In response to my mention of the endless search questions I get about why Britain’s called great, Andrew Green just posted a poem, “What Makes Britain Great.” I’d love to say it should end the discussion, but it won’t. Still, it’s a quick read and an enjoyable one, not to mention a clear and memorable answer.
This confusion about “Great” is at the heart of so many of the Brits’ delusions about themselves……
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It’s one of those unhappy overlaps between the historical inheritance of empire and a messy language that positively invites misunderstanding.
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Indeed it does and cynical politicians exploit it!
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All too true.
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Great because it’s the biggest island of them all – great in terms of size. I like it and it’s such a simple explanation.
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I’m about to confuse the issue more: Britain is the island containing England, Scotland, and Wales. Great Britain is that island plus a handful of small surrounding islands, including Isle of Wight, Anglesey, the Isles of Scilly, the Hebrides, and the island groups of Orkney and Shetland.
Sorry. Don’t lose any sleep over this.
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He says the U.K. is the country. I also see places that say the U.K is a nation-state made up of the 4 countries. So the poem has helped me understand the U.K with 4 parts and why Great Britain is named as it is. But now I am wondering if Andrew is correct in calling the U.K. a country. And to make it worse, we have the United States which is a country of 50 states and I know that these states are not states in the same sense of a nation-state.
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Don’t you just love the English language?
The country (as in a nation-state with its own government) is the United Kingdom, so yes, he’s correct. The nations (as in territories with definable cultures and histories) within it are England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Britain and Great Britain are geographical terms, irrelevant to government although people use Britain to mean the country. They only do that to confuse foreigners. Happily for us foreigners, they confuse themselves as well, and politicians regularly refer to the U.K. as Britain.
Think of it (I said this elsewhere, but there’s no reason you’d have seen it, so I have an excuse to quote myself) as a massive job of overpackaging. The U.K. contains four nations, each one wrapped separately. Lots of brown paper and string were wasted in the effort, but no plastic.
Have I confused the issue sufficiently?
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Ah, this definition of nation clears it up for me. Thank you.
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Hi my passport says I live in ‘the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’; so four countries: England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales that make up one nation. It is spread geographically between the big island Great Britain and a bit of the smaller one, Ireland. Great Britain isn’t a country it’s a geographical description. ‘Team GB’ should have been ‘Team Uk’ or ‘Team Great Britain and Northern Ireland.’
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And anyone who says, because they carry a British (sorry, a U.K.) passport, that they’re British should actually say they’re U-K-ish. Which just doesn’t roll off the tongue the way British does.
I remember reading someone snarking about the politicians who suffer from the delusion that they govern Britain when what they govern is the U.K. I suspect the genie’s out of the bottle on this and there’s no way to get it back in.
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A little bit like Canada is part of North America but Canadians aren’t Americans😊
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Sorta kinda, but the U.K. parliament governs the whole shebang and the U.S. government doesn’t. Even when it thinks it should.
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Yes, thank god. But does the UK
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Sorry, my comment got cut off. I was going to ask if the UK parliament overrules the Scottish parliament but I think you might have addressed that. If not, I can always look it up!
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The short answer is that it’s complicated. The longer answer’s probably worth a post, because it depends on what the subject is. Certain powers have been devolved to the various nations, but not the same ones to all of them because that would be too easy to keep track of.
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That helps! So glad there is no plastic.
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If it had all been organized later, there would’ve been, but the arrangement predates plastic so it’s all ecologically pure.
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Yay!!!!
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And then in amongst all that, there’s the Isle of Man…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man
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It’s complications like this that make me want to tear my hair out when I think about trying to write a post on how this all works.
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My advice: don’t try.
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Oh, it’s such a complicated mess that I can’t resist it.
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By the way, what makes you think it ‘all works’? ;-)
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Okay, that was a careless choice of words.
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You have a poem dedicated to you. How wonderful.
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It’s an odd feeling, finding myself on someone else’s blog. Maybe I’ve been in (Great) Britain too long, but my pleasure’s oddly mixed with an impulse to apologize.
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Profuse thanks is probably the right way to go. An apology always runs the risk of embarrassing the recipient.
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Good to know. My friends have us securely filed (or so one of them tells me) as the mad Americans, so although we may embarrass them from time to time, nothing completely surprises them.
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I don’t know many Americans, and those not well, so I’m constantly surprised.
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And I’m still surprised by what surprises people.
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Ehhh, it’s great because it’s a mongrel nation. Or has been, up until now. A free influx of alien DNA promotes health, high intellect, creativity and vitality. And dissent. Lots and lots of dissent. Debate and infighting and growth.
Inbreeding and xenophobia produces… well, look at the Windsors. Roll on Brexit! Oh what fun! Ireland, Germany, Denmark — can I have a visa and domiciliary rights documentation, please?
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I’m all for a mixing DNA and thoughts, but all the “great” means is big.
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Yeah, I get the strict technical interpretation. I mean subjectively.
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Fair enough.
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