United Kingdom

Not to be confused with Great Britain, British Isles, England, or British Overseas Territories.

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The United Kingdom (full name: The Amazing Digital United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Perhaps a Neurpoing; also known as Kingdom of Really Quite Near) is a country made up of multiple kingdoms that were united. Most notably England and Scotland, but even more notably Northern Ireland and Wales. It is also where the Partially Found Artifact can be obtained.

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who??

I Went To The United Kingdom For A The Wiki Camp 2 Challenge! Here's My Review:

this is just like in that other kingdom

For the first two weeks of this challenge period, I went to the United Kingdom to gather information for this article.^[?!] Okay so I only went to London, but it's the biggest city, so I'm sure that generalizes to the whole country, right?

Some of these pictures are not mine, so I've highlighted the ones that I did take in gold.

General atmosphere

Typical United States sky (left) vs. typical United Kingdom sky (right)

It generally felt like what I was used to, but with some things changed so they were different. Generally felt cleaner and quieter than my city. Also slightly more vibrant colours.

Also I don't know where else to put this, but floors of buildings are 0-indexed instead of 1-indexed which I think is cool (0 is often replaced with G for "ground", but it still counts).

Transportation

In the United Kingdom, things move around. Here are some of the ways they do so there:

Trains

The first thing I noticed on the train out of the airport was how quiet the trains were! But then we went on more trains and it turned out that a lot of them are really loud. The loud ones were pretty loud, about the same as the ones in my city if not louder; at one point one train on the Northern line got up to 90 decibels inside and many times I felt the need to cover my ears. The quiet ones were very pleasant though; maybe the loud ones are just old and it just wouldn't be economical to replace them if they work fine, which I can understand.

Here's a list of all the train lines* I went on ranked by how loud they were. Ordering within tiers is also representative of relative loudness.

Tier	Line or railway company	Note
Too loud	Northern	Frequent loud track screeches and resonating tones.
	Jubilee	Every time they enter and leave the station they make these noises! Iconic but loud regardless (Harrow added this note)
	Victoria	More okay sections than the above lines, but there were still some bad loud sections.
OK	District	Decently quiet. I think it has lower average loudness than the piccadilly line, but there were some unpleasent low frequencies, so I'm ranking district above it.
	Piccadilly	No unpleasent noises in the high or low parts of the spectrum.
Quiet	Elizabeth	Very consistent, no irritating sounds.
Very quiet	South Western Railway	The newer trains were very quiet; almost no sound inside. The older model ones were a bit louder with occasional track screeching, but still very good.
	Southern Railway

Also, this is unrelated but I somehow avoided all warm coloured train lines??

The trains were also frequent; there was one coming every few minutes! It's been a while since I've used the trains in my city, but I remember having to wait around a while for trains. Okay, there were some long waits because not every train was our train; I also haven't been on a train in my city in a long time, so maybe the wait just felt longer because I used to be more impatient. The trains also seemed to be pretty well on time. The only delay I experienced was having to wait for like, 5 minutes on a train stopped in a station because the train ahead of us fell off their system. And we took a lot of trains, so this seems pretty good.

Another positive of the trains here was they didn't smell like the ones in my city!

I'm not super into trains (as in I don't know a lot about them), but I do love some good public transit, and I got a good user experience from the United Kingdom's trains. 8/10 because I'm sure there are better public transit systems out there, I just don't know where they are.

Busses

Some of them have two stories which is neat—doubled efficiency!

— my EWOW response

I've only been on a bus once in my city and it was an okay experience. My experiences with the busses in the United Kingdom was quite pleasant, similar to the trains. They were much quieter and cleaner than the ones in my city; it felt very similar to the trains in terms of general vibe, just slower and on a road instead of a track. The upper level sways with double the amplitude of the bottom level, but the frequency is fairly low so it's fine. Again a very positive experience; 8/10 for the same reasons as the trains.

Boats

River boats along the Thames are also integrated into the United Kingdom's transit system. I only went on one, but it went pretty smoothly. It was the same process as the trains, just with some additional steps for getting on. There was also a safety card we were told to read when we sat down. About as good as it could be I think. Not rating as a don't have anything to compare it to.

Cable cars

I don't think anyone actually uses this regularly.

For crossing the Thames with style.

Taxis

Don't know what I'm supposed to comment on here. They're just like taxis in any other city really. I heard that cab drivers here have to take training for 4 years and memorize every street, so I guess that's something.

Bicycles

I remember hearing that while London has a lot of cycle lanes, almost no one uses them. However, when I went there I did see a good number of cyclists using them. Maybe I misinterpreted where I heard that from, or maybe things have changed since then. Definitely more bicycles than I see in my city, but they could still see a lot more usage from the looks of them.

Walking

Slow, tiring. 1/10

Signage

This is what recommended character tags will look like in 2035!

Road signs are the standard ones; not the ones I'm used to though, because North America decided to do its own thing. The street signs are fun and stylized depending on where you are and this one's typeface is reminiscent of Albertus so that's cool I guess.

The number plates use a rather minimalistic design which means they lack the opportunity for fun designs, so they lose points for that, but then again, they also lack the opportunity for ugly designs and you can't go wrong with something this simple, so I give the number plates a 6.5/10.

Generally, I found the designs on signage to have a nice distinctive look; bright colours of different hues, very minimalistic, no nonsense and straight to the point.

Food

The United Kingdom has many unique foods. Here are some that I encountered in the country:

Turducken

A cross section of turducken.

In the United Kingdom, they encase a hard boiled chicken egg in duck meat and put it in turkey bread. I didn't eat this one, but my sister did and she said it was good but only at the beginning.

Pasty

Another form of breaded meat. Can't really go wrong with this, pretty solid.

Fish and Chips

Did you know that in the United Kingdom they call crisps "chips" and fries "biscuits"? The world truly is a strange place.

I don't like fish, so I just had the chips and they were fine. I personally prefer my fried potato slices thinner so there's a lower surface area to volume ratio, but these were okay.

Wildlife

Why so ginormous?

The pigeons here appear to be larger than the ones in the ones I've seen at the lower latitudes. Look at how big this one is! While on the topic of birds, apparently peregrine falcons (the fastest bird in the world, even faster than the cheetah) come from here! I didn't see any on my trip, but it's cool to know that they're here.

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  Rock dove (Columba livia)

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  Woodpigeon (Columba palumbus)

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  Starling (Sturnus vulgaris)

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  Magpie (Pica pica)

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  Jay (Garrulus glandarius)

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  Robin (Erithacus rubecula)

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  Chirpa (Nurpus chirpus)

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  Gull

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  Greylag goose (Anser anser)

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  Cackling goose (Branta hutchinsii)

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  Egyptian goose (Alopochen aegyptiaca)

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  Pochard (Aythya ferina)

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  Ross's goose (Anser rossii)

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  Red-breasted goose (Branta ruficollis)

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  Nene (Branta sandvicensis)
  Endemic to the Hawaiian Islands. I don't know how this one got here.

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  Mute swan (Cygnus olor)

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  Black swan (Cygnus atratus)
  Again, these are only native to Australia, I have no idea how this one got here.

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  Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)

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  DUCK! (Duck duck)

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  Tufted duck (Aythya fuligula)
  Male (left), Female (right)

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  Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus)

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  Coot (Fulica atra)

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  I'm pretty sure this is a bird

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  Great white pelican (Pelecanus onocrotalus)

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  Carrion crow (Corvus corone)

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  Jackdaw (Coloeus monedula)

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  Rook (Corvus frugilegus)

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  Raven (Corvus corax)

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  Could it be? The mythical golden bird 😲

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  Ring-necked parakeet (Psittacula krameri);
  not native, escaped pets.

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  Grey heron (Ardea cinerea)

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  Fox

Domesticatedlife

Jurta lives in the United Kingdom, and they're a cat (official).

Plant life

This is the plant.

There is a plant in the United Kingdom.

Animal life

This is the animal.

There is an animal in the United Kingdom.

Bodies of water

Thames

The Thames is green because London is yucky!

The Thames is the river.

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic ocean, as seen from Brighton.

The Atlantic Ocean is the body of water that surrounds the United Kingdom.

Notable landmarks

Elizabeth Tower

Not to be confused with Bi Ben.

A hologram perhaps?

So The Wiki Camp 2 put me under the impression that this thing died or something, but I checked and it's still there! What gives? The Wiki Camp 2 would never lie to me, would it?

Stonehenge

Stonehenge is so old it's still in black and white!

Thousands of years ago, a lot of people worked together to put big rocks in a circle and it probably meant something, but it was before people wrote things down, so we don't know what it was for. Some guesses include as a burial site (which it is confirmed to be), as a place of ritual gathering, as a sundial (as the tallest stone is aligned with the sunrise on the summer solstice), and perhaps a nurpoing.

????

We don't talk about that one...

Overall score

Overall, I'd say the United Kingdom is a pretty nice place. good/10

Additional photos gallery

This is a gallery for all other photos I'd like to share, but don't fit into any of the above sections.

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  A gay bus stop?

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  Chicago mentioned!

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  ???

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  I sure hope it does!

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  Look at all those chickens

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  🕊s of every colour!

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  I'm glad there's this sign here to show me the way to the #burger!

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  Wind farm on the water

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  The horizontal shadows of buildings at dawn

History

our whole universe was in a hot dense state

The United Kingdom is a bunch of Islands in Europe and they're 🎶Just Okay🎶

In the year Negative 1 Billion, The United Kingdom wasn't here. In the year negative 40,000, it was here, but it was cold. there was a land bridge with the rest of Europe but it got warmer and then sea levels rose and it became and island. The people there were doing stuff and having a good time and technology was becoming kinda cool. Then we kept getting invaded and had armies and then they were like "fuck this" and started invading everyone else. Then they lost it all sometime later because taking things over is bad actually. Who Coulda guessed? I'll add more detail later but this is okay for now I guess

As of right now the country is a hot mess with leaders less competent than... than... I can't think of someone less competent actually but they're still the least competent leaders!!

Language

English

Main article: English language

The predominant language spoken in the United Kingdom is English, with a wide variety of dialects spoken throughout the country. The most common dialects spoken in England are non-rhotic dialects which drop rhotic sounds in the middle or ends of words and changes the vowel's length to be long instead of short. That's right, some dialects of English have phonemic length! Not like that fake long/short distinction that people say English has with /iː/ and /uː/ when they're actually the closing diphthongs /ɪj/ and /ʊw/.

Did you know? The standard IPA symbols used for broad transcription of vowels in English are based off a very small dialect of English spoken in England called "Received Pronunciation" that is no longer spoken anywhere! As a result, many of the symbols do not very well reflect the way they're actually realized in currently spoken dialects.

Scottish English is not a non-rhotic dialect and uses the rolled r ([r]) as their rhotic sound, which is even used in consonant clusters in words like brown ([brawn]) and Carl ([karɫ]).

Scots

Main article: Scots language

In Scotland there is also a different non-English language spoken called Scots which is very similar to English, but not exactly the same. The similarity is somewhat like the similarity between Spanish and Portuguese where there's a good amount of mutual intelligibility while still being different languages.

Welsh

Main article: Welsh language

The United Kingdom is also home to some Celtic languages (a language family much older than Germanic languages like English). Welsh is spoken predominately in Wales.

Irish

Main article: Irish language

Irish is predominately spoken on the island of Ireland which includes Northern Ireland.

Politics

The UK if every constituency were the same size, also known as "Peak Performance"

The UK has a government. Well, actually it has several, though only the one in Westminster can have Unlimited Power (when not vetoed by the current monarch, which basically never happens in the 21st Century). The other Governments are considered "Devolved", which is a pop culture reference to when they added baby Pokémon in Gold and Silver.

Constituencies

There are 650 constituencies in the UK. Each one is represented by an MP who was elected at the last General Election.

Parties

The Government loves to have parties, especially ones that break rules that they themselves set up. They try to have a new party every month to keep people interested.

General Elections

General Elections happen when the current government gets dissolved. This usually happens every five years, and sadly does not involve actually dissolving the politicians themselves. However, They can be dissolved early if they feel like it.

Voting

People vote in Elections using a First Past the Post voting system. This means that whoever beats the local Postman in a race gets to vote in that general election.

TV Section

"Oi mate, you got a license for that telly?"

— Chief Constable Bob

TV in the United Kingdom is kinda wack. To watch live broadcast television you must have a TV license which is essentially a subscription to Netflix long before Netflix existed, with the additional requirement that you still have to pay them even if you only watch live TV Shows on a rival service, and they also send goons and threatening letters to your house (yes, this really happens) if you stop paying for the subscription. The main way to watch Broadcast television is through "Freeview" (which isn't exactly free since you still need to pay the license fee to use it.) Though more channels can be found on Cable and Satellite services where available.

More on the license fee

Despite the License fee money only going to the BBC you still need it to watch any TV channel despite literally every other channel being ad supported. They literally will send threatening letters and people to your address to get you to pay up, though you don't have to actually let them in, which kinda defeats the point. All in All, it's pretty strange but at least the shows are cool I guess

Teletext

It's like text, but for your television. basically you could have blocky, limited graphics sent to your via television signal that could display some super "cool" stuff. Cool, as in the latest headlines and stocks, before computers and internet were everywhere. The UK Pioneered this Technology and it was incredible. So incredible that they had to shut it down in 2012 when analogue TV stopped being a thing so you were forced to view news in a non blocky, unlimited colour format. Gross.

News Headlines were just so more consumable in this format.

The Airing of Gravity Falls on CITV

In 2013, the children's network Children's ITV (CITV) had the rights to air the beloved Disney hit original series Gravity Falls for two months in Summer of 2013.

This is commonly regarded as one of the strangest and boldest moves in UK television history as while it wouldn't have been the first time CITV had acquired Disney shows, as Phineas & Ferb, Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil and House of Mouse had all aired on the channel in the past. Season 1 of the series hadn't even fully finished on Disney XD UK yet or even over in the United States at the time. As a result, much of the show wasn't acquired as the channe only had the rights to the first nine episodes of the series, “Tourist Trapped” - “Time Traveler's Pig”.

This outraged many people who wished to support the show legally and couldn't afford to pay for the UK's channel packages containing Disney XD. Many fans to this day remain confused on why the later Season 1 eps or even any of season 2 weren't acquired by ITV a later date either, due to the show's booming popularity at the time from the cartoon community and general theorists.

It is speculated that either the ITV executives wanted to make more room for Scooby Doo, Horrid Henry, The Aquabats! Super Show and Mr. Bean: The Animated Series reruns, or that they simply didn't want any more story-driven cartoons plaguing their precious network. Pokèmon the Series: Black & White was already airing at the time on it's final season with Adventures in Unova with Pokèmon the Series: XY right around the corner, so another show with heavy continuity might've worried the higher ups as they didn't want kids having to keep up with more of these types of shows.

PWispa's Opinion: Peak show. I was very lucky to have the awesome channel package that let me watch Gravity Falls as intended on Disney XD, though I do feel bad for the Freeview viewers. The ITV absolutely made a big mistake.

Oh well, at least Pokèmon the Series: Black & White was sorta cool for them I guess. Not so much the final season as Adventures in Unova had that trash league and filler island arc to waste time until XY, but the first two were neat. Rival Destinies especially, that theme song is a bop and there sure were a lot of rivals. Bianca, Stephan, Georgia, Burgundy and diet Pau- I mean Trip.

Trivia

• the uk
• It's a monarchy 🤢
  • The current monarch is King Bob though and he seems cool.
• British cat videos are objectively funny
• Only British people understand how cool sitting on the benches during assembly time in Year 6 was at primary school.
• The United Kingdom is also in Minecraft!
• The United Kingdom has crosswalks.
• The United Kingdom used to be part of the European Union, but decided it didn't want to be one day and left.
• 

  It looks kinda like an onion
  The United Kingdom selfishly placed the international 0 point for longitude at their observatory. The prime meridian is the basis for timezones, and since the royal observatory is loceted in Grenwitch, the timezone around it is called Grenwitch Mean Time or GMT.
• The currency used in the UK is pounds. They're called that because each physical bill weight the corresponding number of pounds. For example, a 5 pound note weighs five pounds.
  • Just kidding! Could you imagine? The real reason is because it used to correspond to that weight of sterling silver (hence the full name "Pound Sterling") similar to the gold standard in the US.
• The country is smaller than you might think! Here is the country next to some others you might know!

Uzbekistan

Greenland

Oh, the Mercator projection may have interfered with this one...

Alaska

This one isn't a country, but it could be.

Luxembourg

No way like the unwanted

United Kingdom

That's right, the United Kingdom is smaller than itself! How is that possible? Idk, ask your local library.

See also

• England
  • Accrington
  • Barnsley
  • Barrow-in-Furness
  • Bath
  • Birkenhead
  • Birmingham
  • Blackburn
  • Blackpool
  • Bolton
  • Bradford
  • Brighton & Hove
  • Bristol
  • Burnley
  • Burton upon Trent
  • Cambridge
  • Canterbury
  • Carlisle
  • Chelmsford
  • Cheltenham
  • Chester
  • Colchester
  • Coventry
  • Crawley
  • Crewe
  • Derby
  • Doncaster
  • Durham
  • Ely
  • Exeter
  • Fleetwood
  • Gillingham
  • Gloucester
  • Grimsby
  • Harrogate
  • Hartlepool
  • Hereford
  • High Wycombe
  • Huddersfield
  • Ipswich
  • Kingston upon Hull
  • Lancaster
  • Leeds
  • Leicester
  • Lichfield
  • Lincoln
  • Liverpool
  • London ⭐ Most populous!
  • Luton
  • Manchester
  • Mansfield
  • Middlesborough
  • Milton Keynes
  • Morecambe
  • Nailsworth
  • Newcastle upon Tyne
  • Northampton
  • Norwich
  • Nottingham
  • Oxford
  • Peterborough
  • Plymouth
  • Portsmouth
  • Preston
  • Reading
  • Ripon
  • Rochdale
  • Rotherham
  • Salford
  • Salisbury
  • Sheffield
  • Shrewsbury
  • Southampton
  • Southend-on-Sea
  • St Albans
  • Stevenage
  • Stockport
  • Stoke-on-Trent
  • Sunderland
  • Swindon
  • Truro
  • Wakefield
  • Walsall
  • Watford
  • Wells
  • West Bromwich
  • Wigan
  • Winchester
  • Wolverhampton
  • Worcester
  • York
• Berwick-upon-Tweed
• Scotland
  • Glasgow
  • Edinburgh
  • Aberdeen
  • Dundee
  • Dunfermline
  • Inverness
  • Perth
  • Stirling
• Wales
  • Bangor
  • Cardiff
  • Llanfairpwllgwyngyll
  • Newport
  • St Asaph
  • St Davids
  • Swansea
  • Wrexham
• Northern Ireland
  • Armagh
  • Bangor
  • Belfast
  • Derry
  • Lisburn
  • Newry
• Isle of Man
  • Douglas
• Guernsey
  • St. Peter Port
• Jersey
  • St Helier

Chunnel

The English channel is an area of water between England and France, and at one part it's pretty narrow so one time they decided to dig a tunnel through the channel and call it The Chunnel because the name would sound cool. Personally, I would have called it something whimsical like The Amazing Digital Channel Tunnel, but whatever.

It has trains in it. However, due to the UK's inconsistent size, sometimes the trains come out the other side mini!

ReFrances

This article is CONDEMNED by The Mario Party.