Alternately, this can be interpreted hilariously as an effort to encourage the troops to fight harder.
The Other Wiki notes that British Tanks contain "a boiling vessel (BV) also known as a kettle or "bivvie" for water which can be used to brew tea, produce other hot beverages and heat "boil-in-the-bag" meals contained in ration packs." Once unique to British armoured vehicles (The Americans working with the Brits in Afghanistan and Iraq are jealous; they appreciate being allowed to use them and the Brits were only too glad to let them.), it is starting to be adopted by other nations in helping extending amount of time crew can spend inside vehicles. During half-time during the FA Cup Final, extra power generation capability is online to cope with all the kettles being boiled. The Brits love plug-in, fast-heating electric kettles (probably precisely because they facilitate making tea) over stovetops or microwaves, a trend that didn't much catch on in the States except for college dorms (and more for ramen than tea).
Electric kettles sold in the British Isles are generally rated at 3 kW - it's generally not possible (ignoring the voltage differences) to use an appliance that uses so much power in North American households without getting your kitchen re-wired. A NEMA 5-20R (T-slot) outlet typically found in modern kitchens in the US will only deliver a maximum of around 2.4 kW. There are lower power kettles (cheap junk sold in the UK can be anything from 1.5-2 kW) but they're slow as hell in comparison.
This is the reason why rapid-response power stations such as Dinorwig were built, which can from idling to full power within seconds to accommodate sudden surges in demand. That's right: in the UK they've built specialist power stations inside mountains just so the entire nation can use their high-powered kettles at the same time.
The same effect also apparently happens far more regularly at the end of soap operas: Britain from Above featured a segment showing a National Grid employee watching TV waiting for the end of EastEnders (IIRC) in order to bring online the extra generators needed to cope with the power surge.
Domestic power consumption can double in a few seconds with the load from kettles. This is why we have the fastest responding pumped storage power station in the world. Dinorwig in Wales can bring 1320MW of capacity on line in 12 seconds. All to make tea. Immediately after the recent televised wedding of Prince William and now-Duchess Kate ended, British utilities reported a surge of electricity consumption approximating 2,400 megawatts, or about 1 million households boiling kettles. (This was not the all-time record; that'd be 2,800 MW consumed right after the 1990 World Cup England-Germany semifinal game ended, after which England needed a freakin' Spot of Tea.)
In fact, British commercial breaks are designed to accommodate the making of tea. It takes roughly three minutes to boil the kettle and make 1-3 cups of tea. Commercial breaks are roughly just over 3 minutes long and the volume is increased substantially over main programmes so that Brits in the kitchen can hear them.
In the 90's a team from the UK retraced Robert Scott's attempt to reach the South Pole on foot, to prove that it could be done. Now they had some advantages in that they had modern equipment and knowledge such as taking chocolate rather than tea because chocolate has a higher calorie content. When they got to the Pole one member of the team revealed that he had brought a small supply of tea along in order to have a brew-up at the Pole because as he said "This wouldn't have been a British expedition without at least one cup of tea at the Pole!"
When the SAS patrol Bravo Two Zero were on the run though some of the coldest recorded weather ever in Iraq, they stopped and put a nice hot brew on to stop themselves freezing, despite the risk of fire giving away their position.
After the July 7th attacks on the London transport system, a meme swiftly flew around the net to the effect that the only appropriate response was a cup of tea. And passing out tea was indeed one of the tasks of rescue volunteers.
Operation Cup of Tea. The British response to riots in the center of London? Drink tea (and donate the proceeds).
During the London riots in August 2011, some people made tea for the police officers protecting their streets.
In the UK it is a matter of politeness to offer tea to tradesmen (plumbers, carpenters etc.), firemen and policemen, if they are staying for more than an hour. This has caused some confusion with immigrant tradesmen who are initially unfamiliar with the custom. In Australia, tea is also very popular, much in the British vein. There's a fairly strong surge of Taiwanese style bubble tea, but general iced tea is more of a pre-bottled thing that is nowhere near as popular as the hot variety.
China All things tea can be traced back to China. The tea leaf, the tea pot, the teahouse and tea garden, even the tea ceremony - not one like in Japan, but its own tradition called gongfu, where oolong or black tea is brewed several times over the course of several minutes, with short brew times and small cups to experience every nuance of flavor the tea has to offer.
How They Drink It: The choice of white, green, oolong or black tea as a favorite varies regionally; however, it is almost invariably drunk straight and hot. Chinese tea is weaker than the Indian black tea common in Britain, and most Chinese are lactose intolerant. However, the strong and astringent teas common to central China are also drunk straight, but they are served in small shotglasses. The variances from this are foreign customs: bottled cold tea has a respectable showing; the Mongol Empire of the Yuan (whose Central Asian masters were among the few lactose-tolerant peoples in Asia) is probably responsible for the milk-in-tea custom traveling west; and Tibet has the (in)famous yak butter tea which is as much a food as it is drink. Pu erh tea, of the formerly-Muslim south-western provinces (Sichuan, Yunnan), is pressed into bricks and aged in caves like cheese - this is a rather specialist taste (the fermentation/aging process gives it a unique mushroomy/umami flavour).
As in many other places, it's honorable and a sign of hospitality to pour tea for another - brides and grooms pour it for their parents, juniors for their elders, and so on. Legend has it that Qing dynasty emperor Qian Long would often travel through the land incognito and his servants were forbidden from letting the secret slip. One day as they were all seated for tea, the Emperor took his turn pouring tea for his servants. This was an immense honor that in any other situation would have called for the servants to kowtow; since they could not do that without giving the emperor away, they tapped the table with three fingers bent as if in a kowtow pose. To this day is continues as a gesture of thanks for being served tea.
Like Britain, where tea drinking improved the health and productivity of the population, so it also was in Tang Dynasty China, where it allowed the population to greatly increase and greased the gears of poets, songwriters, and painters. In a place where your other option for safe drinking was rice-wine, tea was very popular (not that some poets didn't thrive on wine, though, Li Po/Li Bai being the most famous).
The name for the dim sum-like tradition of yum cha literally means 'drink tea' - the little buns and fried snacks were a later addition.
Though we might imagine the tea-drinking habits of ancient Buddhist monks to be mired in ritual and spirituality, it was actually incorporated for a much more mundane reason: to keep them from falling asleep while meditating for long periods at a time. This is why Bhodidharma's eyelids figure into the tea origin myth.
In Hong Kong, which was formerly British-ruled, "milk tea" is hot tea with evaporated milk, usually of the "Black & White" brand. Other variants include mixing milk tea and coffee, which sort-of ends the tea vs coffee debate.
Japan
Japanese green tea gets the honorific 'O' prefix to its name: Ocha. This is the clearest indicator of Japanese reverence; any other kind of tea is simply 'cha'. In fact, the hot water required to brew tea (and make baths) gets the 'O' — "oyu" — but any other temperature is just 'mizu'.
Tea in Japan has always been deeply intertwined with Buddhism and Shintoism. And the rituals that have developed around the serving of tea has become a deep and exacting discipline over the centuries. In the Japanese tea ceremony (or chado, literally "the Way of Tea"), the preparation and drinking of tea is treated as a quasi-religious ritual and the prescribed movements is as exacting as a dance. The study of the ceremony can literally take a lifetime.