Talk:United Kingdom

I thought "Great Britain" referred to the island of Britain as opposed to the political entity United Kingdom. The latter includes the Channel Islands (and the Isle of Man, and the Shetland Islands, and much else), but the former does not. --LMS

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Yes, you're right, I think (!) just did a quick search and found an abundance of information at CIA Jersey factbook (incidentally, ci.html is Chile, there doesn't appear to be a Channel Islands specific page), note the "Dependency status: British crown dependency" and the Independence.

Certainly I know there is a lot of independence between mainland Britain and the Channel Islands, as demonstrated by the fact it is tax exempt (and the number of offshore banks shows this)..

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Crown dependencies don't usually count in Great Britain. See [1]

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But this does highlight that the United Kingdom page should be about that, and the Great Britain page should be about that (even if that does leave everyone a bit confused ;-) --Neeklamy

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OK, but do the Channel Islands deserve special mention as part of the U.K. that, for example, the Isle of Man or the British Virgin Islands would not? I don't know what the legal relationships are, but I would guess (just guess) that the Channel Islands are in the same relationship to the U.K. that the Isle of Man and the British Virgin Islands are. Of course, I wouldn't be at all surprised if I were totally wrong. --LMS

In practice, the relationship between UK and Isle of Man, and UK and British Virgin Islands is pretty well identical. But they have a very different legal status. British Virgin Islands is a British Dependent Territory (soon to be called British Overseas Territories); the Isle of Man and Channel Islands are British crown dependencies. -- SJK

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You've caught me again, I can't say for sure tonight, but certainly I'll hit the library tomorrow and find some dead wood answer to this. --Neeklamy

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Just added list of monarchs if anyone would like to run over it.

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Have we determined yet if the Channel Isles and the Isle of Man have a different legal standing than the British dependencies. If they don't they should be folded into that list, not kept separate. If they do -what is the difference? ---rmhermen

They do a separate legal standing, but the difference is more due to the differing historical origins than due to anything practical today. The British Overseas Territories are former colonies, while the British crown dependencies were (and still technically are) feudal vassals of the British crown. -- SJK

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Does anyone know if this Berwick-upon-Tweed thing is true or is it a wind-up? I'm from the UK and i've never heard anything about it, surely it should be on a new page anyway. p.s. I hope i've cleared up any American confusions between the terms Great Britain, United Kingdom and England :) - JamieTheFoool