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We know that the Netherlands was the first country to impose a racist regime in South Africa, but what we don't know is that once the British took over they maintained those racist ideals and even promoted it. Once we get to the early 1900's, when South Africa finally gets their independence, it was the British who decided that the mainly white politicians would rule, initiating what would be one of the most racist regimes in the world. Here we read a little about apartheid to see how it all started and how far it actually got.

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When and How Did Apartheid Start in South Africa?

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Apartheid became law in South Africa after World War II, but it arose on a long-standing subordination of the economic and political rights of Black African people.

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The Sikh community in UK has renewed its demand for an apology from the British Parliament, for the massacre before its centenary on April 13. But, what good is an apology that comes a century too late?

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The prolific Sikh community in the UK has renewed its demand before the British Parliament, to tender an immediate and unconditional apology for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar, before its centenary on April 13.

Also known as the Imperial Apology, the call for it has resonated from a trifecta of sources-relatives of over 600 unarmed martyrs who were fired point blank under then General Brigadier General Dyer's orders on the fateful day, as well as the UK-based Sikh Federation, and Members of the Indian Parliament including Shashi Tharoor, from the Indian National Congress, and Akali Dal's Prem Singh Chandumajra.

Jallianwala Bagh Shaheed Parivar Samiti president Mahesh Behal announced that the Samiti will not settle for anything less than a full apology from British Prime Minister Theresa May. Her predecessor, David Cameron, while calling the event "deeply shameful" also defended the lack of apology, during his visit to Jallianwala Bagh in 2013. In 1997, Queen Elizabeth II also visited the memorial to pay her respects, but carefully avoided making an actual apology.

In December 2017, however, the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan urged the British government to make the gesture during his own visit to Amritsar. "I am clear that the government should now apologise, especially as we reach the centenary of the massacre. This is about properly acknowledging what happened here and giving the people of Amritsar and India the closure they need through a formal apology," he is reported as saying by the BBC.

"It is not enough for the UK government today to be supporting and promising funds for a monument in central London to mark the Sikh sacrifices for the freedom of Europe and denying the worldwide Sikh community a full apology for the 13 April massacre that came within months of the Great War," Amrik Singh who chairs the Federation was reported as saying by the Times of India last year.

Efforts to shore up support for the Sikh cause

According to the report, Sikhs in the diaspora approached political leaders in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, Malaysia and a number of African nations to lead the call for a full apology and turn up the pressure on the UK government at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting held last April.

In 2015, Shashi Tharoor's arguments during the Oxford Union debate on postcolonial reparations was the first time a case was made for more than an apology to India over its colonial past. In February 2019, Tharoor along with Akali Dal MP Chandumajra demanded in Lok Sabha that the House should collectively demand an apology from the British for the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh at Amritsar.

Yet, the apology continues to elude and there is sufficient reason to believe that even hundred years on, the UK may not apologise for the historic massacre of hundreds of Indian civilians, mistaken for armed rebels, who had congregated peacefully in the gardens to observe the Baisakhi festival.

Government's response

The Lok Sabha, in February, passed the Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial (Amendment) Bill, 2018. The Act provides for the erection of a National Memorial in the memory of those slain or wounded in the 1919 massacre, and created the Jallianwala Bagh National Memorial Trust, to manage the memorial. The Trust also renewed the call for an apology before the 100th anniversary this year, saying it would be befitting.

However, the centenary commemoration of the massacre will be anti-climactic, owing to mismanagement. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the current chairperson of the Trust, which functions under the central government. Notably enough, the Centre has failed to plan any major event to commemorate the centenary on April 13.

"We couldn't pay attention towards the event as we have been busy in preparations for the Lok Sabha elections for the past several days," said Rajya Sabha member and Punjab BJP president Shwait Malik, who is a trustee of the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial Trust that manages affairs of the historic garden situated near the Golden Temple. Another trustee and Rajya Sabha MP cited probable interference with the EC's model code of conduct.

Are apologies empty symbolic gestures?

In 2016, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proferred a full apology in the House of Commons for the Komagata Maru incident in 1914, where 350 Indian migrants were starved of food and water for two months, denied entry, and ultimately sent back to their ship.

Acknowledging responsibility for the first time, Belgium also apologised on Thursday, April 5, for kidnapping thousands of mixed-race children from Congo between 1959 and 1962 and placing them in Catholic schools and orphanages, in a move to address the legacy of its brutal 80 years of African colonisation. This came over a year after the United Nations Security Council published a report on how "endemic" racial discrimination was in Belgium's institutions.

Such apologies without reparations, while pointless and frivolous to some, are not entirely unprecedented and have a certain symbolic value in the victims' healing process. But, that's probably about it.

Critics have argued against the postcolonial apology, which hands over the microphone to the transgressor, who may sanitise the narrative of colonial torture from their elevated speaking position.

Many others regard the admission of guilt as the first step toward reconciliation that can heal centuries worth of trauma, offer closure, and pave the way for radical redress and material reparations. Meanwhile, noted historian William Dalrymple believes that war crimes must never be forgiven or forgotten.

Britain's pending apologies

According to a recent poll by YouGov, most Britons are generally proud of their colonial past and the British empire, while most students aren't aware of the habitual theft, racism, cultural destruction, slavery, and genocide engendered by imperial policies, which caused millions of famine deaths in British India, the functioning of brutal detention camps in occupied territories, and massacres of civilians by imperial troops.

In fact, the direct correlation between Winston Churchill's policies and the famine that claimed more than three million Indian lives in 1943 was mapped in a study that sought to prove the origins of the disaster for the first time. In this light, an apology, if it did arrive would not amount to more than an empty symbolic gesture.

The one time Britain did apologise for its colonial wrongdoings was after a lengthy campaign following the intervention from The Hague tribunal.

Expressing "sincere regret" for the torture and abuse of Kenyans by British colonial officers in the 1950s, Britain also announced a compensation package worth $31 million to be divided between 5,200 Kenyan victims, marking the settlement of a landmark legal case initiated in 2009, by a Kenyan trio who suffered beating, rape, and castration under the colonial rule. The verdict came just eight months after the British government affirmed that it had nothing to apologise for, and that it was willing to face down its former colonial subjects in court.

It opened the door of possibilities for former colonies including Yemen, Cyprus, and Malaysia to receive due reparations besides an official apology. Several Caribbean nations are also agitating for apology, calling upon former European colonisers to engage them in dialogue for reparation for centuries of slavery, pilferage, and appalling atrocities.

History on trial

Many critics object to this generational gap which deems any apology for the crimes of one's ancestors redundant, when tendered a century after the deed.

This article in The Conservation, however, argues saying, "while the current generation did not actually commit the crimes, many within it still reap the rewards of a world in which white Europeans and the descendants of white settlers remain disproportionately privileged in comparison to the peoples they once conquered. As such, the privileged among the current generation acquire guilt by virtue of the fact that their favourable position in the contemporary capitalist system has its roots in empire."

Two and a half million Indians, for example, fought for British forces in the Second World War, by the end of which £1.25bn of Britain's total £3bn war debt was owed to India-merely the tip of the iceberg, that was India's colonial exploitation by the British. It still hasn't been paid.

Contemporary privilege aside, the Indian Penal Code alone gives India plenty of grounds to demand an apology for. Written by British jurist Thomas Babington Macauley, the colonial environment gave the empire the "perfect field for experiments in rationalizing and systematising the law. The colonies were passive laboratories."

The Economic Times notes, "Laws controlling sexual activity were an important part of this. There was a practical reason for them-the fear that uncontrolled sexual activities could weaken the soldiers on whom British rule depended. The British passed laws to regulate brothels, until the influence of missionaries forced them to close them altogether. But when it came to same sex activity the only option considered was total prohibition."

So when Justice Indu Malhotra said while delivering the historic verdict repealing the colonial era-Section 377, that "history owes the LGBT community an apology," she is referring to centuries of socio-cultural and economic damages passed down by British institutions, for which an apology is the least Britain can offer.
Prarthana Mitra is a Staff Writer at Qrius.

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Jallianwala Bagh, history on trial: Will Britain ever apologise

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The prolific Sikh community in the UK has renewed its demand before the British Parliament, to tender an immediate and unconditional apology for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar, before its centenary on April 13.

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How British Colonialism Produced Islamic Extremism

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How British Colonialism Produced Islamic Extremism

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In the 1950s and 1960s, when Great Britain, France, and other European powers relinquished their colonies in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, leaders of newly sovereign Muslim-majority countries faced a decision of enormous consequence: Should they build their governments on Islamic religious values or embrace the European laws inherited from colonial rule?

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Warning that Islamic extremists want to fundamentalist religious rule in American communities, right-wing lawmakers in dozens of U.S. states have tried Sharia, an Arabic term often understood to mean Islamic law.

These political debates - which cite and political violence in the Middle East to argue that Islam is incompatible with modern society - reinforce stereotypes that the Muslim world is uncivilized.

They also reflect ignorance of , which is not a strict legal code. Sharia means "path" or "way": It is a broad set of values and ethical principles drawn from the Quran - Islam's holy book - and the life of the Prophet Muhammad. As such, different people and governments may interpret Sharia differently.

Still, this is not the first time that the world has tried to figure out where Sharia fits into the global order.

In the 1950s and 1960s, when Great Britain, France, and other European powers relinquished their colonies in the Middle East, Africa and Asia , leaders of newly sovereign Muslim-majority countries faced a decision of enormous consequence: Should they build their governments on Islamic religious values or embrace the European laws inherited from colonial rule?
The big debate
Invariably, my historical research shows, political leaders of these young countries chose to keep their colonial justice systems rather than impose religious law.

Newly independent Sudan, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Somalia, among other places, all the application of Sharia to marital and inheritance disputes within Muslim families, just as their colonial administrators had done. The remainder of their legal systems would continue to be based on European law .

To understand why they chose this course, I researched the decision-making process in Sudan, the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence from the British, in 1956.

In the national archives and libraries of the Sudanese capital Khartoum, and in interviews with Sudanese lawyers and officials, I discovered that leading judges, politicians and intellectuals actually pushed for Sudan to become a democratic Islamic state.

They envisioned a progressive legal system consistent with Islamic faith principles, one where all citizens - irrespective of religion, race or ethnicity - could practice their religious beliefs freely and openly.

"The People are equal like the teeth of a comb," wrote Sudan's soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Hassan Muddathir in 1956, quoting the Prophet Muhammad, in an official memorandum I found archived in Khartoum's Sudan Library. "An Arab is no better than a Persian, and the White is no better than the Black."

Sudan's post-colonial leadership, however, rejected those calls. They chose to keep the English common law tradition as the law of the land.
Why keep the laws of the oppressor?
My research identifies three reasons why early Sudan sidelined Sharia: politics, pragmatism, and demography.

Rivalries between political parties in post-colonial Sudan led to a parliamentary stalemate, which made it difficult to pass meaningful legislation. So Sudan simply maintained the colonial laws already on the books.

There were practical reasons for maintaining English common law, too.

Sudanese judges had been trained by British colonial officials. So they continued to apply English common law principles to the disputes they heard in their courtrooms.

Sudan's founding fathers faced urgent challenges , such as creating the economy, establishing foreign trade and ending civil war. They felt it was simply not sensible to overhaul the rather smooth-running governance system in Khartoum.

The continued use of colonial law after independence also reflected Sudan's ethnic, linguistic and religious .

Then, as now, Sudanese citizens spoke many languages and belonged to dozens of ethnic groups. At the time of Sudan's independence, people practicing Sunni and Sufi traditions of Islam lived largely in northern Sudan. Christianity was an important faith in southern Sudan.

Sudan's diversity of faith communities meant that maintaining a foreign legal system - English common law - was less controversial than choosing whose version of Sharia to adopt.
Why extremists triumphed
My research uncovers how today's instability across the Middle East and North Africa is, in part, a consequence of these post-colonial decisions to reject Sharia.

In maintaining colonial legal systems, Sudan and other Muslim-majority countries that followed a similar path appeased Western world powers, which were pushing their former colonies toward secularism .

But they avoided resolving tough questions about religious identity and the law. That created a disconnect between the people and their governments.

In the long run, that disconnect helped fuel unrest among some citizens of deep faith, leading to sectarian calls to unite religion and the state once and for all . In Iran, Saudi Arabia and parts of and , these interpretations triumphed, imposing extremist versions of Sharia over millions of people.

In other words, Muslim-majority countries stunted the democratic potential of Sharia by rejecting it as a mainstream legal concept in the 1950s and 1960s, leaving Sharia in the hands of extremists.

But there is no inherent tension between Sharia, human rights and the rule of law. Like any use of religion in politics, Sharia's application depends on who is using it - and why.

Leaders of places like Saudi Arabia and have chosen to restrict women's freedom and minority rights. But many scholars of Islam and grassroots organizations interpret Sharia as a , rights-oriented and equality-minded ethical order.
Religion and the law worldwide
Religion is woven into the legal fabric of many post-colonial nations, with varying consequences for democracy and stability.

After its 1948 founding, debated the role of Jewish law in Israeli society. Ultimately, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and his allies opted for a mixed legal system that combined Jewish law with English common law.

In Latin America , the Catholicism imposed by Spanish conquistadors underpins laws restricting , and .

And throughout the 19th century, judges in the U.S. regularly invoked the legal maxim that "Christianity is part of the common law." Legislators still routinely invoke their Christian faith when supporting or opposing a given law.

Political extremism and human rights abuses that occur in those places are rarely understood as inherent flaws of these religions.

When it comes to Muslim-majority countries, however, Sharia takes the blame for regressive laws - not the people who pass those policies in the name of religion.

Fundamentalism and violence, in other words, are a post-colonial problem - not a religious inevitability.

For the Muslim world, finding a system of government that reflects Islamic values while promoting democracy will not be easy after more than 50 years of failed secular rule. But building peace may demand it.
This article was originally published on The Conversation . Read the original article .
If you're interested in writing for International Policy Digest - please send us an email via submissions@intpolicydigest.org

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Don't Blame Sharia for Islamic Extremism - Blame Colonialism

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Warning that Islamic extremists want to fundamentalist religious rule in American communities, right-wing lawmakers in dozens of U.S. states have tried Sharia, an Arabic term often understood to mean Islamic law. These political debates - which cite and political violence in the Middle East to argue that Islam is incompatible with modern society - reinforce stereotypes that the Muslim world is uncivilized.

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We may think that UK has good intentions in this conflict, but the facts proved us wrong.
The UK has not answered the UN request to search and answer to the 189 unexplicable deads that took place in Gaza. In the article, we can read the following piece of text, that show how the UK refuses to acknowledge those deads; "The commission found reasonable grounds to believe that all 189 fatalities were caused by unlawful use of force – with the possible exception of two incidents – and that medical workers, journalists some children and some people with visible disabilities were shot intentionally."

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Charities condemn UK over refusal to endorse Gaza deaths report

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Foreign Office said it could not support inquiry that failed to investigate role of Hamas

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It may be thought that the UK has really good intentions with the war in Isreal, but do we really know how does it work and does the UK suppoorts Israle? That Britain is supporting Israel over the Gaza killings is true to form. The UK's relationship with Israel is special in at least nine areas, including arms sales, air force, nuclear deployment, navy, intelligence and trade, to name but a few.

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Britain has a special relationship with Israel that is little recognised in the mainstream media but unmissable in light of the killings in Gaza. With more than 110 protesters dead, Britain is in effect defending Israeli actions. The British government has not, as far as I have seen, actually condemned Israel for the killings.

When British Prime Minister Theresa May phoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 10 May, by which date 40 Palestinian protesters in Gaza had already been shot, it appears she did not even raise the issue. Meanwhile, the government infers it will not even review UK arms exports to Israel after the Gaza massacres which have only been discussed once in the British cabinet.

That Britain is supporting Israel over the Gaza killings is true to form. The UK's relationship with Israel is special in at least nine areas, including arms sales, air force, nuclear deployment, navy, intelligence and trade, to name but a few.

Consistent support

Theresa May says that Israel is "one of the world's great success stories" and a " beacon of tolerance". To Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, Israel is a " light unto the nations" whose relationship with the UK "is underpinned by a shared sense of values: justice, compassion, tolerance".

These gushing words translate into consistent British support for Israel internationally, helping to shield it from ostracism. Britain abstained on the recent UN vote to authorise an investigation into the Gaza killings because it would not also investigate Hamas; instead, the UK supports Israel carrying out its own inquiry.

Last year, the Foreign Office refused to sign a joint statement at the Paris peace conference on Palestine, accusing it of "taking place against the wishes of the Israelis".

That Britain is supporting Israel over the Gaza killings is true to form. The UK's relationship with Israel is special in at least nine areas

The UK exports components for combat aircraft while Israel's air force conducts air strikes in Gaza, causing civilian deaths and destruction of infrastructure. The government admits it has not assessed the impact of its arms exports to Israel on Palestinians.

Double standards

Britain has a long history of supporting Israeli aggression (AFP)

Nothing is allowed to interrupt the " very close defence... cooperation" between Britain and Israel. British military pilots are even being trained by a company owned by Israel arms firm Elbit Systems.

Israel is believed to possess 80 to 100 nuclear warheads, some of which are deployed on its submarines. The UK is effectively aiding this nuclear deployment by supplying submarine components to Israel. According to the commander of Haifa naval base, General David Salamah, Israel's submarines regularly operate "deep within enemy territory".

Britain has a long history of helping Israel to develop nuclear weapons. In the 1950s and 1960s Conservative and Labour governments made hundreds of sales of nuclear materials to Israel, including plutonium and uranium.

The contrast with British policy towards Iran is striking. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson states that the UK is "adamant that a nuclear-armed Iran would never be acceptable" and thus maintains sanctions against Iran. At the same time Britain refuses to adopt any sanctions against Israel, an actual nuclear state.

In 1995, the UK and other states agreed to a UN resolution to establish a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. It is not known whether Britain has ever seriously pressed Israel on this.

'A strong partnership'

This week British and Spanish warships, part of NATO's forces, docked in Israel's Haifa port to conduct a joint NATO-Israel naval exercise. This follows naval exercises between Britain and Israel in December 2017 and November 2016. Through its blockade, the Israeli navy restricts Palestinians' fishing rights, even firing on local fishermen.

The blockade of Gaza is widely regarded as illegal, including by senior UN officials, a UN independent panel of experts and Amnesty International, partly since it inflicts "collective punishment" on an entire population. Britain is failing to uphold its obligation "to ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law".

Little is known of the intelligence relationship between the UK and Israel. There have been differences such as in 1986 when prime minister Margaret Thatcher ordered a freeze in relations with Mossad after a female Israeli agent lured Mordechai Vanunu, who was trying to reveal Israel's nuclear secrets, to Rome where he was kidnapped.

As the mandatory power in Palestine from 1920 to 1948, Britain enabled the gradual takeover of Palestine by the Zionist movement

Former MI6 director Sir Richard Dearlove recently said that British intelligence did not always share information with Israel "because we could never guarantee how the intelligence might or would be used". But the Telegraph reports that the relationship between MI6 and Mossad has become closer in recent years with both concerned about nuclear proliferation in Iran.

The director of the British spy centre GCHQ says the latter has a "strong partnership with our Israeli counterparts in signals intelligence" and that "we are building on an excellent cyber relationship with a range of Israeli bodies".

A young Palestinian citizen of Israel holds up a sign during a demonstration near the Roman Catholic Church of the Annunciation in the Israeli Arab town of Nazareth in March 2006 (Reuters)

Documents from 2009 leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden show that GCHQ spied on the Israeli military, defence firms and diplomatic missions. But they also revealed that GCHQ monitored Palestinian communications, including the phone calls of President Mahmoud Abbas and his two sons.

The interceptions took place just three weeks before Israel's offensive on Gaza in January 2009, suggesting that they may have helped Israel gear up for the offensive.

Violating UN resolutions

Indeed, the government appears to be helping Israel counter the BDS movement. In September 2017, then communities minister Sajid Javid met Gilad Erdan, Israel's "strategic affairs" minister in charge of combating the BDS movement, to discuss "steps to counter anti-Israel delegitimisation and BDS".

Rather, the UK wants trade relations to go from " strength to strength", bolstering the UK's position as the primary Israeli investment location in Europe.

The UK is aware that there are more than 570,000 Israeli settlers in the occupied territories and its formal position regards the settlements as illegal. Yet this is meaningless in light of actual British policy, which is never known to press Israel strongly to end settlement building or the occupation.

The UK simply calls on Israel to "ease" restrictions on Gaza, and rather than demand an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Golan Heights, Britain only calls on Israel to "uphold its obligations under international law".

Israel's policy in the occupied territories has been described by human rights body B'Tselem as an " unbridled theft ". Hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of goods produced in these settlements are exported internationally each year, including oranges, dates and spring water.

Palestinian youths wanting to play football in the Maale Adumim settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank (seen in the background) are blocked by Israeli security forces as they try to enter the settlement in October 2016 (AFP)

Yet Britain permits this trade and does not even keep a record of imports into the UK from the settlements. Indeed, Boris Johnson has explicitly said that it is the "policy of the UK" to trade with the illegal settlements and that this will continue. This policy violates UN Security Council resolutions which require all states to "distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967".

What explains British policy?

Two reasons are clear in explaining current British policy. One is commercial: arms exports and trade are increasingly profitable to British corporations. The other is that UK policy towards Israel is to a large degree determined in Washington and by London wanting to curry favour with the US and not challenge its closest ally.

Patel was forced to resign last year after it was revealed that she held secret meetings in Israel with key officials, including Netanyahu. Most significantly, she visited Israeli military hospitals in the Golan Heights where Israel treats anti-government fighters involved in the Syrian war, including members of the al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra, which Israel is seen as effectively supporting. Patel even wanted to give British aid to the Israeli army.

Britain effectively backs Israeli military policy in the Middle East while it has carried out more than 100 clandestine air strikes inside Syria against government, Iranian and Hezbollah targets. Israel is seen as an ally against Syria and Iran - Britain's two main enemies in the region.

London increasingly regards Israel as a strategic asset, especially now that the old Arab-Israeli conflict has largely disappeared, meaning that Britain can more easily back both Israel and its despotic Arab allies at the same time. The Palestinians are the expendable unpeople in this deepening special relationship.
- Mark Curtis is a historian and analyst of UK foreign policy and international development and the author of six books, the latest being an updated edition of Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. Photo: Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May welcomes Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outside 10 Downing Street in London in November 2017 (Reuters) This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

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The raw truth about the UK's special relationship with Israel

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Britain has a special relationship with Israel that is little recognised in the mainstream media but unmissable in light of the killings in Gaza. With more than 110 protesters dead, Britain is in effect defending Israeli actions. The British government has not, as far as I have seen, actually condemned Israel for the killings.

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In this video we can learn more about the effects of colonialism in Africa.

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As the war in Israel continues, it is important to know how the UK is making a huge impact in Gaza.
Israel, since de begining of the war in 2014, has had a lot of problems, some of them are economic, and it affects other areas of the country's system. In the article, it is mentioned that  the money (given by UK) half of which will be funnelled through the World Bank, will create hundreds of jobs, enhance water and electricity infrastructure, and help boost exports to Israel and beyond.

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department for international development (dfid)

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UK to double aid to Gaza and West Bank in bid to boost Palestinian export trade

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Funding programme set to increase to £38m as ministers target economic benefits, but experts warn aid is not enough

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This article explained the mutual benefits between the UK and United States in the late Nineteenth Century

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The UK is one of the biggest contributors to the EU budget 

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The UK is one of the biggest contributors to the EU budget 

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The UK is one of the three countries that puts the most money into the EU budget. You can compare more contributions in this link.

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"With all the money that we put into it (the EU), we are one of the three countries that put the most money into it".

BBC Question Time audience member, 12 July 2018

This is correct, referring to the EU budget. The UK has been the third or fourth largest contributing country to the EU budget in recent years, and of the 28 EU members is one of 10 to contribute more than it gets back in receipts.

The UK also gives and receives much more money via trade with other EU countries, so transactions with the EU budget aren't the full story when it comes to the UK's economic relationship with the rest of the EU.

Each country pays a 'membership fee' and gets benefits

Each EU member state has to contribute money to the EU budget each year, and each member state gets funding back which is spent in their country on various kinds of projects.

Payments into the EU come in three types. The biggest by far is a payment based on the size of each country's economy, called a GNI (Gross National Income)-based contribution. Countries also pay money based on how much they make in VAT, and on customs duties on their imports from countries outside of the customs union.

The UK, being one of the EU's largest economies, pays more than most members. Only Germany and France consistently contribute more funding, while Italy pays about the same amount.

The UK's rebate is a discount on its contributions so it reduces what it would otherwise pay, and increases what other member states pay. Without the rebate the UK would be the second largest contributor behind Germany.

Factoring in money that comes back as well, the UK is one of 10 countries that pay more in than they get back. Relative to the size of their economies, Germany and the Netherlands are the biggest contributors and Bulgaria and Hungary are the biggest receivers.

When the UK leaves the EU, it won't continue to pay annual budget contributions, although it will settle a divorce bill agreed with the EU to settle outstanding liabilities, and the government has already indicated that, until at least 2022, it will continue to spend some money on the areas where the EU currently gives us funding.

As we factchecked recently, that means there is no guaranteed extra money-or 'Brexit dividend'-to pay for public services as a result of ending the UK's payments to the EU budget.
This factcheck is part of a roundup of BBC Question Time. Read the roundup.
We need facts more than ever.

Right now, it's difficult to know what or who to trust. Misinformation is spreading. Politics and the media are being pushed to the limit by advancements in technology and uncertainty about the future. We need facts more than ever.

This is where you come in. Your donation is vital for our small, independent team to keep going, at the time when it's needed most. With your help, we can keep factchecking and demanding better from our politicians and public figures.We can give more people the tools to decide for themselves what to believe. We can intervene more effectively where false claims cause most harm.

Become a donor today and stand up for better public debate, on all sides, across the UK.

By Joseph O'Leary

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The UK is one of the biggest contributors to the EU budget

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"With all the money that we put into it (the EU), we are one of the three countries that put the most money into it". BBC Question Time audience member, 12 July 2018 This is correct, referring to the EU budget.

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In this video you can see the reasnos why and how Britain colonized India

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Now that we know a little bit about the consequences found in the EU, now it is imperative to know what will happen to the UK itself. It is also a way to  understand all of the recent protests against this motion and against Theresa May herself. In the end it is important to see what the future of the UK will be with this huge politic move.

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It will be bad with a Brexit deal. It will be worse with no deal at all.

Brexit is going to be bad for Britain's economy - no matter what.

A new UK government report released on Wednesday concluded that the economy will be worse off in the next 15 years after Brexit, compared to a scenario where the United Kingdom remained part of the European Union.

How much it will cost the economy depends on how the UK and EU divorce - namely, if there's a Brexit deal or no deal at all.

The government report predicts that Britain's economy will be 3.9 percent smaller under a Brexit withdrawal agreement, with net migration from the EU at zero. But a no-deal Brexit - meaning the UK leaves the EU without any transition plan on March 29, 2019 - would make the economy whopping 9.3 percent lower in 15 years than if the UK and EU had never broken up.

The Bank of England issued its own report on Wednesday, and gave another less-than-rosy analysis of a no-deal Brexit. It warned that it could cause the worst economic downturn since the Great Recession a decade ago.

The UK and the EU have been integrated for four decades, so leaving the bloc was always going to be unpredictable and complicated, no matter how it happened. But these projections put the coming impact of Brexit into stark relief.

These are, of course, just estimates, and the analysis was made based on an earlier "soft" Brexit plan May had presented over the summer called the "Chequers" deal, which the EU rejected. But these latest figures are still likely to intensify the current Brexit debate in Britain, especially as the UK Parliament gears up for a vote on May's Brexit deal around December 11.

Everyone will see what they want to see in these latest estimates

All sides of the fractured Brexit debate are now trying to spin or discredit the findings to support their positions.

May and her government will likely use its own report to persuade anxious members of Parliament to support her unpopular Brexit deal. May is facing a serious revolt from hardline Brexiteers within her own Conservative Party who see this agreement as a Brexit in name only, and as a deal that will keep the UK tied to the EU and its rules long after they break up.

May has been trying to make the case to Conservative members of Parliament - and to some members of the opposition Labour Party - that it's this Brexit deal or no deal at all, and the latest analysis does show that some sort of plan will likely mitigate the economic pain.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond (the UK's fancy title for a Finance or Treasury minister) argued in similar terms, saying that any version of Brexit involves pain, but that the economic costs wouldn't be as dramatic under May's plan.

"Becoming a fully independent country and trading as an independent country with the European Union introduces some level of friction in our trade," he said Wednesday about the government's analysis. "Our commitment is to absolutely minimize that friction and we have got our European neighbors to agree, in this deal, that we will work together to do that."

Of course, asking members of Parliament to pick the lesser of two bad options isn't the most compelling of arguments. And that will likely give ammunition to opponents of the deal - including pro-"Remain" Conservatives and some members of the Labour Party - who are pushing for a second referendum to give the public another opportunity to rethink Brexit altogether. (May has opposed a second referendum, which would likely require the EU to agree to extend the Brexit deadline from March 29, 2019.)

As for the pro-Brexit crowd: They're questioning the accuracy of the research. David Davis, May's former Brexit secretary who quit in protest in July over the prime minister's approach to the matter, said the numbers were based on "flawed assumptions," according to the BBC.

But the latest numbers expose at least some of the ruse of the Brexiteers and their "Leave" campaign, which promised voters ahead of the June 2016 referendum that being free from the rules of the European Union would be an economic boon and allow Britain to make its own trade deals.

Even if the analysis is imperfect, the short- and medium-term outlook suggests Brexit is going to have a significant cost to the United Kingdom's economy.

Anand Menon, a researcher at an independent Brexit think tank, told me earlier this week that people have long argued that the economic pain of Brexit, including a no-deal Brexit, wouldn't be as bad as some claim.

"There are proponents of chaos on both sides of the divide - on the far left and the far right," he said. "They think that the UK leaving the EU with no Brexit deal will create the chaos necessary for the kind of radical reform this country needs."

"It's not a very easy thing to say out loud, so they don't tend to say it out loud," he added. "They tend to say, 'It will be fine, don't worry about it.'"

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Brexit will hurt the UK's economy no matter what - says the government's own analysis

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Brexit is going to be bad for Britain's economy - no matter what. A new UK government report released on Wednesday concluded that the economy will be worse off in the next 15 years after Brexit, compared to a scenario where the United Kingdom remained part of the European Union.

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Scottish Gaelic: A’ mairsinn beò (Staying alive)

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Scottish Gaelic: A’ mairsinn beò (Staying alive)

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This article speaks about the importance of Scottish Gaelic, its current status and the struggles of learning a second language in increasingly anglophone.

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The first time I try to learn Gaelic, I go with my mum. We enrol on a week-long immersion course at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic college on Skye. Beginners I, our course is called, and it assumes no knowledge.

We start from the very beginning: consulting notes at every corner, fearing the spotlight, feeling every syllable strange in our mouths. The teacher stands to write a question on the board and we regard it solemnly. " Dè an t-ainm a th'ort?" Together we pick the sentence apart and put it together again, wondering at its strangeness: what is the name that is on you?

I learn to put the names on us, with a certain amount of panache. " Is mise Cal," I wobble, earning appreciative nods from around the room. " Agus seo Fiona. Tha i na-" I explain, with a confidential air, "- mo mhàthair."

We've never been the sort of family in which I address my parents by their first names, but it feels nice to be suddenly peers: sitting beside each other in class and sleeping in twin beds. Together we rattle through the basics. "It is windy," we inform each other in halting syllables. Or: "I have one sister." Sometimes these statements are true; more often they aren't-the facts manipulated to generate the simplest or most adventurous language. "I don't like soup," I announce to the class on Friday. "But I like making soup." "Liar," says Mum, out of the corner of her mouth, as the teacher observes us good-humouredly from the front of the room. When not teaching immersion courses, he tells us, he is the Gaelic voice of Daddy Pig on BBC Alba's version of Peppa Pig.

In the evenings, over dinner in the hall, we practice our conjugations. Sometimes we walk to the rocky beach on the other side of the headland to watch for otters, and on the way we talk about Mum's childhood on the island. A traditional Highland upbringing in many ways-but an Anglophone one, in an increasingly Anglophone world. "Isn't it awful," her father said once, after she and her siblings were grown, "that none of you speak any Gaelic." But he didn't teach it to us, says Mum. They often didn't, that generation.

Another phrase from class: " A bheil Beurla agad?" I write it carefully in my jotter. Gaelic spelling in black, a phonetic approximation in green below (" a vail byurla akit "), then the English in blue: "Do you [speak] English?" Revising my work that evening, I wonder afresh at the construction of it, the effort of my careful transcription. What was the point?

If there's ever a thread a Gaelic learner shouldn't tug upon, it's this one. Learning any language requires a certain amount of redundancy, it's true: the statement "I am bald," which I also learnt that morning, was not true and, if it had been, would have been self-evident. But there was a deeper anxiety underwriting this particular question: I already know the answer to it, in every possible application. They all speak English, every one of them. There are no monolingual Gaels left. If there's no point in asking if someone can speak English, why should I bother to learn the language at all?

A' chainnt bhorb
(The rude speech)
Gaelic is not a dead language, but it might be described as dying. The number of speakers has been steadily in decline since at least the turn of the 20th century; at last count there were only 57,000 native speakers; that is just 1 per cent of all Scots, and they are largely concentrated in the Outer Hebrides and Skye, probably the only places where you will still hear it spoken in the street.

The other Celtic languages of the British Isles have been afflicted by a similar drop-off, but to differing degrees. In its census of world languages, Unesco classes Manx and Cornish as "critically endangered" (although this is a victory of sorts, both having previously been declared extinct). Irish Gaelic-which is similar, but separate, to Scottish Gaelic, their relationship akin to that of Spanish and Portuguese-is taught in school across the Republic, and yet used on a daily basis by fewer than 100,000 of a population of 4.7m and thought "definitely endangered" by the UN body. Welsh has been most buoyant-with 19 per cent of the population able to speak the "vulnerable" language.

In all of these places, the withering of Celtic tongues has not come about by accident. Scots Gaelic has endured centuries of pressure from the south; "the south" in this instance encompassing England and-just as significantly-lowland Scotland too. After the Union of Crowns in 1603, James VI-James I in England-sought to unite his subjects under one language, and encouraged clan chiefs to send their eldest child to English-language public schools in the lowlands. Following the 1707 Act of Union, religious schools, which served the wider community, embraced the aim of anglicising the "uncivilised" provinces, instructing in English even where the pupils previously spoke only Gaelic, and punishing the use of their native tongue. Samuel Johnson, who toured the Highlands in 1773, reflected-and entrenched-English attitudes when he dismissed "the rude speech of barbarous people," and wrongly reported that the local language had never been written down. Such prejudice was codified in education policy when this came to be standardised-the 1872 Education (Scotland) Act specifically excluded Gaelic from classrooms.

Na tha e a' ciallachadh a bhith nad Albannach
(What it means to be Scottish)
Education law had been modified in 1918, with a formal requirement for "provision" for Gaelic areas, yet in practice low-level persecution of Gaelic speakers continued to hasten its demise over most of the 20th century. "My grandfather was made to wear a wooden block around his neck for speaking Gaelic in class. My father was belted for speaking Gaelic in the playground," recalls the author Donald S Murray. Murray spoke Gaelic at home in rural Lewis, but at school in Stornoway he too was mocked by his teachers. "They called us 'maws,'" he says "and to some extent there's still a residue of that attitude around today, though less so now that people see there can be money in it."Even so, at the end of the 19th century, Gaelic remained the dominant language of the Highlands and Hebrides. But a cultural shift had taken hold, a changing in status of the language in the eyes of the speakers themselves. The values of the lowlands were being absorbed by the Highland public. English came to be seen as the way forward-the language of learning, of bettering one's lot. Gaelic, and the Gaelic way of life, was for those who looked backwards, to the past. By the time my mother was a child in the 1950s, it was a language on the brink-fewer than 100,000 still spoke it.

There is: in recent decades a minor industry has grown up around the language, and a professionalisation of its usage. Gaelic-medium education began to be offered in the 1980s, and later there was a boom in Gaelic-language media. Since devolution in 1999, successive Holyrood governments have embraced its preservation: the Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition legislated in 2005 to make it an official language. The current SNP administration has pledged to return the falling number of speakers back to 2001 levels as part of its efforts, it says, to recognise the language's cultural, economic and social value. Gaelic, it explains, is "an integral part of Scotland's heritage."

And yet the reception to these efforts have been mixed, at best. Startlingly virulent opposition bubbles up from odd quarters and at regular intervals. There has been vocal criticism over the resources devoted to Gaelic-language broadcasting, and persistent (though false) rumours that Gaelic-medium education-whose pupils, like most bilinguals, show above-average attainment-unfairly receives extra funding. Most notably, there is an ongoing fracas over bilingual road signs, which flares up every few months.

These signs, critics claim, are inauthentic, dangerous and expensive; sneering tweets and newspaper articles poke fun and hype up the cost. The most bandied-around figure is £26m. In reality, the budget for upgrading road signs-bilingual or not-is £2.5m over five years and will only take place as old signs come up for renewal. At less than 50p a Scot, this is hardly lavish. But, as has been the case in many recent political debates, the detail is not as important as the underlying resentments these arguments represent.

Gaelic campaigners face a trickier time than those who successfully championed Welsh in the 1960s and 70s because the latter enjoyed a clear base-the political heartland of Welsh nationalism in the north and west of the principality, and the cultural heartland of the Welsh language were one and the same. But there's not, and never has been, a one-to-one relationship between Gaelic enthusiasm and Scottish nationalism. To many in the Outer Hebrides, Holyrood looks just as remote as Westminster.

The bickering over signposts is a proxy war; a symptom of something that will not be said outright. What's at stake is the question of Scottish identity-what it means to be "Scottish" and to whom. The task of rallying the nation to Gaelic is further complicated by parallel heritage efforts to preserve the traditional Scots tongue of the lowlands, a close cousin of English. Some rail against what feels like the imposition of Gaelic culture upon them. The journalist Ian Jack, for example, on spotting a dual-language sign in his native Cardonald (" Cair Dhòmhnaill "), near Glasgow, wrote of the "sadness" it aroused in him. A Gaelic identity was being constructed for a place in which Gaelic may never have been spoken, he argued-and in so doing rewrote both history and his own memory of the place.

Iomallachadh cultarach
(Cultural alienation)
But this dispute over the identity of the nation is only the first aspect of resentment against any Gaelic revival. There is another, with deeper roots, which I have only begun to appreciate more recently. During the research for my book Thicker Than Water -a true story of frontier violence during the settlement of Australia-I began to think more about what it means when a minority and its language is absorbed into a more dominant culture. There, of the original 250 Aboriginal languages (600 if one includes dialects) only 18 are still in common use-a result of the efforts by missionaries to eradicate these languages in the name of "progress," many going so far as to rechristen the Aboriginal adults as well as children with names that might have been taken from the pages of a Jane Austen novel.

Aboriginal culture clung on in the fringes: in private conversation and in the unaudited bush; as a symbol of disobedience. Elsewhere, millennia-old cultures were hounded to extinction, dying out with the elders, the last keepers of knowledge. Some cultures vanished before their existence was documented. Then, after the worst of the violence was over, a new insidious force took hold. Many of the survivors became ashamed of their roots, and shrugged their own culture off like a cloak. They refused to speak the old tongue, or to teach it-they spoke the new language and worshipped the new God. And yet they were left in a strange limbo: though they might absorb British ways, they would never be British. Like expats who have lived abroad for years, many found they felt they did not belong anywhere.

This alienation has a profound effect, which we're only now coming to appreciate. Cultural programmes are now viewed in Australia as an aspect of public health; cultural identity is connected to self-worth and-indirectly-to social and physical resilience. In Gippsland, Victoria, I met Doris Paton: a member of the Gunaikurnai people who held adult learner classes in her traditional language, which has survived in only the most fragmentary form. "They want the knowledge and connection to country," she told me. "Language defines who people are."

Doris's tireless work to regenerate an almost entirely lost language made me rethink my careless attitude towards Gaelic. Although I'd hesitate to describe what happened to its speakers in the same terms as the brutalised Aboriginal Australians, it is true that the Gaels of the Highlands and islands were "culturally conquered" in the 18th and 19th centuries by the rampantly expansive English-speaking, capitalist society of the south.

As the ancient clan system of the Highlands dissolved, many of its residents were uprooted to make way for sheep-farming during the Clearances, when an estimated 500,000 people left the Highlands, often under duress. Of all Scotland's poor in those days, the Gaels were by far the most pitiable: many pitched up in Edinburgh or Glasgow starving, dressed in rags and speaking not a word of English. Even now, Scottish money and power remains heavily concentrated in the lowlands, and it remains an uncomfortable truth that big landowning families in the Highlands tend to speak with English accents.

When I lived in England and abroad, people would regularly ask me if I spoke Gaelic and I would have to admit that, no, I didn't, although-and here I would lean in conspiratorially- no one really did. This wasn't totally true, and I knew it. Two schoolfriends had, in the early 1990s, gone to Gaelic primaries; I myself had once appeared in the television show Dè a-nis? (diving joyfully into the swimming pool in Inverness with my class, for reasons I had not fully understood). From the age of 12, I had the opportunity to study it as my "modern language," instead of French. This choice I had rejected immediately: why learn a language that diminished my horizons, instead of expanding them?

More fool me, then, that in adulthood a knowledge of Gaelic would have translated into paid work in my chosen career. While I photocopied and fetched coffee in London, often for no money, my Gaelic-medium educated friend Derek was presenting programmes and appearing on quiz shows on BBC Alba.

But at that age, the choices we make about which subjects to study are symbolic. They reflect how we imagine ourselves, or the people we might like to become. The fact I had no particular intention to move to France was besides the point. The point was: I didn't want to be defined as "only" a Highlander. Now, having left and returned, I think that maybe I do. As John Muir wrote in another context: going out, I found, was really going in.

***

The second time I try to learn Gaelic, I sign up for a term of council-run evening classes near my new home in Edinburgh. I take my English boyfriend Richard and our Welsh friend Luke, which I half-expect to prompt surprise, but when we get to the first lesson I find we're no more unusual than anyone else. There is the married couple who refuse to sit together, the linguist who asks circumlocutive questions, the girl with lilac hair and tattoos like stained glass up both arms, who constantly rolls cigarettes during each two-hour session. Sandra, our teacher, is from the Hebrides and believes firmly in rote learning. There is a lot of call and response: " Dearg," she shouts, and we chorus it back: "jar-ag," looking at the word and visualising the colour red, willing ourselves to form triangular associations between sound and spelling and sensation.

Our homework is to find the BBC television series Can Seo online. It was made in the 1970s and Sandra feels is yet to be surpassed. In it, instruction is interspersed with skits in which phrases we've learned are put into context. They have a surreal, Beckettian quality: actors stand in featureless white expanses and scold each other over perceived slights and humorous Hebridean misunderstandings. "O, tartan, tartan!" as Catriona exclaims during a disagreement over tea cosies. "Nothing but tartan!"

The chanting is fine but it's the grammar that gets us going. Verb-subject-object, as in-the linguist informs us-Hebrew and Arabic. The opening verb's form indicates both the tense and whether it's a statement, negative statement or question. This requires planning ahead; long pregnant pauses as we string together sentences from back to front. Then there are those relational quirks. " Tha an t-acras orm!" we tell each other dramatically, rolling our Rs. The hunger is upon me!

It's fascinating, and challenging. More than that, there is a whole world in it, one that I can only catch glimpses of. As Murray, the author, explains: "In another language you think in another way. You experience the world in a different way too." Gaelic divides the colour spectrum differently, for one thing: while there are many words for brown-as anyone who has traversed Scotland's northern peatlands will understand-but a single word, gorm can describe either the blue of the sky or the green of grass. (Another word, uaine, is commonly translated as green, but indicates a vivid, artificial shade that rarely applies to the natural world.)

It used to be said that the Ancient Greeks-who lacked a simple word for blue-were in fact unable to see it. In Homer, the sky is often "iron" or "bronze," the sea "wine-dark" or even "pansy-like." We know now they had the same cone and rod cells in his retinas as we do; but it has also been shown that terminology can affect perception, the experience of colour. Those who speak two languages see the world through two sets of eyes.

A' mairsinn beò
(Staying alive)
Every language has grown organically, over many centuries: local custom, history and landscape are encoded in its DNA. In America-another postcolonial land, where many indigenous languages were stamped out-the nature writer Barry Lopez has written movingly of how language can fit against its native land "like another kind of air..." In Alaska, he said, he studied a map crowded with Dena'ini names and descriptions, for which there were only 10 or so English equivalents. When we lose a language we may also lose the ability to describe the landscape it lives in. The land becomes less readily characterised, less gradated, more difficult to read. And so do we: what it means to be a Highlander, for example, becomes diffuse when there is no language to mark you apart.

So then: Gaelic class. This can be my contribution. But, it's difficult. The irregularities of the language soon come to frustrate me. Why are the starts of nouns pronounced in a certain way when there are one or two, but not if there are more? Why do I shout for my father " Athair!" but for my mother " A Mhàthair!"? My Gaelic teacher is frustrated too. I'm a native speaker, she says. I don't know why. It just does.

I am not a native speaker, and never will be. After term is over the seeming hopelessness hits me afresh. Without practice, my Gaelic starts to decay. And there are so few places to practice. When I do hear Gaelic speakers on the street, I am too shy to address them. I take out my notes alone, at home, but wrestle with feelings of being a fraud. Who am I kidding? What am I doing this for? My vocabulary shrivels, my amnesia becomes a source of guilt. It's been months now since my last class.

But still, this burning desire. Perhaps I'll never speak it fluently, or even well. But I might hope to read the greats of Gaelic literature-Sorley Maclean, Iain Crichton Smith, Mary MacPherson, Ewan Robertson, Angus Peter Campbell-in the original. Perhaps even one day try my hand at translation: contribute to their literary survival, even in another form.

If Gaelic really is dying, then the people who still speak it today are something like living fossils. We are lucky to have them. But I'd rather it stayed alive, a breathing, flourishing creature. For my part, I can only promise to keep trying.

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A' mairsinn beò: why I'm learning Scottish Gaelic

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The first time I try to learn Gaelic, I go with my mum. We enrol on a week-long immersion course at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic college on Skye. Beginners I, our course is called, and it assumes no knowledge.

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In this page you can find the different native languages across the UK, these other languages developed very differently to English and share few common words.

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What languages are spoken? | British Council

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English is spoken across the UK, but it is not the only native official language. In London alone it is estimated that you can hear over 300 languages!

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In this video, I found some of the basic English accents, from London to Irish you get a little taste of each one. After watching this video, I couldn't stop trying to imitate them to see if I could achieve speaking similarly. How about you give it a try?

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One Woman, 17 British Accents - Anglophenia Ep 5

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Some times we can get a little confused with History, that's why, here you have a timeline of the history of UK after the 2WW. It explais the most important points of the after war.

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What are the origins of the English language?

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What are the origins of the English language?

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So now that we know a little bit about the history of England, I thought that it would be interesting to know how exactly did the language become what we know now. In this link, we can see the Old English alphabet and how to pronounce the letters!

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In this quiz you can choose whichever answer comes closest to how you talk even if you havent been raised there, to give yourself an idea about the true differences between Ireland and Britain!

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Do you call the common playground game tag, tig or it? Is that bit of bread on the table a roll, a bap or a bun? And do the words but and put rhyme when you say them out loud?

The answers to these questions and others like them divide the various regions of Ireland and Britain just as much as, say, the question of soda, pop or coke splits the United States.

The way that people speak - the particular words they use and how they sound - is deeply tied to their sense of identity. And it's not just about geography. Education, gender, age, ethnicity and other social variables influence speech patterns, too.

These dialect markers are so ingrained into people's sense of self that they tend to persist well after they move away from home. "Identity is what underlies most people's retention of at least some of their local features," said Clive Upton, professor emeritus of English language at the University of Leeds, "because ultimately what we say is who we are."

In Ireland and Britain, the local dialect can change wildly just 10 or 20 miles down the road. There's a vast amount of variation over a small area, especially when compared with a place like the United States.

Language differentiation takes time, so the longer a language has to simmer in one location, the more diverse it becomes, said Raymond Hickey, a professor of linguistics at the University of Duisburg-Essen. English speakers first settled in Ireland in the late 12th century, and Old English has its beginnings in, no surprise, England, almost 1,600 years ago. So it has had plenty of time to diversify.

Do you have suggestions or English language regionalisms that you're curious about? Please let us know.

For dialectologists, the patterns of people's speech reveal a great deal about the historical development of the English language. "Regional dialect variation allows you to hear echoes of earlier forms of the language - it isn't just about chronicling, 'Oh, that's a funny noise' or 'Oh, that's a strange word,'" Mr. Upton said. "Underneath all that it's very seriously trying to get to grips with the question of how language changes."

And the English language is always changing. While some of the finer village-by-village accent distinctions in Ireland and Britain are eroding, there is no evidence that regional speech differences are about to disappear, regardless of technological changes. We are not about to start all speaking the same way anytime soon - that's not how language works. People always form linguistic communities, each with its own speech patterns. Additionally, a generational component built into language development ensures that English will continue to evolve.

"Each generation wants to separate themselves from the previous one," Mr. Hickey said. "That change is not going to stop. You're not going to get teenagers who want to dress like their parents and listen to the same music as their parents, and there's a linguistic aspect to that as well."

As English continues to spread around the world, it will lead to an increasing number of new, emergent varieties of world Englishes. "It doesn't belong to England anymore," Mr. Upton said. "Just as you in North America have done things with it and own it yourselves, so people in Africa and the Far East and so on are doing the same. It's all very exciting."

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Do you call the common playground game tag, tig or it? Is that bit of bread on the table a roll, a bap or a bun? And do the words but and put rhyme when you say them out loud?

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Although fun facts are not as important as other information could be, this points about the UK, are important because it reflects the culture and the behaviour of the citizens.
Through the fun facts, we can find important key-points that can lead to a more deep investigation.

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Fun Facts about the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom, popularly known as Great Britain, or simply as the UK, is one of the most Influential, powerful, and richest countries in the world. It is an amazing piece of land that is rich in history and facts, some of which are yet to be discovered. From the natural beauty to the people, technological advancement, sports, no one can ever have enough of the UK. To learn more about Britain including some of the surprising and interesting facts about the UK, here are some of the fun facts about the country.

Although the UK is a large country covering about 93,600 square miles, nowhere in it is more than 75 miles from the sea.

The British drink over 163 million cups of tea daily, about 20 times the number of cups consumed by Americans.

Although Britain has been involved in many wars lasting decades, it has also been involved in the shortest war. The Anglo-Zanzibar War fought in 1896 lasted only 38 minutes.

The UK has the highest rate of obesity in the world with almost 25% of the British adults being obese.

The accent of the UK changes noticeably every 25 miles.

In the UK, it is illegal for anyone to die in the Houses of Parliament.

The Queen, Elizabeth II, has visited over 115 countries despite not having a passport.

In the UK, you can rent mourners to fill your funeral. The service is referred to as "Rent a Mourner" service.

York, Northern England is not only the most haunted city in the UK but also in the world. The city has recorded more than 500 cases of ghostly encounters.

The UK has the shortest scheduled flight in the world. The flight connecting the tiny islands of Westray and Papa Westray lasts only two minutes.

Soccer got its start in England when a skull of a Danish warrior was unearthed by Anglo-Saxon farm workers. They kicked the skull around to show their anger and amuse themselves. The early soccer was known as "Kick Dane's head."

One can be jailed for life if they placed a postage stamp with the Queen's head upside down. That is considered as treason.

The UK was the first country to allow for the creation of babies using DNA of three people

Almost 25% of all women in the UK were named Mary in 1811.

The US eggs are illegal in the UK because they are washed. and the British eggs are illegal in the US because they are not washed.

More than 3,000 people in the UK were hospitalized in 1999 for tripping over a laundry basket.

Over 6,000 people are hurt or die in Britain annually for tripping over their trousers or falling downstairs while putting them on.

The British Navy used Britney Spear's songs to scare away the Somali pirates along the coast of Africa.

Queen Victoria survived about seven assassination attempts

The UK has the third-highest rate of heart attack in Europe. It ranks just below Ireland and Finland.

Kate Middleton is a cousin to the first president of the US, George Washington, and American World War II hero, General George Petton.

London has the highest number of languages (300) than any other country in the world

Of all countries that celebrate Independence Day, 58 are independent of the UK, the highest by any country.

The most common cause of death for men less than 50 years old in the UK is suicide.

The average age for a first kiss in the UK is 15.

The 16th-century law in the UK forbade wife beating after 2100 hrs, simply because the noise disturbed people's sleep.

Death penalty was outlawed in the UK following the wrongful execution of a man for killing his wife and daughter in 1950.

Children over 5 years old can ingest alcohol at their home or on private property in the UK.

In the UK, the Queen sends personalized birthday cards to those celebrating their 100th birthday every year.

Windsor Castle in Berkshire is the oldest royal residence in the world.

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The United Kingdom, popularly known as Great Britain, or simply as the UK, is one of the most Influential, powerful, and richest countries in the world. It is an amazing piece of land that is rich in history and facts, some of which are yet to be discovered.

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BREXIT: the UK is not the only one shaking 

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BREXIT: the UK is not the only one shaking 

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For nearly two years now we have been reading about the departure of the UK from the EU. The first thing we think of is what will happen to the european countrie that depend on or have strong ties with the UK? In this next article, we have some of the main countries that would be directly affected from a "no-deal" of Brexit.

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With only days until the deadline for Britain to leave the European Union, the political negotiations for a withdrawal agreement remain stuck - and the economic concerns are growing.

By most accounts, Britain's economy would be hammered if it crashed out of the European Union without a deal. The gloomiest projections show that Britain would lose 9.3 percent of its gross domestic product, housing prices could sink by 30 percent and the pound could fall against the dollar to $1.10. (The pound, seen as a barometer of confidence in Brexit, is now at about $1.29.)

But the impact would also be painful for the 27 remaining member states in the European Union. Even though the bloc is a single market, each country has a unique relationship with Britain as far as the movement of goods, services, people and capital.

The regions most exposed to a no-deal Brexit would experience issues ranging from disruptions in trade to costly tariffs to fragmented supply chains and restrictions on services.

In the political negotiations, the Europeans have the stronger position. But experts agree that hardly anyone wins if a withdrawal deal isn't struck - and some countries could lose quite badly.

No more free trade

The immediate risk of a no-deal exit is that it would leave Britain and the European Union without a trade agreement, forcing them to default to the tariffs set by the World Trade Organization.

Any price increases from tariffs are likely to be absorbed by consumers, and for some goods - meat, dairy and tobacco products - tariffs are upward of 15 percent.

One study looking at the impact on trade of a no-deal Brexit found a wide range of exposure across Europe - but with every member of the bloc facing a possible reduction in trade.

Ireland is the most exposed to tariffs and changes in trade. Nearly 14 percent of its exports go directly to Britain, and the majority of all of its trade passes through the country at some point. In addition, two of its top exports - meat and dairy products - face some of the highest tariffs.

Germany exports a wide variety of industrial products to Britain, including almost 800,000 cars a year - or about 14 percent of all the cars it makes domestically.

The Netherlands' trade with Britain is significant but partly inflated by the so-called "Rotterdam effect" - goods flowing through the country's large port, though they may originate (or are destined for) other locations.

Europe relies on workers in Britain

Theresa May has assured those already living or working in Britain that they will be able to remain in the country legally, but in the event of no deal, restrictions or requirements for new migrants could come sooner than planned.

This could affect European Union countries that rely on workers abroad to send money home. Britain is the third-largest remittance-sending country in the European Union, and in 2017, migrants from the bloc sent home about $9 billion.

There are almost one million people from Poland living and working in Britain, and it's one of the largest recipients of remittances. Polish migrants working there sent home more than $1 billion in 2017; so did migrants from France and Germany workingin Britain.

In Hungary, government officials have said they hope migrants will return home to work.

Lithuania has the largest percentage of its population living abroad in Britain - nearly 8 percent - many of whom came over in 2004 after the country joined the European Union.

The financial center fragments

With the most developed financial center in the European Union, Britain is relied upon for services including lending, currency trading, insurance contracts and asset management.

Financial firms have been busy setting up legal entities in the European Union so that they can continue to provide these services even after Brexit. And British lawmakers, aware that Britain's clout as a financial hub and gateway could be at risk, have tried to mitigate the effects of the country leaving with no deal: a temporary permissions regime that will give European Union firms access to the British market and a deal with Switzerland giving over continued access to each other's insurance markets.

The European Union has also passed regulation that will allow certain activities like the clearing of derivatives to continue for a limited time.

But these measures are unlikely to make up for the loss of so-called passporting rights, which allow institutions based in Britain to offer a huge array of financial services.

Banks in Britain, for example, play an important role in lending across the entire bloc. Borrowing from these banks could be limited or become more expensive after Brexit because it'll cost more to route through Britain without passporting.

But Britain's departure could also prove beneficial to the European Union countries that succeed in bringing home some firms currently based in Britain. The cost of setting up shop in new locations and the eventual loss of efficiency, however, are expected to outweigh the gains from relocations and could push up the cost of financial services in the long run, say analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Cities like Frankfurt, Dublin, Paris and Amsterdam will benefit from the thousands of jobs that are expected to shift from Britain. Germany and Ireland have been popular for activities like banking, while Luxembourg has attracted asset managers.

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great britain withdrawal from eu (brexit)

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Where Europe Would Be Hurt Most by a No-Deal Brexit

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With only days until the deadline for Britain to leave the European Union, the political negotiations for a withdrawal agreement remain stuck - and the economic concerns are growing. By most accounts, Britain's economy would be hammered if it crashed out of the European Union without a deal.

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There is no better way of getting acquaintance with a new language than through the universal language of music. Though the written word has a beauty of its own, there is a singular beauty to the way words sound and mix to create a world all of its own.  Here is an old Irish song sung in Irish Gaelic and English, transporting us to the days of yore.