The fact you've compared first year papers is irrelevant (and not a fair representation of the difficulty of our course by any means). Your friend will still themselves with their work cut out in future years in order to get a good grade unless they're a genius and even then they'll maybe find some things hard, like learning other skills; teamwork, group projects etc. That's probably why the student satisfaction and employability are higher as we do a lot more than just learn chemistry in our degree I feel and we enjoy our degree, though it's hard work.
I feel the only one who really cares about the league tables here is you as quite frankly I picked the place based on my gut feeling at the open day, the friendliness and welcoming nature of the department staff and students and the course, which looked really good- well rounded but allowing me to do options in the areas I'm interested in and want to work in in the future.
Oh and the point about A level maths- they're looking to make that compulsory in the future seeing as so many have it these days already, which would mean they can toughen up the maths content, but as the entry is what it is currently it is still challenging but not enough to put people off. Because they want to get people interested in chemistry to study chemistry.
I think you're missing the point. You could go on about Bristol for ages but this is a thread about York. We chose York because we wanted to come here - if we'd wanted to go to Bristol we'd have chosen it. But that doesn't make our degrees worth any less for the work we've put into them. The constant pointing out differences isn't really relevant here, it's just making us feel like you're saying our degrees are worthless and easy because they're not exactly the same as your degree, which is making you sound a bit of a nob as mentioned before.