Ballooning Britishness

Local authorities have been forced to intervene in the restaurant business because the British are too embarrassed to ask for a glass of water. Eighty per cent of people drink tap water at home, but being a customer at a restaurant routinely involves interacting with staff who are offering a commercial service. In such circumstances, most British people have trouble enough calculating the minimum acceptable tip and showing just enough disapproval at the service staff's ethnic fetishes, without being drawn into the intricate and distasteful business of asking for things as well. Hence they tend to plump, if that is the verb I want, for letting their spawn guzzle nominally fruit-flavoured hypersugar juice instead. Where avoidance of parental discomfort is involved, years of playground persecution followed by an early heart attack is evidently a reasonable price for the children to pay.