[Leica] Education OT

["Rod Fleming" <rodfleming@sol.co.uk>]

Hi and Happy New Year


Jonsthan Borden wrote

>The British university system is a
notable exception>

Sorry Jonathan, I don't like to be picky and you're being nice and all, but
there is no such thing as  a "British University system".

There is an education system covering England and Wales, and a completely
separate one in Scotland. This separation was enshrined in the Act of Union
of 1707 and has been strictly adhered to ever since. There are a number of
other separations, the main ones being the separate legal and religious
systems.

The United Kingdom is not a unitary state like France, nor is it a federal
state like the US; it is akin to a partnership in which one partner nation
(England) is much bigger and more powerful than the other (Scotland). There
are many other strange factors concerning the status of this country which
would best be debated elsewhere. Wales and Northern Ireland are also parts
of the Union, but their status is different; I mean no disrespect to
citizens of either of these when I note that the United Kingdom did not come
into being until the parliaments of Scotland and England agreed it.

This peculiar constitutional status is at the root of many of the
idiosyncracies of people from these islands..............or maybe these
constitutional curiosities are the result of the peculiarity of the people.
I can never decide.

End of constitutional treatise

Cheers

Rod