Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Life and Family Life in Britain
Life and Family Life in Britain
A. LIFE IN BRITAIN:
I. Employment:
- Unenthusiastic for work:
+ Start late (at 8.00 for manual workers/ 9.00 for non-manual workers).
+ Lunch break is an hour or less and end working at 5.00 or 5.30pm
+ Work 5 days a week, a two-day weekend is very important.
+ Retire at 65 for men and 60 for women.
- High leisure: the more money they have, the more they enjoy their leisure.
- Types of jobs:
Middle and upper-classes - Do the non-manual, skilled work, from business to medicine and
teaching.
- Are called “white-collar” worker.
- Earn a lot more money and are paid monthly, by a bank cheque.
Income Support - your income is too low to support yourself or your family.
- On dole with a family to support.
Government has to assess your personal living conditions.
Child Allowance - Every family is entitled to some money for every child they have.
Pension (lương hưu) - Get a Government pension when they retire.
These benefit are funded in part by National Insurance, a small tax that is taken off everyone’s
wages.
The National Health - The best part of the welfare system and the British health service (BHS)
Service (NHS) - Patients visit GP (a group of NHS’s doctors do not work in hospital) to
check any serious problems it is free.
* The welfare system is still imperfect and has some problems:
- Many people do not accept the help because they do not like the government interfering in their
private lives
- The system is too complicated with lots of rules and regulation.
- Some people can get so many kinds of benefits that their income is higher than the salary they
would receive if they were employed.
- Some people complain about paying taxes for the welfare.
- NHS doctors only help people who need it, they do not want to arrange more consultation than
necessary.
III. Housing: