A Brief Introduction of the United Kingdom
The full name of the country is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is a complicated name for what is in many ways a complicated country. There’re four parts, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which complete to the set.
Here, as follows, are a few aspects of the United Kingdom.
1. Politics
The Government of the United Kingdom
(1) The Monarchy
The oldest institution of government is the Monarchy cruel by the king. This dates back to the Saxon who ruled from the 5th century AD until the Norman Conguest in 1066.
The power of the monarchy was largely derived form the ancient doctrine of the ‘divine right of kings”. It was held that the sovereign derived his authority from God, not from his subjects.
While the king in theory had God on his side, in practice even in medieval times it was thought that he should not exercise absolute power.
(2) The Parliament
The word “parliament”comes from the verb “the parley”, that is to discuss or talk. The term was first used officially in 1236 to describe the gathering of feudal barons and representatives from countries and towns
monarchy
which the occasionally summoned if he wanted to raise money.
The Great Council came to include both those who were summoned “by name” (the House of Lords) and representatives of communities (the House of Commons). These two houses exist today and collectively we call them the parliament. The Commons quickly gained in political strength. They were willing to help the king by raising taxes and passing laws, but in return they wanted an increasing say in what the king was doing.
The parliament became the most powerful institute in Britain was after the Revolutional War.
Parliament has a number of different functions. First and foremost, it passes laws. Another important fu
nction is that it provides the means of carrying on the work of government by voting for taxation. Its other roles are to scrutinize government policy, administration and expenditure and to debate the majority issues of the day.
Parliament is supreme in the British state because it alone has the power to change the terms of the constitution.
There are no legal restraints upon parliament. It can make or change laws. Change or overturn established conventions or even prolong its own life without consulting the electorate. However, it does not assert its supremacy, but bears the common law in mind and acts according to precedent..
Each Parliament lasts for 5 years.
The Upper house has no right to decide, it only has the right to pass the
bills passed by the Lower House.
The party which holds a majority of those “seats” in parliament forms the government, with its party leader as the Prime Minister. After a government has been in power for 5 years it has to resign and hold a “general election”, in which al British adults are give the chance to vote again for their constitue
ncy’s MP. A government cannot stand for longer than 5years except in exceptional circumstances. However, the Prime Minister can call an election sooner than 5years. This can happen when the government loses a “vote of no confidence” in the House of Commons. That is, an MP puts forward a statement for the MPs to vote on saying that “This house no longer ha confidence in the government.”
(3) The Political Parties
There are three major national parties: The conservative party and the Labour party are the two biggest, and any general election is really about which of those two is going to govern. But there’s a third important party, the Liberal Democrats, who usually receive up to about 20% of the votes: not enough to form a government, but enough to have a big impact on which of the other two parties does so.
The Labour party is the newest of these three, created by the growing trade union movement at the end of nineteenth century. It quickly replaced the Laberal party as one of the two biggest parties. Labour is a socialist party. That is to say that they believe a society should be relatively equal in
economic terms, and the part of the role of government is to act as a “redistributive” agent. The Conservative party is the party that spent most time in power, basically the Conservative are seen as t
he party of the individual, protecting the individual’s right to acquire wealth and to spend it how they choose , and so favouring economic policies which businessmen prefer, such as low taxes. They receive a lot of their party funding from big companies.
2. Religion
(1) Queen or king is the leader as well as the bishop of the High Church.
(2) 20% of British citizen claims to be Roman Catholics.
(3) 40% of Scotland citizen believe in Roman Catholic.
(4) Two established churches: Church of London; Church of Scotland.
(5) Roman Catholic churches.
(6) Free Churches.
3. Culture
Here, I will emphasis on one aspect of Britain’s artistic output, that for which it is perhaps best known:
Literature.
⑴Early Writing
Much early British writing was concerned with Christianity: Anglo-Saxons produced beautifully illustrated versions of the Bible: the most famous of these is the book of keels, party written on the Scottish island of lona.
⑵Elizabethan Drama
There was a general flowering of cultural and intellectual life in Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries which is known as “The Renaissance”, in British culture one of the most successful and long-lasting expressions of this development lay in drama.
⑶18th –century English literature is marked by a rather large
shift from the mood and tone of 17th –century literature.
⑷The Romantic Period
Roughly the first third of the 19th century makes up English literature’s romantic period. Writers of romantic literature are more concerned with imagination and feeling than the power of reason, which marked the 18th century.
⑸20th Century Literature
The 20th Century marked the end of the British Europe, which was replaced by the Commonwealth of Nations. Yet English civilization and culture continue to have a strong influence on the rest of the world. The heritage of English literature forms an outstanding part of that culture.
20th Century literature can be broadly divided into two stylistic periods: Modernism, and Postmodernism. These periods roughly correspond to literature written after it. Both are characterized by a high degree of experimentation.
4. Economy
National economies can be broken down into three main areas: “primary”

版权声明：本站内容均来自互联网，仅供演示用，请勿用于商业和其他非法用途。如果侵犯了您的权益请与我们联系QQ:729038198，我们将在24小时内删除。