hedders

You can, if the context allows it e.g. you can answer the question “Where were you earlier?” with “Went to the doctor” and it means the same and would be understood as “I went to the doctor”.

I mean, there was that time Roy Hattersley was supposed to be on HIGNFY and he didn’t turn up, so they replaced him with a tub of lard on the basis that it was “liable to give much the same performance and imbued with many of the same qualities”.

Not as deranged as what’s going on in the USA right now, but it was fucking funny.

I feel like OP is of the cusp of a realisation: “Hang on. Are we the baddies?”

Back in the day, Switzerland was one of Europe’s main sources of armies-for-hire. We see the echoes of that today in the Swiss Guard in Vatican City, for instance.

It’s not just Americans who do this by any means, and nor are they the worst offenders! Trust me on this, I’m British - the most wilfully parochial nation on earth.

You’ll always get the odd jerk, but mostly this stuff tends to come from a lack of travel experience more than anything else. Unless you’ve travelled, you may not even realise what assumptions you’re making about how day-to-day life works. And, well, a lot of Americans haven’t travelled much outside of the USA. (That’s not a criticism by the way - the USA is absolutely enormous and incredibly diverse, and you could spend a lifetime exploring it and not see it all.)

All that said, back in the days before dual voltage power supplies were common I did used to find it amusing watching Americans in Europe blithely plugging their electrical goods into the 220V mains and wondering why they blew up.

Look at what happens to the women who do come forward. Is it really any wonder they’re so reticent?

You tell them, gently, directly and as a matter of fact. Then you pick up the pieces.

Read “The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists” by Robert Tressell. Or, if reading a book is too difficult, there’s a graphic novel version I think.

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