Talk:United Kingdom/Country, Kingdom or State Archive 2

message: OK, it seems to me that we have the following views. I may be generalizaing here, but there you go:
Position                         	Explanation                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 	Words disliked                                                                                                        	Words liked
'The UK is a state not a country'	Feel that the calling the UK a country is inaccurate because it is made up of smaller entities that are often called countries. This is due to the vagueness of the popular use of words such as country. They see that calling the UK country is basicially denying the 'countryness' of England/Wales etc.	Country/nation                                                                                                        	State, monarchy, union
'The UK is more than a state'    	Feel that the word state is too exclusive and refers only to the governmental bodies of the UK. They see it as exclusing the asepcts of civil society or culture that are part of the UK (e.g. shared tv channels or whatever)                                                                              	State, union                                                                                                          	Country
'State and Country are synonyms' 	Feel that, whatever their origins and occaisional political appropriations, the words state and country are effectively synonyms. Some will say that as state is more technical it is better in an enyclopeida; some might see this as an over use of jargon and may favour country as more inclusive       	None in particular; may feel certain terms such as political union or consitutional monarchy are a bit obscure for use	Country/State, no overall prefence
Is this a fairly accurate schematic of the ongoing debate? I essentially see this as being an argument between the top two, with the third group attempting to come up with compromises that keep both others happy. The various versions that have been used/suggested so far, then, are:
* 'State' (supported by 1, rejected highly by 2)
* 'Country'(visa versa)
* 'Constituional Monarchy'
* 'Political Union' (my personal least favourite, by the way, but I would be more than happy with anything that got put in)
* 'Unitary State'
* 'Kingdom'
* - (nothing)
Now I'm not a fan of votes and dont think we need to go there yet, but hopefully that lines up our options. People who have a strong view on this need to realise that they are arguing about words that different people give different meanings to, and that as we appear to have rejected having nothing, one of group 1/2 need to relent. --Robdurbar 09:44, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So anyone who refers to, or thinks that therre are, definate definitions of country/state are really the people I'm talking too there. --Robdurbar 09:47, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have not seen any valid reason yet not to call a spade a spade and define the UK in terms of the Union. That is, after all what the UK is, and covers all of the other things, none of which are fully inclusive. What is the problem with it? Naomhain 10:08, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree that union is fine - its just my least favourite is all; what I objected to was ' a union of england, scotland, wales and northern ireland' cos I thought that's a bit misleading. Political union of the nations of Great Britain and Northern Ireland would be better, if we had to have union. --Robdurbar 16:20, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Options

message: In view of the opinions expressed here (hugely in favour of country) and the total absence of anyone making any serious objection, I'm going to make the change and call the UK a country. What I expect is that a whole load of people who haven't participated in the debate so far will suddenly get involved (or possibly just revert without discussing), but we've go to do it sometime. OK, here goes. DJ Clayworth 16:59, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: I'm going to make the change

message: Since nobody who objects to the UK being called a country seems to be expressing an opinion, I thought I would take the opportunity to mention some possible objections, and why I personally think they are wrong:
#"You can't have a country within a country, and England and Scotland are countries.". My first answer here is 'who says'? It's certainly unusual to have a country within a country, but there is no reason why its impossible. If you look at Wiktionary it gives two definitions of country (plus some others which are not relevant). The UK fulfills the first, that of being a 'nation state', and England and Scotland fulfil the second, that of being historically independent nations - in fact they are explicitly mentioned as examples. My second answer is that if you absolutely insist that only one level of organisation can be labelled 'country' then the UK fulfils the criterion much better than England or Scotland, which have less practical autonomy than, for example, a US state. Not that I would personally want to deny the label 'country' to England or Scotland, but if someone forced the issue then the UK is the better choice.
#"The UK is really a nation state, or a kingdom, or a union, not a country". Nobody would deny that the UK is any of these. But there is no reason for these to be exclusive. There are plenty of kingdoms that are also countries. The US is an example of a union that is also a country. And one definition of country, according to Wiktionary, is 'nation state'.
DJ Clayworth 16:18, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Some Objections

message: I'm also starting a list of references where the UK is called a country. Since there are probably many millions of these lets restrict it to major and well-know sources. Once again this is not meant to disrupt the status quo of the article, just to make sure that we don't get into the same argument too many times. I'll start. Feel free to add. DJ Clayworth 18:22, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: References

message: For those arriving at this discussion after it ended, let me record the consensus, which was that it is perfectly OK to refer to the UK as a country. This is backed up by a huge number of references. The constituents (England, Scotland etc) can also be referred to as countries. DJ Clayworth 19:26, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: To avoid future confusion should this issue arise again, I'll label this section an archive, and encourage others to contribute on the main talk page. --Robdurbar 20:01, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Consensus