I love england :)

[Steffi]

Well aren't you the lucky one! and no I didn't have any other issues! I started my transition in 2001 and have been FT ever since.

Those of you who seem to have an easy ride with the U.K NHS GIC system are quick to criticise those of us who have had a hard time with the NHS GIC without knowing the facts. I for one do not love England and don't spend much time there anymore.

Sorry, I seem to have hit a nerve there   
..... and Yes, I have been very lucky indeed in all respects and I DO know it.  I'm not a person inclined to gloat -I do have sympathy for those who have a harder time with the system and I know several, but in most cases there has been another issue causing complications
e.g. a girl who was 6 months ahead of me on the NHS Gender Pathway is now 18 months behind and counting.  In her case the problem was weight and despite being aware throughout RLE that it may become an issue, she arrived at her pre-surgery inspection overweight and was told by the surgeon that he would operate but was postponing surgery until she fell below a certain weight threshold.   12 months later she is still downing pints of lager every night, has negligible weight loss and regularly lambasts the system for "failing her."

I am also aware that some of the GIC's and/or PCT's ( ... for USA readers - PCT = Primary Care Trusts, the local bodies who control the funding within their area of the UK) are more difficult than others.  e.g. whereas Charing Cross London do two initial Assessments of one hour each approx 3 months apart, another GIC ( Leeds??) do six Assessments a month apart.
One PCT has repeatedly been in trouble for effectively operating a "blanket-ban" on SRS   
I know of one person who has been living in-role and attending their GIC for SIX YEARS who has only recently been prescribed hormones - I have no idea whether they have other issues complicating the situation.

I said nothing in any way offensive in my original post; I simply told my own experience of the system and asked whether there was any problem specific to you personally which had affected your progress.  Those who have difficultywith the system are understandably very vocal whereas those who had no significant trouble say little.  Many of them will not even be on trans forums because they have simply got their problems solved and moved on with their lives.
It is important that a view has balance, because for every person complaining there are dozens who had a fairly smooth run through though I agree that the system is far from perfect.

Private healthcare in the U.K is still limited but it hasn't helped matters when meddling NHS GIC psychiatrists try and put more experienced private consultants who are doing a very good job out of business.

Does that refer to the recent events with a well known London gender specialist?
If so then from what I heard of the situation, the problem was that he was sending clients off to Thailand with only his signature on the Approval For Surgery letter and the second signature necessary to comply with international standards was supplied by a Thai psych mere hours before surgery.
As the patient has already flown out there and surgery time is booked it seems very unlikely indeed that this second signature would not be given as a matter of course and expediancy, therefore bypassing the intent of the two separate signature requirement.
- If that is indeed the case, then I am supportive of the action of London GIC.  The Dr concerned has not been put out of business, he has been put under supervision which in the above circumstances seems reasonable to me.

[Naturally Blonde]

It is important that a view has balance, because for every person complaining there are dozens who had a fairly smooth run through though I agree that the system is far from perfect. Does that refer to the recent events with a well known London gender specialist?
If so then from what I heard of the situation, the problem was that he was sending clients off to Thailand with only his signature on the Approval For Surgery letter and the second signature necessary to comply with international standards was supplied by a Thai psych mere hours before surgery.
As the patient has already flown out there and surgery time is booked it seems very unlikely indeed that this second signature would not be given as a matter of course and expediancy, therefore bypassing the intent of the two separate signature requirement.
- If that is indeed the case, then I am supportive of the action of London GIC.  The Dr concerned has not been put out of business, he has been put under supervision which in the above circumstances seems reasonable to me.

No, that wasn't the case at all. It was a private patient who was referred privately for  GRS and after surgery decided it wasn't for her and went to complain to the NHS GIC about the private consultant.  The private consultant has now had restrictions put on him by the GMC that he can no longer make referrals for GRS. But I know of several people who went through the NHS London GIC system who had surgery and regretted it afterwards and reverted back to their original gender, so the balance of regretful patients be it private or NHS is about the same. Although I've never met the private consultant this is not the first time the head clinician at the NHG GIC has launched a case against a private psychiatrist.

I'm fully supportive of private consultants as it was the only way for me to start on prescription HRT back in 2003. I also don't like the way the GIC psychiatrists act like gods and try and manipulate, mentally abuse and control patients lives usually affecting their health and increasing their depression buy stalling their progress. I don't agree with the way the GIC is run and regret ever attending the clinic.  I witnessed total incompetence from them and they mixed up my medical files with other patients files. 

Also did you read the PM I sent to you?

[Jayne]

Congratulations on having a great night out with no problems, based on my recent experiences I would have to say that my home town of Bristol is not a good place to transition, i've had verbal abuse quite alot & had to talk my way out of fights twice.

On the subject of transitioning on the NHS, it's a very slow lumbering slog so far, I saw my GP early last February & my first appointment with the London GIC is at the end of March so it's taken almost 14 months to get on the first rung of the ladder.
I hope the NHS pace picks up a bit after March or i'll be getting my bus pass before my SRS  I just hope I get SRS before I hit 40 or evryone will be pulling my leg that this is just a mid life crisis 

[Naturally Blonde]

On the subject of transitioning on the NHS, it's a very slow lumbering slog so far, I saw my GP early last February & my first appointment with the London GIC is at the end of March so it's taken almost 14 months to get on the first rung of the ladder.
I hope the NHS pace picks up a bit after March or i'll be getting my bus pass before my SRS  I just hope I get SRS before I hit 40 or evryone will be pulling my leg that this is just a mid life crisis 

That's what I hoped that it would be all done and dusted before I was 40 and now here I am well past 40 and still fighting!

[El Capitan]

Good food anywhere on these islands is amazing. But food, like so many things, is modified by finance. Hence, frying at low temperatures, because it's cheaper, for example.

In the days when i did regularly go out to eat, my days in Edinburgh as it happens, I found that resturants tend to be at their best in their first 12 months. After that, with a regular client base, they would be bought out, costs cut to increase profit, so reduce standards. One, I recall, started in West Bow. It served sort of German/Italian type food with a very British accent. Kinda tacky, with wooden floors and wads of paper under the table legs. In the toilets, the walls were painted with black poster paint, so people would bring in a pocket full of chalk and write things on the wall. When it was bought out, they lowered cooking tempertures and used cheap bread.

For some reason, the British seem to generally make disgusting bread.

If all the places I've lived, I have to say I miss Edinburgh the most. It will be a very different place today of course, but it was always so exciting in a very stayed sort of way. Like an alien could arrive from outer space and someone might comment, 'Aye weel, so wit else is happenin'?'.

Great thread by the way.

I go to university just outside of Edinburgh

ps. Anstruther fish bar in Anstruther just outside of st. andrews in Fife (Scotland for those that don't know ) does the best fish and chips

pps. we brits make nice bread :p

[El Capitan]

I remember listening to a french chef saying that many other french chef loved London because in France there was a recognised way to cook a given dish and experimentation and variation was not allowed, whereas in London experimentation was the norm.

Another plus about the UK is its level of tolerance. When you read what some of the american transitioners go through it is like they are dealing with a medieval village. I simply cannot imagine such things happening here. England and Wales are very tolerant places, Northern Ireland less so and I have not lived in Scotland so I cannot say, but many scots I have met have been decent, tolerant folk.

Beverley

Oi! lol I'm originally from Northern Ireland (wheeyyyy for us Brits )  and we be more tolerant than people make us out to be haha

[El Capitan]

sorryjust realised this is in the mtf forum. Hope you ladies don't mind me posting :p

[El]

You are very welcome sir

[spacial]

I go to university just outside of Edinburgh

ps. Anstruther fish bar in Anstruther just outside of st. andrews in Fife (Scotland for those that don't know ) does the best fish and chips

pps. we brits make nice bread :p

Good tip, though I doubt I'll be in that part of the world any time soon.

As for Bread, sorry, not they don't. Some individuals make good bread and even sell it. But most bread in the UK is basically the same, bland sponge, with very little taste and a texture that is designed to turn to goo when you eat it.

No offense, this is a light hearted discussion after all.

I once knew a fellow who owned a number of chipships in Glasgow. I asked him why chips are always so bad. He told me, he can and has cooked really nice chips, simply by heating the fat and blanching, ie cooking twice. But people kept sending them back claiming they didn't taste right.

A similar experience in a bar in Edinburgh in 1975. I got a job there for a short while. It was Bennets. At that time it sold beer from wooden barrels, brought up to the taps using traditional, very Scottish methods. None of your sucking pumps as approved by CAMRA. there. The beer would come out crystal clear, with a slight sparkle. In cold weather it had little or no head. They used a cooler simply because of demand, but it was kept deliberately so the beer wasn't too cold and the flavour remained. Every day, at least one person would complain the beer was flat.

Though we're still talking about Scotland here and the subject is England. Both wonderful and interesting countries, yet so very different.

And please don't worry about being FtM. It's great to have your input

[JoanneL]

I have fish and chips once a week at home. No batter on the fish. Place in the oven in a dish with a drop of olive oil. Same with the chips. A lot better than the greaseproof paper and newspaper wrappings we used to get in Yarmouth (Norfolk) in the old days. LOL

[justmeinoz]

I was in the UK in 2001 and 2003 and had a great time.  I will get back there again one day I hope.   

Padma, I am not surprised you can't find a good 'Pie Floater' in Norwich. Good and Pie Floater don't belong in the same sentence!
As for the cod I decided that it is overrated, and haddock is far nicer.  The chips were not generally that great, a lot greasier than here,  Oz chips are crisper.  The kilo pot of mussels in Ullapool made up for that though when I got into Scotland. Yum!!

As for the lard, it is being hoarded by the Little Chef on the M6.  I am sure I actually ended up with a lardburger, with extra lard, lard chips and lard flavoured coke! It was a surreal experience, straight out of an old episode of "Z-Cars" or similar time warp.

Karen.

[Cindy]

You can tell Karen doesn't come from Adelaide, home of the pie floater

My Grandfather use to love 'dripping butties' which are very Scouse.

[justmeinoz]

During WW2 people in Australia used to save their dripping and put it in tins to send to England in an official "Dripping for England" drive! I kid you not!

[Cindy]

Oh I'm going to get a T-shirt "I drip for Poms" should go great in the next Ashes.

[Tazia of the Omineca]

Maybe I would enjoy England, I do like tea.
Oh and the accent is nice, or the lack there of.

I wanna go there now!

[Cindy]

Honey,
The accents are all over the place

[Tazia of the Omineca]

I need to find me an accent. :U

[Cindy]

I emigrated from Liverpool to Australia when I was 23. Terribly homesick I went back the following Christmas. No one seemed to understand me in Australia due to my accent. I got into a taxi at Lime Street rail intersection. I told the guy where to go, his reply was " So what part of the world are you from?'

Mmm

[spacial]

I need to find me an accent. :U

If I were to define one characteristic of England, it would be the amazing, nay, astonishing number of completely different accents.

In the city where I live, on the south coast, there are three. I kid you not. Hog is the traditional working class accent, that has largely but not completely been replaced with a newer one, which has elements of Essex and hog. Then there's the Grammer school accent.

People in England tend to judge each other according to their accents. Originally, anything other than, what is termed Preceived, as spoken by the Queen, basically, upper class East Anglian with some Buckingham mix, was seen as ignorant, ill-educated, working class. Now, many regional accents are seen as educated, with only some of the stronger ones continuing to be associated with lower classes. Essex, West Country, Liverpool and so on.

Irish people also have an enormous number of local accents with variations, but I have found no custom there to show any real interest at all. And the French obscession with pronounciation is absent.

It's sad that Britains haven't yet matured enough, as a society, to see each of these for what they are. But expereicne suggests that, just before that happens they will go through a period of contrivance which will essentially make them little more than a joke, rather like many native peoples have become.

An interesting custom in much of Scotland which is rarely, if ever, seen in any other part of the British Isles, is to try to guess where people are from, by their accents. Many people, especially in W Scotland, where the generally accepted norm is to be much more forth coming to the point of almost intrusive directness, will get quite angry, even offended to the point of anger, of you refuse to co-operate with this. If they get it wrong, for example, they generally demand to know exactly where you come from and I have, on a number of occasions, even been told I was lying, when I denied coming from a particular area.

In Scotland my accent, for example, was often taken as being almost precieved. Here in England, it used to be American, latterly, Scottish. My wife is often referred to as the'Wee Fat Black girl', which she finds incredably funny. But that the Scottish elements in mine are basically Edinburgh, while hers are basically Glasgow, is of no consequence, for the English.

Late edit. After reading Pippa's post, further down, I have realised I made reference to Preceived accents, when I was actually referring to Received.

Sorry and if anyone thinks that makes me look silly then please be assured it can't be a silly as I feel. 

[tekla]

All I know is that if I get one roadie from Scotland I'll barely be able to understand him, if I get two all hope is lost.  And if the entire crew is from Scotland I just give up and try to find a translator.