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Entry Year in EU: |
1973 |
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Seats: |
78 |
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Seats Percentage of EU: |
10.7 |
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Votes: |
29 |
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Votes Percentage
of EU: |
9 |
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Population: |
60.1 |
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Population Percentage of EU: |
13.2 |
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Area: |
244820 |
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Area Percentage
of EU: |
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Density: |
243 |
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Budget Contribution: |
137399000 |
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Budget Contribution of EU: |
13.05 |
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GDP: |
1910818 |
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GDP Capita: |
31529 |
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GDP Nominal: |
36494 |
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United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (usually shortened to the United Kingdom or the UK) is a country [1] [2] [3] and sovereign state[4] occupying most of the British Isles off the northwest coast of Europe. Its territory and population are primarily situated on the island of Great Britain, but it also shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland on the island of Ireland. The United Kingdom is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean and its ancillary bodies of water- the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, and the Irish Sea.
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History
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The present United Kingdom is the latest of several unions formed over the last 840 years. Scotland and England have existed as separate political entities since the 9th century. Wales, under the control of English monarchs from the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, became part of the Kingdom of England by the Laws in Wales Act 1535. [9] With the Act of Union 1707, the independent states of England and Scotland, having been in personal union since 1603, agreed to a political union as the Kingdom of Great Britain. [10]
The Act of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland, which had been gradually brought under English control between 1169 and 1691, to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. [11] Independence for the now Republic of Ireland in 1922 brought the partition of the island of Ireland, with six of the nine counties of the province of Ulster remaining within the UK, which then changed to the current name in 1927. [12]
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Government and politics
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The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy, with executive power exercised on behalf of the monarch by the prime minister and other cabinet ministers who head departments. The cabinet, including the prime minister, and other ministers collectively make up Her Majesty's Government. These ministers are drawn from and are responsible to Parliament, the legislative body, which is traditionally considered to be "supreme" (that is, able to legislate on any matter and not bound by decisions of its predecessors). The United Kingdom is one of the few countries in the world today that does not have a codified constitution, relying instead on traditional customs and separate pieces of constitutional law[ |
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Law
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The United Kingdom has three distinct systems of law. English law which applies in England and Wales; and Northern Ireland law which applies in Northern Ireland. Each are based on common law principles. Scots law which applies in Scotland is a hybrid system based on both common law and civil law principles. The existence of separate systems dates back to the Act of Union 1707 which guaranteed the continued existence of a separate law system for Scotland.
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Geograph
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Most of England consists of rolling lowland terrain, divided east from west by more mountainous terrain in the Northwest (Cumbrian Mountains of the Lake District) and north (the upland moors of the Pennines) and limestone hills of the Peak District by the Tees-Exe line. The lower limestone hills of the Isle of Purbeck, Cotswolds, Lincolnshire and chalk downs of the Southern England Chalk Formation. The main rivers and estuaries are the Thames, Severn and the Humber Estuary. The largest urban area is Greater London. Near Dover, the Channel Tunnel links the United Kingdom with France. [32] There is no peak in England that is 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) or greater, the highest mountain being Scafell Pike in England's Lake District, at some 978m (3,208 ft).
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Cities
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There are many different statistics and debates on what are the UK's largest cities, as well as differing opinions on which cities are considered regional capitals. This debate chiefly arises due to the erratic and inconsistent way political and administrative boundaries have been applied historically to British cities. Amongst the cities listed below are regional capitals and conurbations with a significant metropolitan influence [37]. The four 'traditional' capitals of the United Kingdom's constituent countries are London, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast.
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Demographics
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At the April 2001 UK Census, the United Kingdom's population was 58,789,194, the third-largest in the European Union (behind Germany and France) and the twenty-first largest in the world. This had been estimated up to 59,834,300 [38] by the Office for National Statistics in 2004. Its overall population density is one of the highest in the world. About a quarter of the population lives in England's prosperous south-east [39] and is predominantly urban and suburban, with about 7.2 million in the capital of London. The United Kingdom's high literacy rate (99%) [40] is attributable to universal public education introduced for the primary level in 1870 and secondary level in 1900 (except in Scotland where it was introduced in 1696, see Education in Scotland). Education is mandatory from ages five to sixteen.
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Language
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Whilst the UK does not have an official language, the predominant tongue is English. This is a West Germanic language, descended from Old English, which features a large number of borrowings from Norman French. The other main indigenous languages are the Insular Celtic languages, i.e. the Celtic languages of the British Isles. These fall into two groups: the P-Celtic languages (Welsh and the Cornish language); and the Q-Celtic languages (Irish and Scots Gaelic).
The English language has spread to all corners of the world (primarily because of the British Empire) and is referred to as a "global language". Worldwide, it is taught as a second language more than any other. [42] The United Kingdom's Celtic languages are also spoken by small groups around the globe, including Gaelic in Canada and Welsh in Argentina.
Additional indigenous languages are Scots (which is closely related to English);
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Religion
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The United Kingdom has one of the lowest levels of worship in the world, with less than 8% of people actually attending any form of worship on a regular basis (of whom the majority are of middle-aged and older generations). [43][44]. The main religion in the UK is Christianity [45] first introduced by the Romans. Each home nation has their own church hierarchies.
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England, and acts as the 'mother' and senior branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Originally established as part of the Roman Catholic Church in 597AD by Augustine of Canterbury on behalf of Pope Gregory I, the Church split from Rome in 1534 during the reign of Henry VIII of England.
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Economy
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The British economy is based on the Anglo-Saxon model, focusing on the principles of liberalisation, the free market, and low taxation and regulation. Based on market exchange rates, the United Kingdom is the fifth-largest economy in the world; [46], the second largest in Europe after Germany, and the sixth-largest overall by purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates. [5]
The British were the first in the world to enter the Industrial Revolution, and, like most industrialising countries at the time, initially concentrated on heavy industries such as shipbuilding, coal mining, steel production, and textiles. The empire created an overseas market for British products, allowing the United Kingdom to dominate international trade in the 19th century.
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Administrative subdivisions
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The United Kingdom is divided into four constituent parts, commonly referred to as the home nations. Each nation is further subdivided for the purposes of local government. The Queen appoints a Lord-Lieutenant as her personal representative in lieutenancy areas across the UK. The following table highlights the arrangements for local government, lieutenancy areas and cities across the home nations of the UK:
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Military
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The armed forces of the United Kingdom are known as the British Armed Forces or Her Majesty's Armed Forces, but officially Armed Forces of the Crown. Their Commander-in-Chief is the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II and they are managed by the Ministry of Defence. The armed forces are controlled by the Defence Council currently headed by Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup.
The United Kingdom is also one of the five countries in the world with a comprehensive nuclear arsenal, utilising the submarine-based Trident II nuclear warhead system. These Vanguard submarines have all, to date, been designed and built at Barrow-in-Furness, a port in the United Kingdom
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Education and science
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The United Kingdom contains some of the world's leading universities [53], including the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, and the University of London. It has produced many great scholars, scientists and engineers including Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Stephen Hawking, Adam Smith, James Clark Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel; the nation is credited with many inventions including the locomotive, vaccination, television, the railway, and both the internal combustion and the jet engine. The nation usually goes uncredited with the invention of the computer as the 1944 Colossus computer was top secret for many years.
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Literature
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The playwright William Shakespeare is arguably the most famous writer in the history of the English language; other well known writers from the United Kingdom include the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, J. K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, J. R. R. Tolkien, P. G. Wodehouse, C. S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and George Orwell. Important playwrights include Harold Pinter, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson and Tom Stoppard. Important poets include Geoffrey Chaucer, William Blake, Lord Byron, Robert Burns, John Keats, John Milton and Lord Tennyson.
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Music
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Notable composers from the United Kingdom have included William Byrd, John Taverner, William Lawes, John Dowland, Thomas Tallis, and Henry Purcell from the 16th and 17th centuries, and, more recently, Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Arthur Sullivan (most famous for working with librettist Sir W. S. Gilbert), Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten in the 19th and 20th. George Frideric Handel spent most of his composing life in England.
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Media
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The UK has a large and diverse media, and the prominence of the English language gives it a widespread international dimension.
The BBC is the UK's publicly funded radio and television broadcasting corporation, and is the oldest broadcaster in the world. Funded by the compulsory television licence, the BBC operates several television and radio stations both in the UK and abroad. The BBC World Service radio channel is broadcast in 33 languages around the world. BBC News is also broadcast around the world, and its output has won critical acclaim worldwide and praise for its unbiased and balanced reporting. The other television networks in the UK are ITV, Channel 4 and five. The main satellite broadcaster is British Sky Broadcasting, the vast majority of digital cable services are provided by NTL:Telewest (created by the merger of NTL and Telewest in March 2006), and free-to-air digital terrestrial television by Freeview.
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Sports
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A great number of major sports originated in the United Kingdom, including association football (soccer), rugby football (rugby), golf, cricket, tennis and boxing.
The pre-eminent sport in the UK is association football, usually referred to as "football", but the UK does not compete as a nation in any major football tournament. Instead, the home nations compete individually as England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It is because of this unique four-team arrangement that the UK currently does not compete in football events at the Olympic Games. However, a united team will probably take part in the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, as these will be hosted in London. The English and Northern Irish football associations have confirmed participation in this team while the Scottish FA and the Welsh FA have declined to participate.
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Symbols
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The flag of the United Kingdom is the Union Flag (commonly known as the "Union Jack"), and is one of the most recognisable and well-known national flags in the world. Created from the superimposition of the flags of England and Scotland; the Saint Patrick's cross, representing Ireland, was added to this in 1801.
Britannia is a personification of the UK, originating from the Roman occupation of southern and central Great Britain[56]. Britannia is symbolised as a young woman with brown or golden hair, wearing a Corinthian helmet and white robes. She holds Poseidon's three-pronged trident and a Greek shield, bearing the Union Flag. In modern usage, Britannia is often associated with maritime dominance, as in the nationalist anthem Rule Britannia.
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