Gourt > Regional > Europe > United Kingdom (26538)
- ''For other meanings of the terms "United Kingdom" and "UK”, see United Kingdom (disambiguation) and UK (disambiguation).
- For an explanation of these and terms such as Great Britain, British, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, see British Isles (terminology).''
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (usually shortened to the United Kingdom, the UK and Britain) is a country Countries within a country, Number 10. Accessed May 29 2006 Member States: United Kingdom, UK Presidency of the EU 2005. Accessed May 29 2006. "United Kingdom", Encyclopædia Britannica Accessed May 29 2006 and sovereign stateUK or GB?, Directgov (UK government website); accessed May 29 2006 occupying Great Britain and the northeast of Ireland off the northwest coast of mainland 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.
The United Kingdom is a political union made up of four constituent countries: England, Scotland, and Wales on the island of Great Britain, and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom also has several overseas territories, including Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands. The Crown has a relationship with the dependencies of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands; they are part of the British Islands but not part of the United Kingdom. A constitutional monarchy, the United Kingdom has close relationships with fifteen other Commonwealth Realms that share the same monarch — Queen Elizabeth II — as head of state.
More on [ United Kingdom ]
BBC News | UK | World Edition
Computer hacker 'facing US trial'
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:54:36 -0000
Computer hacker Gary McKinnon will stand trial in the US after the Home Office refused to block his extradition.
Bush 'hardened Blair Iraq stance'
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:39:55 -0000
Tony Blair's views on Iraq regime change "tightened" after private talks with President Bush in 2002, the Iraq inquiry is told.
Hospital kit 'covered in blood'
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:29:10 -0000
Serious concerns have been raised about the standards of care at an NHS trust in Essex, the BBC understands.
Man charged with jockeys' murders
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:49:14 -0000
A man is charged with the murder of two apprentice jockeys who died in a fire at a flat in North Yorkshire.
Borders goes into administration
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:09:29 -0000
The Borders bookshop chain in the UK, which owns 45 stores, has gone into administration but stores will remain open.
Dismay voiced on 7/7 inquest plan
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:36:06 -0000
Plans for the 7/7 inquests to examine the deaths of both the 52 victims and the bombers have been criticised by the victims' families.
The Economist: Britain
Britain's woman in Brussels: Gordon's angel
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:04:12 -0000
A mystery to Britain as well as in EuropeSOME of those dispatched to bat for Britain in the higher reaches of the European Union (EU)—such as Neil Kinnock, a twice-defeated Labour leader, and Chris Patten, who had lost his parliamentary seat—were cruelly lampooned as rejects of their own electorate. Catherine Ashton has never received a vote from anyone outside the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, where she once served as a treasurer. Yet she is now notionally in charge of representing the continent to other world powers. The ascent of so obscure a figure to the job of EU trade commissioner in 2008 puzzled many. Her elevation, announced on November 19th, to the post of high representative on foreign affairs—one of the most important jobs in Europe—seemed baffling. Admirers testify to her gifts as a negotiator, but her career before Brussels consisted of a tour of Whitehall departments at under-secretary level and a stint as leader of the House of Lords: hardly the stuff of Metternich. The mystery is not only why Europe embraced her, but why Gordon Brown wanted it to. ...
Bagehot: Year zero
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:40:33 -0000
Why the impending general election will be unlike any otherTHE chief tools of the literary critic, T.S. Eliot wrote, are analysis and comparison. Political critics these days rely heavily on the latter. The canon their comparisons draw on is comprised not of writers but of the years of previous general elections, which toll percussively through too much newspaper commentary. The idea is to make judgments and predictions via analogy. The trouble with this method is that history is not quite as cyclical as it implies; and the current situation is too unusual for it to work. The Tories have two favourite comparators for their bid for power. One is 1979, when Margaret Thatcher ousted Labour after the Winter of Discontent; the other, which they fixate on in private, is 1997, when Tony Blair’s new model Labour Party won its first landslide. Gordon Brown has been said to dwell on 1945, when an ungrateful nation rejected Winston Churchill: for Churchill’s war heroism, read Mr Brown’s handling of the credit crunch and recession. Labour optimists adduce 1992, when a fag-end prime minister scored an unexpected triumph. Pessimists mutter about the 1920s, when the Liberals were annihilated. ...
Bank charges: Knockout
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:40:33 -0000
A Supreme Court judgment does nothing for consumersSINCE July 2007 complaints from 1.2m bank customers about unfair charges on their unauthorised overdrafts have been gathering dust while learned counsel fought an action through the courts. In the red corner, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) asserted the right to assess the fairness of overdraft charges according to whether they vastly exceeded the economic cost to the bank. In the blue corner were eight lenders (some of which have since merged) arguing that the charges were clearly set out in contracts voluntarily entered into by current-account holders. Two lower courts had ruled in favour of the OFT. On November 25th the Supreme Court gave its judgment in the matter and—against most expectations—found for the banks.The court’s decision turned on a fine point of law, inspired by Brussels. At issue was the EU Directive on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts, transposed directly into English law in 1999. The killer clause seized on by the banks maintains that the fairness or otherwise of a contract cannot depend on the “adequacy of the price” but on whether its terms are stated clearly. The court agreed that the level of prices was not the issue; the clarity of the contract was. ...
Scotland's minority government: Lessons from a hung parliament
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:40:33 -0000
Fewer laws, more actionBRITAIN’S political establishment was all aflutter this week after an opinion poll suggested the Conservatives’ lead over Labour had shrunk so much that David Cameron might not win an outright majority at the general election due by next June. A subsequent poll has restored the Tories’ majority-winning lead, but so big is the swing required that the first hung parliament since 1974 is distinctly possible. That would mean either a formal coalition or, more likely, a minority government. This, however, might not be as unstable as many think: look at Scotland’s.Alex Salmond’s Scottish National Party (SNP) won more seats in the 129-strong Scottish Parliament than anyone else in the election in May 2007 but fell 18 seats short of a majority. His attempts to build a coalition were rebuffed, and he has run a minority government ever since. Yet his administration has been remarkably sturdy. That is partly because he has concentrated on popular things that could be done without parliamentary approval, such as building motorways, cutting prescription charges and reducing class sizes. The real secret, though, lies in the fact that he has managed to create alliances of a different sort. ...
Bank rescues: Bigger than you thought
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:40:33 -0000
How some shareholders lost out, and all must be wiser in futureTWO years ago when Northern Rock, a mortgage bank, was teetering on the brink, the financial authorities considered keeping it afloat with secret emergency lending. Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, would have liked to do it, he said later, though others say that initially he may have underestimated the seriousness of the situation. But there were legal objections to a covert operation. Soon a very public run on Northern Rock put paid to the lender’s prospects. It had eventually to be taken over by the state; its shareholders have so far lost everything.The objections at that time came mainly from the Financial Services Authority (FSA), which warned that a listed company would have to disclose the emergency funding to avoid misleading the markets. But a year later, it seems, there were no such qualms about covert central-bank support. More than GBP60 billion ($100 billion) was provided to two banks—Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and HBOS—and the markets were not told for over a year. Mr King disclosed the fact on November 24th—curiously, on the day that the group to which HBOS now belongs, Lloyds Banking Group, was launching Britain’s biggest-ever rights issue. ...
Anglo-Catholicism: The joys and perils of flying high
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:40:33 -0000
High Anglicans are thrilled by a papal offer but may not like the small printFATHER DAVID WALLER may be facing a little local difficulty, but he says morale is soaring among Anglo-Catholics like himself: traditionalist Christians who favour elaborate rites (more than modern Catholics do) but have stayed within the fractious family of Anglicans. As worshippers tried to interpret the brief encounter in Rome on November 21st between Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Pope Benedict XVI (which seemed to patch up the worst of the scrap in October, but no more), the noticeboard at his church was daubed with anti-Catholic graffiti. Father David returned from Mass (he always uses the Catholic term) to find drunken abuse on his answering machine. He says such insults (presumably from people trying to stop him accepting the papal offer last month of a new institutional home to Anglicans upset by their own church’s increasing liberalism) are much easier to bear than the hostility that old-line Anglicans faced at last year’s Anglican synod. That gathering endorsed the idea of women bishops and left little room for objectors. Anglo-Catholics, he says, are delighted because “the Pope is now offering us what we sought from the Church of England”—a corner where they can be old-fashioned in worship and theology and still retain some traces of Anglicanism. ...
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Computer hacker 'facing US trial'
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:54:36 -0000
Computer hacker Gary McKinnon will stand trial in the US after the Home Office refused to block his extradition.
Bush 'hardened Blair Iraq stance'
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:39:55 -0000
Tony Blair's views on Iraq regime change "tightened" after private talks with President Bush in 2002, the Iraq inquiry is told.
Hospital kit 'covered in blood'
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:29:10 -0000
Serious concerns have been raised about the standards of care at an NHS trust in Essex, the BBC understands.
Man charged with jockeys' murders
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:49:14 -0000
A man is charged with the murder of two apprentice jockeys who died in a fire at a flat in North Yorkshire.
Borders goes into administration
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:09:29 -0000
The Borders bookshop chain in the UK, which owns 45 stores, has gone into administration but stores will remain open.
Dismay voiced on 7/7 inquest plan
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:36:06 -0000
Plans for the 7/7 inquests to examine the deaths of both the 52 victims and the bombers have been criticised by the victims' families.
The Economist: Britain
Britain's woman in Brussels: Gordon's angel
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:04:12 -0000
A mystery to Britain as well as in EuropeSOME of those dispatched to bat for Britain in the higher reaches of the European Union (EU)—such as Neil Kinnock, a twice-defeated Labour leader, and Chris Patten, who had lost his parliamentary seat—were cruelly lampooned as rejects of their own electorate. Catherine Ashton has never received a vote from anyone outside the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, where she once served as a treasurer. Yet she is now notionally in charge of representing the continent to other world powers. The ascent of so obscure a figure to the job of EU trade commissioner in 2008 puzzled many. Her elevation, announced on November 19th, to the post of high representative on foreign affairs—one of the most important jobs in Europe—seemed baffling. Admirers testify to her gifts as a negotiator, but her career before Brussels consisted of a tour of Whitehall departments at under-secretary level and a stint as leader of the House of Lords: hardly the stuff of Metternich. The mystery is not only why Europe embraced her, but why Gordon Brown wanted it to. ...
Bagehot: Year zero
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:40:33 -0000
Why the impending general election will be unlike any otherTHE chief tools of the literary critic, T.S. Eliot wrote, are analysis and comparison. Political critics these days rely heavily on the latter. The canon their comparisons draw on is comprised not of writers but of the years of previous general elections, which toll percussively through too much newspaper commentary. The idea is to make judgments and predictions via analogy. The trouble with this method is that history is not quite as cyclical as it implies; and the current situation is too unusual for it to work. The Tories have two favourite comparators for their bid for power. One is 1979, when Margaret Thatcher ousted Labour after the Winter of Discontent; the other, which they fixate on in private, is 1997, when Tony Blair’s new model Labour Party won its first landslide. Gordon Brown has been said to dwell on 1945, when an ungrateful nation rejected Winston Churchill: for Churchill’s war heroism, read Mr Brown’s handling of the credit crunch and recession. Labour optimists adduce 1992, when a fag-end prime minister scored an unexpected triumph. Pessimists mutter about the 1920s, when the Liberals were annihilated. ...
Bank charges: Knockout
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:40:33 -0000
A Supreme Court judgment does nothing for consumersSINCE July 2007 complaints from 1.2m bank customers about unfair charges on their unauthorised overdrafts have been gathering dust while learned counsel fought an action through the courts. In the red corner, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) asserted the right to assess the fairness of overdraft charges according to whether they vastly exceeded the economic cost to the bank. In the blue corner were eight lenders (some of which have since merged) arguing that the charges were clearly set out in contracts voluntarily entered into by current-account holders. Two lower courts had ruled in favour of the OFT. On November 25th the Supreme Court gave its judgment in the matter and—against most expectations—found for the banks.The court’s decision turned on a fine point of law, inspired by Brussels. At issue was the EU Directive on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts, transposed directly into English law in 1999. The killer clause seized on by the banks maintains that the fairness or otherwise of a contract cannot depend on the “adequacy of the price” but on whether its terms are stated clearly. The court agreed that the level of prices was not the issue; the clarity of the contract was. ...
Scotland's minority government: Lessons from a hung parliament
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:40:33 -0000
Fewer laws, more actionBRITAIN’S political establishment was all aflutter this week after an opinion poll suggested the Conservatives’ lead over Labour had shrunk so much that David Cameron might not win an outright majority at the general election due by next June. A subsequent poll has restored the Tories’ majority-winning lead, but so big is the swing required that the first hung parliament since 1974 is distinctly possible. That would mean either a formal coalition or, more likely, a minority government. This, however, might not be as unstable as many think: look at Scotland’s.Alex Salmond’s Scottish National Party (SNP) won more seats in the 129-strong Scottish Parliament than anyone else in the election in May 2007 but fell 18 seats short of a majority. His attempts to build a coalition were rebuffed, and he has run a minority government ever since. Yet his administration has been remarkably sturdy. That is partly because he has concentrated on popular things that could be done without parliamentary approval, such as building motorways, cutting prescription charges and reducing class sizes. The real secret, though, lies in the fact that he has managed to create alliances of a different sort. ...
Bank rescues: Bigger than you thought
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:40:33 -0000
How some shareholders lost out, and all must be wiser in futureTWO years ago when Northern Rock, a mortgage bank, was teetering on the brink, the financial authorities considered keeping it afloat with secret emergency lending. Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, would have liked to do it, he said later, though others say that initially he may have underestimated the seriousness of the situation. But there were legal objections to a covert operation. Soon a very public run on Northern Rock put paid to the lender’s prospects. It had eventually to be taken over by the state; its shareholders have so far lost everything.The objections at that time came mainly from the Financial Services Authority (FSA), which warned that a listed company would have to disclose the emergency funding to avoid misleading the markets. But a year later, it seems, there were no such qualms about covert central-bank support. More than GBP60 billion ($100 billion) was provided to two banks—Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and HBOS—and the markets were not told for over a year. Mr King disclosed the fact on November 24th—curiously, on the day that the group to which HBOS now belongs, Lloyds Banking Group, was launching Britain’s biggest-ever rights issue. ...
Anglo-Catholicism: The joys and perils of flying high
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:40:33 -0000
High Anglicans are thrilled by a papal offer but may not like the small printFATHER DAVID WALLER may be facing a little local difficulty, but he says morale is soaring among Anglo-Catholics like himself: traditionalist Christians who favour elaborate rites (more than modern Catholics do) but have stayed within the fractious family of Anglicans. As worshippers tried to interpret the brief encounter in Rome on November 21st between Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Pope Benedict XVI (which seemed to patch up the worst of the scrap in October, but no more), the noticeboard at his church was daubed with anti-Catholic graffiti. Father David returned from Mass (he always uses the Catholic term) to find drunken abuse on his answering machine. He says such insults (presumably from people trying to stop him accepting the papal offer last month of a new institutional home to Anglicans upset by their own church’s increasing liberalism) are much easier to bear than the hostility that old-line Anglicans faced at last year’s Anglican synod. That gathering endorsed the idea of women bishops and left little room for objectors. Anglo-Catholics, he says, are delighted because “the Pope is now offering us what we sought from the Church of England”—a corner where they can be old-fashioned in worship and theology and still retain some traces of Anglicanism. ...
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