Things that have changed!

I left the UK 10 years ago and now I am back. Not surprisingly  there are a lot of things that have changed. Some of these I knew about, the same developments had occurred more or less simultaneously in Norway, others were more of a surprise.
So here are a few in no particular order
1. The self service checkout in supermarkets and big shops. Had never seen that before I came back and was a bit sceptical - now I love it. Its quick and it works.
2. Banks! What has happened to banks? They bare no resemblance to how they were when I left
3. All of the call centres now seem to be outsourced to third World countries - I like the idea of people in India getting jobs but these are basically shitte
4.NHS direct - a phone number you call when you are sick. You talk to a call centre person (not in India yet - but just wait) tell them what is wrong and they give you advice over the phone, which may include "get to hospital quick!" I was super sceptical about this, I thought it was a cheap way of cutting back on Doctors and doomed to be a disaster. Having called it a few times for Sophie I think its great.
5. TV - when I left there was 5 free channels - now there seems to be hundreds. They are mainly still crap though. Tonnes of vacuous cooking, dancing and property shows and an even bigger serving of utterly shitte talent and reality shows. TOWIE must be the biggest waste of 10 mins of my life - what sort of people watch this shit?

The country is still run by a corrupt bunch of self serving arseholes in London, although the current bunch seem even worse than the last lot who were in power when I left. Very glad to be living in Scotland which is at least partially autonomous.

Next time - the differences between the UK and Norway