British Business Club: Fill & Download for Free

My biggest annoyances are two things. The first one may be an experience unique to me based on cross-cultural misunderstanding, and the second is that I wish British people ate healthier—or at least more flavorful—foods.The British businesses I dealt with didn't seem to do much that was "promotional" or free. I found this to be the case in several regions of the country. I came away feeling like British consumers were used to being nickel-and-dimed and didn't grasp the free enterprise system. This may have been my experience simply because I was in some areas frequented by tourists, and certainly urban areas in any country may be prone to "ruder" customer service.However, I did sometimes feel British businesses wanted to charge me for every breath of oxygen I took in their restaurants, dance clubs, or retail shops. There was no free water, no drink refills, no free samples, no mints on your way out the door, no specials, and some items that I would normally expect to be cheap are packaged and priced as if they are big purchases.My impression was that there was less offered in the way of customer service in Britain than in the United States or in continental Europe. I occasionally thought service workers were signaling to me that they thought they were doing me a public service by their letting me in the door, and I owed them my business. I have assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that the relatively high taxes that British businesses must pay (relative to the United States) and lingering socialist attitudes among British workers in shops were being displayed.Whether or not my assessments are solid or all accurate (and they really may not be), the attitude toward customers in the USA is indisputably the opposite of what I thought I encountered in Britain. American merchants tend to treat customers as if we are doing the business a favor just by walking in the door—the customer is king.As for British cuisine, I wish it was a bit healthier. Restaurants serve a lot of starchy and lard-cooked foods compared to what I am used to as a "clean eating" health fanatic.Nevertheless, these complaints are so minor in the scheme of Great Britain's wonderful ways. I don't think I would change anything about the British except their love of greasy and bland food.

It’s perfectly acceptable to set national standards. We do it in the UK; in my own game we have BS1363 standards and if devices are not compliant with this we don’t buy them in because we can’t use them let alone sell them.Standards on products are fine. I don’t want us selling the Europeans shoddy goods. It isn’t good for anybody.What’s not acceptable is the fact that they’re trying to dictate environmental, labour and social standards to us, which since we’ve left we shouldn’t have to observe anyway, but that’s particularly galling when they do not insist on the same standards from other countries outside the EU.This is their take on it:“The British tell us that this is unfair because other third countries do not have these same constraints, such as Canada. But we have to realise that the UK will be our major trading partner outside the EU tomorrow. There is 10 times as much trade between the EU and UK than with Canada. It is therefore normal to seek guarantees that they will not engage in unacceptable dumping.”What this actually means is that they think that British businesses will actually be more productive outside of the regulations and will be able to undercut continental businesses by bringing products to market more cheaply.Look Jacques, this doesn’t cut it. If you’re going to have a set of rules for EU and non-EU, fair enough, it’s your club. But you can’t say that one non-EU importer has to follow rules the rest don’t.And that’s what the argument is about. We accept the rules will now be different because we’ve left. What we want is the same rules to apply to us as it does to anybody else not in the EU.The way they’re doing this just looks spiteful and petulant. It’s as if they want to punish anybody that wants to leave the club to deter others.Surely not?How shall I end this article? Do you know, I’m stuck for a concluding sentence….hmm.:P

Yes, it is.Let us look at one set of statistics, namely, the Democracy Index published by the Economist Intelligence Unit.The Democracy IndexThe Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is a British business within the Economist Group providing forecasting and advisory services through research and analysis, such as monthly country reports, five-year country economic forecasts, country risk service reports, and industry reports.On the EIU Democracy Index 2018, Spain is categorized as a Full Democracy. See Map below:Source: Democracy Index 2018The EIU definition for Full Democracies is:[N]ations where civil liberties and basic political freedoms are not only respected but also reinforced by a political culture conducive to the thriving of democratic principles. These nations have a valid system of governmental checks and balances, an independent judiciary whose decisions are enforced, governments that function adequately, and diverse and independent media. These nations have only limited problems in democratic functioning.That puts it in the top 20 countries, representing 4.5 percent of the world population. That is the equivalent of to belonging to an elite club. About 95.5 percent of the world population should be envious of Spain.Source: Democracy Index - WikipediaJust for the sake of comparison, on the EIU Democracy Index, the United States of America, France, and Belgium rate as Flawed Democracies.The EIU definition for Flawed Democracies is:[N]ations where elections are fair and free and basic civil liberties are honored but may have issues (e.g. media freedom infringement). These nations have significant faults in other democratic aspects, including underdeveloped political culture, low levels of participation in politics, and issues in the functioning of governance.International IDEAThere is another institute that publishes data on democracy, namely the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), established in Stockholm, Sweden. Its data base is accessible on the following website:The Global State of DemocracyPlumbing this data base reveals that the quality of representative government of Spain is comparable to that of the Netherlands, both of which are above average for Europe. See screenshot below:The same pattern of information emerges when we compare the quality of fundamental rights for Spain and the Netherlands, both of which are again above average for Europe. See screenshot below:To summarize: Spain is clearly a fully democratic country where fundamental rights are respected.The problem of CataloniaThis question should also be understood in the light of the developments with respect to how Spain is dealing with the problem of separatism in Catalonia.Many separatists in Catalonia and their supporters abroad claim that Spain is oppressing the region.One way to put this claim into perspective is to seek information on the quality of local democracy. Using that information we compare the quality of local democracy in Spain with that of other countries in Europe where there are regions with a significant degree of local autonomy. Countries in Europe where regional autonomy is significant are: the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Switzerland.Using the database of International IDEA, we can chart the quality of local democracy in Spain, the UK, Belgium and Switzerland as follows:From this chart we can see that for most of its democratic history since the 1980s, Spain appears to track the UK, Switzerland and Belgium. However, by 2018, it appears to be doing slightly better than the other three countries.Doing as good or better than Switzerland or Belgium is a hard feat to follow. So three cheers for Spain!It should be noted that this measure does not provide data on any specific region, so no conclusions can be drawn about the quality of local democracy in any specific region, including Catalonia.ConclusionApparently, data seems to reveal Spain as a seriously healthy democracy.