the guardian’s list of 52 american advantages is a bit dubious. not only are many of them not particularly widespread in america but several of them don’t seem to be advantages at all.

• thirty year mortgages: so you can pay the bank tons more interest for a miniscule reduction in the monthly payment over a standard uk 25 year term? it makes far better economic sense to pay your mortgage off over the least time that you can comfortably manage rather than the most.

• fierce loyalty to illogical fahrenheit, mileage, gallon and pound avoirdupois measurement. oh please. the americans got to the moon first despite the impediment of imperial measurements not because of it. and find me any american scientist who’s not familiar with si units and all the ease that working in powers of ten in easily converted between units gives us.

• yellow, lined pads and yellow, eraser-head pencils. are yellow pads actually made with unbleached environmentally friendly recycled paper? if they are i’ll concede the point but i can find plenty of pencils with rubbers on the end here too. they don’t mention the stupid non iso sizes the pads come in. (oh yes they do, that’s another point i disagree with)

• free local calls from residential phones over a really small call area with sky high rates for national and international calls. my penny a minute local call area covers most of the population of the north east of england.

• supermarket baggers - courteous youngsters who expertly pack your purchases at the checkout while you fumble with your wallet. i make that doddery pensioners who pack heavy tins on top of squishy things, haven’t heard of putting all the frozen stuff and all the refrigerated stuff in their own bags and often pack just two or three items to a carrier leaving you with a multitude of bags to carry.

• high-school graduation, and regular class reunions as if friends reunited wasn’t quite scary enough

• unambiguous, literal (not symbolic) traffic-control signs: “don’t walk!”, “wrong way!”, “slow!”. internationalisation be damned.

                        i could stay here all day but i think it's a good thing that the uk has left many of these things behind or implemented them better.