meet and visit with Rebecca (before we married, obviously), I had U.S. money that I wanted to get changed into British currency. Instead of going to a bank as I expected us to do, she took me to the local post office just up at the top of the hill in our neighborhood. They didn't have enough cash on hand to make the exchange, so they sent us to another post office that handles larger cash reserves. I've come to learn that this is the common place to make currency exchanges, especially now that the Euro is the defacto currency of most of the European Union.

At our post office, the Lobley Hill Post Office, a person can go in and pay many of their bills, do some limited banking chores, buy insurance of most kinds, buy candy and/or a drink, buy greeting cards, ship parcels, pay car tax (theirs is a little paper disk displayed in the lower left-hand side of the front windshield). Some others offer a large selection of newspapers and magazines instead. And the largest ones are much like a drug store, just without the pharmacy part.

Not only that, but the British Post Offices also allow a person to take care of a lot of their government business there too. They'll have forms there for what most people would need to interact with the Royal Government. Council government forms and such are an entirely different matter; you have to go down to the Civic Center (their word for our Court House) and enter into a maze of confusing offices that make most of us feel like we're back home trying to find our way around a hospital. But that's an entirely different story and will be told another time.

Our post office, the Lobley Hill Post Office is run by a lovely Indian couple (Christians no less) who deal with all the myriad duties with such aplomb that it amazes me. It doesn't seem to faze either of them to switch from making a deposit for someone into their banking account, regardless of the bank, to figuring up shipping charges for a pile of packages and letters to selling insurance. We usually pop in to make a cash withdrawal from our bank account there because there is no charge . . . and we get a chance to visit with the couple who run the post office, if they're not too busy.

The things that you will find missing from Royal Mail Post Offices are post office boxes! Nor do they sort mail for delivery. That is handled by a different branch of the Royal Mail. Speaking of mail delivery, the mail here is not delivered to a mail box out by the street or hanging on the wall near the front door. The Post Man walks around to each house and slides the mail through a mail slot in the front door. If there is a package too big to go through the slot, the Postman will try to deliver to you by hand if you are at home. Otherwise, he/she will leave a post card with details of how you can get your package, either by going down to a central warehouse where service is somewhat spotty and only before lunch, or by making arrangements to have it delivered to the local post office for the charge of 50 pence. We usually find it much easier, if a package number is given on the card, to arrange online to have it delivered to the Lobley Hill Post Office.

I've also learned that there are certain days that one should avoid going to the post office if one is in a hurry. That's when all the pensioners come in to pay their bills just after they get their pension checks. I just have trouble remembering when those days are. LOL But then I wind up either meeting up with someone from my church or meeting someone new. As you might guess, they all love to hear me talk; my accent is so rich to them. So, all in all, it works out to the good no matter what. And no matter how long the line or how busy they've been all day, the couple who runs our post office always make you feel like you're their best customer.

There has been a lot of worry lately because the Labour Government has been talking about closing down a fair percentage of post offices across the land because of rising expenses. I don't know why they don't just go up on their postal rates like our Postal Service does every so often. not only that, but the local post offices here are the focal points of the various neighborhoods! I think this is something that we Americans might not appreciate as much nowadays. Now me, I'm the new kid in the neighborhood. But most of these people have lived here all their lives; some for more than a few generations. The three places where everyone congregates in these neighborhoods are at the church (sadly, this is not like it used to be), the corner shop and the post office. Everyone knows everyone else by constantly running into each other at these places. Since the local church is not the center of the neighborhood like it used to be - I heard two years ago that only 14% of the population here in England are Christians and attend church - that leaves the corner market and the post office as the two remaining focal points of the neighborhood. By closing down a lot of post offices, the national government will be taking out a big chunk of the heart of a lot of neighborhoods, leading to further decay of neighborhood unity. And when I say neighborhood, you can also read that as village, because in bigger cities, that's what local neighborhoods are, just villages that have been overtaken and absorbed into a larger city. For villages out in the countryside, it would gut them completely!