The first one is the bureaucracy. It's a big cliché, but it's not only true but far worse than you can imagine. For most government functions the law is interpreted depending on region, office, and even the individual behind the counter. Particularly you're foreign, a lot of the time people don't actually know the procedures and are guessing, give you the wrong forms, or try to fob you off and send you to another office. Every time you need to do something to do with the government - which is way more than in the UK - you need to allow about half a day. Also for any the last 30 years the UK has had a philosophy of simplifying communications, including government websites etc. Italy has a different philosophy which guards expertise and information with obscure language. Banks and post offices are shit too.

Next, the salaries are tragically low by international standards, and taxes are very high. There's no tax-free allowance so every penny you earn is taxed. The equivalent of NI is about the same as the UK for employees but if you're self-employed it's currently more than 26% of your entire income, even before tax. In this case total deductions can approach 70% of gross income. There's a scheme to reduce the burden but it's capped at €85k which limits success for entrepreneurs.

Infrastructure can be really shonky. Repairs to roads etc. are measured in months and even years. In one case near my mother-in-law's house they've been waiting for more than a decade for a closed lane to be reopened.

In work and government, there's very little forward planning. People work on projects and do a great job but the idea of planning and budgeting for maintenance, e.g. five years into the future is rarely considered (because it's boring). This leads to fantastic headlines and disappointing, crumbling reality. Missing deadlines is de rigeur, and not replying to emails is standard. In my own case I sometimes have to do a 7-hour round trip just to get a response in person to enquiries sent repeatedly to colleagues by email and WhatsApp.

Finally Macy drivers are genuinely bad. It gets worse the further south you go. There are plenty of great drivers around but the proportion of shitty, aggressive, selfish and dangerous ones is much higher than the UK. Almost nobody uses their blinkers. There's a machismo and a "win at all costs" philosophy from some men that permeates this and general attitudes in life. Also they rarely strap kids in to the back seat which gives me the heebie-jeebies. I even see kids in the front seat, and in car seats, but without the belt done up.

One more positive thing I'll say is that the health service, while a bit of a pain to navigate, is what the NHS should be. I have found it consistently superb, with all sorts of screening and diagnostics as standard that we rarely access in the UK unless we fight for it. When you see a GP they spend ages looking after you and making sure you've got everything you need. A standard appointment is 45 minutes to an hour. They've both saved my life and my ability to walk (thanks to one of the aforementioned shitty drivers).

Also nursery childcare is free, which frees up couples to work with very little financial burden, which is a massive positive difference compared to the UK.