The country topic........

[Neclord X]

it's filled with Islamists.

Puff, Tell me one that isn't this days.

In before "racism" they want you to respect their beliefs, but on a trip a couple of friends almost werte lynched by a mob because they tried to enter a building and she didnt wear a hiyab.

[LadyCyclone]

England - a wealth of brilliant history but unfortunately now infested with plenty of cowardly left-wing socialists who are more concerned with political correctness than the well-being of the country. Pathetic ...

[freshmetal]

England - a wealth of brilliant history but unfortunately now infested with plenty of cowardly left-wing socialists who are more concerned with political correctness than the well-being of the country. Pathetic ...

That sounds a lot like my country too. LOL.

[Aerolithe Lion]

So hold on.

Scotland is a country. Wales is a country. England is a county. This is a geographical fact.

Yet all of them combined is 1 individual country called The United Kingdom. This is also a geographical fact.

Can someone please elaborate how this works?

[LadyCyclone]

Well, England is not a Sovereign country (anymore) and the United Kingdom is; now they are just constituent countries within one. The UK has one currency etc - I suppose similar to how America is made up of lots of different states?

Never mind quibbling with words though - it might just be one nation but (as I'm sure in many other areas of the world where it's like this!) the people from each country are very different - for example, I don't think that the bad blood between the Scottish and English is entirely dead, I also know that the English still poke fun at the Welsh and the Irish (Northern Irish or Irish, though obviously the Republic or Ireland is separate) and it sort of reminds me of one family where the brothers and sisters hate each others' guts but just have to put up with each other.

[Pyriel]

Are you asking geographically? Because there's no answer to that. It's just a bounding box with a larger area. The difference between, states, nations, nation states, sovereign states, federated states, and so forth is political and cultural rather than geographical.

The difference between the UK and the US is mainly to whom powers are reserved. The UK is a sovereign state, and the central government retains any powers it doesn't explicitly delegate to member countries. With the US, the federal government only has those powers expressly given to it, and the remainder stay with each of the member states. That's the theory anyway.

[Hirathien]

A friend of mine put it rather nicely once. Think of the United Kingdoms as you think of USA, the queen is Obama and there's no election as to replace her. There's different "states" but they all follow the ground rules of the bigger cheese, much like America follows the Amandmends before any state law.

[Aerolithe Lion]

I only ask because the 2012 Encyclopedia Britannica officially recognizes Wales as a country. Just not 'sovereign'. As it does Scotland and England.

However, it also lists 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' as a sovereign country. It goes on to pronounce Great Britain as a conjunction of England, Scotland, and Wales. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I understand the states or provinces explanation, but no encyclopedia would list Vermont as a country.

[Hirathien]

similar

Let's not miss the details shall we.

[Pyriel]

I only ask because the 2012 Encyclopedia Britannica officially recognizes Wales as a country. Just not 'sovereign'. As it does Scotland and England.

However, it also lists 'The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' as a sovereign country. It goes on to pronounce Great Britain as a conjunction of England, Scotland, and Wales. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I understand the states or provinces explanation, but no encyclopedia would list Vermont as a country.

Great Britain is the island. It used to be a nation, but it's not anymore. Look at how Ireland is divided into Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, yet the island is just Ireland, and it used to belong to various nations at different points in history, but the people there still thought of themselves as separate. I think the reason for continuing to call Wales, Scotland, England and so forth countries is simply because they all were countries at various points in history, and the people of those areas wouldn't look favorably on being reduced to provinces. They call themselves countries, and the rest of the world just sort of follows along. Including the UK government, because there's no use pissing off everybody over something so trivial.

[Aerolithe Lion]

A friend of mine put it rather nicely once. Think of the United Kingdoms as you think of USA, the queen is Obama

This makes even less sense. The Queen has little over government when it comes to executive measures. You can make some backhanded comment about Obama being little more than a figurehead, but his role is much more that of David Cameron.

In fact, Elizabeth serves a similar role in England as she does in Many former British commonwealths. No one would confuse her in any regard as similar to a Canadian Barack Obama. This is directly from the Canadian government website: "Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is Queen of Canada. She has dedicated her life to public service and continues to serve Canada and Canadians after 60 years".

I would say she is more in line with Michelle Obama. Living off a title and serving as a goodwill ambassador. Comparing her to Barack is a poor analogy

[LadyCyclone]

A friend of mine put it rather nicely once. Think of the United Kingdoms as you think of USA, the queen is Obama

This makes even less sense. The Queen has little over government when it comes to executive measures. You can make some backhanded comment about Obama being little more than a figurehead, but his role is much more that of David Cameron.

In fact, Elizabeth serves a similar role in England as she does in Canada. No one would confuse her in any regard as similar to a Canadian Barack Obama. This is directly from the Canadian government website: "Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is Queen of Canada. She has dedicated her life to public service and continues to serve Canada and Canadians after 60 years".

I would say she is more in line with Michelle Obama. Living off a title and serving as a goodwill ambassador. Comparing her to Barack is a very poor analogy when Britain has a Prime Minister who plays an identical role in parliament to that of the president in congress.

You can't compare the Queen of England to Michelle Obama! The Queen represents hundreds of years of English Monarchy, some Scottish, much of which has shaped a great deal of the world! Putting any Obama in the same line as the Queen is laughable; the Royal Family is also adored by the majority of the country (apart from those clueless anarchists) and they unite the whole country in a way that no politician would be able to (unless you count Churchill back during the war.) That 'title' she is 'living off' carries with it a history of gold which NO American president could compare too. Your logic is that the Queen is to Michelle Obama what Cameron is to Barack Obama. That makes very little sense to me

[Antimatzist]

Well, can't we put too much emphasis on that particular sentence? It's not comparable, because the USA and the UK have different governmental forms.

In the end, it's like this (I think): The UK is the nation, representing the interests of their people in the UN and so on, and Scotland, Wales, England etc. are still called like that because they had a rich history. They can also keep their Football Associations because they have such a rich history (I think that's the explanation).

[Lemmy Claypool]

the Royal Family is also adored by the majority of the country (apart from those clueless anarchists)

This is something of a sweeping generalisation. There are many different schools of thought within anarchism and not all of it goes hand in hand with anti-royalist sentiment. In fact, it is such a broad ideology that not only are there differences from subsect to subsect, many of them actually contradict one another.

Though I don't consider myself a true anarchist as such (I'm in no way politically active) I do identify with many anarchistic philosophies much more than any other part of the political spectrum. That being said, I'm also literally the only person I know personally that has no problem with the royal family. Where I live the general consensus (though granted not amongst everybody, obviously) is that they are a bunch of inbred, out of touch, freeloading, toffee-nosed wastes of space. So your statement that most of the country adore them is also a generalisation. I however don't share such resentful sentiments and actually quite like the fact that we are one of the few countries in the world to still uphold a monarchy, even if they are little more than figureheads.

Just don't tar us all with the same brush

Plus I like to think that I'm not quite clueless, but that is yet to be medically confirmed.

[Hirathien]

It seems the country topic is a bomb waiting to go off, people don't seem to like when you compare it to the wrong thing.