Anglobilia all about England

About England

Map of England and the UK

England is the largest and most populous country in the British Isles.

England covers an area of some 130,395 square kilometres. It has a population of 49,138,831 people (as of the 2001 UK Census).

The official language is (of course) English. The currency is the pound sterling (£).

England is governed as part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK), which is a member of the European Union.

The UK is a constitutional monarchy. This means it has a royal family and the reigning monarch (currently Queen Elizabeth II) is the official head of state. In practice the monarch is a figurehead and the country is governed by a democratically elected government led by the Prime Minister (currently Tony Blair).

The government is elected by a general election which must be held at least every five years. Elections can be held more frequently at the will of the Prime Minister.

The UK is divided into 646 constituencies. A number of candidates stand for election in each constituency and voters within the constituency vote for their preferred candidate. The candidate getting most votes becomes the Member of Parliament (MP) for that constituency.

Most MPs belong to one of the major political parties (Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat). The party with the most MPs forms the government and its leader becomes Prime Minister.

If a party has more than half of the MPs (ie 324 or more) it has a majority. Provided all its MPs support its policies it is able to get all its policies made law. If no party has 324 MPs there is said to be a hung parliament, in this case the government will need the support of other parties to get its policies made law.

The Prime Minister chooses a number of Ministers (usually MPs from the governing party) to take responsibility for key areas of government. Eg the Chancellor of the Exchequer is responsible for financial policy, the foreign secretary for foreign policy, the home secretary for immiogration and law & order etc.

The UK parliament consists of two Houses, the Commons and the Lords. The 659 MPs sit in the House of Commons, this is where proposed laws are debated and voted on.

The House of Lords is the second chamber of Parliament and must approve Bills (proposed laws) before they become Acts (law). The House of Lords is not democratically elected and currently consists of 706 members (or peers). 92 or these peers sit by virtue of hereditary peerage, ie they inherited their place in the Lords. The remainder are senior bishops, senior judges or are appointed by the Prime Minister (officially by the monarch on the Prime Minister's advice).

Since 1999 Scotland and Wales have had their own devolved assemblies (parliaments). Strangely there is no English parliament, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs all participate in the making of English law.

Map of England and the UK from Wikipedia. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.