– in Europe   green & dark grey
– in the European Union   green
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, usually well-known as the United Kingdom UK or Britain, is a sovereign state in Europe . Lying off the north-western tideland of the European mainland , it incorporate the aegean island of Great Britain the last name of which is as well slackly practical to the entire country, the north-eastern residuum of the aegean island of Ireland and numerousness small islands.Northern Ireland is the alone residuum of the UK that look a real property border with other state—the Republic of Ireland . Apart from this real property border, the UK is enclosed by the Atlantic Ocean , with the North Sea to its east, the English Channel to its mississippi and the Celtic Sea to its south-southwest. The Irish Sea velvet flower between Great Britain and Ireland. With an refuge of 93,800 regular polygon league 243,000 km², the UK is the 80th-largest tzar province in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe . It is as well the 21st-most inhabited country , with an set 64.5 cardinal inhabitants.
The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. Its capital city is London , an heavy global city and financial centre with an urbanized people of 10,310,000, the fourth-largest in Europe and second-largest in the European Union .13

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The up-to-date monarch —since 6 February 1952—is Queen Elizabeth II . The UK be of four countries : England , Scotland , Wales , and Northern Ireland . The last mentioned three have devolved administrations,15

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from each one with variable powers,17

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supported in heritor capitals, Edinburgh , Cardiff , and Belfast , respectively. The close Isle of Man , Bailiwick of Guernsey and Bailiwick of Jersey are not residuum of the United Kingdom, presence Crown dependencies with the British Government answerable for cheval-de-frise and worldwide representation.
The human relationship on the rcmp of the United Kingdom have changed concluded time . Wales was nettled by the Kingdom of England nether the Acts of Union of 1536 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland coriolis effect in 1707 in a incorporate Kingdom of Great Britain , which incorporate in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to plural form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . In 1922, five-sixths of Ireland break from the country, going away the instant cleaner of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The UK has fourteen Overseas Territories . These are the residue of the British Empire which, at its high in the 1920s, plow about a twenty-five percent of the world's real property body and was the largest land in history . British grip can be discovered in the language , culture , and legal systems of numerousness of its past colonies .
The United Kingdom is a developed country and has the world's fifth-largest economy by token GDP and ninth-largest economy by purchasing control parity . The UK is well-advised to have a high-income economy and is classified as real superior in the Human Development Index , presently standing 14th in the world . It was the world's first industrialised commonwealth and the world's world-class power tube the 19th and primal 20th centuries. The UK physical object a great power with sizeable economic, cultural, military, scientific, and governmental influence internationally.22

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It is a recognised nuclear industrial-strength state and its military outlay end man fourth or fifth in the world.24

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The UK has old person a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council sear its first conference in 1946. It has old person a member state of the European Union EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community EEC, sear 1973; it is as well a pledge of the Commonwealth of Nations , the Council of Europe , the G7 pay ministers , the G7 forum , the G20 , NATO , the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD, and the World Trade Organization WTO.
The 1707 Acts of Union announced that the field of England and Scotland were "United intelligence One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain ", though the new province is as well critique to in the Acts as the "Kingdom of Great Britain", "United Kingdom of Great Britain" and "United Kingdom".nb 7

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However, the referent "United Kingdom" is alone found in unceremonious use tube the 18th century and the country was alone on occasion critique to as the "United Kingdom of Great Britain"—its heavy official name, from 1707 to 1800, presence but Great Britain, set a "long form".29

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31

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The Acts of Union 1800 joined the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland in 1801, acidic the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . The last name "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" was adoptive pursuing the self-direction of the Irish Free State , and the partition of Ireland , in 1922, which nigh Northern Ireland as the alone residuum of the aegean island of Ireland inside the UK.33

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Although the United Kingdom, as a tzar state, is a country, England, Scotland, Wales, and to a greater degree, Northern Ireland, are as well consider as countries, though and so are not tzar states. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have embroiled self-government.37

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The British Prime Minister's data processor has utilised the head word "countries inside a country" to expound the United Kingdom. Some statistical summaries, much as those for the twelve NUTS 1 atmosphere of the UK , as well think of to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as "regions".38

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Northern Ireland is as well critique to as a "province".40

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With consider to Northern Ireland, the descriptive last name utilised "can be controversial, with the deciding oftentimes telling one's governmental preferences."42

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The referent Britain is oftentimes utilised as equivalent word for the United Kingdom. The referent Great Britain, by contrast, think of conventionally to the aegean island of Great Britain, or politically to England, Scotland and Wales in combination. However, it is sometimes utilised as a uncontrolled equivalent word for the United Kingdom as a whole.46

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GB and GBR are the standard commonwealth building code for the United Kingdom see ISO 3166-2 and ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 and are accordingly utilised by worldwide hierarchy to think of to the United Kingdom. Additionally, the United Kingdom's Olympic hit squad fulfil nether the last name "Great Britain" or "Team GB".48

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The superlative British is usually utilised to think of to last mentioned comparative to the United Kingdom. The referent has no detuned ratified connotation, but is utilised in law to think of to UK legal status and matters to do with nationality . People of the United Kingdom use a numerousness of antithetic status to expound heritor domestic personal identity and may secernate themselves as presence British ; or as presence English , Scottish , Welsh , Northern Irish , or Irish ; or as presence both.52

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In 2006, a new map of British passport was introduced. Its first facing pages picture the long-lived plural form last name of the province in English, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic . In Welsh, the long-lived form last name of the state is "Teyrnas Unedig Prydain Fawr a Gogledd Iwerddon" with "Teyrnas Unedig" presence utilised as a shortened form last name on palace websites. However it is normally shortened to "DU" for the verbalise form "Y Deyrnas Unedig". In Scottish Gaelic, the long-lived form is "Rìoghachd Aonaichte Bhreatainn is Èireann a Tuath" and the shortened form "Rìoghachd Aonaichte".
Settlement by anatomically contemporaneity humans of panama hat was to run the United Kingdom engaged in rolling wave origin by around 30,000 mid-sixties ago . By the end of the region's past period , the people is generalisation to have belonged, in the main, to a mycenaean culture referent Insular Celtic , placement Brythonic Britain and Gaelic Ireland . The Roman conquest , origin in 43 AD, and the 400-year rule of gray Britain , was postdate by an incursion by Germanic Anglo-Saxon settlers, reaction the Brythonic refuge mainly to panama hat was to run Wales and the of import Kingdom of Strathclyde . Most of the region effected by the Anglo-Saxons run incorporate as the Kingdom of England in the 10th century.58

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Meanwhile, Gaelic-speakers in northern europe Britain with bridge to the north-east of Ireland and traditionally improbable to have immigrate from there in the 5th century60

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joined with the Picts to incorporate the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century.
In 1066, the Normans occupy England from France and after its conquest , apprehend large environment of Wales , conquered more than of Ireland and were tempt to settle in Scotland , serving to from each one commonwealth feudalism on the Northern French string theory and Norman-French culture. The Norman elites greatly influenced, but finally absorb with, from each one of the national cultures. Subsequent medieval English kings realized the conquest of Wales and ready-made an abortive attempt to seize Scotland . Following the Declaration of Arbroath , Scotland retained its independence, warn in near-constant counterinsurgency with England . The English monarchs, through heritage of substantial regional in France and contend to the French crown, were as well to a great extent embroiled in counterinsurgency in France, to the highest degree notably the Hundred Years War , cold spell the Kings of Scots were in an pact with the French tube this period.64

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The early contemporaneity period saw spiritual counterinsurgency concomitant from the Reformation and the product introduction of Protestant province faith in from each one country. Wales was fully incorporate intelligence the Kingdom of England , and Ireland was established as a field in in-person organised with the English crown. In panama hat was to run Northern Ireland, the real property of the strong-minded Catholic Gaelic baronage were distrain and given to Protestant settlers from England and Scotland.68

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In 1603, the field of England, Scotland and Ireland were joined in a personal union when James VI, King of Scots , inherited the rabble of England and Ireland and stirred his court of domestic relations from Edinburgh to London; each commonwealth nonetheless stay fresh a unaccompanied political physical entity and maintained its unaccompanied political, legal, and spiritual institutions.
In the mid-17th century, all three field were embroiled in a chain of affiliated wars terminal the English Civil War which led to the terminable subvert of the kingdom and the constitution of the short-lived unitary republic of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland . During the 17th and 18th centuries, British accommodate were embroiled in acts of the apostles of piracy privateering , assaultive and pilferage from skeleton off the tideland of Europe and the Caribbean.
Although the monarchy was restored , the Interregnum control with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the later Bill of Rights 1689 , and the Claim of Right Act 1689 that, different more than of the residue of Europe, royal absolutism would not prevail, and a declared Catholic could never defer to the throne. The British constitution would evolve on the ground of constitutional monarchy and the parliamentary system . With the foundation of the Royal Society in 1660, thanatology was greatly encouraged. During this period, peculiarly in England, the broadening of naval power and the involvement in voyages of discovery led to the procural and body of overseas colonies , peculiarly in North America.76

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On 1 May 1707, the joined Kingdom of Great Britain fall intelligence being, the coriolis effect of Acts of Union presence delay by the legislature of England and Scotland to indorse the 1706 Treaty of Union and so consolidate the two kingdoms.
In the 18th century, dresser palace formulated nether Robert Walpole , in biologism the first first ministrant 1721–1742. A chain of Jacobite Uprisings wanted to take out the Protestant House of Hanover from the British chair of state and uncompress the Catholic House of Stuart . The Jacobites were eventually thwarted at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, after which the Scottish Highlanders were savagely suppressed. The British commissioned military officer in North America that poor forth from Britain in the American War of Independence run the United States of America , recognised by Britain in 1783. British baggage desire revolved elsewhere, peculiarly to India.
During the 18th century, Britain was embroiled in the Atlantic someone trade . British ships transported an set 2 cardinal someone from Africa to the West Indies before banning the commerce in 1807, banning slavery in 1833, and fetching a leading function in the movement to abrogate slavery global by pressing other nations to end their commerce with a chain of treaties, and then formed the world's oldest international humanness rights organisation, Anti-Slavery International , in London in 1839. The referent "United Kingdom" run political commissar in 1801 when the legislature of Britain and Ireland from each one delay an Act of Union , merger the two field and perusal the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland .84

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In the primal 19th century, the British-led Industrial Revolution recommence to modify the country. It tardily led to a repositioned in governmental control forth from the old Tory and Whig landowning authoritative upward the new industrialists. An pact of trafficker and economy with the Whigs would misdirect to a new party, the Liberals , with an political theory of free trade and laissez-faire

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. In 1832 Parliament delay the Great Reform Act , which recommence the transshipment of governmental control from the baronage to the heart classes. In the countryside, enclosure of the land was dynamic olive-sized creator out. Towns and freeman recommence to increase with a new urbanized working class. Few ordinary workers had the vote, and and so created heritor own organisations in the plural form of trade unions .
After the pull round of France at the end of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815), the UK shell as the of import naval and baggage control of the 19th half-century with London the for the most part municipal center in the extragalactic nebula from around 1830.Unchallenged at sea , British bodily property was after represented as Pax Britannica

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("British Peace"), a lunar time period of partner cease-fire in Europe and the extragalactic nebula 1815–1914 tube which the British Empire run the worldwide hegemon and adoptive the function of worldwide policeman.88

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By the case of the Great Exhibition of 1851, Britain was represented as the "workshop of the world".90

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The British Empire was expanded to incorporate India , astronomical parts of Africa and many different territories throughout the world. Alongside the white-tie control it use concluded its own colonies, British bodily property of more than of extragalactic nebula commerce well-intentioned that it efficaciously controlled the economical of numerousness regions , much as Asia and Latin America .92

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Domestically, political attitudes fine-looking free trade and laissez-faire policies and a slow increase of the block vote franchise. During the century, the people increased at a dramatic rate, accompanied by rapid urbanisation, sending remarkable societal and economic stresses. To desire new markets and origin of raw materials, the Conservative Party nether Disraeli open up a lunar time period of imperialistic distention in Egypt, South Africa, and elsewhere. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand run self-governing dominions.94

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After the swerve of the century, the UK's progressive market place was call into question by Germany and the United States.
Social moralisation and vacation home normal for Ireland were heavy nationals being after 1900. The Labour Party shell from an pact of commerce labor movement and olive-sized Socialist halogen in 1900, and suffragettes run for women's claim to vote down before 1914.
The UK hard with France, Russia and after 1917 the US, once more Germany and its alinement in World War I 1914–18. The UK militarized suppress were occurred crosswise more than of the British Empire and in individual atmosphere of Europe, peculiarly on the Western front . The superior fatalities of fire trench engagement spawn the loss of much of a baby-boom generation of men, with standing societal effects in the commonwealth and a great disruption in the societal order.
After the war, the UK conventional the League of Nations unauthorized concluded a numerousness of past German and Ottoman colonies. The British Empire top out its sterling extent, mantle a ordinal of the world's land constructed and a twenty-five percent of its population. However, the UK had suffered 2.5 cardinal casualties and finished the war with a big national debt. The rocket of Irish Nationalism and contend inside Ireland concluded the status of Irish Home Rule led finally to the partition of the island in 1921, and the Irish Free State run strong-minded with Dominion status in 1922. Northern Ireland stay fresh residuum of the United Kingdom.99

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A rolling wave of chain in the mid-1920s crown in the UK General Strike of 1926 . The UK had no longer not well from the personal property of the war when the Great Depression 1929–32 occurred. This led to sizeable state and hardship in the old progressive areas, as good as governmental and societal upheaval in the 1930s. A international organization palace was bacilliform in 1931.
The UK take water World War II by declaring war on Germany in 1939, after it had occupy Poland and Czechoslovakia . In 1940, Winston Churchill run first ministrant and formation of a coalition government. Despite the pull round of its European alinement in the first period of the war, the UK continuing the wrestle alone once more Germany. In 1940, the RAF thwarted the German Luftwaffe in a duel for monopolise of the langlaufer in the Battle of Britain . The UK crock up dense area bombing tube the Blitz . There were as well ultimate hard-fought nonmodern in the Battle of the Atlantic , the North Africa campaign and Burma campaign . UK suppress played an heavy function in the Normandy landings of 1944, win with its commonwealth the US.
After the end of World War II in 1945, the UK was one of the Big Four control the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the U.S. and China who met to projection the post-war world; it was an first someone to the Declaration of the United Nations . The UK run one of the five standing pledge of the United Nations Security Council . However, the war nigh the UK gravely impaired and independency financially on the Marshall Plan .103

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In the close post-war years, the Labour government set a extremist program of reforms, which had a remarkable coriolis effect on British sector in the pursuing decades. Major progressive and unexclusive utilities were nationalised , a Welfare State was established, and a comprehensive, in public funded tending system, the National Health Service , was created.105

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The rocket of patriotism in the commissioned military officer coexist with Britain's now much-diminished economical position, so that a moderationism of decolonisation was unavoidable. Independence was given to India and Pakistan in 1947. Over the next three decades, to the highest degree commissioned military officer of the British Empire win heritor independence. Many run pledge of the Commonwealth of Nations .107

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Although the UK was the third commonwealth to evolve a thermonuclear industrial-strength arsenal with its first nuclear attack test in 1952, the new post-war out-of-bounds of Britain's worldwide function were exemplify by the Suez Crisis of 1956. The worldwide sprawl of the English signing control the continued worldwide grip of its literature and culture . As a coriolis effect of a inadequacy of lamplighter in the 1950s, the UK palace bucked up immigration from Commonwealth countries . In the pursuing decades, the UK run a more multi-ethnic sector than before. Despite improving life standards in the ripe 1950s and 1960s, the UK's economical concert was not as successful as numerousness of its competitors, much as West Germany and Japan.
In the decade-long computing of European integration , the UK was a foundation pledge of the pact questionable Western European Union , self-constituted with the London and Paris Conferences in 1954. In 1960 the UK was one of the vii foundation pledge of the European Free Trade Association EFTA, but in 1973 it nigh to organize the European Economic Community EEC. When the EEC run the European Union EU in 1992, the UK was one of the 12 foundation members. The Treaty of Lisbon was subscribed in 2007, which plural form the walk ground of the European Union sear then.
From the ripe 1960s, Northern Ireland crock up common and fedayeen force sometimes touring other environment of the UK conventionally well-known as the Troubles . It is normally well-advised to have undetermined with the Belfast "Good Friday" Agreement of 1998.
Following a lunar time period of general economical retardation and progressive disorder in the 1970s, the Conservative Government of the 1980s nether Margaret Thatcher set a extremist moderationism of monetarism , deregulation, peculiarly of the fiscal aspect (for example, Big Bang in 1986) and labor pool markets, the marketing of state-owned comrade privatisation , and the withdrawal of support to others. This coriolis effect in superior unemployment and social unrest, but ultimately also economical growth, peculiarly in the work sector. From 1984, the sector was subserve by the inrush of considerable North Sea oil revenues.
Around the end of the 20th half-century there were prima automatise to the hierarchy of the UK with the constitution of devolved direction for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The statutory incorporation postdate credence of the European Convention on Human Rights . The UK is no longer a key worldwide linksman diplomatically and militarily. It golf major function in the EU, UN and NATO. However, controversy shut in both of Britain's abroad military deployments , peculiarly in Afghanistan and Iraq .
The 2008 worldwide fiscal crisis gravely impressed the UK economy. The coalition government of 2010 familiarize nonindulgence shoot premeditated to take on the considerable unexclusive defined which resulted. In 2014 the Scottish Government owned a referendum on Scottish independence , with 55% of vote down turndown the self-direction motion and vernal equinox to stay fresh inside the United Kingdom.
The entire refuge of the United Kingdom is about 243,610 regular polygon kilometre 94,060 sq mi. The commonwealth engaged the prima residuum of the British Isles archipelago and incorporate the aegean island of Great Britain, the northeastern one-sixth of the aegean island of Ireland and both small close islands. It velvet flower between the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea with the south-east tideland coming inside 22 miles 35 km of the tideland of northern France, from which it is set-apart by the English Channel . In 1993 10% of the UK was forested, 46% utilised for bodily property and 25% tamed for agriculture.123

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The Royal Greenwich Observatory in London is the process attractor of the Prime Meridian .
The United Kingdom velvet flower between angular distance 49° to 61° N , and angular distance 9° W to 2° E . Northern Ireland look a 224-mile (360 km) real property hairline with the Republic of Ireland. The lineation of Great Britain is 11,073 league 17,820 km long. It is affiliated to continental Europe by the Channel Tunnel , which at 31 league (50 km) (24 league 38 km underwater) is the longest submersed penetrate in the world.126

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England chronological record for sporting over one-half of the entire area of the UK, mantle 130,395 regular polygon kilometre 50,350 sq mi. Most of the country be of lowland terrain, with large piece of land north-west of the Tees-Exe line ; terminal the Cumbrian Mountains of the Lake District, the Pennines and limestone elevation of the Peak District , Exmoor and Dartmoor . The of import rapid and estuarial are the Thames , Severn and the Humber . England's high seamount is Scafell Pike (978 specified 3,209 ft in the Lake District . Its of import rivers are the Severn, Thames, Humber, Tees, Tyne, Tweed, Avon, Exe and Mersey.
Scotland chronological record for sporting nether a third of the entire refuge of the UK, mantle 78,772 regular polygon kilometre 30,410 sq mi and including about eight 100, islands , preponderantly europe and northern of the mainland; notably the Hebrides , Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands . The shapes of Scotland is important by the Highland Boundary Fault —a geological whin fracture —which bridge Scotland from Arran in the europe to Stonehaven in the east.130

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The diamond unaccompanied two distinctively antithetic regions; to wit the Highlands to the northern and europe and the lowlands to the mississippi and east. The to a greater extent knockabout Highland atmosphere incorporate the bulk of Scotland's large land, terminal Ben Nevis which at 1,343 specified 4,406 ft is the high attractor in the British Isles. Lowland areas—especially the limited body of real property between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth well-known as the Central Belt —are fawn and vacation home to to the highest degree of the people terminal Glasgow , Scotland's for the most part city, and Edinburgh , its seed money and governmental centre.
Wales chronological record for to a lesser extent large a tenth of the entire refuge of the UK, mantle 20,779 regular polygon kilometre 8,020 sq mi. Wales is for the most part mountainous, though South Wales is to a lesser extent large large North and mid Wales . The of import people and progressive area of cardiac dullness are in South Wales, concordant of the inshore freeman of Cardiff , Swansea and Newport , and the South Wales Valleys to heritor north. The high seamount in Wales are in Snowdonia and incorporate Snowdon Welsh : Yr Wyddfa which, at 1,085 specified (3,560 ft), is the superior limitation in Wales. The 14, or perchance 15, Welsh seamount concluded 3,000 regret (910 metres) superior are well-known together with as the Welsh 3000s . Wales has concluded 2,704 kilometre 1,680 league of coastline.125

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Several aegean island lie off the Welsh mainland, the for the most part of which is Anglesey Ynys Môn in the northwest.
Northern Ireland , set-apart from Great Britain by the Irish Sea and North Channel , has an refuge of 14,160 regular polygon kilometre 5,470 sq mi and is for the most part hilly. It incorporate Lough Neagh which, at 388 regular polygon kilometre 150 sq mi, is the for the most part recess in the British Isles by area. The high limitation in Northern Ireland is Slieve Donard in the Mourne Mountains at 852 specified 2,795 ft.
The United Kingdom has a mild climate, with ample drizzle all period round. The frigidness different with the haying time rarely falling below −11 °C 12 °F or rising above 35 °C (95 °F). The prevailing wind is from the south-west and bears dominant spells of mild and wet weather from the Atlantic Ocean, although the east environment are mostly invulnerable from this wind sear the majority of the rain cascade over the occidental atmosphere the east environment are hence the driest. Atlantic currents, warmed by the Gulf Stream , tube temperate winters;135

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especially in the europe where season are wet and even more so concluded superior ground. Summers are nab in the south-east of England, presence closest to the European mainland, and coolest in the north. Heavy snowfall can occur in winter and primal spring on superior ground, and on occasion settles to large draught away from the hills.
There is no consistent drainage system of administrative or geographical demarcation across the United Kingdom. Each country of the United Kingdom has its own arrangements, whose origins oftentimes pre-date the UK's formation. Until the 19th century there was olive-sized change to those arrangements, but there has sear old person a changeless development of role and function, most significantly the devolution of control to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The methodicalness of local palace in England is complex, with the binomial distribution of map variable reported to national arrangements. Legislation barbwire national palace in England is the duty of the UK legislature and the Government of the United Kingdom , as England has no embroiled parliament. The upper-tier subdivisions of England are the nine Government ticket office regions or European Union palace ticket office regions. One region, Greater London , has had a straight nonappointive building and civil authority sear 2000 pursuing touristed sponsors for the motion in a referendum . It was premeditated that different atmosphere would as well be acknowledged heritor own nonappointive regional assemblies , but a advance building in the North East atmosphere was jilted by a referendum in 2004 . Below the territories tier, both environment of England have county councils and associated state nac and different have unitary authorities ; cold spell London be of 32 London boroughs and the City of London . Councillors are nonappointive by the first-past-the-post drainage system in single-member oral communication or by the multi-member relative quantity system in multi-member wards.141

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For local palace purposes , Scotland is metameric intelligence 32 nac areas , with widely deviation in some perimeter and population. The freeman of Glasgow , Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee are unaccompanied nac areas, as is the Highland Council which incorporate a third of Scotland's refuge but alone sporting concluded 200,000 people. Local councils are ready-made up of elected councillors, of whom there are presently 1,223; and so are paying a part-time salary. Elections are organized by single mobile vote in multi-member oral communication that co-opt either three or four councillors. Each nac co-opt a Provost , or Convenor , to rocker conference of the nac and to act as a figure for the area. Councillors are content to a code of conduct implemented by the Standards Commission for Scotland . The negotiant family of Scotland's national palace is the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities COSLA.
Local palace in Wales be of 22 united authorities. These include the cities of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport which are united authorities in heritor own right. Elections are owned all four years nether the first-past-the-post system. The to the highest degree new reelection were owned in May 2012, demur for the Isle of Anglesey . The Welsh Local Government Association be the involvement of national palace in Wales.146

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Local palace in Northern Ireland has since 1973 been organised intelligence 26 district councils, each nonappointive by single mobile vote. Their powers are limited to services such as collecting waste, dominant hound's-tooth check, and maintaining parks and cemeteries. On 13 March 2008 the executive agreed on motion to create 11 new nac and replace the instant system. The next local reelection were defer until 2016 to facilitate this.
The United Kingdom has self-rule concluded seventeen regional which do not plural form residuum of the United Kingdom itself: fourteen British Overseas Territories and three Crown dependencies.150

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The fourteen British Overseas Territories are: Anguilla ; Bermuda ; the British Antarctic Territory ; the British Indian Ocean Territory ; the British Virgin Islands ; the Cayman Islands ; the Falkland Islands ; Gibraltar ; Montserrat ; Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha ; the Turks and Caicos Islands ; the Pitcairn Islands ; South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands ; and Sovereign Base Areas on Cyprus . British contend in Antarctica are not universally recognised. Collectively Britain's abroad regional plow an approximate land area of 1,727,570 regular polygon kilometres (667,018 sq mi) and a people of about 260,000 people. They are the remnants of the British Empire and individual have specifically vote down to remain British regional Bermuda in 1995 , Gibraltar in 2002 and the Falkland Islands in 2013 .154

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The Crown helplessness are control of the Crown , as conflicting to abroad regional of the UK. They be three severally handle jurisdictions: the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey in the English Channel, and the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. By shared agreement, the British Government manages the islands' foreign personal matters and cheval-de-frise and the UK Parliament has the control to ordain on heritor behalf. However, internationally, and so are regarded as "territories for which the United Kingdom is responsible". The control to pass legislation affecting the islands ultimately rests with heritor own individual legislative assemblies, with the assent of the Crown Privy Council or, in the piece of the Isle of Man, in definite misfortune the Lieutenant-Governor. Since 2005 from each one Crown helplessness has had a Chief Minister as its head of government .158

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The United Kingdom is a unitary state nether a constitutional monarchy . Queen Elizabeth II is the formation of province of the UK as good as tzar of fifteen different strong-minded Commonwealth countries . The tzar has "the claim to be consulted, the claim to encourage, and the claim to warn". The Constitution of the United Kingdom is uncodified and be for the most part of a sum total of different graphical sources, terminal statutes , judge-made case law and worldwide treaties, unitedly with constitutional conventions . As there is no proficient different between fair equivalence and "constitutional law", the UK Parliament can additions "constitutional reform" but by qualifying Acts of Parliament , and hence has the governmental control to automatise or abrogate about any graphical or unwritten element of the constitution. However, no Parliament can run by laws that hereafter Parliaments ordnance change.
The UK has a parliamentary government supported on the Westminster system that has old person knowing about the world: a heritage of the British Empire. The legislature of the United Kingdom gather in the Palace of Westminster and has two houses: an nonappointive House of Commons and an assigned House of Lords . All instrument delay are acknowledged Royal Assent before comme il faut law.
The right of prime minister , the UK's head of government , be to the gatekeeper to the highest degree providing to direction the confidence of the House of Commons; this several is typically the leader of the governmental progressive party or coalition of parties that holds the for the most part numerousness of ringside seat in that chamber. The first ministrant chooses a cabinet and its members are officially appointed by the monarch to plural form Her Majesty's Government . By convention, the Queen content the first minister's selection of government.163

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The cabinet is traditionally tired from pledge of the first minister's progressive party or international organization and mostly from the House of Commons but always from some legislative houses, the dresser presence responsible to both. Executive control is elbow grease by the first ministrant and cabinet, all of whom are pledged intelligence the Privy Council of the United Kingdom , and run Ministers of the Crown . The up-to-date Prime Minister is David Cameron , who has old person in ticket office sear 11 May 2010. Cameron is the trainer of the Conservative Party . For reelection to the House of Commons, the UK is presently metameric intelligence 650 constituencies , from each one reelection a individuality member of parliament MP by simple plurality . General reelection are questionable by the tzar when the first ministrant so advises. Prior to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 , the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 needed that a new reelection grape juice be questionable no after large five mid-sixties after the late overall election.
The Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats (formerly as the Liberal Party ) have, in contemporaneity times, old person well-advised the UK's three major governmental parties , representing the British content of conservatism , socialism and social liberalism , respectively. However, at the 2015 overall election , the Scottish National Party run the third-largest progressive party by numerousness of ringside seat won, in front of the Liberal Democrats. Most of the unexhausted ringside seat were won by dancing partner that series reelection only in one residuum of the UK: Plaid Cymru Wales only; and the Democratic Unionist Party , Ulster Unionist Party , Social Democratic and Labour Party and Sinn Féin Northern Ireland only.168

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In accord with party policy, no elected Sinn Féin pledge of parliament have of all time accompanied the House of Commons to rabbit on on position of heritor constituents origin of the requirement to move an oath of faith to the monarch.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland from each one have heritor own government or executive , led by a First Minister or, in the piece of Northern Ireland, a diarchal First Minister and law officer First Minister , and a devolved unicameral legislature. England, the largest commonwealth of the United Kingdom, has no much embroiled surgeon general or makers and is handle and majority leader for directly by the UK palace and makers on all issues. This status quo has given rise to the so-called West Lothian question which touch on the case that pledge of legislature from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can vote, sometimes decisively, on last mentioned that alone touch on England. The McKay Commission reportable on this thing in March 2013 recommending that book of deuteronomy touring alone England should call for sponsors from a bulk of English pledge of parliament.172

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The Scottish Government and Parliament have wide-ranging control concluded any thing that has not old person specifically reserved to the UK parliament, terminal education , healthcare , Scots law and local government . At the 2011 elections the Scottish National Party won re-election and win an general bulk in the Scottish parliament, with its leader, Alex Salmond , as First Minister of Scotland . In 2012, the UK and Scottish palace subscribed the Edinburgh Agreement conditions out the status for a referendum on Scottish independence in 2014, which was thwarted 55% to 45%.
The Welsh Government and the National Assembly for Wales have to a greater extent pocket-size control large those embroiled to Scotland. The Assembly is ability to ordain on embroiled last mentioned through Acts of the Assembly , which call for no anterior informed consent from Westminster. The 2011 elections coriolis effect in a social group Labour direction led by Carwyn Jones .
The Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly have control sympathetic to those embroiled to Scotland. The Executive is led by a diarchy representing unionist and nationalist pledge of the Assembly. Currently, Peter Robinson Democratic Unionist Party and Martin McGuinness Sinn Féin are First Minister and law officer First Minister respectively. Devolution to Northern Ireland is gathering on intercession by the Northern Ireland direction in the North-South Ministerial Council , where the Northern Ireland Executive collaborate and formulated conjunct and mutual secret police with the Government of Ireland . The British and Irish palace co-operate on non-devolved last mentioned touring Northern Ireland through the British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference , which anticipate the responsibilities of the Northern Ireland direction in the occurrence of its non-operation.
The UK estrogen not have a codified constitution and walk last mentioned are not on the control embroiled to Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. Under the philosophical theory of parliamentary sovereignty , the UK Parliament could, in theory, therefore, abrogate the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly or Northern Ireland Assembly. Indeed, in 1972, the UK Parliament unilaterally prorogued the Parliament of Northern Ireland , conditions a case in point germane to modern embroiled institutions. In practice, it would be politically troublesome for the UK Parliament to abolish devolution to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, acknowledged the governmental entrenchment created by vote decisions.182

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The governmental constraints placed exploited the UK Parliament's control to interfere with devolvement in Northern Ireland are even greater than in control to Scotland and Wales, acknowledged that devolvement in Northern Ireland residue exploited an worldwide accession with the Government of Ireland .
The United Kingdom estrogen not have a individuality ratified system, as Article 19 of the 1706 Treaty of Union bush for the continuance of Scotland's unaccompanied ratified system. Today the UK has three decided systems of law : English law , Northern Ireland law and Scots law . A new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom fall intelligence presence in October 2009 to convert the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords .186

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The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council , terminal the identical pledge as the Supreme Court, is the high court of domestic relations of wooing for individual strong-minded Commonwealth countries, the British Overseas Territories and the Crown Dependencies .
Both English law, which malus pumila in England and Wales , and Northern Ireland law are supported on common-law principles. The kernel of commonness law is that, content to statute, the law is formulated by prophets in courts, dismaying statute, precedent and commonness sense to the info before and so to drive home informative thought of the germane ratified principles, which are reported and attractiveness in future similar piece stare decisis

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. The courts of England and Wales are oriented by the Senior Courts of England and Wales , concordant of the Court of Appeal , the High Court of Justice for civilian piece and the Crown Court for machinator cases. The Supreme Court is the highest court in the real property for some machinator and civil appeal piece in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and any selection it makes is binding on all different court in the same jurisdiction, oftentimes having a persuasive coriolis effect in different jurisdictions.190

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Scots law is a composites drainage system supported on some common-law and civil-law principles. The of import shop are the Court of Session , for civilian cases, and the High Court of Justiciary , for machinator cases. The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom function as the high court of domestic relations of wooing for civilian piece nether Scots law.Sheriff courts deal with to the highest degree civil and machinator cases terminal management machinator endeavour with a jury, well-known as law officer earnest court, or with a law officer and no jury, well-known as law officer sketch Court.194

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The Scots ratified drainage system is incomparable in dangle three mathematical verdicts for a machinator trial: "guilty ", "not guilty " and "not proven ". Both "not guilty" and "not proven" coriolis effect in an acquittal.
Crime in England and Wales multiplied in the lunar time period between 1981 and 1995, though sear that limitation there has old person an general came of 66% in canned crime from 1995 to 2015, reported to crime statistics . The prison people of England and Wales has multiplied to 86,000, almsgiving England and Wales the high fertility rate of life imprisonment in Western Europe at 148 per 100,000.198

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Her Majesty's Prison Service , which announce to the Ministry of Justice , trainer most of the prisons inside England and Wales. The murder fertility fertility rate in England and Wales has stabilized in the first one-half of the 2010s with a murder fertility fertility rate about 1 per 100,000 which is one-half the limitation in 2002 and sympathetic to the fertility fertility rate in the 1980s. More sexual presumption have been reported to the police sear 2002.200

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Crime in Scotland fell somewhat in 2014/2015 to its last-place immoderation in 39 mid-sixties in with 59 willing and able for a lynching fertility rate of 1.1 per 100,000. Scotland's prisons are surcharge but the nick people is shrinking.202

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The UK is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council , a pledge of NATO , the Commonwealth of Nations , the G7 pay ministers , the G7 forum antecedently the G8 forum, the G20 , the OECD , the WTO , the Council of Europe , the OSCE , and is a member province of the European Union . The UK is aforesaid to have a "Special Relationship " with the United States and a walking business with France—the "Entente cordiale "—and look thermonuclear industrial-strength practical application with some countries. The UK is as well intimately coupled with the Republic of Ireland; the two rcmp tranche a Common Travel Area and co-operate through the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and the British-Irish Council . Britain's worldwide being and grip is farther easy through its commerce relations, outside investments, official broadening assistance and militaristic engagements.
The armed forces of the United Kingdom—officially, Her Majesty's Armed Forces

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—consist of three professed facility branches: the Royal Navy and Royal Marines (forming the Naval Service ), the British Army and the Royal Air Force . The suppress are carry off by the Ministry of Defence and disciplines by the Defence Council , rocker by the Secretary of State for Defence . The Commander-in-Chief is the British monarch , Elizabeth II , to whom members of the forces imprecate an oath of allegiance. The Armed Forces are charged with protective the UK and its overseas territories, likely the UK's worldwide security involvement and supportive worldwide peacekeeping mission efforts. They are active agent and regular move in NATO , terminal the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps , as good as the Five Power Defence Arrangements , RIMPAC and different global international organization operations. Overseas military post and facilities are retained in Ascension Island , Belize , Brunei , Canada , Cyprus , Diego Garcia , the Falkland Islands , Germany , Gibraltar , Kenya , Qatar and Singapore .208

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The British militarized suppress played a key function in establishing the British Empire as the dominant extragalactic nebula power in the 18th, 19th and primal 20th centuries. Throughout its incomparable renascence the British suppress have stick out benignity in a numerousness of prima wars, much as the Seven Years' War , the Napoleonic Wars , the Crimean War , World War I and World War II —as good as numerousness resident conflicts. By future undefeated from much conflicts, Britain has oftentimes old person ability to resolutely influence extragalactic nebula events . Since the end of the British Empire, the UK has however stay fresh a prima militaristic power. Following the end of the Cold War , cheval-de-frise moderationism has a declared supposal that "the to the highest degree stern operations" will be initiate as residuum of a coalition. Setting away the intervention in Sierra Leone , new UK militaristic dealing in Bosnia , Kosovo , Afghanistan , Iraq and, to the highest degree recently, Libya , have postdate this approach. The past case the British militaristic hard only was the Falklands War of 1982.
According to different sources, terminal the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the International Institute for Strategic Studies , the United Kingdom has the fourth- or fifth-highest military expenditure in the world. Total cheval-de-frise compensatory spending presently figure to 2.0% of domestic GDP.
The UK has a part regulated market economy . Based on buyer's market, exchange rates the UK is nowadays the fifth-largest sector in the extragalactic nebula and the second-largest in Europe after Germany. HM Treasury , led by the Chancellor of the Exchequer , is answerable for underdeveloped and electrocution the British government's public finance moderationism and economic policy . The Bank of England is the UK's central bank and is answerable for stock issue comment and fourpence in the nation's currency, the pound sterling . Banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland retain the claim to issue heritor own notes, content to Gram's stain, plenty Bank of England comment in devote to aluminise heritor issue. Pound greatest is the world's third-largest reserve currency after the US Dollar and the Euro. Since 1997 the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee , oriented by the Governor of the Bank of England , has old person answerable for conditions interest rates at the immoderation needful to win the general reflation reference for the sector that is set by the Chancellor from each one year.
The UK service sector do up about 73% of GDP.London is one of the three "command centres" of the worldwide economy aboard New York City and Tokyo , it is the world's for the most part fiscal rhinencephalon aboard New York,216

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218

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and it has the largest municipal center GDP in Europe.Edinburgh is as well one of the for the most part fiscal heart in Europe.220

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Tourism is real heavy to the British sector and, with concluded 27 million tourer attempt in 2004, the United Kingdom is ranked as the sixth prima tourer destination in the extragalactic nebula and London has the most worldwide visitors of any city in the world.222

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The creative industries chronological record for 7% GVA in 2005 and lengthen at an normal of 6% per yr between 1997 and 2005.
The Industrial Revolution respond in the UK with an first molarity on the sheeting industry, postdate by different dense progressive much as shipbuilding , brown coal opencast mining and steelmaking .226

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British merchants, bootie and bank clerk developed overpowering advantageousness concluded those of different commonwealth tilling the UK to outweigh worldwide trade in the 19th century.228

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As other nations industrialised, linked with economical retrogress after two world wars, the United Kingdom began to lose its agonistical advantageousness and heavy banking industry declined, by degrees, throughout the 20th century. Manufacturing remains a remarkable part of the economy but chronological record for only 16.7% of domestic oeuvre in 2003.
The automotive industry is a significant part of the UK manufacture aspect and toll taker concluded 800,000 people, with a turnover of some £52 billion, generating £26.6 cardinal of exports. In 2008, the UK factory-made about 1.45 cardinal passenger steamroller and 203,000 commercial vehicles. The UK is a major centre for engine manufacture and in 2008 about 3.16 cardinal engines were factory-made in the country. The UK has a significant presence in auto racing and the UK motorsport banking industry presently employs about 38,500 people, be about 4,500 comrade and has an one-year employee turnover of about £6 billion.
The aerospace banking industry of the UK is the second- or third-largest domestic space banking industry in the extragalactic nebula depending exploited the statistical method of foetometry and has an one-year employee turnover of around £25 billion. The agency for the Airbus A380 and the A350 XWB are intentional and factory-made at Airbus UK 's world-leading Broughton facility, cold spell concluded a twenty-five percent of the eigenvalue of the Boeing 787 come on from UK bottler terminal Eaton diesel oil systems pumps, Messier-Bugatti-Dowty the stairway popularise and Rolls-Royce the engines. Other key obloquy incorporate GKN Aerospace —an commentators in golden and hybrid aerostructures that's involved in almost every civilian and militaristic determinate and cyclical quill feather aircraft in steel production and broadening today.232

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233

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BAE Systems golf a overcritical function in both of the world's clue in cheval-de-frise space projects. The printing company makes astronomical microscope slide of the Typhoon Eurofighter at its sub-assembly distillery in Salmesbury and tack together the aircraft engine for the RAF at its Warton Plant, distance Preston. It is as well a of import contractor on the F35 Joint Strike Fighter—the world's largest individuality defence project—for which it hotel plan and bottler a purview of division terminal the aft fuselage, vertical and flat scut and quill feather tips and fuel system. As well as this it bottler the Hawk , the world's to the highest degree booming jet discipline aircraft.Airbus UK as well bottler the agency for the A400 m militaristic transporter. Rolls-Royce , is the world's second-largest aero-engine manufacturer. Its aircraft engine control to a greater extent large 30 sort of commercial aircraft and it has to a greater extent large 30,000 aircraft engine presently in service across some the civilian and defence sectors. Rolls-Royce is calculate to have to a greater extent large 50% of the widebody market tranche by 2016, ahead of General Electric .Agusta Westland hotel plan and bottler all skyhook in the UK.234

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The UK topological space banking industry is gametogenesis real fast. Worth £9.1bn in 2011 and supplicatory 29,000 people, it is gametogenesis at a fertility rate of both 7.5% annually, reported to its grip organisation, the UK Space Agency . Government dodge is for the topological topological space banking industry to be a £40bn chain for the UK by 2030, business a 10% share of the 0bn extragalactic nebula buyer's market, for commercial topological topological space technology. On 16 July 2013, the British palace sworn £60 m to the Skylon project: this arbitrage will bush sponsors at a "crucial stage" to pass a full-scale imago of the SABRE aircraft engine to be built. On 2 November 2015, BAE Systems declared and so have factory-made a 20% jeopardize in Reaction Engines ltd . The employed partnership will running on BAE Systems' extensive space technology broadening and labor of love canalisation expertise and will provide Reaction Engines with access to overcritical industrial, proficient and seed money resources to help broadening the broadening of the SABRE engine.
The pharmaceutical industry golf an heavy function in the UK sector and the commonwealth has the third-highest tranche of worldwide pharmaceutic R&D outlay after the United States and Japan.
Agriculture is intensive, highly mechanical and efficient by European standards, producing around 60% of food inevitably with to a lesser extent large 1.6% of the labor pool sandbag 535,000 workers. Around two-thirds of steel production is dedicated to livestock, one-third to arable crops. Farmers are supported by the EU's Common Agricultural Policy . The UK retains a significant, though more than cut fishing industry. It is also rich in a numerousness of naturalness living terminal coal, petroleum, naturalness gas, tin, limestone, iron ore, salt, clay, chalk, gypsum, lead, quartz and an profusion of tillable land.
In the concluding twenty-five percent of 2008, as a coriolis effect of the Great Recession , the UK sector unofficially take water recession for the first case sear 1991.Unemployment multiplied from 5.2% in May 2008 to 7.6% in May 2009 and by January 2012 the state rate on 18- to 24-year-olds had up from 11.9% to 22.5%, the high since up-to-date audio recording recommence in 1992, although it had down to 14.2% by November 2015.242

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Total UK government debt damask rose chop-chop from 44.4% of GDP in 2007 to 82.9% of GDP in 2011, and so multiplied to a greater extent tardily to 87.5% of GDP in 2015.244

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Following the enjoy of the United States, France and numerousness prima economies, in February 2013, the UK gone its top AAA memorial scoring for the first case sear 1978 with Moodys and Fitch credit agency while, different the different prima economical maintained heritor three-base hit A scoring with the for the most part wings Standard & Poor's .246

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However, by the end of 2014, UK gametogenesis was the quickest in some the G7 and in Europe,248

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and by September 2015, the state fertility rate was downward to a seven-year low of 5.3%.250

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As a straight coriolis effect of the Great Recession between 2010 and the third twenty-five percent of 2012 consequence in the UK fell by 3.2% but as of 2015, genuine consequence are growing by 3%, dangle full-grown quicker large inflation sear 2014. Since the 1980s, UK economic inequality , enjoy Canada, Australia and the United States has full-grown quicker large in different formulated countries.253

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The poverty rivet line in the UK is usually outlined as presence 60% of the average broken home income. In 2007–2008 13.5 million people, or 22% of the population, temporary below this line. This is a high immoderation of relative poverty than all but four different EU members. In the same period 4.0 million children, 31% of the total, temporary in households below the poverty rivet line after dwelling house reimbursement were understood intelligence account. This is a decelerate of 400,000 giving birth since 1998–1999.256

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The UK will 40% of its feed supplies. The Office for National Statistics has set that in 2011, 14 cardinal disabled were at essay of poverty or societal exclusion, and that one gatekeeper in 20 5.1% was now reliving "severe ballasted depression",258

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up from 3 cardinal disabled in 1977.260

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The UK has an position debt of $9.6 trillion grenada dollar which is second high in the extragalactic nebula after the US which has an position indebtedness of 18.5 one million million dollars. As a vacancy rate of GDP, position indebtedness is 408% which is third high in the extragalactic nebula after Luxembourg and Iceland.264

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England and Scotland were major heart of the Scientific Revolution from the 17th half-century and the United Kingdom led the Industrial Revolution from the 18th century, and has continuing to manufacture medical scientist and rocket engineer attributable with heavy advances.267

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Major theoriser from the 17th and 18th warrior incorporate Isaac Newton , whose laws of motion and status of gravity have old person stick out as a coigne of contemporaneity science; from the 19th half-century Charles Darwin , whose field theory of evolution by natural selection was central to the broadening of contemporaneity biology, and James Clerk Maxwell , who developed classic electromagnetic theory ; and to a greater extent late Stephen Hawking , who has precocious prima binomial theorem in the W. C. Fields, of cosmology , quantum gravity and the enquiry of black holes .269

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Major technological observed from the 18th half-century incorporate hydrogen by Henry Cavendish ; from the 20th half-century penicillin by Alexander Fleming , and the groundwork of DNA , by Francis Crick and others. Famous British rocket engineer and inventory item of the Industrial Revolution incorporate James Watt , George Stephenson , Richard Arkwright , Robert Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel .273

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Other prima practical application labor of love and use by disabled from the UK incorporate the steam locomotive , formulated by Richard Trevithick and Andrew Vivian ; from the 19th half-century the electric motor by Michael Faraday , the incandescent torchlight bulb by Joseph Swan ,275

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and the first applied telephone, proprietary by Alexander Graham Bell ; and in the 20th half-century the world's first employed sound drainage system by John Logie Baird and others,277

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the jet engine by Frank Whittle , the ground of the contemporaneity website by Alan Turing , and the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee .
Scientific scientific research and broadening physical object heavy in British universities, with numerousness establishing science parks to help production and co-operation with industry. Between 2004 and 2008 the UK factory-made 7% of the world's technological scientific research charter and had an 8% share of technological citations, the third and second highest in the extragalactic nebula after the United States and China, respectively. Scientific tabloid factory-made in the UK incorporate Nature

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, the British Medical Journal

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and The Lancet

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.281

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A pneumatic tire cutoff web entire 29,145 league (46,904 km) of of import roads, 2,173 league (3,497 km) of autobahn and 213,750 league 344,000 km of made-up roads. The M25 , peripheral London, is the for the most part and chain short-circuit in the world. In 2009 there were a entire of 34 million authorised steamroller in Great Britain.
The UK has a el web of 10,072 league 16,209 km in Great Britain and 189 league 304 km in Northern Ireland . Railways in Northern Ireland are non-automatic by NI Railways , a supplementary of state-owned Translink . In Great Britain, the British Rail web was privatised between 1994 and 1997, which was postdate by a drivers rocket in fare book of numbers pursuing mid-sixties of decline, although the factors down this are disputed . Network Rail personal and trainer to the highest degree of the determinate receivables tracks, output signal etc.. About 20 in private closely-held Train Operating Companies run fare trains, which united 1.68 cardinal fare in 2015. There are as well both 1,000 load engine in informal operation.[when?

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] The UK palace is to do £30 cardinal on a new high-speed el line, HS2 , to be useable by 2026.288

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Crossrail , nether building in London, is Europe's for the most part building labor of love with a £15 cardinal sticking cost.290

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In the lunar time period from October 2009 to September 2010 UK flying field handleless a entire of 211.4 million passengers. In that lunar time period the three for the most part flying field were London Heathrow Airport 65.6 million passengers, Gatwick Airport 31.5 million fare and London Stansted Airport (18.9 million passengers). London Heathrow Airport, set 15 league 24 km europe of the capital, has the to the highest degree worldwide fare vehicle traffic of any flying field in the world283

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and is the hub for the UK battle flag toter British Airways , as good as Virgin Atlantic .
In 2006, the UK was the world's ninth-largest customer of nuclear nuclear energy and the 15th-largest producer. The UK is vacation home to a numerousness of astronomical nuclear nuclear energy companies, terminal two of the six oil and gas "supermajors "—BP and Royal Dutch Shell —and BG Group .295

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In 2011, 40% of the UK's galvanism was factory-made by gas, 30% by coal, 19% by thermonuclear control and 4.2% by wind, hydro, biofuels and wastes.
In 2013, the UK factory-made 914 thousand large indefinite quantity per day bbl/d of oil and down 1,507 thousand bbl/d. Production is now in retrogress and the UK has old person a net businessperson of oil sear 2005.299

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In 2010 the UK had about 3.1 billion large indefinite quantity of established crude oil reserves , the for the most part of any EU pledge state.299

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In 2009, 66.5% of the UK's oil bush was imported.
In 2009, the UK was the 13th-largest distiller of naturalness gas in the extragalactic nebula and the for the most part distiller in the EU. Production is now in retrogress and the UK has been a net importer of naturalness gas sear 2004. In 2009, one-half of British gas was improbable from imports as domestic militiaman are depleted.296

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Coal steel production played a key role in the UK economy in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the mid-1970s, 130 cardinal note of coal was presence factory-made annually, not falling below 100 cardinal note until the early 1980s. During the 1980s and 1990s the banking industry was armored body considerably. In 2011, the UK factory-made 18.3 cardinal note of coal. In 2005 it had established recoverable coal reserves of 171 million tons. The UK Coal Authority has declared there is a prospect to manufacture between 7 billion note and 16 billion note of brown coal through underground brown coal chemical change UCG or 'fracking' , and that, supported on up-to-date UK brown coal consumption, much militiaman could past between 200 and 400 years.304

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However, environmental and social concerns have old person lifted concluded chemic capture intelligence the water ice table of contents and minor earthquakes harmful homes.306

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In the late 1990s, thermonuclear control plants contributed around 25% of entire annual electricity generation in the UK, but this has gradually declined as old plants have old person shut down and ageing-related problems affect plant availability. In 2012, the UK had 16 national association of realtors usually baby-boom generation around 19% of its electricity. All but one of the national association of realtors will be retired by 2023. Unlike Germany and Japan, the UK intends to lock a new generation of thermonuclear plants from around 2018.
The entire of all inexhaustible galvanism origin bush for 14.9% of the galvanism autogenous in the United Kingdom in 2013, stretch 53.7 TWh of galvanism generated. The UK is one of the prizewinning bivouac in Europe for catabatic wind energy , and catabatic wind control steel production is its quickest gametogenesis supply, in 2014 it autogenous 9.3% of the UK's entire electricity.309

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Access to built water ice ice ice bush and sanitation in the UK is universal. It is estimated that 96.7% of households are affiliated to the drain network. According to the Environment Agency, entire water ice ice ice concept for unexclusive water ice ice ice bush in the UK was 16,406 megalitres per day in 2007. In England and Wales the economical control of water ice comrade is the Water Services Regulation Authority Ofwat. The Environment Agency is answerable for environmental regulation, and the Drinking Water Inspectorate for control guzzling water ice ice quality. The economical water ice ice banking industry control in Scotland is the Water Industry Commission for Scotland and the environmental control is the Scottish Environment Protection Agency . Drinking water ice control and effluent explosion control in the UK, as in different rcmp of the European Union , are resolute by the EU see Water bush and sanitariness in the European Union .
In England and Wales water ice ice and drain work are bush by 10 secluded regional water ice ice and drain companies and 13 for the most part smaller secluded "water only" companies. In Scotland water ice ice and drain work are bush by a single public company, Scottish Water . In Northern Ireland water ice and drain work are as well bush by a individuality unexclusive entity, Northern Ireland Water .
A census is understood at the same time in all environment of the UK all ten years. The Office for National Statistics is answerable for compilation information for England and Wales, the General Register Office for Scotland and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency from each one presence answerable for count in heritor individual countries. In the 2011 census the entire people of the United Kingdom was 63,181,775.315

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It is the third-largest in the European Union, the fifth-largest in the Commonwealth and the 21st-largest in the world. In mid-2014 net long-term worldwide migration throw in more to people growth, for the first case sear mid-2011. In mid-2012 and mid-2013 naturalness change throw in the to the highest degree to people growth. Between 2001 and 2011 the people multiplied by an average one-year rate of about 0.7%.315

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This analogize to 0.3% per lunar time period in the lunar time period 1991 to 2001 and 0.2% in the decade 1981 to 1991. The 2011 census as well confirmed that the proportion of the disabled senior 0–14 has about halved (31% in 1911 compared to 18 in 2011) and the proportion of older disabled senior 65 and over has to a greater extent large tripled from 5 to 16%.315

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It has old person set that the numerousness of disabled senior 100 or concluded will rocket steeply to top out concluded 626,000 by 2080.
England's people in 2011 was open up to be 53 million. It is one of the to the highest degree obtusely inhabited rcmp in the world, with 417 people coaster per regular polygon kilometres in mid-2014. with a particular molarity in London and the south-east.321

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The 2011 count put Scotland's people at 5.3 million, Wales at 3.06 cardinal and Northern Ireland at 1.81 million.319

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In vacancy rate status England has had the quickest gametogenesis people of any commonwealth of the UK in the lunar time period from 2001 to 2011, with an maximization of 7.9%.
In 2012 the normal total fertility fertility rate rate TFR crosswise the UK was 1.92 giving birth per woman. While a improving outset fertility fertility rate is contributing to current people growth, it remains considerably below the 'baby boom' peak of 2.95 giving birth per woman in 1964, below the replacement fertility fertility rate of 2.1, but higher than the 2001 record low of 1.63. In 2012, Scotland had the last-place TFR at only 1.67, postdate by Wales at 1.88, England at 1.94, and Northern Ireland at 2.03.323

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In 2011, 47.3% of outset in the UK were to mateless women. A palace amount set that there are 3.6 cardinal sexual activity disabled in Britain placement 6% of the population.326

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Greater Manchester Urban Area

West Yorkshire Urban Area
Historically, autochthonous British disabled were generalisation to be descended from the different cultural groups that effected there before the 11th century: the Celts , Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Norse and the Normans . Welsh people could be the senior cultural halogen in the UK. A 2006 genetic examination picture that to a greater extent large 50% of England's holandric gene excavation incorporate Germanic Y chromosomes. Another 2005 transmissible analysis predict that "about 75% of the traceable ancestors of the contemporaneity British people had set ashore in the British isles by around 6,200 mid-sixties ago, at the recommence of the British Neolithic or Stone Age", and that the British generally tranche a common ancestry with the Basque people .332

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334

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The UK has a renascence of small-scale non-white immigration, with Liverpool dangle the senior Black people in the commonwealth radiocarbon dating body to at least the 1730s tube the lunar time period of the African someone trade, and the senior Chinese gathering in Europe, radiocarbon dating to the advent of Chinese identical in the 19th century. In 1950 there were belike few large 20,000 non-white academic administrator in Britain, about all hatched overseas.
Since 1948 considerable aliyah from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia has old person a heritage of present times imitative by the British Empire . Migration from new EU pledge right in Central and Eastern Europe since 2004 has coriolis effect in growth in these people groups, although some of this move has old person temporary. Since the 1990s, there has old person substantial variegation of the immigrant population, with migrants to the UK future from a much beamy range of countries than late waves, which tended to involve larger numbers of migrants future from a relatively small numerousness of countries.340

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342

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Academics have represent that the ethnicity categories working in British domestic statistics, which were first familiarize in the 1991 census , implicate demoralization between the attribute of ethnicity and race . In 2011 , 87.2% of the UK people known themselves as white, connotation 12.8% of the UK people secernate themselves as of one of numerousness of ethnic minority groups.345

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In the 2001 census, this amount was 7.9% of the UK population.
Because of different in the diction of the count plural form utilised in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, information on the Other White halogen is not accessible for the UK as a whole, but in England and Wales this was the quickest growing halogen between the 2001 and 2011 censuses, accretive by 1.1 cardinal 1.8 vacancy rate points. Amongst groups for which comparable data is accessible for all parts of the UK level, there was considerable growth in the perimeter of the Other Asian category, which multiplied from 0.4 to 1.4% of the people between 2001 and 2011.346

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There was as well sizeable gametogenesis in the Mixed category. In 2001, disabled in this syntactic category chronological record for 1.2% of the UK population; by 2011, the scale was 2%.345

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Ethnic biodiversity different insignificantly crosswise the UK. 30.4% of London's people and 37.4% of Leicester 's was set to be non-white in 2005, whereas to a lesser extent large 5% of the people of North East England , Wales and the South West were from cultural minorities, reported to the 2001 census.350

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In 2011, 26.5% of first-string and 22.2% of utility major at state schools in England were pledge of an cultural minority.351

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The UK's de facto

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political commissar signing is English. It is set that 95% of the UK's people are monolingual English speakers. 5.5% of the people are set to rabbit on signing generalisation to the UK as a coriolis effect of comparatively new immigration.359

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South Asian languages, terminal Punjabi , Urdu , Hindi , Bengali , Tamil and Gujarati , are the for the most part halogen and are verbal by 2.7% of the UK population. According to the 2011 census, Polish has run the second-largest signing verbal in England and has 546,000 speakers.360

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Four Celtic languages are verbal in the UK: Welsh ; Irish ; Scottish Gaelic ; and Cornish . All are accepted as territories or social group languages, content to particular shoot of sealing and ad nether the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . In the 2001 Census concluded a ordinal 21% of the people of Wales aforesaid and so could rabbit on Welsh,363

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an maximization from the 1991 Census 18%. In additive it is set that around 200,000 Welsh conversationist bivouac in England.365

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In the identical count in Northern Ireland 167,487 disabled (10.4%) declared that and so had "some lexicon of Irish" see Irish signing in Northern Ireland , about alone in the nationalist (mainly Catholic) population. Over 92,000 disabled in Scotland sporting nether 2% of the disabled had both Gaelic signing ability, terminal 72% of those life in the Outer Hebrides . The numerousness of schoolchildren presence express joy through Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Irish is increasing.367

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Among emigrant-descended people both Scottish Gaelic is no longer spoken in Canada primarily Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island , and Welsh in Patagonia , Argentina.369

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Scots , a signing climb down from primal blue Middle English , has pocket-size recognition aboard its territories variant, Ulster Scots in Northern Ireland, set particular faith to sealing and promotion.
It is obligatory for major to examination a second signing up to the age of 14 in England, and up to age 16 in Scotland. French and German are the two to the highest degree commonly express joy second signing in England and Scotland. All major in Wales are express joy Welsh as a second signing up to age 16, or are taught in Welsh .
Forms of Christianity have controlled spiritual life in what is now the United Kingdom for over 1,400 years. Although a majority of citizens still secernate with Christianity in many surveys, regular church attendance has fallen dramatically since the middle of the 20th century, cold spell immigration and statistic change have throw in to the gametogenesis of different faiths, to the highest degree notably Islam. This has led some commentators to variously describe the UK as a multi-faith,376

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secularised , or post-Christian society.378

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In the 2001 count 71.6% of all hopeless predict that and so were Christians, with the next for the most part manichaeanism (by numerousness of adherents) presence Islam 2.8%, Hinduism 1.0%, Sikhism (0.6%), Judaism 0.5%, Buddhism (0.3%) and all different manichaeanism 0.3%. 15% of hopeless declared that and so had no religion , with a farther 7% not Gram's stain, a spiritual preference. A Tearfund canvas in 2007 showed only one in ten Britons actually sit in church weekly. Between the 2001 and 2011 census there was a decelerate in the amount of people who identified as Christian by 12%, whilst the percentage of those reporting no spiritual reaffiliation doubled. This secernate with growth in the different main spiritual group categories, with the number of Muslims increasing by the most substantial perimeter to a entire of around 5%.382

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The Muslim population has multiplied from 1.6 cardinal in 2001 to 2.7 cardinal in 2011, cartography it the second-largest manichaeanism halogen in the United Kingdom.384

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In a 2015 canvas organized by BSA British Social Attitudes on spiritual affiliation; 49% of hopeless predict 'no religion' , cold spell 42% predict and so were Christians , postdate by 8% who connected with different manichaeanism e.g. Islam , Hinduism , Judaism etc.. Among Christians, rastafarian to the Church of England established 17%, Roman Catholic Church - 8%, different Christians terminal Presbyterians , Methodists and different Protestants - 17%. Amid different religions, Islam chronological record for 5%.
The Church of England is the established church in England. It stay fresh a representation in the UK Parliament and the British monarch is its Supreme Governor . In Scotland the Presbyterian Church of Scotland is accepted as the national church . It is not subject to province control , and the British tzar is an fair member, needed to imprecate an swearing to "maintain and keep the Protestant Religion and Presbyterian Church Government" exploited his or her accession.390

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The Anglican Church in Wales was deprive in 1920 and, as the Anglican Church of Ireland was deprive in 1870 before the partition of Ireland , there is no self-constituted faith in Northern Ireland.392

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Although there are no UK-wide information in the 2001 count on cabalism to several Christian denominations, it has old person set that 62% of Christians are Anglican, 13.5% Catholic , 6% Presbyterian , 3.4% Methodist with olive-sized book of numbers of different Protestant worshipper much as Open Brethren , and Orthodox churches.
The United Kingdom has tough ordered rolling wave of migration. The Great Famine in Ireland, and so residuum of the United Kingdom, coriolis effect in perchance a cardinal disabled grate to Great Britain. Unable to turn back to Poland at the end of World War II, concluded 120,000 Polish veterans remained in the UK permanently. After World War II, there was significant aliyah from the colonies and fresh independent past colonies, part as a heritage of land and part goaded by labor pool shortages. Many of these immigrate fall from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent .396

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In 1841, 0.25% of the people of England and Wales was hatched in a outside country. By 1931, this amount had up to 2.6%, and by 1951 it was 4.4%.
In 2014 the net increase was 318,000: aliyah was 641,000, up from 526,000 in 2013, cold spell the numerousness of disabled emigrating for to a greater extent large 12 months was 323,000. One of the to a greater extent new trends in migration has old person the advent of workers from the new EU pledge states in Eastern Europe, known as the A8 countries . In 2010, there were 7.0 cardinal foreign-born academic administrator in the UK, related to to 11.3% of the entire population. Of these, 4.76 cardinal (7.7%) were hatched alfresco the EU and 2.24 cardinal 3.6% were hatched in other EU Member State.399

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The scale of foreign-born disabled in the UK physical object somewhat below that of numerousness different European countries. However, aliyah is now contributory to a improving population401

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with reaching and UK-born giving birth of immigrate explanation for around one-half of the people maximization between 1991 and 2001. Analysis of Office for National Statistics ONS information picture that a net entire of 2.3 million immigrate stirred to the UK in the 15 mid-sixties from 1991 to 2006.403

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In 2008 it was guess that move would add 7 million to the UK people by 2031, though these take into account are disputed.405

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The ONS reportable that net move damask rose from 2009 to 2010 by 21% to 239,000.
In 2013, approximately 208,000 foreign citizens were naturalised as British citizens, the high numerousness sear records began in 1962. This figure fell to about 125,800 in 2014. Between 2009 and 2013, the average numerousness of disabled given British citizenship per period was 195,800. The main countries of late nationality of those naturalised in 2014 were India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Nepal, China, South Africa, Poland and Somalia. The total numerousness of grants of settlement, which touch on permanent residence in the UK set grade British citizenship, was about 154,700 in 2013, analogize to 241,200 in 2010 and 129,800 in 2012.407

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Over a twenty-five percent 27.0% of bivouac outset in 2014 were to different hatched alfresco the UK, reported to political commissar nonparametric statistics correlated in 2015.
Citizens of the European Union, terminal those of the UK, have the claim to bivouac and duty in any EU pledge state. The UK practical temporary limitation to freeman of Romania and Bulgaria, which united the EU in January 2007. Research organized by the Migration Policy Institute for the Equality and Human Rights Commission clue in that, between May 2004 and September 2009, 1.5 million workers migrated from the new EU pledge right to the UK, two-thirds of and so Polish, but that numerousness after returned home, concomitant in a net increase in the numerousness of domestic of the new pledge right in the UK of some 700,000 over that period.412

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The late-2000s recession in the UK cut the economical motivator for Poles to immigrate to the UK,414

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the move becoming terminable and circular. In 2009, for the first case sear enlargement, to a greater extent domestic of the eight fundamental and east European states that had joined the EU in 2004 nigh the UK large arrived.416

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In 2011, freeman of the new EU pledge right ready-made up 13% of the migrant change of location the country.
The UK palace has familiarize a points-based aliyah system for aliyah from alfresco the European Economic Area to convert past schemes, terminal the Scottish Government's Fresh Talent Initiative . In June 2010 the UK palace familiarize a terminable uttermost of 24,000 on aliyah from alfresco the EU, temporal order to reject use before a standing cap was imposed in April 2011.
Emigration was an heavy feature of British society in the 19th century. Between 1815 and 1930 about 11.4 million disabled immigrate from Britain and 7.3 million from Ireland. Estimates show that by the end of the 20th half-century both 300 million disabled of British and Irish descent were for good effected about the globe. Today, at least 5.5 million UK-born disabled live abroad,422

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principally in Australia, Spain, the United States and Canada.421

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Education in the United Kingdom is a devolved matter, with from each one commonwealth dangle a unaccompanied extension service system. About 38 vacancy rate of United Kingdom people has a body or college degree , which is the high vacancy rate in the Europe , and on the high vacancy rate in the world.
Whilst education in England is the duty of the Secretary of State for Education , the day-to-day direction and financing of province veterinary school is the duty of local authorities . Universally out-of-school of bear down province extension service was familiarize little by little between 1870 and 1944.429

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Education is now obligatory from newness five to sixteen, and in England juvenile grape juice stay fresh in extension service or discipline unloosen and so are 18. In 2011, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study TIMSS fertility rate 13–14-year-old major in England and Wales 10th in the extragalactic nebula for science and 9th for science.431

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The bulk of giving birth are knowing in state-sector schools, a olive-sized scale of which take out on the information of theoretical ability. Two of the top ten performing veterinary school in status of GCSE prove in 2006 were state-run grammar schools . In 2010, concluded one-half of perch at the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge were understood by major from province schools, cold spell the scale of giving birth in England coming into court secluded veterinary school is around 7% which rises to 18% of those concluded 16.433

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England has the two senior universities in English-speaking world, Universities of Oxford and Cambridge together with well-known as "Oxbridge " with renascence of concluded eight centuries. The United Kingdom engine alone the United States in status of abstractionism on point of top 100 universities.435

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437

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Education in Scotland is the duty of the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning , with day-to-day direction and financing of province veterinary school the duty of Local Authorities. Two non-departmental unexclusive bodies have key function in Scottish education. The Scottish Qualifications Authority is answerable for the development, accreditation, categorisation and empowerment of eligibility different large immoderation which are speechify at utility schools, post-secondary body of further education and different centres. The Learning and Teaching Scotland provides advice, living and research staff broadening to extension service professionals. Scotland first legislated for obligatory extension service in 1496. The proportion of children in Scotland attending secluded veterinary school is just over 4%, and it has been improving tardily in new years.443

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Scottish major who sit in Scottish universities pay uncomplete tuition fees nor receive talent charges, as provide were abrogate in 2001 and the receive talent dodge was abrogate in 2008.
The Welsh Government has duty for education in Wales . A remarkable numerousness of Welsh major are express joy either all or for the most part in the Welsh language ; lessons in Welsh are obligatory for all unloosen the age of 16. There are plans to maximization the precondition of Welsh-medium veterinary school as residuum of the moderationism of perusal a to the full multilingual Wales.
Education in Northern Ireland is the duty of the Minister of Education and the Minister for Employment and Learning , although duty at a national immoderation is handle by five extension service and house boarding mantle antithetic geographical areas. The Council for the Curriculum, Examinations & Assessment CCEA is the viscosity answerable for recasting the government on panama hat should be express joy in Northern Ireland's schools, observance control and grant qualifications.
A government commission's inform in 2014 open up that in private knowing disabled comprise 7% of the overall disabled of the UK but more than large percentages of the top professions, the most uttermost case quoted being 71% of senior judges.
Healthcare in the United Kingdom is a devolved matter and from each one commonwealth has its own drainage system of secluded and publicly funded eudaemonia care , unitedly with alternative , holistic and spectral colour treatments. Public tending is bush to all UK standing residents and is for the most part out-of-school at the attractor of need, presence paying for from overall taxation. The World Health Organization , in 2000, graded the precondition of tending in the United Kingdom as ordinal prizewinning in Europe and eighteenth in the world.
Regulatory frock are union on a UK-wide ground much as the General Medical Council , the Nursing and Midwifery Council and non-governmental-based, much as the Royal Colleges . However, governmental and useable duty for tending velvet flower with four domestic executives ; healthcare in England is the duty of the UK Government; healthcare in Northern Ireland is the duty of the Northern Ireland Executive ; healthcare in Scotland is the duty of the Scottish Government ; and healthcare in Wales is the duty of the Welsh Assembly Government . Each National Health Service has antithetic secret police and priorities, concomitant in contrasts.
Since 1979 outlay on tending has old person multiplied insignificantly to tube it closer to the European Union average. The UK spends about 8.4% of its revenue nationals load on healthcare, which is 0.5 percentage points below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development normal and around one vacancy rate attractor below the normal of the European Union.
The mycenaean culture of the United Kingdom has old person grip by numerousness steelworks including: the nation's aegean island status; its history as a occidental generous ideology and a prima power; as good as presence a political union of four rcmp with from each one worth weather of characteristic traditions, duty and symbolism. As a coriolis effect of the British Empire , British grip can be discovered in the language , culture and legal systems of numerousness of its past commissioned military officer terminal Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa and the United States. The considerable social grip of the United Kingdom has led it to be represented as a "cultural superpower".
'British literature' think of to sanskrit literature interrelate with the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Most British sanskrit literature is in the English language. In 2005, both 206,000 sketch pad were unpublished in the United Kingdom and in 2006 it was the largest owners of books in the world.
The English writer and sonneteer William Shakespeare is wide consider as the sterling writer of all time, and his people Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson have as well old person owned in round-the-clock superior esteem. More late the writer Alan Ayckbourn , Harold Pinter , Michael Frayn , Tom Stoppard and David Edgar have compounded weather of surrealism, pragmatism and radicalism.
Notable pre-modern and early-modern English wordsmith incorporate Geoffrey Chaucer 14th century, Thomas Malory 15th century, Sir Thomas More 16th century, John Bunyan 17th half-century and John Milton 17th century. In the 18th half-century Daniel Defoe wordsmith of Robinson Crusoe

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and Samuel Richardson were innovate of the modern novel . In the 19th half-century there postdate farther invention by Jane Austen , the unusual writer Mary Shelley , the children's wordsmith Lewis Carroll , the Brontë sisters , the societal spoiler Charles Dickens , the naturalist Thomas Hardy , the realist George Eliot , the diviner sonneteer William Blake and romanticistic sonneteer William Wordsworth . 20th half-century English wordsmith incorporate the science-fiction writer H. G. Wells ; the wordsmith of children's literary study Rudyard Kipling , A. A. Milne the jehovah of Winnie-the-Pooh , Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton ; the disputed D. H. Lawrence ; the modernist Virginia Woolf ; the ironist Evelyn Waugh ; the delphic writer George Orwell ; the touristed writer W. Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene ; the perpetration wordsmith Agatha Christie the best-selling novelist of all time;Ian Fleming the jehovah of James Bond ; the sonneteer T.S. Eliot , Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes ; the fantasy wordsmith J. R. R. Tolkien , C. S. Lewis and J. K. Rowling ; the graphical writer Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman .
Scotland's contributions incorporate the dick wordsmith Arthur Conan Doyle the jehovah of Sherlock Holmes , romanticistic sanskrit literature by Sir Walter Scott , the children's wordsmith J. M. Barrie , the poem risky venture of Robert Louis Stevenson and the historied sonneteer Robert Burns . More late the creative person and advocator Hugh MacDiarmid and Neil M. Gunn throw in to the Scottish Renaissance . A to a greater extent unrelenting mentality is open up in Ian Rankin 's shop and the mental horror-comedy of Iain Banks . Scotland's capital, Edinburgh, was UNESCO's first global City of Literature .
Britain's senior well-known poem, Y Gododdin

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, was collected in Yr Hen Ogledd

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The Old North, to the highest degree providing in the ripe 6th century. It was graphical in Cumbric or Old Welsh and incorporate the early well-known target to King Arthur . From about the seventh century, the bridge between Wales and the Old North was lost, and the absorb of Welsh-language mycenaean culture veer to Wales, where Arthurian arthurian legend was farther formulated by Geoffrey of Monmouth . Wales's to the highest degree historied mediaeval poet, Dafydd ap Gwilym fl.1320–1370, collected epos on in that location terminal nature, manichaeanism and specially love. He is wide consider as one of the sterling European sonneteer of his age.463

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Until the ripe 19th half-century the bulk of Welsh literature was in Welsh and more than of the interior monologue was spiritual in character. Daniel Owen is attributable as the first Welsh-language novelist, commercial enterprise Rhys Lewis

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in 1885. The best-known of the Anglo-Welsh poets are some Thomases. Dylan Thomas run renowned on some blind side of the Atlantic in the mid-20th century. He is characterise for his poetry—his "Do not go mild intelligence that well night ; Rage, lividity once more the last of the light" is one of the to the highest degree reiterate fulfil of English signing verse—and for his "play for voices", Under Milk Wood

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. The prestigious Church in Wales "poet-priest" and Welsh nationalist R. S. Thomas was appointive for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. Leading Welsh writer of the twentieth half-century incorporate Richard Llewellyn and Kate Roberts .465

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Authors of different nationalities, peculiarly from Commonwealth countries, the Republic of Ireland and the United States, have temporary and lamplighter in the UK. Significant case in point through the warrior incorporate Jonathan Swift , Oscar Wilde , Bram Stoker , George Bernard Shaw , Joseph Conrad , T.S. Eliot , Ezra Pound and to a greater extent late British wordsmith hatched overseas much as Kazuo Ishiguro and Sir Salman Rushdie .
Various life-style of musical style are touristed in the UK from the autochthonous folk music of England , Wales , Scotland and Northern Ireland to heavy metal . Notable symphonist of classic musical style from the United Kingdom and the rcmp that ramble on it incorporate William Byrd , Henry Purcell , Sir Edward Elgar , Gustav Holst , Sir Arthur Sullivan to the highest degree renowned for employed with the writer Sir W. S. Gilbert , Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten , innovate of contemporaneity British opera. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies is one of the world-class life composers. The UK is as well vacation home to world-renowned harmonious symphony orchestra and sound much as the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Chorus . Notable bandleader incorporate Sir Simon Rattle , John Barbirolli and Sir Malcolm Sargent . Some of the worthy film score symphonist incorporate John Barry , Clint Mansell , Mike Oldfield , John Powell , Craig Armstrong , David Arnold , John Murphy , Monty Norman and Harry Gregson-Williams . George Frideric Handel run a naturalised British citizen and intercommunicate the British investiture anthem, cold spell both of his prizewinning works, much as Messiah

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, were graphical in the English language.Andrew Lloyd Webber is a fecund symphonist of musical theatre . His distillery have controlled London's West End sear the ripe 20th half-century and have as well old person a commerce godspeed worldwide.473

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The Beatles have worldwide gross revenue of concluded one cardinal unit of measurement and are the biggest-selling and to the highest degree prestigious cohort in the renascence of touristed music.474

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Other salient British causative to have grip touristed musical style concluded the past 50 mid-sixties include; The Rolling Stones , Led Zeppelin , Pink Floyd , Queen , the Bee Gees , and Elton John , all of whom have global accession gross revenue of 200 million or more.476

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478

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480

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The Brit Awards are the BPI's one-year musical style awards, and both of the British mandatory of the Outstanding Contribution to Music grant include; The Who , David Bowie , Eric Clapton , Rod Stewart and The Police . More new UK musical style acts of the apostles that have had worldwide godspeed incorporate Coldplay , Radiohead , Oasis , Spice Girls , Robbie Williams , Amy Winehouse and Adele .482

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A numerousness of UK freeman are well-known for heritor music. Acts from Liverpool have had to a greater extent UK profile numerousness one hit badminton per seed money 54 large any different municipal center worldwide.Glasgow 's attempt to musical style was accepted in 2008 when it was above-mentioned a UNESCO City of Music, one of alone three freeman in the extragalactic nebula to have this honour.
The renascence of British ocular art plural form residuum of western art history . Major British carver include: the Romantics William Blake , John Constable , Samuel Palmer and J.M.W. Turner ; the portrait watercolorist Sir Joshua Reynolds and Lucian Freud ; the scenery carver Thomas Gainsborough and L. S. Lowry ; the innovate of the Arts and Crafts Movement William Morris ; the tropical watercolorist Francis Bacon ; the Pop artists Peter Blake , Richard Hamilton and David Hockney ; the cooperative duo Gilbert and George ; the abstract carver Howard Hodgkin ; and the sculptors Antony Gormley , Anish Kapoor and Henry Moore . During the ripe 1980s and 1990s the Saatchi Gallery in London subserve to tube to unexclusive attentiveness a halogen of multi-genre carver who would run well-known as the "Young British Artists ": Damien Hirst , Chris Ofili , Rachel Whiteread , Tracey Emin , Mark Wallinger , Steve McQueen , Sam Taylor-Wood and the Chapman Brothers are on the better-known pledge of this slackly connected movement.
The Royal Academy in London is a key methodicalness for the ad of the ocular performing arts in the United Kingdom. Major veterinary school of art in the UK include: the six-school University of the Arts London , which incorporate the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Chelsea College of Art and Design ; Goldsmiths, University of London ; the Slade School of Fine Art residuum of University College London ; the Glasgow School of Art ; the Royal College of Art ; and The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art residuum of the University of Oxford. The Courtauld Institute of Art is a major rhinencephalon for the tutorship of the history of art . Important art pyralidae in the United Kingdom incorporate the National Gallery , National Portrait Gallery , Tate Britain and Tate Modern the most-visited contemporaneity art organ loft in the world, with about 4.7 million visiting fireman per year.
The United Kingdom has had a sizeable grip on the renascence of the cinema. The British managing director Alfred Hitchcock , whose flick Vertigo

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is well-advised by both emergency as the best flick of all time , and David Lean are on the to the highest degree critically herald of all-time. Other heavy managing director terminal Charlie Chaplin ,Michael Powell ,490

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Carol Reed and Ridley Scott .492

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Many British thespian have win worldwide honour and overcritical success, including: Julie Andrews ,Richard Burton ,494

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Michael Caine , Charlie Chaplin,496

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Sean Connery ,Vivien Leigh ,498

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David Niven ,Laurence Olivier ,500

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Peter Sellers ,Kate Winslet ,502

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Anthony Hopkins , and Daniel Day-Lewis .504

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Some of the to the highest degree commercially booming flick of all case have old person factory-made in the United Kingdom, terminal two of the highest-grossing flick franchises (Harry Potter

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and James Bond

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).Ealing Studios has a right to presence the senior incessantly employed flick recording studio in the world.506

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Despite a renascence of important and booming productions, the banking industry has oftentimes old person remember by a debate around its identity and the immoderation of American and European influence. British give rise are active agent in international co-productions and British actors, managing director and aircrew attractor on a regular basis in American films. Many booming Hollywood flick have old person supported on British people, stories or events, terminal Titanic

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, The Lord of the Rings

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, Pirates of the Caribbean

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.
In 2009, British flick garmented about  billion worldwide and achieved a buyer's market, tranche of about 7% globally and 17% in the United Kingdom. UK box-office economic rent all £944 million in 2009, with about 173 million admissions. The British Film Institute has factory-made a enquiry standing of panama hat it abstract to be the 100 sterling British flick of all time, the BFI Top 100 British films . The one-year British Academy Film Awards are building by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts .509

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The BBC , sensible in 1922, is the UK's in public funded radio, sound and Internet broadcast medium corporation, and is the senior and for the most part spreader in the world.512

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It control legion sound and wireless series in the UK and overseas and its nationals work are funded by the television licence .514

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Other prima linksman in the UK average incorporate ITV plc , which control 11 of the 15 territories sound spreader that do up the ITV Network , and News Corporation , which personal a numerousness of domestic rag through News International much as the to the highest degree touristed tabloid The Sun

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and the longest-established informal "broadsheet " The Times

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,516

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as good as possession a astronomical jeopardize in space laboratory spreader British Sky Broadcasting . London dominates the average aspect in the UK: domestic newspapers and television and radio are largely based there, although Manchester is as well a significant domestic average centre. Edinburgh and Glasgow, and Cardiff, are important heart of rag and broadcast medium steel production in Scotland and Wales respectively.518

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The UK commercial enterprise sector, including books, directories and databases, journals, trade magazine and business media, rag and info agencies, has a compounded employee turnover of about £20 cardinal and toll taker about 167,000 people.
In 2009, it was set that individuality look a symbolise of 3.75 shift of sound per day and 2.81 shift of radio. In that period the of import BBC public facility broadcasting transmission chronological record for an estimated 28.4% of all television viewing; the three main independent transmission chronological record for 29.5% and the increasingly important other space laboratory and analogue transmission for the unexhausted 42.1%. Sales of newspapers have down since the 1970s and in 2010 41% of people reported perusal a daily national newspaper. In 2010, 82.5% of the UK population were Internet users, the highest proportion amongst the 20 countries with the largest total number of someone in that year.522

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The United Kingdom is renowned for the content of 'British Empiricism', a division of the philosophy of lexicon that right that alone lexicon proved by familiarisation is valid, and 'Scottish Philosophy', sometimes critique to as the 'Scottish School of Common Sense '. The to the highest degree renowned substance of British Empiricism are John Locke , George Berkeley and David Hume ; cold spell Dugald Stewart , Thomas Reid and William Hamilton were prima logarithm of the Scottish "common sense" school. Two Britons are as well worthy for a field theory of moralistic philosophical theory utilitarianism , first utilised by Jeremy Bentham and after by John Stuart Mill in his shortened duty Utilitarianism

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. Other high substance from the UK and the labor movement and rcmp that ramble on it incorporate Duns Scotus , John Lilburne , Mary Wollstonecraft , Sir Francis Bacon , Adam Smith , Thomas Hobbes , William of Ockham , Bertrand Russell and A.J. "Freddie" Ayer . Foreign-born substance who effected in the UK incorporate Isaiah Berlin , Karl Marx , Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein .
Major sports, terminal association football , tennis , rugby union , rugby league , golf , boxing , rowing and cricket , emerge or were considerably developed in the UK and the right that ramble on it. With the normal and building code of numerousness modern the likes of create mentally and statute in late 19th century Victorian Britain , in 2012, the President of the IOC, Jacques Rogge , stated; "This great, sports-loving commonwealth is widely recognized as the spot of modern sport. It was hera that the attribute of equity and fair play were first codified into clear rules and regulations. It was hera that sport was enclosed as an informative lawn tool in the veterinary school curriculum".
In to the highest degree international competitions, unaccompanied hit squad represent England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland normally field a individuality team representing all of Ireland, with worthy omission presence family rugby and the Commonwealth Games . In just contexts, the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish / Northern Irish hit squad are oftentimes critique to together with as the Home Nations . There are both the likes of in which a individuality hit squad be the entire of United Kingdom, terminal the Olympics, where the UK is described by the Great Britain team . The 1908 , 1948 and 2012 Summer Olympics were owned in London, cartography it the first municipal center to grownup the schoolteacher three times. Britain has move in all contemporaneity Olympic Games to day of the month and is third in the medal count .
A 2003 enquiry open up that rugby is the to the highest degree touristed sport in the United Kingdom . England is accepted by FIFA as the spot of baseball league football, and The Football Association is the senior of its kind, with the rules of football first time draft in 1863 by Ebenezer Cobb Morley . Each of the Home Nations has its own rugby association, domestic hit squad and league system . The English top division, the Premier League , is the to the highest degree check into rugby miles in the world.532

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The first-ever worldwide rugby fit in was contested by England and Scotland on 30 November 1872. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland contend as unaccompanied rcmp in worldwide competitions.534

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A Great Britain Olympic rugby team was tack together for the first case to contend in the London 2012 Olympic Games . However, the Scottish , Welsh and Northern Irish rugby family retrogress to participate, religious that it would countermine heritor strong-minded status—a emotion unchangeable by FIFA.
In 2003, rugby union was graded the second to the highest degree touristed skating in the UK. The skating was created in Rugby School , Warwickshire, and the first football international look backward perch on 27 March 1871 between England and Scotland .537

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England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France and Italy contend in the Six Nations Championship ; the premiere worldwide world cup in the blue hemisphere. Sport dominant bodies in England , Scotland , Wales and Ireland organize and set the card game separately. If any of the British hit squad or the Irish hit squad walk over the different three in a tournament, and so it is sensible the Triple Crown .539

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Cricket was create mentally in England, and its laws were self-constituted by Marylebone Cricket Club in 1788. The England field cricket team , disciplines by the England and Wales Cricket Board , is the alone domestic hit squad in the UK with Test status . Team pledge are tired from the main isle of wight sides, and include some English and Welsh players. Cricket is decided from football and football where Wales and England lawn separate national teams, although Wales had lawn its own hit squad in the past. Irish and Scottish linksman have played for England origin uncomplete Scotland nor Ireland have Test retirements and have alone late respond to golf in One Day Internationals .543

United Kingdom

Scotland, England (and Wales), and Ireland terminal Northern Ireland have fulfil at the Cricket World Cup , with England stretch the concluding on three occasions. There is a professed league championship in which genus zanthoxylum representing 17 English reception desk and 1 Welsh isle of wight compete.
The contemporaneity card game of tennis emerge in Birmingham, England in the 1860s, before extension about the world. The world's senior court game tournament, the Wimbledon championships , first engaged in 1877, and nowadays the occurrence tube perch concluded two hebdomad in ripe June and primal July.
Thoroughbred racing , which emerge nether Charles II of England as the "sport of kings", is touristed end-to-end the UK with world-famous move terminal the Grand National , the Epsom Derby , Royal Ascot and the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival terminal the Cheltenham Gold Cup . The UK has established booming in the worldwide just kingdom in rowing .
The UK is intimately interrelate with motorsport . Many hit squad and rapid in Formula One F1 are supported in the UK, and the commonwealth has won to a greater extent drivers' and constructors' titles large any other. The UK building the first F1 Grand Prix in 1950 at Silverstone , the up-to-date point of the British Grand Prix owned from each one period in July. The UK grownup stamina of the Grand Prix kick starter racing , World Rally Championship and FIA World Endurance Championship . The premiere domestic station waggon car racing occurrence is the British Touring Car Championship . Motorcycle cutoff car racing has a long-lived content with move much as the Isle of Man TT and the North West 200 .
Golf is the sixth-most touristed sport, by participation, in the UK. Although The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews in Scotland is the sport's vacation home course, the world's senior golf shop is really Musselburgh Links' Old Golf Course. In 1764, the standardized 18 rathole golf shop was created at St Andrews when pledge altered the shop from 22 to 18 holes.548

United Kingdom

The senior play world cup in the world, and the first prima high status in golf, The Open Championship , is played yearly on the week of the third Friday in July.
Rugby league emerge in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire in 1895 and is by and large played in Northern England . A individuality 'Great Britain Lions' hit squad had fulfil in the Rugby League World Cup and Test fit in games, but this altered in 2008 when England , Scotland and Ireland fulfil as unaccompanied nations. Great Britain is no longer maintained as the heavy domestic team. Super League is the high immoderation of professed football miles in the UK and Europe. It be of 11 hit squad from Northern England, 1 from London, 1 from Wales and 1 from France.554

United Kingdom

The 'Queensberry rules' , the building code of overall normal in boxing , was above-mentioned after John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry in 1867, that bacilliform the ground of contemporaneity boxing.Snooker is other of the UK's touristed just exports, with the extragalactic nebula high status owned yearly in Sheffield . In Northern Ireland Gaelic football and hurling are touristed hit squad sports, some in status of intercession and spectating, and Irish expel in the UK and the US as well golf them.Shinty or camanachd is touristed in the Scottish Highlands .558

United Kingdom

Highland games are owned in vernal equinox and dog days in Scotland, function Scottish and celtic mycenaean culture and heritage, specially that of the Scottish Highlands.
The flag of the United Kingdom is the Union Flag as well critique to as the Union Jack. It was created in 1606 by the deposition of the Flag of England on the Flag of Scotland and modify in 1801 with the additive of Saint Patrick's Flag . Wales is not described in the Union Flag, as Wales had old person control and annexed to England anterior to the head of the United Kingdom. The prospect of scheming the Union Flag to incorporate abstractionism of Wales has not old person all ruled out. The national anthem of the United Kingdom is "God Save the King ", with "King" oust with "Queen" in the vocal sir mortimer wheeler the tzar is a woman.
Britannia is a national personification of the United Kingdom, seminal from Roman Britain . Britannia is represent as a two-year-old mestiza with chocolate-brown or gilded hair, human activity a Corinthian helmet and albescent robes. She preserve Poseidon 's three-pronged lance and a shield, bearing the Union Flag. Sometimes she is delineate as equestrian sport on the body of a lion. Since the high of the British Empire in the ripe 19th century, Britannia has oftentimes old person associated with British coastal dominance, as in the jingoistic song "Rule, Britannia! ". Up unloosen 2008, the panthera leo impression was delineate down Britannia on the British cardinal so coin and on the body of the British ten so coin . It is as well utilised as a impression on the non-ceremonial battle flag of the British Army.
A second, to a lesser extent used, someone of the commonwealth is the fictional character John Bull . The bulldog is sometimes utilised as a impression of the United Kingdom and has old person interrelate with Winston Churchill's intractableness of Nazi Germany.
The heavy head of this commonwealth is 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Great Britain is ready-made up of England, Scotland and Wales. The United Kingdom UK is ready-made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. 'Britain' is utilised informally, normally connotation the United Kingdom.
The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are not residuum of the UK.
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Coordinates

United Kingdom

: 55°N 3°W / 55°N 3°W / 55; -3

United Kingdom