What's the best thing the UK has ever given to the world?

[Nigella's Cream Pie]

Cricket
Cream tea
BBC
Traffic lights
Game of conkers

 

[withdeanwombat]

If it hasn't already been said,

The British Empire.

 

[clapham_gull]

And because some Greek retailers decide to call it "british style" this actually makes it British then? Riiiight.

Face it - its not British. The UK has given the world many, many things but fish and chips wasn't one of them. I think you're getting far too protective of 'home' due to being away.

I'd give the British fish and chips to be honest.

It's very hard to claim "ownership" of a single way of preparing a single food stuff.

There are pasta and noodles all over the world and there are fried potatoes in all their varieties.

A Tempura style of cooking vegetables was introduced to Japan by the Portuguese.

But bringing different food together to make a single dish, perfecting them, standardising their preparation and creating an industry supplying them is exactly what happened with fish and chips as we know it.

What we know as Fish and Chips was brought to the world by the British.

 

[clapham_gull]

A television that wasn't as good as the foreign ones.

First demonstrated in Hastings I believe.

 

[sod1]

football hooligans
Mr Blobby
Page 3
Who wants to be a millionaire

 

[blue and white army]

Appeasement

 

[Nottseagull]

The Industrial Revolution.

 

[clapham_gull]

The Industrial Revolution. And has noone mentioned television?

I have, but our version of it was a bit rubbish.

Clapham gave us the abolition of slavery.

 

[Stoo82]

Wallace and Gromit

 

[Stoo82]

Corkscrews
Tin Can
Electric Motor
Fax Machine
Gas Mask
Jet Engines
Lawn Mower
Penicillin
Rubber Bands
Steam Engine
Toilet Paper

 

[Cian]

Sender pays postal system.

 

[Nottseagull]

Sender pays postal system.

That post is badly in need of some inverted commas.

 

[Cian]

That post is badly in need of some inverted commas.

I didn't say its current form was worth praising, but Rowland Hill's concept and initial system was...

 

[Juan Albion]

Well I've just had fish and chips for dinner. And they definitely weren't British.

 

[brakespear]

you people.....

worcestershire sauce
marmite?
brown sauce
proper bacon
microprocessors
middle-class guilt
proper sausages
xtc
and football.....and maybe cricket

 

[PILTDOWN MAN]

From the Harveys Website:

The English pub does not translate well to other countries. As an icon of the Nation, pubs surpass fish & chips, double decker buses and village cricket. Our pubs are to be treasured and require support. Hilaire Belloc, a great Sussex writer, wrote... "When you have lost your inns drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England!"

Has to be serving a pint of Harveys Best Bitter in good nick of course.....

A great writer who was French! Nonetheless he did love Sussex as this song proved
Sussex Drinking Song

Sussex Drinking Song
(Words: Hilaire Belloc, early 20th century;
set by Martyn Wyndham-Read to the fine Irish rebel tune "The West's
Awake")

On Sussex Downs, where I was bred,
In rains where autumn lanes are red,
Where Aran tumbles in his bed
And dusty gales go by.

Where branches, bare on vert and glen
And merry hills are whitening then;
I drink strong ale with gentle-men,
Which no one can deny, deny,
Which no one can deny, deny.

In cold November off I go,
And turn my face against the snow;
And watch the wind where ere it blow,
Because my heart is high.

'Till I settle me down in Steyning to sing
Of the girls I've met in my wandering;
And all I mean to do in Spring
Which no one can deny, deny,
Which no one can deny, deny.

'Tho times be hard and fortunes tough,
The ways be foul and the weather rough;
We are of stout south country stock
Who cannot have strong ale enough

From Crowborough Top to Ditchling Down,
From Hustpierpont to Arundel town,
The girls are fine, the ale is brown;
Which no one can deny, deny,
Which no one can deny, deny.

Good man

 

[looney]

thatcherism

 

[looney]

Hovercraft

Harrier jumpjet

Partition

The long bow

The Gold Standard/Pax Britannica

Added to this we managed to civilise more savage peoples than any other empire.


Owning the frogs at everything.


Oh and finally the english f***ing language.

 

[shoreham moonraker]

youth culture

 

[little al]

The Sandwich