Get a pen and paper because you’ll want to write this down. Ready? Here it is: England and New York are very different.

Some differences are readily apparent. First, of course, is the language. In England they speak a language that very closely resembles the English we speak here in Texas. There are some obvious differences, of course. They say “crisp” when they mean “potato chip,” “banger” when they mean “sausage,” and “fag” when they want Americans to snicker like schoolboys. I’m not sure what language they speak in New York City, but references to one’s mother are common.

A news story I read the other day really underlines the differences in the Big Apple and Old Blighty. In Middlesbrough, a small town in the north of England, city officials have launched a campaign to cut down on public nuisances by installing closed-circuit television cameras all over town. City officials monitor the cameras and, if they see someone committing a breach of the peace – littering, drinking beer, or otherwise having fun – they use loudspeakers to tell them to knock it off. And the English miscreants, being English, typically comply.

New York City is trying a similar program and all I can say is, good luck.

By the end of this year, NYC officials say, more than 100 cameras will be monitoring cars as they move through lower Manhattan. This is the beginning phase of an English-style surveillance system, and the first in the United States.

It may look like the English system on paper, but I don’t see New York getting the sort of cooperation the English do. For one thing, most New Yorkers are either yakking away on their cellphones, oblivious to the world, or jacked into their iPods, imagining that the music they’re hearing is the soundtrack to the movie going on in their heads. The rest of them are already hearing disembodied voices telling them what to do. Of course, the voices are probably urging them to kill and dismember their landlord, not pick up their Starbucks cup.

When officials in Middlesbrough spot someone doing something they shouldn’t, they read from a script and carefully identify the scofflaw so there’s no doubt who is being addressed.

Such an exchange might go something like this: “Man in tweed jacket, you have been seen to drop litter. Kindly pick it up and put it in the bin provided." Officials say that people are usually so startled (and so English) that they actually do as they are asked.

In New York, an exchange might be something along these lines: “Yo! Yeah, you -- the loser in the Mets cap. I’m talkina you! You dropped your crack vial. Pick that crap up or I’m gonna come down there and kick your butt. Oh, and the vet called to remind you it’s time for your mom’s rabies shot.”