Never really noticed the lighting difference, certainly some of the little villages we stay in have very little lighting, if any. Yes, carpet in the bathroom (and kitchen) is a regular contender.

Heh! I actually don't think public transport around London is too bad (both trains and London Underground) even if a little pricey. But in the rest of the UK the network suffers from having been the first to be built in the world. Whereas Spain can get organised and get several high-speed rail lines put down, it seems the UK will have to wait until 2025 or later before the new proposed link between London and Scotland gets built. A lot of this is down to the planning process (the UK has obstructive bureaucracy too!) rather than any physical constraints - there are far more mountain ranges to overcome on routes in Spain. However the UK has far more constraints in the realm of planning permissions and public appeals etc. Madrid managed to build something like 89 new metro stations over the course of 4 years - you can't see that happening in London these days - look how long it took to build Wembley.
At least we have the Channel Tunnel! That's quite an impressive journey!

TBH, I don't ever eat in London, simply passing on their observations. And as they actually live there, I believe what they say. Certainly I have had people "playing" guitars, even worse, accordions in southern Spain, wandering through restaurants rattling their tins. In Sevilla, some guy playing a guitar and making some awful noise got offended, quite aggressive when I refused his offer to put some coins in his tin. Certainly in places like Sevilla, they are a bl00dy nuisance. Obviously they favour the busier places, places with guiris that are seen as a soft touch, at times you can't move for gypsy heather sellers!

Well I have lived in London and believe me, you get all the beggars, pick-pockets, thieves etc that you'd expect in a big city, and yes you can get hassled for money in a pub and/or have your coat or bag stolen. Having said all that, I still prefer living in a city to a village, but that's just me!

Probably shows my prejudice, but I just knew this would be the south. Obviously I haven't eaten in every Madrid dining establishment, but those I have done would never accept this - apart from anything else they'd be too concerned about losing regular customers.

Certainly UK has more people packed into a lot smaller country, so it's obviously more difficult so start a completely new track straight across the country. Same happened in France, it's a lot bigger country, and it was relatively easy to build a new track going straight across country. But make no mistake, to build in a straight line everything in it's path is flattened, compulsory purchased, so inevitable it will upset a lot of people, it's a price that has to be paid. OK so long as it's not you, NIMBY! Mind you, even in Spain the old line that joins Algerciras with Ronda, built in the 1890's by Brits, is still chugging along. Well, it's not at the moment, it's closed for a few months for repairs!

heh, typical shoddy British workmanship! They should have imported some Poles to do the job

I can't find the article now, but I can assure you a lot of the members are madrileños. Still it´s better than the street behaviour in Barcelona.
http://www.forolondres.com/foro/showthread.php?t=45614&

It was built OK, it´s the way it´s been maintained since!

Well, OH travels a lot for business and always uses the AVE so the bar was set pretty high!

For some reason he always held the notion that British Rail was the leader in the field....fast, efficient, clean, ultra modern, value for mone...a real world leader that other rail companies aspired to be. I don't know where he got that idea from! Maybe he was confusing British Rail with the BBC or something.

Some graphic pictures there! I suppose the London equivalent would be its parks like Hampstead Heath or Clapham Common - great to walk on in the morning but best avoided towards night-fall. The Madrid equivalent would be the Casa de Campo. Barcelona (being a port city) certainly has its grotty seedy side, but there again so do a lot of British cities, as indeed do large cities anywhere. Is there a large city without a red-light zone?

Perhaps he read a book from 1905?

Well, he is ancient. So maybe!

I just asked him what else he was surprised by when he went to the UK and he says he found stairs that creak took some getting used to as well as the really low ceilings in houses.

Also, a few years ago when there was that heatwave in the UK (about 3 years ago ish?) he happened to be there staying in a 4* hotel at the time with NO air-conditioning. He couldn't believe that a hotel of that calibre had no air-con.

Yes, we are having to get used to creaking floors as well.

I think again in the UK you find older hotels that are really mediocre due to their age, yet the recently built ones are perfectly ok. I stayed in business hotels a lot at one point, and some places were diabolical - yet my company was charged £100+ a night. Having said that, some of the newer chains like MalMaison are really quite good. Hotels in Spain (despite the odd exception that gets a scare story report in the UK press) are generally very good; even the hostals are getting better nowadays (back in the 80s/90s some of these were really poor).