Talk:Great Britain

Unsourced

• The position of the United Kingdom is as usual so nuanced that it's difficult to see where they are on the spectrum, but look, that's what Britain's like and we all love being British.
  • Fabian Picardo (2012)

United Kingdom

Why does United Kingdom redirect here?  Great Britain is just the island that holds England, Whales, and Scotland.  It does not hold Northern Ireland.  The United Kingdom is the government that unites and rules over the three countries of Great Britain plus Northern Ireland.  Until Northern Ireland gains its independence from the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom will remain a larger entity than Great Britain.  In short, the two are not the same thing.  allixpeeke (talk) 02:46, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

You have a point. It should be the U.K., not Great Britain. – Illegitimate Barrister 15:53, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

@Allixpeeke: I have moved the page to United Kingdom. – Illegitimate Barrister, 21:52, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Cool.  allixpeeke (talk) 10:56, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Surplus

• Look at England, whose mighty power is now felt, and for centuries has been felt, all around the world. It is worthy of special remark, that precisely those parts of that proud island which have received the largest and most diversified populations, are to day the parts most distinguished for industry, enterprise, invention and general enlightenment. In Wales, and in the Highlands of Scotland the boast is made of their pure blood, and that they were never conquered, but no man can contemplate them without wishing they had been conquered. They are far in the rear of every other part of the English realm in all the comforts and conveniences of life, as well as in mental and physical development. Neither law nor learning descends to us from the mountains of Wales or from the Highlands of Scotland. The ancient Briton, whom Julius Caesar would not have as a slave, is not to be compared with the round, burly, amplitudinous Englishman in many of his qualities of desirable manhood.
  • Frederick Douglass, "Our Composite Nationality" (7 December 1869), Boston, Massachusetts

• To illustrate how dramatically populations can displace each other over time, the historian E.M. Kulischer once reminded his readers that in A.D. 900 Berlin had no Germans, Moscow had no Russians, Budapest had no Hungarians, Madrid was a Moorish settlement, and Constantinople had hardly any Turks. He added that the Normans had not yet settled in Great Britain and before the sixteenth century there were no Europeans living in North or South America, Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa.
  • Neil Howe, Richard Jackson (2008) The Graying of the Great Powers: Demography and Geopolitics in the 21st Century. p. 15