Blurb - Geography

The United Kingdom is a big country. It gets to do all sorts of neat things, like being in the United Nations, and the European Union and things. The United Kingdom is made up of Britain and Northern Ireland, and governed from London. We are the lucky owners of the longest official country name in the world - "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". So far so good. If anyone else looks like they're going to beat us, I think we could always stick a "democratic republic" in there.

"Britain" or more properly "Great Britain" means the mainland countries - England, Scotland and Wales. Are these proper countries? Well, that's a lot more tricky to answer than you'd think. In most political affairs, they behave as one country (The United Kingdom) but in some other things, notably sport, you'll find separate English, Scottish and Welsh teams. Scotland and Wales do have their own regional mini-parliaments, with some legislative power, but I think it's fair to say that generally we're told what to do by the main UK government, based in London, England. This doesn't really mean that Scotland and Wales are governed by England - more that England, Scotland and Wales are governed by a UK government, based in the largest city in the country. Scotland and Wales are quite definitely not in England. English, Scottish and Welsh people are all British, but only people who come from England are English. These disparities can be equated reasonably closely to the interweaving of the United States - calling a Welshman "English" is pretty similar to calling a Texan an Alaskan.

And then there's Northern Ireland. This is the north-east section of the island of Ireland, around Belfast. The rest of Ireland is a separate country, generally called "Eire". We are aware that this looks a little odd. How did we end up governing a small chunk of our next-door-neighbour? Well, the whole of Ireland was given to England by Pope Adrian in the twelfth century. The Irish were pretty furious about this, and fought periodically about it until the first World War, when a bloody attempt at revolt provoked Britain to create two parliaments - one for Northern Ireland, and another one for the rest. At this point the histories divided somewhat, with "the rest" became Eire, announcing its independence in 1937. Quite a few people in Northern Ireland were pretty cross about this, and have been letting off bombs now and again to remind the Brits. There is a lot more to this whole issue (generally known as "The Troubles") and as I'm reasonably uninformed of the details I'm going to stop here. Suffice to say that right now, Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom, and governed as such.

Most countries in Europe are members of an organisation called the European Union, which aims to help the region take advantage of economies of scale and cooperate for mutual benefit. Both the United Kingdom and Eire are members of this. I think it would be fair to say that the UK is one of the less enthusiastic members, generally dragging its heels on most issues.