please empty your brain below

The highest mountain in the 'new' United Kingdom would be Snowdon.

dg writes: Course it would, Fixed thanks.
Untied? Disunited? We definitely need a better name than rUK. But I think most of the previously undecided will vote "no".

See this link.
That's an awfully precise forecast of the results of next year's election. (The Untied Kingdom won't exist until 2016, so you can't just take the current composition of Parliament and use it as the basis for allocating MPs in the new Parliament.)
DG

Sorry to be an utter pedant but only England and Scotland are countries.

Wales is a Principality.

North Ireland is a Province.

I know you like to get these things right.
Brianist. They're only "Countries" or "Principality" or "Province" through usage and convention - because we choose to call them that. In terms of international treaties, only the UK is a country. The constituent parts aren't signatories or members of any international body (such as UN, NATO, EU)in their own right. If Scotland chose to leave, the UK would still be a member of the same treaties - the successor state. In terms of EU legal matters (which governs a lot these days), Scotland Wales etc have the status of "region" with certain devolved powers.
I would also prefer some indication in the heading that this is a possible change - not a definite.
DG in the untied Kingdom, there would still be Scottish MPs voting on items that would not affect the future Scotland for the next 2 years - something worth pointing out?
@IslandDweller

"They're only "Countries" or "Principality" or "Province" through usage and convention - because we choose to call them that. "

Yes, that's how languages work!

So, you're basically saying that I'm right, thanks for the confirmation.
Don't we call them "nations"? "Home Nations" for example.

Scottish MPs have been able to vote on matters that don't affect their constituents since devolution. But then English MPs have always been able to vote on legislation in the UK parliament that only affects Scotland. Consider the piloting of the poll tax.
@Messiah

In the unlikey event of a yes vote, as long as the UK remains, then the Scottish MPs will be in the HoC.

The vote today is only "advisory" it doesn't cause instant independence.
Where would we be without utter pedants, eh?
@Briantist

Northern Ireland isn't even a whole province - Ulster has nine counties in total, only six of which form NI. Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan are part of the republic of Ireland.

Oh what a tangled web we weave...
@DG, 09:10

Guilty, yer honour.

(slinks off, shamefaced...)
The one thing that's really surprised me in this whole thing is that even the somewhat new-ish Scottish Parliament does not have (yet) even half the authority and autonomy of any Canadian province or Australian or US state. Handing over that sort of power must be long overdue. Though that sort of infers that the English need a referendum to decide if they need a devolved parliament as well and what sort of form that would take...
@THC

I think you might be conflating the idea of a Roman Catholic Church "Province" with a British Legal "Province".
I think that, in the event of a 'yes' vote, the May 2015 election will go ahead as planned (or may even be brought forward), with the idea of electing a UK parliament, including Scottish MPs, to vote on motions required for independence (division of civil service, future of the BBC, nuclear weapons etc.). Then, following formal seperation (intended for March 2016 but I suspect it could be a bit later than this), there will be a new election to form the UK parliament, minus Scotland. That would seem the most sensible way to go about it.
How does our land border grow when Scotland leaves (surely adding the England/Scotland border to its length)?
@diamond geezer

"Where would we be without utter pedants, eh?"

Well, I wouldn't have made a fairly good living from being a technical writer over the years...
The geographical and demographic stuff is fascinating.
Andorra and Monaco are principalities and also countries.

Israel and Qatar are states (look at their passports), but the US contains 50 states.

Russia contains 22 republics, but the People's Republic of China is just one.
It would be nice to have another column with the data for Scotland on its own.

With more devolution on the way, I think we're headed for a separate parliament for England and a federal government in Westminster that would only vote on federal matters. Then all MPs there would be equal.
@ Briantist

I'm not. Ulster is one of the four provinces of Ireland - nothing whatsoever to do with the Church of Rome. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the title of "province" in respect of Northern Ireland carries no legal standing; it is merely convenient shorthand, as is the term "Britain" when used to describe the whole United Kingdom.
@Roehamster

Our land border grows because the England/Scotland border will be added to the existing land border between NI and the RoI.

England, Scotland, Wales etc are all countries, or nations - not necessarily recognised as independant by the UN, although they are by FIFA, which is what matters! - but only the first two were Kingdoms.

Intrigued as to which country would overtake the Formerly-United Kingdom* for 22nd most populous?

* if you don't like the TLA, how about NIEW Kingdom? - or WENI Kingdom? ((pronounced weeny in view of its diminished size?)

And a question that is still unanswered - which part of the former Union would the Ulster Unionists want to remain in Union with?
@ timbo

Very pertinent question, considering that approximately 90% of the Ulster Protestant population has its roots in Scotland, not England. I applied some years ago to undertake a PhD on that very subject but was told that my proposal was too abstract, relying as it did on an untested proposition. Perhaps it's time to go again...
When I worked at the BBC, the 'other parts' of the UK were called 'the Nations'. Back in 2008, as part of their nation building obligations, the BBC introduced regional quotas which took great chunks of programme making away from London to be made in other parts of the country. Scotland got 9% of the BBC's programme making budget and a fine new studio complex in Glasgow, and many BBC staff trekked up there to make the programmes they'd previously made in London. It will be a relief to many that this artificial arrangement might now stop. The BBC would save more millions if it could abandon all those remote Scottish transmitters, but it would lose £320m of Scottish licence fees which will affect the service we'll get in the rest of the UK.

So we could add to DG's columns:
"BBC spend: Before = hundreds of millions. After = nothing".

Of course, this is but one of the many things that Mr Salmond airily expects not to change under independence, along with the currency, the Queen, postal deliveries, defence, phone services, the banking system, border controls, etc, etc....
What has the United Kingdom ever done for us?

My son got some smiles by cheering "come on the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" at the Olympics (better than the inane "GB").

So how about "the United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland" or UK for short? One kingdom, united.
Can you add a row with the average annual rainfall? That should go down by a large number. So, yes there is a way to vote for better weather :)
@Feargal: come tomorrow, you might get an extra column...
@Feargal
(derived from DG's figures)

Name: Scotland
Constinuent Countries: One (until Shetland gets Home Rule)
Population 5,300,000
Area 78,772 sq km
population density: 67/sq km;
languages: English, Scots, Scots-gaelic
ethnicity: White 96%, Asian 2.6%, Black 0.8%, mixed 0.34%, other 0.35%
n.b I have adjusted DG's evidently rounded-up percentages down by 0.05% (to 2.15% and 0.95%) for the NIEW figures for these last two, to make the total add up to 100% and avoid the the Scottish "mixed" and "other" totals coming out negative!
Religions: Christian 48%, none 44%, Islam 5%, Hindu 1%, Other 2%
(again I have had to adjust a figure to deal with a rounding problem and a resulting negative number of Scottish followers of Islam!)
Largest cities: Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen
Longest River : Tay (188km)
Lies between 0W and 9W and 54N to 61N
inhabited islands : 97
coastline 18,500km
land border 96km
currency: poond sterling (for now at least)
MPs: 59, (Lab 41, LibD 11, Con 1, other 6)

Alot of fuss...but one thing is for sure. Just under 50% of voters will be "unhappy" tomorrow...
@Island Dweller,

In terms of EU legal matters (which governs a lot these days), Scotland Wales etc have the status of "region" with certain devolved powers.

Yes, apparently it is next to impossible to get either the EU or the European Court of Human Rights (something completely different) to grasp the concept that ther is no such thing as UK law and that Scotland has its own legal system founded on different principles. Apparently causes (or at least used to cause) no end of problems.
As the Financial Times sagely reported this morning:
"A poll published on Tuesday... found half of Scots believed the referendum has been divisive."
Timbo -11:06
Italy, with approximately 60 million people, will become the 22nd most populous country.
.. and how do we explain to the average Martian that the titular head of this "Kingdom" is not actually a King?
To offset Grumpy Anon's observation, since the result is expected to be close, and it is done on the overall total (no "constituency" mumbo-jumbo), everyone who has voted will be able to feel (in contrast to most elections) that their vote has counted.
What the BBC loses in licence fee it can make up for in selling programmes either to a Scottish Broadcasting Corporation or (and more likely) commercial networks in Scotland. STV could continue as an affiliate of ITV but there's mothing to say there has to be a licence funded Scottish broadcaster or if there is it could be highbrow. Rupert Murdoch could take some of the transmission spectrum launching entertainment channels with programmes like EastEnders and Strictly acquired from the BBC and Channel 4, news output from Sky News and second-run rights of Sky/Fox programmes. Or the BBC could launch pay channels similar to BBC America and BBC Entertainment overseas.
I think that section 1 of the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 should be sufficient to warrant marking Welsh as an official language in the United Kingdom.
Briantist: No that's not how language works (usually). The definition of a word is given by how it's used, yes, but it still has overall meaning. For example, the colour "green" is defined by people all (or mostly) using it to refer to things roughly the same colour.

But if we commonly referred to the colour of one particular green thing with one word, and the colour of another green thing with another word, etc., it would be reasonable to say "bugger this, they're clearly all just green", and to shoot down anyone that tries to correct us with their "real" colour.
@Malcolm
Welcome to the Queendom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland!
Or the Queendom of Britain and Northern Ireland!
Or the Queendom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland!
Oh, never mind!
So the Scots have decided not to give independence to the southern realms inherited by their king in 1603.
@timbo: Right on!
The Untied Queendom?










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