Your Favourite Other Country

[Noel Edmonds]

Watched a very interesting BBC4 documentary yesterday about Italy, a country that I've never visited yet but always had a very fond interest in. Really stunning part about ancient underground mines in Naples, and how they were used as shelter for residents during ww2. Some heartbreaking messages of love along with contrastingly chilling graffiti depicting Mussolini's aggressive nationalism carved into the cave's very walls. Culturally and architecturally it just stands out by far and away as the most beautiful country in the world, with a lot of interesting stories to tell from its history. It's food is the probably finest in the world too. A bit of an obvious choice, but definitely my favourite other country, even without having been there.

[Norgethistle]

Norway is at times my most favorite other country and at times my most hated, the whole family first, clean, easy to find a job and relative crime free is magic, the bureaucratic red tape and slowness of getting anything and I mean anything done, the taking shelter behind union rules and committees for the slightest thing (We are going to offer the employees free health checks and care.......... oh we need to get the union involved, run a committee, check employment law, and feed back to you in 12 weeks) and the most messed up tax & welfare system in the world (The tax office and NAV, the social security office employ more people than any other company in Norway), where even the tax office cannot get your tax claim resulting in 80% of people being under taxed or overtaxed yearly make it at times a horrendous place to stay, but the positives currently outweigh the negatives mostly due to being a father of a 7 year old and the opportunities for children are miles better than the UK.