1.
Tyne and Wear
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Tyne and Wear is a metropolitan county in the North East region of England around the mouths of the rivers Tyne and Wear. It came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972 and it consists of the five metropolitan boroughs of South Tyneside, North Tyneside, City of Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead and City of Sunderland. It is bounded on the east by the North Sea, and has borders with Northumberland to the north, Tyne and Wear County Council was abolished in 1986, and so its districts are now unitary authorities. However, the county continues to exist in law and as a geographic frame of reference. The Local Government Act 1888 constituted Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, between the county boroughs, various other settlements also formed part of the administrative counties of Durham and of Northumberland. The need to reform local government on Tyneside was recognised by the government as early as 1935, the second-tier units would form by amalgamating the various existing boroughs and districts. The county boroughs in the area would lose their status, within this area, a single municipality would be formed covering the four county boroughs of Newcastle, Gateshead, Tynemouth, South Shields and other urban districts and boroughs. A minority report proposed amalgamation of Newcastle, Gateshead, Wallsend, Jarrow, Felling, Gosforth, the 1937 proposals never came into operation, local authorities could not agree on a scheme and the legislation of the time did not allow central government to compel one. Tyneside was a Special Review Area under the Local Government Act 1958, the Local Government Commission for England came back with a recommendation to create a new county of Tyneside based on the review area, divided into four separate boroughs. The Redcliffe-Maud Report proposed a Tyneside unitary authority, again excluding Sunderland, the Bill as presented in November 1971 pruned back the southern edge of the area, and gave it the name Tyneside. The name Tyneside proved controversial on Wearside, and a government amendment changed the name to Tyne, although the metropolitan county council was abolished in 1986, several joint bodies exist to run certain services on a county-wide basis. Most notable is the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Authority, which co-ordinates transport policy, also through Nexus, the authority subsidises socially necessary transport services and operates a concessionary fares scheme for the elderly and disabled. The Passenger Transport Authority is an authority, raising funds by imposing a levy on the Council Tax of the five constituent authorities of Tyne. In April 2014 Nexus became a body of the new North East Combined Authority. These joint bodies are administered by representatives of all five of the constituent councils, in addition the Northumbria Police force, which covers the whole of Northumberland and Tyne and Wear, is one of several joint forces in England spanning two or more counties. The force was created in 1974, and so is not a by-product of the abolition of the county council, Tyne and Wear either has or closely borders two official Met Office stations, neither located in one of the major urban centres. The locations for those are in marine Tynemouth where Tyne meets the North Sea east of Newcastle, there are some clear differences between the stations temperature and precipitation patterns even though both have a cool-summer and mild-winter oceanic climate. Tyne and Wear is divided into 13 Parliamentary constituencies, at the level of local government, three of the regions five unitary authorities were controlled by Labour in 2005, the exceptions being Newcastle City Council and North Tyneside Council
2.
United Kingdom Census 2011
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A census of the population of the United Kingdom is taken every ten years. The 2011 census was held in all countries of the UK on 27 March 2011 and it was the first UK census which could be completed online via the Internet. The Office for National Statistics is the office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department formed in 2008. ONS designs, manages and runs the census in England and Wales, the first results from the 2011 census, age and sex, and occupied households estimates for England and Wales and Northern Ireland, were released on 16 July 2012. The first results for Scotland, and the first UK-wide results, were published on 17 December 2012, more detailed and specialised data were published from 2013. The Registrar General John Rickman conducted the first census of Great Britains population, from 1911 onwards rapid social change, scientific breakthroughs, and major world events affected the structure of the population. The 1971 census was run by the newly created Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, in 1996 the Office for National Statistics was formed by merging the Central Statistical Office, OPCS and the statistics division of the Department of Employment, the first census it ran was in 2001. In 2008 the UK Statistics Authority was established as an independent body, a population census is a key instrument for assessing the needs of local communities. When related to data sources such as housing or agricultural censuses, or sample surveys. Most countries of the world take censuses, the United Nations recommends that countries take a census at least once every ten years, other organisations that use census data include healthcare organisations, community groups, researchers and businesses. The 2011 census for England and Wales included around 25 million households, people could complete and submit their questionnaire online, or fill it in on paper and post it back in a pre-addressed envelope. Guidance was provided online and through the census helpline, completed questionnaires were electronically tracked and field staff followed up with households that did not return a questionnaire. In these cases field staff delivered and collected questionnaires and, where needed, provided advice or assistance in completing the questionnaire, there was a legal requirement to complete the 2011 census questionnaire, under the terms of the Census Act 1920. As at 27 March 2011 everyone who had lived or intended to live in the country for three months or more was required to complete a questionnaire, failure to return a completed questionnaire could lead to a fine and criminal record. The contract is valued at £150 million, approximately one third of the total £482 million census budget, concerns were raised during contract negotiations that the US PATRIOT Act could be used to force Lockheed Martin to reveal census data to US authorities. The Cabinet Office state that Lockheed Martin will develop the systems used to process census data, neither Lockheed Martin UK nor any Lockheed Martin employee will have access to personal Census data. The Office for National Statistics stated that no census information will ever leave the UK or be seen by any American-owned company. Several groups called for a boycott of the census over the involvement of Lockheed Martin, including the Stop the War Coalition, and the Christian thinktank Ekklesia
3.
Ordnance Survey National Grid
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The Ordnance Survey National Grid reference system is a system of geographic grid references used in Great Britain, different from using Latitude and Longitude. It is often called British National Grid, the Ordnance Survey devised the national grid reference system, and it is heavily used in their survey data, and in maps based on those surveys. Grid references are commonly quoted in other publications and data sources. The Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system is used to provide references for worldwide locations. European-wide agencies also use UTM when mapping locations, or may use the Military Grid Reference System system, the grid is based on the OSGB36 datum, and was introduced after the retriangulation of 1936–1962. It replaced the previously used Cassini Grid which, up to the end of World War Two, had issued only to the military. The Airy ellipsoid is a regional best fit for Britain, more modern mapping tends to use the GRS80 ellipsoid used by the GPS, the British maps adopt a Transverse Mercator projection with an origin at 49° N, 2° W. Over the Airy ellipsoid a straight grid, the National Grid, is placed with a new false origin. This false origin is located south-west of the Isles of Scilly, the distortion created between the OS grid and the projection is countered by a scale factor in the longitude to create two lines of longitude with zero distortion rather than one. Grid north and true north are aligned on the 400 km easting of the grid which is 2° W. 2° 0′ 5″ W. OSGB36 was also used by Admiralty nautical charts until 2000 after which WGS84 has been used, a geodetic transformation between OSGB36 and other terrestrial reference systems can become quite tedious if attempted manually. The most common transformation is called the Helmert datum transformation, which results in a typical 7 m error from true, the definitive transformation from ETRS89 that is published by the OSGB is called the National Grid Transformation OSTN02. This models the detailed distortions in the 1936–1962 retriangulation, and achieves backwards compatibility in grid coordinates to sub-metre accuracy, the difference between the coordinates on different datums varies from place to place. The longitude and latitude positions on OSGB36 are the same as for WGS84 at a point in the Atlantic Ocean well to the west of Great Britain. In Cornwall, the WGS84 longitude lines are about 70 metres east of their OSGB36 equivalents, the smallest datum shift is on the west coast of Scotland and the greatest in Kent. But Great Britain has not shrunk by 100+ metres, a point near Lands End now computes to be 27.6 metres closer to a point near Duncansby Head than it did under OSGB36. For the first letter, the grid is divided into squares of size 500 km by 500 km, there are four of these which contain significant land area within Great Britain, S, T, N and H. The O square contains an area of North Yorkshire, almost all of which lies below mean high tide
4.
Districts of England
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The districts of England are a level of subnational division of England used for the purposes of local government. As the structure of government in England is not uniform. Some districts are styled as boroughs, cities, or royal boroughs, these are purely honorific titles, prior to the establishment of districts in the 1890s, the basic unit of local government in England was the parish overseen by the parish church vestry committee. Vestries dealt with the administraction of both parochial and secular governmental matters, parishes were the successors of the manorial system and historically had been grouped into hundreds. Hundreds once exercised some supervising administrative function, however, these powers ebbed away as more and more civic and judicial powers were centred on county towns. From 1834 these parishes were grouped into Poor Law Unions, creating areas for administration of the Poor Law and these areas were later used for census registration and as the basis for sanitary provision. In 1894, based on these earlier subdivisions, the Local Government Act 1894 created urban districts and rural districts as sub-divisions of administrative counties, another reform in 1900 created 28 metropolitan boroughs as sub-divisions of the County of London. Meanwhile, from this date parish-level local government administration was transferred to civil parishes, the setting-down of the current structure of districts in England began in 1965, when Greater London and its 32 London boroughs were created. They are the oldest type of still in use. In 1974, metropolitan counties and non-metropolitan counties were created across the rest of England and were split into metropolitan districts, in London power is now shared again, albeit on a different basis, with the Greater London Authority. During the 1990s a further kind of district was created, the unitary authority, metropolitan boroughs are a subdivision of a metropolitan county. These are similar to unitary authorities, as the county councils were abolished in 1986. Most of the powers of the county councils were devolved to the districts but some services are run by joint boards, the districts typically have populations of 174,000 to 1.1 million. Non-metropolitan districts are second-tier authorities, which share power with county councils and they are subdivisions of shire counties and the most common type of district. These districts typically have populations of 25,000 to 200,000, the number of non-metropolitan districts has varied over time. Initially there were 296, after the creation of unitary authorities in the 1990s and late 2000s and these are single-tier districts which are responsible for running all local services in their areas, combining both county and district functions. They were created in the out of non-metropolitan districts, and often cover large towns. In addition, some of the smaller such as Rutland, Herefordshire
5.
Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead
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The Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead is a metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, in North East England. The borough forms the south west part of the county and it is named after its largest town, Gateshead, but also spans the towns of Rowlands Gill, Whickham, Blaydon and Ryton, suburban areas include Felling, Pelaw, Dunston and Low Fell. The district has some 201,000 inhabitants and lies between the county boundaries of Northumberland and County Durham. It along with South Tyneside was the division between Northumberland and County Durham, in 1986 the County Council of Tyne and Wear was abolished, and so Gateshead Council effectively became a unitary authority. There were originally two civil parishes in Gateshead - Birtley and Lamesley, both from the Chester-le-Street RD, Birtley Town Council and parish were abolished on 1 April 2006. In national government the borough contains two parliamentary constituencies, Gateshead and Blaydon, the Gateshead constituency covers the centre and east of the borough. The MP, elected in 2010, is Ian Mearns, the Blaydon constituency covers the west of the borough and Birtley to the south. It is represented by Dave Anderson, jarrow takes in the very eastern tip of the borough, including Pelaw. In total there are twenty two wards in the borough, each ward elects three councillors. In total there are 54 Labour councillors and 12 Lib Dem councillors, Gateshead has hosted two major political conferences. The first of these was Labours spring conference, ahead of the 2005 general election, the Conservatives also held a conference at the Sage Gateshead in March 2008. The Conservatives do not have any councillors in Gateshead and at the time only had one MP in the whole of the north east region and that conference was seen as an attempt to connect to voters in the area. Gateshead has a number of schools across the borough at both primary and secondary level, results are well above average, with a number of outstanding schools. Indeed, Gateshead has amongst the best primary and secondary schools in the country overall, a range of schools are present in Gateshead, including Jewish, Roman Catholic, Church of England, Methodist and non-religious state schools. There is one independent school in the borough, Chase school in Whickham, further independent schools can be found in Newcastle, Sunderland and Tynedale. Gateshead town itself has an education college, Gateshead College. Gateshead has a variety of landscapes, urban and industrial areas include the town itself, Felling and Blaydon, with more semi-rural and rural locations in the west including Ryton and Rowlands Gill. Overall though, it is a green area with over half of the borough being green belt or countryside
6.
Regions of England
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The regions are the highest tier of sub-national division in England. Between 1994 and 2011, nine regions had officially devolved functions within Government, while they no longer fulfil this role, they continue to be used for statistical and some administrative purposes. They define areas for the purposes of elections to the European Parliament, Eurostat also uses them to demarcate first level Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics regions within the European Union. The regions generally follow the boundaries of the former standard regions, the London region has a directly elected Mayor and Assembly. Six regions have local authority leaders boards to assist with correlating the headline policies of local authorities, the remaining two regions no longer have any administrative functions, having abolished their regional local authority leaders boards. In 1998, regional chambers were established in the eight regions outside of London, the regions also had an associated Government Office with some responsibility for coordinating policy, and, from 2007, a part-time regional minister within the Government. House of Commons regional Select Committees were established in 2009, Regional ministers were not reappointed by the incoming Coalition Government, and the Government Offices were abolished in 2011. Regional development agencies were public bodies established in all nine regions in 1998 to promote economic development and they had certain delegated functions, including administering European Union regional development funds, and received funding the central government as well. After about 500 AD, England comprised seven Anglo-Saxon territories – Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, the boundaries of some of these, which later unified as the Kingdom of England, roughly coincide with those of modern regions. During Oliver Cromwells Protectorate in the 1650s, the rule of the Major-Generals created 10 regions in England, proposals for administrative regions within England were mooted by the British government prior to the First World War. In 1912 the Third Home Rule Bill was passing through parliament, the Bill was expected to introduce a devolved parliament for Ireland, and as a consequence calls were made for similar structures to be introduced in Great Britain or Home Rule All Round. On 12 September the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, within England, he suggested that London, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the Midlands would make natural regions. While the creation of regional parliaments never became official policy, it was for a widely anticipated. In 1946 nine standard regions were set up, in central government bodies, statutory undertakings. However, these had declined in importance by the late 1950s, creation of some form of provinces or regions for England was an intermittent theme of post-Second World War British governments. The Redcliffe-Maud Report proposed the creation of eight provinces in England, one-fifth of the advisory councils would be nominees from central government. The boundaries suggested were the eight now existing for economic planning purposes, a minority report by Lord Crowther-Hunt and Alan T. Peacock suggested instead seven regional assemblies and governments within Great Britain, some elements of regional development and economic planning began to be established in England from the mid-1960s onwards
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North East England
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North East England is one of the nine regions of England that are classified at the first level of NUTS for statistical purposes. It covers Northumberland, County Durham, Tyne and Wear, the region is home to three large conurbations, Teesside, Wearside, and Tyneside, the latter of which is the largest of the three and the eighth most populous conurbation in the United Kingdom. The city of Durham is the county town of County Durham, other large settlements in the region include Darlington, Gateshead, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, South Shields, Stockton-on-Tees and Washington. The region is hilly and sparsely populated in the North and West. The highest point in the region is The Cheviot, in the Cheviot Hills, Peters Church in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland and St. Pauls in Jarrow also hold significant historical value and have a joint bid to become a World Heritage Site. The area has a strong religious past, as can be seen in such as the Lindisfarne Gospels. The work of the 7th-century Cuthbert, Bede and Hilda of Whitby being hugely influential in the church and are still venerated today. Bede is regarded as the greatest Anglo-Saxon scholar and his best known work is The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. This body of work is thought to have been done in honour of Cuthbert, British history changed forever that day and three hundred years of Viking raids, battles and settlement were to persist until William the Conqueror defeated King Harold at Hastings in 1066. The last independent Northumbrian king from 947–8 was Eric Bloodaxe who died in battle at the Battle of Stainmore, Westmorland, after Eric Bloodaxes death, all England was ruled by Eadred the grandson of Alfred the Great and so began the machinery of national government. Today the Viking legacy can still be found in the language and place names of Northeast England, the name Newcastle comes from the new castle built shortly after their conquest in 1080 by Robert Curthose, William the Conquerors eldest son. North East England has a climate with narrower temperature ranges than further south in England. Met Office operates several stations in the region. The stations nearest significant urban areas are Durham, Stockton-on-Tees and Tynemouth, the warmest summers in the region are found in Stockton-on-Tees and the Middlesbrough area with a 1981-2010 July average high of 20.4 °C. The summers on the coastlines are clearly cooler than in the southern and central inland areas. Moving further inland, frosts during winter gets more common due to the higher elevation and these companies are members of the Northeast of England Process Industry Cluster. The early chemical industry in this region was however primarily Tyneside based and associated with the manufacture of soap and glass. The most important chemical activity in the 18th and 19th centuries was the manufacture of alkali to make soap, what came out of the industrial revolution was a period when the Northeast of Englands economy was dominated by iron and steel, coal mining and shipbuilding
8.
Countries of the United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom comprises four countries, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Within the United Kingdom, a sovereign state, Northern Ireland, Scotland. England, comprising the majority of the population and area of the United Kingdom, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are not themselves listed in the International Organization for Standardization list of countries. However the ISO list of the subdivisions of the UK, compiled by British Standards, Northern Ireland, in contrast, is described as a province in the same lists. Each has separate governing bodies for sports and compete separately in many international sporting competitions. Northern Ireland also forms joint All-Island sporting bodies with the Republic of Ireland for most sports, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are dependencies of the Crown and are not part of the UK. Similarly, the British overseas territories, remnants of the British Empire, are not part of the UK, southern Ireland left the United Kingdom under the Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922. * Figures for GVA do not include oil and gas revenues generated beyond the UKs territorial waters, various terms have been used to describe England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Wales was described as the country, principality, and dominion of Wales, outside Wales, England was not given a specific name or term. The Laws in Wales Acts have subsequently been repealed, the Acts of Union 1707 refer to both England and Scotland as a part of a united kingdom of Great Britain The Acts of Union 1800 use part in the same way to refer to England and Scotland. The Northern Ireland Act 1998, which repealed the Government of Ireland Act 1920, the Interpretation Act 1978 provides statutory definitions of the terms England, Wales and the United Kingdom, but neither that Act nor any other current statute defines Scotland or Northern Ireland. Use of the first three terms in other legislation is interpreted following the definitions in the 1978 Act and this definition applies from 1 April 1974. United Kingdom means Great Britain and Northern Ireland and this definition applies from 12 April 1927. In 1996 these 8 new counties were redistributed into the current 22 unitary authorities, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are regions in their own right while England has been divided into nine regions. The official term rest of the UK is used in Scotland, for example in export statistics and this term is also used in the context of potential Scottish independence to mean the UK without Scotland. The alternative term Home Nations is sometimes used in sporting contexts, the second, or civic group, contained the items about feeling British, respecting laws and institutions, speaking English, and having British citizenship. Contrariwise, in Scotland and Wales there was a much stronger identification with each country than with Britain, studies and surveys have reported that the majority of the Scots and Welsh see themselves as both Scottish/Welsh and British though with some differences in emphasis. The propensity for nationalistic feeling varies greatly across the UK, and can rise and it reported that 37% of people identified as British, whilst 29% identified as Irish and 24% identified as Northern Irish
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England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
