Posted by theanonymousone 4 days ago
But yeah, UK main streets have a problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...
If it's supposed to be a display of a city's finest... we're not doing very well.
People don't understand the scams but they smell it. They know how they remember things and they know that everything is getting worse not better.
I dare our governments to try and draft us into another war, literally dare them, even a war to defend our actual land - people have nothing to fight for and will turn their weapons on perceived perpetrators. It's brewing. This slow decline is painfully visible to people.
> People don't understand the scams but they smell it.
This is so so true and well put
In the uk virtually all thrift stores are run by a well known charity and thus the locals call them charity shops.
Are there no similar stores in the US?
Modern döner-kebab meat is rarely the quality shawarma of a century ago. It is highly processed and basically a big hot dog.
> Kebab shops elsewhere in Europe are often associated with shady dealings.
No they are not, but there's a lot of racist propaganda that says they are!
> "All types of misconduct are clearly more common in foreign-owned companies,"
Spare me, anywhere with bankers hanging out is going to be an endless sea of far more serious crime.
None of this has anything to do with food quality anyway, which was my point.
> anywhere with bankers hanging out is going to be an endless sea of far more serious crime.
In Finland? Examples?
Yeah.
As a Brit that’s moved to Australia let me say the kebab shops here are a revelation. The meat is nicely cooked, generally identifiable, and not swimming in grease. The bread is usually more like real Greek gyros bread, the salad fresh…
My memories of Kebabs in the UK is of very dubious slices of something coming off the elephant-leg at the back of the store, nothing you would ever consider when sober.
What, the elephant leg? In the UK it's mostly Doner - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doner_kebab
And doner kebabs on sale in kebab shops in the UK are of very dubious origin. There have been a variety of scandals over the years about the origins of the meat.
About 20 years ago I read an article in the metro newspaper about the origins of the meat, a study having been done, which found that most kebab meat in the UK was not what it said it was. A significant proportion contained a mix of lamb, beef, pork and unknown meats. And at that time most of the allegedly 'halal' doners on the market contained pork.
Recently one of the UK's biggest suppliers of kebab meat was fined for selling doner meat that advertised 87% lamb, but was found to be using large quantities of fat and skin, with meat making up between 10 and 50% depending on which source you read. The 'meat' itself, where it was even from sheep was largely neck trim and mutton trim, and they were using goat as well without labelling it - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy736xme2vvo
Maybe you found some good places in east London that were actually making their shawarma on-site. But the standard of a generic 'kebab' in the UK has always been known to be awful.
Of course it’s not a literal elephant leg, but it is highly-processed mystery meat.
Döner kebab in much of Europe is meat of dubious origin that has been industrially processed into a homogenized mass. Again, it is essentially a very large hot dog.
You can continue to eat that and enjoy it if you want, but to criticize the "elephant leg" moniker and claim it is "just shwarma" doesn't suggest you have much experience with this cuisine, just as your remark elsewhere about "criminal bankers" in a Nordic country (lol) doesn't suggest much experience with the world in general.
> essentially a very large hot dog
Just like most German food!
I'd invite you to do a comparison. Here is a picture of a 'real' doner kebab or shwarma style kebab, raw - https://www.jidlonacestach.cz/data/obrazky/2026/01/pripraven...
Notice the recognisable layers of meat and fat, the cap of fat to melt in and keep it all moist.
Now here is what you're more likely to get in most generic UK high-street kebab shops - https://www.kirkskebabs.co.uk/raw-kebab-meat/
Notice the homogenous, pink-slime sorta texture going on? And take a look at those ingredients...
Now, if you're going to places serving the former, cool! That's probably some tasty eating. But the latter is why kebab shops in the UK are held in such low regard.
Nevermind that across Europe, the workers hired to run elephant-leg döner joints for absentee owners are often from the Indian Subcontinent. It is not even their own ethnicity's cuisine, it's just the work they could get.
Again, your failure to understand these basic facts and propensity to misinterpret your interlocutors is baffling.
If you want quality Turkish kebabs which are nicely cooked, generally identifiable and not swimming in grease you go to a Turkish barbecue grill restaurant.
I don't know how long you've been away but they're everywhere here now with not an elephant leg in sight. They'll even serve you a nice salad with bulgur wheat.
It's disingenuous to pretend that you can't get decent food in the UK if that's what you are looking for or that you can't buy terrible food in other countries such as Australia too.
Yes, you can get good Turkish food in a lot of places, and good Turkish food is delicious.
But the post I was responding to called out kebab shops in particular as excellent and I wouldn’t want people thinking they can get ‘good’ food in the average high-street kebab place.
Don’t get me wrong, it hits the spot after a skinful… but high-quality it is not. See my sibling post about the various meat-scandals.
> It's disingenuous to pretend that you can't get decent food in the UK if that's what you are looking for.
Just as well I said nothing of the sort then eh?
I think you did.
I think you've presented criminal behaviour as if it's not an aberration.
You've ignored that there are good kebab shops and bad. That good high street kebab shops are common and sell more than just low quality donnas, including shish with fresh salad.
I never want to eat a donna kebab, so I don't order it.
Cool.
I'll be waiting here for you to quote and link exactly where I did this -
"It's disingenuous to pretend that you can't get decent food in the UK if that's what you are looking for"
And “that you can't buy terrible food in other countries such as Australia too.”
Or you could apologise. Up to you really.
And until then I’ll be ignoring anything else you have to say, because I think what’s actually disingenuous is to make things up and accuse people of them.
You can in fact get excellent food at high-street kebab shops. That's my point. When I go to the UK it's literally what I survive on because the alternative (gellied eels anyone?) is completely inedible. You can also get haloumi from most of the good ones, which you can't in most places in the US.
I also don't know why people are calling it an "elephant leg", that's crazy. It's shwarma and it's delicious. I think racism and general UK/AU diet has contorted the perception here. People with more varied diets probably appreciate it a lot more.
Jellied eels? I don’t think most British people have ever eaten those except maybe on a dare.
I’m going to be charitable and assume you’ve only ever been to a small part of the East End of London, where you can get jellied eels (not the case in much of the country) and where there is likely a diverse enough community that actual decent shwarma exists.
Because if you’re eating doner kebabs regularly, from whatever vendor you come across in most of the UK, all I can say is you might want to check your heart health.
If I go to my local high streets I either cannot park at all (all residents only permits or disabled or taxis only or bus stops etc) or I have to pay eye watering fees - e.g. £1 or 2 per 15 minutes. Council parking wardens will be out prowling looking for infractions and giving you a £80 fine without any grace period.
...Or I just go to a shopping center like Brent Cross and park for free with zero hassle.
Yes I can walk or take the bus to the high street, but that will turn a quick 20 minute errands I to a 100-120 minute roundtrip, with the discomfort of doing it with shopping bags on the return journey (and the buss will cost you more than parking and fuel, while being slower, less convenient, and less pleasant)
For what it is worth, I don't feel like crime or drugs are a concern, at least not in my part of London.
Or just go to a supermarket or shopping center where parking is free and easy and you are not being preyed on by parking companies trying dark patterns to fine you.
I can catch a bus but I have to walk to it, it comes at most twice an hour (usually hourly) and it a very circuitous route so it take ages.
Or I can drive 15 minutes from my door but it's expensive to park. So I generally head in the other direction to an out of soulless town shopping centre.
It would be luxury to have something like the Tube arriving every 2 minutes. I love it when I'm in London.
I will say, that sounds expensive for parking, but completely not out of line with what I would expect to pay for premium (location) parking, though I'm used to VHCOL parking rates and maybe you don't live in that big of a city.
Parking in premium areas can certainly be £5 an hour - but that really will be for premium areas with few spots and high demand, although that's a common situation in historic town centres. I wouldn't be mad enough to try and park in London but I'd expect parking there to be through the roof. The places I usually park for shopping etc (outside London but still SE) are more like £1 an hour in town centres, or free when the car park belongs to a shop or is in a less on-demand area.
£1.85 each ride. So £3.70 round-trip if you can do it in just two rides. There are discounts if you are quick (e.g. you might only pay once) but it is time dependent.
Or just drive directly and quickly with zero hassle for pennies of electricity and free parking in a shopping center.
