Everyone for more tea?

Since I have claimed to be living in 'the land of tea', I decided it would be cool to create a little -wait no who am I kidding, little?- post on how tea is done here. They certainly feel quite strongly about it...

Tea is the answer to most problems

First of all there are - allegedly - several nick names for tea: brew, cha, rosie lee and cuppa. According to the UK Tea Council (yep, they even have a website tea.co.uk) the British drink approximately 165,000,000 cups of tea a day, with the recommended dose per person being at least 4 cups a day. Just for the record, only 70 million cups of coffee are drunk per day by the British, which I think makes it pretty clear, tea is better. Because, well, it just is. 

Continuing the random facts, Tea Breaks are a tradition they've had for the last 200 years or so; over 80% of office workers claim they find out more about what's going on in their workplace over a cup of tea than any other way; tea remains Britain's most popular beverage; tea contains half the caffeine that coffee does; 96% of cups made daily are brewed from tea bags; 98% of people take their tea with milk, and only 30% with sugar.  The overall opinion here is that, as far as possible, tea should always be made in a pot rather than throwing a bag in a mug. 

There is an ongoing debate (destined to rage on forever I imagine) on when to add the milk to your cup. Do you put it in at the start, risking as George Orwell claimed, putting too much in? Or at the end, risking a change to the molecules in the milk causing it to taste like UHT? Hmm...Which is worse? Personally, I used to put milk in last, however, since coming here I noticed the prevailing method is to add the milk first, and I must say, I'm a convert. I can't explain it, it just tastes better. Adding the water to the milk instead of the other way around will warm the milk more slowly, and as a serious plus you avoid that weird scummy layer that forms on top if you put the milk in last. I have also noticed that some people put their teabag in the milk in the mug then add the hot water to the milk-teabag combo. Haven't tried that yet myself.

 So, how do you make your tea - milk first or water first?