Fat man of Europe

I'm a little confused. I always thought the UK was the fat man of Europe, and have put up with teasing by Germans (not necessarily thinner than me) about how fat and lazy British people are, convinced that they were actually quite right.
Now on ARD someone mentioned in passing that Germans are the fattest in Europe. Looking it up I find a 2005 document by the International Obesity Task Force:

A study comparing Germany between 1985 and 2002 suggests higher rates than the USA in terms of overweight, with a recent survey suggesting 75% of German men age 25 or over were overweight or obese. This figure is surpassed only in Greece [...] >>

The study is by the International Association for the Study of Obesity (IASO). It's not exactly in favour of Britain: as a Spiegel article from 2007 puts it:

A new study has found that Germany has the highest proportion of overweight people in Europe, partly due to the country's high beer consumption. But Britain, Greece and some Eastern Europe countries have an even higher share of truly obese people.

>>

The Spiegel article has a photo of a fat person ... in Britain. Huh.

The figures, collected from 2002-2004 and presented in 2007, show:

Overweight men (BMI of 25-29.9) - Germany 52.9%, England
43.9%

Overweight women (BMI of 25-29.9) - Germany 35.6%, England
34.7%

Obese men (BMI above 30) - Germany 22.5%, England 22.7%

Obese women (BMI above 30) - Germany 23.3%, England
23.8%

So the Bild's image of Brits with wabblige Bierbäuche is not quite as fair as you might think?

A more recent article in Bild in April 2009 said that British women have a higher average BMI than German women - the highest in Europe. It described how Thibaut de Saint Pol, a French researcher, studied women from 15 EU countries and said that British ladies' average BMI is 26.2, and German ladies' is 24.

However, de Saint Pol's BMI figures are not original research, but are apparently taken from the EC's Eurobarometer 59.0 - which is from the year 2003: the figures are older than those in the IASO's study.

A more recent Eurobarometer (64.3, from 2006) has Germans with an average weight/height ratio of 0.435 and Brits with a ratio of 0.433, i.e. almost exactly the same.

OWAD teaches me English

Recently discovered OWAD - One Word A Day, which selects English words that "occur in educated British-American conversation" but are "unknown to most German speakers of English". These words are "within the most frequent 50,000" in the "World Bank of English" and will apparently impress your British and American acquaintances. The writer says "I would ask you to please trust me that the words I offer are useful. "

I've been subscribed for one day and the first word I got was "putpockets". I've never heard it before. Now I've been away from the UK for a while, so I'm willing to concede that my vocab may not be up to date, but I'd like to check how useful this word might be.

First I check the "World Bank of English", of course. I look it up on Google. Two hits.
I discover that the University of Birmingham has a "400 million word Bank of English Corpus" - which is evidently what OWAD is talking about.
It seems the Bank of English is subscription only. I try the related free concordance search but it doesn't seem to work. So I'll have to try Google to find out how common my new word is.

"Putpockets" gets 62,000 hits, but when you go to the last page of results there are 533 hits.
The first is the newspaper article quoted on OWAD, entitled "Putpockets" give Londoners a little extra cash. The quotation marks in the article tell you that this is an unusual word, perhaps a newly coined one. The article is about former pickpockets going round London putting money back into people's pockets. Hence "putpockets".
I whiz through the first three pages of Google hits and they are all news stories based on this article. I look through random pages of hits. Pages 10, 19, 28, 37, 46 and 54 (the last page) of the Google hits are also all stories based on this article.

One blogger on the Telegraph says "The whole wheeze, known as Putpockets, is a publicity stunt dreamed up by a broadband supply company".

One blog comment says "I live in England and its the first I've heard of it! Many of the Stories from the US about England are straight from Fantasy Island."

Which seems to sum it all up really.

Newspaper website slideshows - cultural differences? Or just reflect what's on offer?

Sächsische Zeitung websiteEssex Chronicle website (both 28.09.09)

Old soldiers return for their final D-Day

When do people start work?

A survey shows what time people start work in various EU countries.

In March 2009, over the previous 6 months the average time for German workers was 8.44 and for British workers it was 9.10.

According to the Guardian the survey is by OfficeMetrics, a software company, and covered 80,000 users of their software.

Winter tyre statistics

In the UK, where annual temperatures often range from -15°C to 30°C, usage of cold weather (winter) tyres is far less common, as legislation dictating changeover does not exist. >
In Germany legislation was brought in on May 1 2006. The traffic regulations (StVO) now say that cars must be fitted to suit the weather conditions, including having appropriate tyres. What is "appropriate" is not described in any more detail. If drivers contravene the rule, they pay a EUR 20 fee; if they hold up the traffic, there is a EUR 40 fee and they get a penalty point on their licence.
75% of people in the UK would not consider fitting winter tyres. >
Winter tyres are a mere three percent of the UK's total tyre market. This poor statistic compares with ... 50 per cent in Germany. >
(2006) 77 percent of German drivers have a set of winter tyres; 6 percent use all-season tyres.... 80 percent of those who change their tyres do so when the temperature drops below 10°C; one in ten waits for the first snowfall. >
In Germany, winter tyres are recommended when the temperature (day or night) drops below 7°C. Winter 2007/8 in the UK - The final mean value for the season is 4.9 °C >
(2006) In Bavaria, 90% of drivers have winter tyres, in eastern Germany, 70 percent have them. In western Germany, almost one in five uses summer tyres all year round, and in northern Germany that is the case for one in four. In Lower Saxony 40 percent of drivers use summer tyres all year round. >

Grüner Punkt - the Green Dot

It isn't really a dot, but a circle (often black and white, not green) with two yin-and-yang arrows.

This symbol is actually used in the UK, and called "the Green Dot", but will people instantly recognise this name as they do in Germany?

In Germany if packaging has the Green Dot on it, consumers can usually put it in special yellow bags or bins which are collected for free (organised by DSD GmbH), saving them money on waste collection. The dot means the producer has paid a fee for their products to be collected in mainland Europe.

In the UK, this collection system is not used.

Nonetheless, the dot was introduced in the UK in 2001 when Valpak UK Ltd (the UK company which ensures packaging complies with European norms) entered into an agreement with Pro Europe, the umbrella organisation for European packaging and packaging waste recovery and recycling schemes. In the UK, the dot is only for products sold in mainland Europe.

This has recently caused some controversy, partly as people don't know what the dot is:

"The intertwined arrows of the Green Dot appear on a range of products from soap and detergent dispensers to toothpaste tubes and crisp packets.
It is widely believed to signify that the product can be recycled and may encourage environmentally-friendly shoppers to buy it.
However the sign is not a recycling symbol and has no meaning in the UK. Lucy Yates, the National Consumer Council's policy advocate, said: "It should be removed from all packaging in the UK because it's very misleading." Telegraph, 1 September 2008

But it hasn't caused enough controversy to mean that everyone is aware of the Green Dot being used in the UK:
"in Germany there is something called the Green Dot Scheme" (Martin Wheatley, March 18 2008, House of Lords)

"Consumers in the UK are unlikely to know about the PRN system, because local authorities largely undertake the collection of domestic material" (Europe Goes Green Dot brochure from pro Europe, 2007) - the PRN is a Packaging Waste Recovery Note, the commercial side of the Green Dot.

To sum things up, the Green Dot is not yet well recognised in the UK and needs some explanation.