GREAT BRITAIN
The full name of the country is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The United Kingdom is situated on the British Isles. The British Isles consist of two large islands, Great Britain and Ireland and a great number of small islands. Their total area is over 244 OOO sq.km.
The British Isles are separated from the European continent by the North Sea and English Channel. The western coast of Great Britain is washed by the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish Sea.
The island of Great Britain consists of three main parts: England (the southern and middle pat of the island), Wales (a mountainous peninsula in the West) and Scotland(the northern part of the island).
There are no high mountains in Great Britain, hi the north the Cheviots separate England from Scotland, the Pennines stretch down North England along its middle, the Canibrian mountains occupy the greater part of Wales and the Highlands of Scotland are the tallest of the British mountains. There is very little flat country except in the region known as East Anglia.
Most of the rivers flow into the North Sea. The Thames is the deepest and the longest of the British rivers. Some of the British greatest ports are situated in the estuaries of the Thames, Mersey, Trent, Tyne, Clyde and Bristol Avon.
Great Britain is not very rich in mineral resources, it has some deposits of coal and iron ore and vast deposits of oil and gas that were discovered in the North Sea.
The warm currents of the Atlantic Ocean influence the climate of Great Britain. Winters are not severely cold and summers are rarely hot.
The population of the United Kingdom is over 58 million people. The main nationalities are: English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish. In Great Britain there are a lot of immigrants from former British Asian and African colonies.
Great Britain is a highly industrialized country. New industries have been developed in the last three decades. The main industrial centers are London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow and Bristol.
The capital of the country is London. The United Kingdom is a parliamentary monarchy.
Vocabulary:
isle /island - îñòð³â
to separate- ðîçä³ëÿòè
the English Channel-Ëà-Ìàíø
to be washed by-îìèâàòèñü
to border on-ìåæóâàòè ç ...
to consist îf - ñêëàäàòèñü ç...
Mountainous peninsula-ã³ðñüêèé ï³âîñòð³â
iron ore-çàë³çíà ðóäà
to discover-âèÿâëÿòè
current-òå÷³ÿ
severely – íàäçâè÷àéíî
decade- äåñÿòèëåòèå
åstuary-ãèðëî ð³êè
The Political System Of England
The organs of government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain are:
1) the legislature, which consists of the Queen in Parliament, and is the supreme authority of the realm; 2) the executive, which consist of:
a) the Cabinet and other ministers of the Crown, who are responsible for initiating and directing national policy;
b) Government departments, most of them under the control of ministers, and all staffed by civil servants, who are responsible for administration at the national level;
c) local authorities, who administer and manage many services at the local level;
d) statutory boards, which are responsible for the operation of particular nationalized industries or public services;
e) “shadow cabinet” which is the directing and leading body of the oppositional group.
The most interesting and important aspect of the British political system, its peculiarity, lies in its division of powers.
It is common knowledge that Great Britain, having the oldest Parliament in the world, has one of the most stable and effective political regimes of our time. Its stability is mostly the result of the division of powers, which, by the way, is not the exception from the general rule.
The main idea of this variant lies in the following: the principle of the demarcation (division) is combined with a principle of interaction. And its principle is fixed in the British system of power not as something abstract, but institutionally. I mean a special center, a linking section, which brings together the legislating and executing powers, and at the same time is the center of making important political decisions. Surely, it is the Cabinet and its leader which are at the head of the whole executive system of the state.
The main 4 principles of division of powers are:
1) sovereignty of the Parliament, as the highest body of political management;
2) the leading role of the Cabinet and the government in the legislative process;
3) a strict Parliamentary and committee control of the legislative branch;
4) a special role given to the State Machinery, which not only executes the instructions, but also influences a political process.
So, as we see, the legislators provide the execution of the laws and resolutions of the Parliament by controlling the State machinery, and in its turn, the state machinery participates in the legislative process, providing its preparatory stage (by doing a spade-work).
British Parliament. The Comparison Of Two Political Systems:
Ukrainian And British Ones.
1. The first distinction may seem to be the form of rule:
Ukraine is a republic. And Britain is considered to be a parliamentary monarchy.
The Queen is the personification of the U.K. By law, she is the head of the executive branch, an integral part of the legislature, the head of the judiciary, the commander-in-chief of all armed forces of the Crown and the temporal head of the established Church of England. But in practice, as a result of a long evolutionary process, these powers have changed. Today, the queen acts only on the advice of her Ministers which she cannot constitutionally ignore. In fact she reigns but she doesn’t rule.
However, the monarchy has a good deal more power than is commonly supposed. There remain certain discretionary powers in the hands of the monarch, known as the Royal Prerogative.
2. The Ukrainian and the British Parliaments have at least four similar functions:
a) to work out legislation, including the creation of a budget;
b) to control the government;
c) to represent and respond to public opinion;
d) to influence actively the people by acquainting them openly with the facts, concerning the accepted decisions.
The difference lies in the electoral systems and the rules for recalling the government.
But there is also one more remarkable peculiarity of the Ukrainian Parliament: the political history of Ukraine does not know any potent legislative bodies (we can hardly take into account the experience of the Soviet Congress ).
3. Both Ukraine and Britain are countries with the representative democracy (which means that the people delegate power to the bodies, which act on their behalf).
The difference is, that Britain has a parliamentary form of government, and Ukraine, in its turn, has a so-called “semi-presidential” form. The main distinctions of this forms are shown in the table, given below.
| The British parliamentary form | The Ukrainian “semi-pesidential” form | |||
| 1. The election solves two questions: On one hand, the forming of the Parliament. And on the other hand, the creation of the Government and different coalitions. | 1. The election solves just one question: Either the problem of forming the Parliament or the creation of the Government. | |||
| 2. The Government is formed only by the Parliament. | 2. The Government is formed byboth the President and the Parliament. | |||
| 3. The executive Power is separated. | 3. The executive Power is not separated. | |||
4. Unlike Britain, Ukraine has different bodies of legislative and executive power, and one body doesn’t interfere with the activity of the other.
5. The negative features of the British system may seem to be too much power in the hands of Prime Minister and rather uncontrolled local government.