Why Britons are miserable

Welcome to 2008! If I had've written this blog a week ago (which I wouldn't have, being snowed under) I would have been delighted - a new job, which is going really well and even plays MC Hammer remixes in the afternoon, a potential new romance, lots of visits from Amsterdam and Sweden, and a renewed take on London. Well, the new job is still going well, and I have exciting trips to New York and Stockholm planned - if not paid for, more about that in a moment - but the romance has seemingly evaporated and an old English demon has reared it's ugly head: bureaucracy. People think everyone in London is miserable because of the weather and greyness and constant knife-crime. Nope, the answer is: bureaucracy.

We currently have four bureaucratic battles on the go, which has left me with no doubt that inefficiency and thickly-layered bureaucracy is a very typical English trait, finally beating the record previously held by the Dutch.

Excruciatingly frustrating situation number one concerns our gas bill. Upon receiving a ridiculously high bill, we asked the gas company to do a meter reading. They said they would send us a key. Meanwhile, I had paid a third of the bill - which they took off our old flatmate's account, rendering it -60, and sent another bill for the full amount to us. We received an envelope informing us it contained the key to our meter. It was empty.

Second is our on-again off-again internet connection and subsequent long conversations with various Indians who like to randomly subtract amounts from Erin's bank account, without ever actually providing us with the service we are paying for. Third is the ongoing saga with bailiffs who write threatening letters on a bi-weekly basis informing us that our house is to be broken into and our possessions sold to pay our supposedly outstanding council tax. This despite the fact that we have written, faxed, phoned and emailed informing said bailiffs that in fact the council owes us tax.

And lastly - the reason I have not paid to go to New York: HSBC, my former bank, has closed my account. Ok, I did ask them to, but after a lengthy conversation with more call centres, I was told that it would not be closed until next week. Supposedly safe in the knowledge I could access my funds until I called them again, I went to Tesco's to buy some dinner that very evening, and discovered they had closed my account in a highly uncharacteristic burst of efficiency. Of course, this means they get to keep my money and make a few more bucks on it for an undisclosed amount of time. Unable to find out after several expensive phone calls ('HSBC doesn't call customers back,' I was told) exactly when or how I will get my money back, I am now at home glad that Ben is going to cook a roast so that I can eat.

Seriously, the combination of bureaucracy and Jeremy Clarkson has severely tainted my view of Britain as a cosy land of hobnob (biscuits) and Dr Who. The friendly tax forms of Sweden beckon...