Re: chip and bin revolt in UK
Well I live in England, and I love it. It's quite different to America in that people seem unfriendly to each other and it takes 5 years to get to know your neighbours name. But the thing with English people is that they have a different style of living than Americans. American's have a outward mobility about them, that most British people don't have. So over there people have a type of "f*ck you if you don't agree with me" attitude. But over here mobility is limited, and most people end up living in the same town they grew up in. So over here, people may bitch about their neighbours, but they eventually learn to get on with each other.
There's another side to Britain, in that the emotional awareness in people seems to be quite high, but emotional language skills are quite low. So British people do care, but before they make the effort to get to know you, they need to see your dark side first. Once someone pisses you off, but stops to give you the time of day later, then they trust you. And although they may not like to speak you ever, they need a nod or some sign of acknowledgement that they exist for them to trust you.
We do have yobs on the street on the weekends, but if your emotional radar is in good working order, you'll have no problem. It's just that alcohol has been for a long time, the only socially acceptable way of expressing your feelings, so for dissaffected youths, Friday and Saturday were fight night.
But once Englishers reach 50 they chill right out, and don't care about the law, they only care that you treat the people around you with respect. The other thing is, most British houses are designed so long ago, that the sound insulation is so poor, that you can hear your neighbours arguing and having sex. British people have so little privacy, that they really value and fight for the privacy that they do have. So I'm not surprised that so many people ripped the chips out of their bins, it a very British form of revolt.
Within California alone there's a night and day difference between Southern California and Northern California...............to the point where there was a serious movement years back trying to petition that Northern Cal break off from SoCal. But they didn't (and probable still don't!) want to be connected to SoCal anymore. Then there's the "northern" U.S. - The north, versus the "NorthEAST" - New England, which is very different from New York and New Jersey. And then there's Maine, who just does its own thing, a seemingly separate entity away from the entire northeast, so much so that it may as well be part of Canada and Nova Scotia. 
Ever hear of Southern Hospitality? Doesn't remote resemble whatever you've described about "Americans" here. Since moving to Virginia I've been quite astounded by how friendly and polite and well mannered everybody is. Men that stand there holding doors open for everybody, lots of "ma'ams" and "sirs." I saw a lot of that friendly helpfulness in the Pacific Northwest as well. Here there's an air of chivalry behind it, whereas there it was casual and mellow, (in the PNW they pretty much bend over backwards to help and be friendly, it's surprising, but nice). Big urban metropolises - New York, Boston, Chicago, L.A. Miami, small towns, mid-size cities, rural, suburban, people of every color - white, black, red, brown, yellow and mixed, extremely rich penthouse dwellers on 5th Avenue NYC and gated ocean mansions of SoCal, Miami and Long Island, to suburban midwestern tract homes, to barefoot and living in shacks in the Appalachians and dusty border towns of Texas/Mexico. Point being, there is no one set stereotype for what an "American" is going to be like. 
