Talk:Great Britain

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search

London is the capital of England?[edit]

On what basis is London is the capital of England? Scotland, Wales and the UK all have legislatures and seats of government giving all three capitals. On what basis does England have a Capital? ToodHall (talk) 17:53, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Because it meets the definition at Capital the area of a country, province, region, or state, regarded as enjoying primary status, usually but not always the seat of the government. If it is not London then where do you think has primary status in the country ? MilborneOne (talk) 18:08, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
Wales survived until 1955 without a capital city, what makes you think England has one? ToodHall (talk) 18:13, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
I'd point to these two threads: Talk:London/Archive_6#Strange_assertion_that_London_is_not_the_capital_of_England, and Talk:London/Archive_3#The_Capital?. -- zzuuzz (talk) 18:14, 26 July 2016 (UTC)
Interestingly looking through various dictionary there is a strong consensus that a government is needed for a capital
The threads zzuuzz kindly put up would suggest the capital claim echoes back to the defunct Kingdom of England prior to 1707 ToodHall (talk) 19:40, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

"Wales survived until 1955 without a capital city," Not so, it as can be summed up in three words Cardiff Arms Park which is located in the capital of Wales.

If you are not trolling then a search of reliable sources will show you that London is considered the capital of England. See for example the statement in Parliamentary papers www.parliament.uk. In particular this statement by Mr Gieve, who was the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office in 2003

I think it was slightly more than that. It is certainly true that the bulk of the Scottish Office was in Scotland, but London is the capital of England and Britain and we are in charge of England and Wales, so the equivalent to the Scottish Office being in Edinburgh is our being in London.

That it is not more widely stated is simply the sky is blue type of fact. The two acts of union were not so much unions but takeovers. If you look today at the the traditions of the Westminster Parliament (eg the slamming of the doors in the face of Black Rod at the opening of parliament to single out the most theatrical) then it is obvious that the UK parliament is also the parliament of England.-- PBS (talk) 10:26, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't get the connection between sporting venues and capitals, in terms of soccer, Wrexham had more international games than Cardiff, Glasgow more than Edinburgh and prior to partition Belfast more than Dublin. I do not know many people articulating that Glasgow and Wrexham are capital cities, but you can correct me on that.
I am not disputing the role of London as capital of the UK, and if it had it's origins in the dissolved state of the England, I don't see how that changes things, we do not call Berlin the capital of Germany and West Germany just because of the legislature's origin.
The source you have given is a reliable source, but the quote you have given is not the opinion of Parliament, but rather that of a single employee, and given the quality of the grammar, a not well thought out statement.
I have yet to see a reliable source that states England has a capital.
The various dictionaries state:
The Collins dictionary - "the seat of government of a country or other political unit"
The Free dictionary - "a. A town or city that is the official seat of government in a political entity, such as a state or nation."
"b. A city that is the center of a specific activity or industry: the financial capital of the world."
The OED "The city or town that functions as the seat of government and administrative centre of a country or region: Warsaw is the capital of Poland"
I don't see London meeting any of these in respect to England ToodHall (talk) 17:35, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
Is London the capital of anywhere or is Westminster the capital of at least England? The city of London has no legislature in it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.50.84.178 (talk) 13:55, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

External links modified[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Great Britain. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

As of February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete the "External links modified" sections if they want, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{sourcecheck}} (last update: 15 July 2018).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.


Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 20:24, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Words like these are NOT hyphenated in Modern English[edit]

Words like these are NOT hyphenated in Modern English:
seminomadic, semidesert, semiprotected, semiconductor, multiparty, multinational, multiethnic, multistate, multistage, anticommunist, antifascist, anticapitalistic, antimissile, antitank, southeast, northeast, northwest, southwest, but anti-Nazi, anti-Soviet, anti-British, and anti-Chinese are, for a good reason. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.121.195.165 (talk) 22:01, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Huh? There are no words in this article beginning with semi, multi or anti, either with or without a hyphen. There are a couple of instances of north-west and south-east though. Feel free to correct those, but don't remove the hyphen from "north-south axis". I'd do it myself but you've wasted enough of my time already trying to make sense of your post. Please remember to sign your posts on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~). nagualdesign 22:17, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Assumptions - Great Britain[edit]

Thank you Moonraker for the recently added citation into the lead. The problem is it does not back up the original research. The POV statement to verify is that Great Britain is also sometimes loosely but incorrectly applied to the United Kingdom as a whole, not that NI is not part of the UK, which is what you and your source have done. This is a classic example of drawing unfounded conclusions by incorrectly applying references. Who is to say Great Britain, when used, is not referring to the Kingdom of Great Britain? Seeing as many of these questionable statements emanate from the USA, this might be a perfectly valid alternative explanation: the mistake being made by the Americans is not realising that their original enemy, and culturally referred to in the early days pre-1801, namely (the Kingdom of) Great Britain, no longer exists. Old habits die hard? To assume that the Americans, including US presidents, are using the word 'Great Britain' for another reason, namely an incorrect use of the term 'Britain' and that that term 'Britain' is also referring to the UK, is the assumption that needs to be verified. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 04:43, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

I agree.... with the first couple of sentences at least. Ghmyrtle (talk) 06:22, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

I am bemused, putting it nicely, at the spate of recent edits by Snowded in the lead. Rather than dealing with the issue I raised above, about POVs and referencing, she seems to be determined to undo any correction edits, including the removal of a quality, relevant citation, and to go off at a tangent to insert mention of Northern Ireland at any cost and without bothering to discuss. I might, of course, be wrong in my reasoning about the referencing error, but if so, why has it never been challenged but instead just side-stepped? At the risk of being accused of making a personal attack, which it certainly is not meant to be, it does seem that SD is digging her heels in. The latest SD version is yet another off topic edit, where a comment about the term Great Britain sometimes being used to mean the United Kingdom, has led to a further statement that NI is not part of (the island of) Great Britain. I will assume good faith, but sometimes it sure ain't easy. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 08:06, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure Snowded is a he not a she. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:43, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

I try not to make assumptions.Roger 8 Roger (talk) 09:19, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Comment. I agree with you that Snowded should have brought the reasons for this edit to the talk page. However, on reading it and the BBC reference it seems fair to include mention of the controversy as the political status is mentioned in the lead. Great Britain as an island does not include Northern Ireland but some use of the terminology of 'Great Britain' (whether political, sporting or otherwise) does, as per the reference. Always difficult when these issues arise in articles that are essentially geographic rather than political. Happy to be persuaded that the text should be reverted though. Robynthehode (talk) 08:23, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
I've had another go at tweaking the text, to include the statement that the term GB is sometimes, in some contexts, contentiously applied to the UK as a whole. My sense is that Snowded has been somewhat missing the point in that this article is about GB, not "Britain" (which has a subtly different meaning). Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:53, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
I'm happy with your tweak and no I don't think I was confused - just trying to make sure that the use is identified as problematic. And given we met at the Monmouth Wiki gathering I really hope you know I am not female :-) Otherwise to Robnynthehode, my view was that I was moving the debate forward by using alternative wording - a revert would hae needed explanation on the talk page -----Snowded TALK 22:17, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Map needed[edit]

Hello, experts on Great Britain! Just an opinion, but I think this article needs a current map that shows the borders of Scotland, England, and Wales, with each country clearly labeled. The image of the island from space is lovely, but for someone not familiar with where those countries border each other (for example, I always thought Wales was somewhere else), a clear map with labels would be helpful. Anyone agree? nycdi (talk) 00:52, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't think it is appropriate because the article is geographical not political. The political element of the island is mentioned in the article with good links to articles with clear political maps that identify the countries in this part of the UK. Other articles [6] about geographical places do the same and do not have political maps. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 07:11, 24 August 2018 (UTC)