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Glasgow

Culture

Glaswegian, otherwise known as The Glasgow Patter is a local, anglicised variety of Scots.

Glaswegian is a dialect, more than an alternative pronunciation; words also change their meaning as all over in Scotland, e.g. "away" can mean "leaving" as in A'm away, an instruction to stop being a nuisance as in away wi ye, or "drunk" or "demented" as in he's away wi it. Pieces refers to "sandwiches". Ginger is a term for the Glasgow based carbonated soft drink "Irn Bru" or any other carbonated soft drink (A bottle o ginger IPA: [? 'bo?l ? 'dndr]). Then there are words whose meaning has no obvious relationship to that in standard English: coupon means "face", via "to punch a ticket coupon". A headbutt is known in many parts of Britain as a "Glasgow kiss".

A speaker of Glaswegian might refer to those originating from the Scottish Highlands and the Western Isles as teuchters, while they would reciprocate by referring to Glaswegians as keelies and those from the East of Scotland refer to Glaswegians as Weegies (or Weedgies).

The long-running TV drama Taggart and the comedies; Empty, Chewin' the Fat, Rab C. Nesbitt and Still Game capture the essence of the Glaswegian patois, while Craig Ferguson and Billy Connolly have made Glaswegian humour known to the rest of the world.

Glasgow is also a major education centre with four universities within 10 miles (16 km) of the city centre:

There are also teacher training colleges, teaching hospitals such as the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow School of Art, and ten other further education colleges. The University of Glasgow is a member of the Russell Group of elite British universities and is a founding member of the organisation Universitas 21, an international grouping of universities dedicated to setting world-wide standards for higher education.

Glasgow is home to a student population in excess of 168,000, the largest in Scotland and second largest in the United Kingdom, with the majority of those, living away from home, being found in Shawlands, Dennistoun and the West End of the city.

Scotland's sole Gaelic-only medium secondary school is located in Glasgow. This combined with a strong Gaelic medium primary school presence enables parents to educate their children entirely through the medium of Gaelic.

Sport

The world's first international football match was held in 1872 at the West of Scotland Cricket Club's Hamilton Crescent ground in the Partick area of the city. The match, between Scotland and England finished 0-0.

Glasgow is one of only three cities (along with Liverpool in 1985 and Madrid in 1986) to have had two football teams in European finals in the same season: in 1967 Celtic F.C. competed in the European Cup final defeating Inter Milan to become the first Scottish and British football club to win the trophy, with Rangers F.C. competing unsuccessfully in the now defunct Cup Winners' Cup final.

The city is home to Scotland's only two UEFA 5 star rated stadia which allows them to host UEFA Champions League or UEFA Cup finals Ibrox Stadium (51,082 seats) and Hampden Park (52,670 seats), meaning that they are eligible to host the final of the UEFA Champions' League. Hampden Park has hosted the final on three occasions, most recently in 2002 and hosted the UEFA Cup Final in 2007.

Hampden Park, which is Scotland's national football stadium, holds the European record for attendance at a football match: 149,547 saw Scotland beat England 3-1 in 1937, in the days before British stadia became all-seated. Celtic Park (60,832 seats) is also located in the east end of Glasgow.

Glasgow has three professional football clubs: Celtic F.C. and Rangers F.C., together known by some as the Old Firm, and Partick Thistle F.C.. A fourth club, Queen's Park F.C., is an amateur club that plays in the Scottish professional league system. Prior to this, Glasgow had five other professional clubs: Clyde FC, which moved to Cumbernauld, plus Third Lanark A.C., Cambuslang F.C, Cowlairs F.C. and Clydesdale F.C., who all went bankrupt. There are a number of Scottish Junior Football Association clubs within the city as well, such as Pollok F.C., Maryhill F.C., Ashfield F.C. and Petershill F.C., as well as countless numbers of amateur teams.

The history of football in the city, as well as the status of the Old Firm, attracts many visitors to football matches in the city throughout the season. The Scottish Football Association, the national governing body, and the Scottish Football Museum are based in Glasgow, as are the Scottish Football League, Scottish Premier League, Scottish Junior Football Association and Scottish Amateur Football Association. The Glasgow Cup was a once popular tournament, were all professional teams from the city would compete, however, now only Junior teams do.

Glasgow has a professional rugby union club, the Glasgow Warriors, which plays in the Magners League alongside teams from Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

In the Scottish League, Glasgow Hawks was formed in 1997 by the merger of two of Glasgow's oldest clubs: Glasgow Academicals and Glasgow High Kelvinside (GHK). Despite the merger, the second division teams of Glasgow Academicals and Glasgow High Kelvinside re-entered the Scottish rugby league in 1998. Cartha Queens Park, on the south side of Glasgow, have risen through the lower leagues to play in the second division despite not having a former pupils system or links to a private school.

Major international sporting arenas include the Kelvin Hall and Scotstoun Sports Centre. In 2003 the National Academy for Badminton was completed in Scotstoun. In 2003, Glasgow was also given the title of European Capital of Sport.

The Braehead Arena is home to leading professional basketball team, the Scottish Rocks, who compete in the British Basketball League. The arena was also host to the 2000 Ford World Curling Championships.

Glasgow is also host to many cricket clubs including Clydesdale Cricket Club who have been title winners for the Scottish Cup many times. This club also hosted the friendly One Day International match for India and Pakistan in 2007, but due to bad weather was called off.

Smaller sporting facilities include an abundance of outdoor playing fields, as well as golf clubs such as Hagg's Castle and artificial ski slopes. Between 1998 and 2004, the Scottish Claymores American football team played some or all of their home games each season at Hampden Park and the venue also hosted World Bowl XI.

Motorcycle speedway racing was first introduced to Glasgow in 1928 and is currently staged at Saracen Park in the North of the city.

Befitting its strong Highland connections as the City of the Gael Baile Mòr nan Gàidheal, Glasgow is also one of five places in Scotland which hosts the final of the Scottish Cup of Shinty, better known as the Camanachd Cup. This is usually held at Old Anniesland. Once home to numerous Shinty clubs, there is now only one senior club in Glasgow, Glasgow Mid-Argyll, as well as two university sides from Strathclyde University and Glasgow University.

On 9 November 2007, Glasgow was selected as the host city of the 2014 Commonwealth Games, beating out competition from the Nigerian capital Abuja and Canadian city Halifax. It will be based around a number of existing and newly constructed sporting venues across the city, including a refurbished Hampden Park, Kelvingrove Park, the Kelvin Hall, and the planned Scottish National Arena at the SECC. Plans have already been drawn up for a Commonwealth Games campus in the East End of the city, which will include a new indoor arena, velodrome and accommodation facilities in Dalmarnock and Parkhead, with an upgraded Aquatics Centre at nearby Tollcross Park. It is the third time the Games have been held in Scotland.

Transport

Glasgow has a large urban transport system, mostly managed by the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT).

The city has many bus services; since bus deregulation almost all are provided by private operators though SPT part-funds some services.

Glasgow has the most extensive urban rail network in the UK outside of London with rail services travelling to a large part of the West of Scotland. All trains running within Scotland, including the local Glasgow trains, are operated by First ScotRail, who own the franchise as determined by the Scottish Executive. Central Station and Queen Street Station are the two main railway terminals. Glasgow Central is the terminus of the 401 mile long West Coast Main Line from London Euston. All services to and from England use this station. Glasgow Central is also the terminus for suburban services on the south side of Glasgow, Ayrshire and Inverclyde, as well as being served by the cross city link from Dalmuir to Motherwell. Most other services within Scotland - the main line to Edinburgh, plus services to Aberdeen, Dundee, Inverness and the Western Highlands - operate from Queen Street station.

The city's suburban network is currently divided by the River Clyde, and an initiative has been proposed to link them; it is currently awaiting funding from the Scottish Executive. The city is linked to Edinburgh by three direct railway links; a further one, the Airdrie-Bathgate Rail Link, is proposed for completion in 2010. In addition to the suburban rail network, SPT operates the Glasgow Subway. The Subway is the United Kingdom's only completely underground metro system, and is generally recognised as the world's third underground railway after London and Budapest. Both rail and subway stations have a number of park and ride facilities.

As part of the wider regeneration along the banks of the River Clyde, a Pre-Tram System, using dedicated bus lanes, called Clyde Fastlink is currently planned.

Ferries used to link opposite sides of the Clyde in Glasgow but they have been rendered near-obsolete, by bridges and tunnels including the Erskine Bridge, Kingston Bridge, and the Clyde Tunnel. The only remaining crossings are the Renfrew Ferry between Renfrew and Yoker, and the Kilcreggan Ferry in Inverclyde, both run by SPT but outwith the city boundary. The PS Waverley, the world's last operational sea-going paddle-steamer, provides services from Glasgow City Centre, mainly catering to the pleasure cruise market. A regular waterbus service links the City Centre with Braehead in Renfrewshire, some 30 minutes downstream. A service by Loch Lomond Seaplanes, connecting the city with destinations in Argyll and Bute started in 2007. The only operational dock left in Glasgow operated by Clydeport is the King George V Dock, near Braehead. Most other facilities, such as Hunterston Ore Terminal are located in the deep waters of the Firth of Clyde, which together handle some 7.5 million tonnes of cargo each year.

The city is the focus of Scotland's trunk road network and has many road connections to other cities. The main M8 motorway passes through the city centre, and connects to the M77, M73, and M80 motorways. The A82 connects the city to Argyll and the western Highlands. The M74 runs directly south towards Carlisle; the highly controversial M74 completion scheme will extend the motorway from Tollcross into the Tradeston area to join the M8. A legal challenge to stop the extension was withdrawn in 2006, and the road is now scheduled for completion by 2010.

Other road proposals include the East End Regeneration Route, which aims to complete the Glasgow Inner Ring Road around the city and provide easier access to deprived areas of the East End.

The city is served by two international airports and a seaplane terminal: Glasgow International Airport (GLA) in Paisley, Renfrewshire (13 km/8 mi west of the city), Glasgow Prestwick International Airport (PIK) (46 km/29 mi to the south-west), and Glasgow Seaplane Terminal, by the Glasgow Science Centre on the River Clyde. There is also a small airfield at Cumbernauld (29 km/18 mi to the north-east). It is anticipated that by 2009, both principal airports will be served by a direct rail link from Glasgow Central railway station on completion of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link project at Glasgow International Airport.

United Kingdom

Sport

The Scottish football league system is much smaller, with just two national leagues: the Scottish Premier League (SPL) and the Scottish Football League which has three divisions. There are, however, other regional leagues that are not connected to the national system, most notably the Highland Football League. One English club, Berwick Rangers, plays in the Scottish system. Scotland is home to world-renowned football clubs such as Rangers and Celtic. Scottish teams that have been successful in European Competitions include Celtic (European Cup in 1967), Rangers (European Cup Winners Cup 1972) and Aberdeen (European Cup Winners Cup and European Super Cup in 1983).

The Welsh football league system includes the League of Wales and regional leagues. League of Wales club The New Saints play their home matches on the English side of the border in Oswestry. The Welsh clubs of Cardiff City, Colwyn Bay, Merthyr Tydfil, Newport County, Swansea City and Wrexham play in the English system. Cardiff's 73,000 seater Millennium Stadium is the principal sporting stadium of Wales.

The Northern Irish football league system includes the Irish Football League. One Northern Irish club, Derry City, plays their football outside of the UK in the Republic of Ireland football league system.

Both forms of rugby are national sports. Rugby League originates from and is generally played in the Northern England, whilst Rugby Union is played predominantly in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and Southern England. Though supposedly originating from the actions of William Webb Ellis at the School at Rugby, it is now considered the national sport of Wales. In rugby league the UK has been represented by a single 'Great Britain' team but this will change for the 2008 Rugby League World Cup in which Scotland, England and Ireland will compete as separate nations.[125] This bring it into line with Rugby Union in which England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland (which consists of players from Ireland and Northern Ireland) already compete in international competition. However, every four years a British and Irish Lions team tours Australia, New Zealand or South Africa, composed of players selected from all the Home nations.

There is no UK-wide team in Cricket. The game was invented in England and the England Cricket Team, technically the England and Wales team, is the only national team in the UK with Test status. Irish and Scottish players have played for England because neither Scotland nor Ireland have Test status and only play in One Day Internationals. As of 2006, teams representing Scotland, England (and Wales), and Ireland (including Northern Ireland) compete at the One-Day International level. England and Wales has a professional league championship in which County teams compete.

The game of tennis first originated from the City of Birmingham between 1859 and 1865. The Wimbledon Championships are international tennis events held in Wimbledon in south London every summer and are regarded as the most prestigious event of the global tennis calendar.

Thoroughbred racing is popular throughout the UK. It originated under Charles II of England as the "Sport of Kings" and is a royal pastime to this day. World-famous horse races include the Grand National, the Epsom Derby and Royal Ascot. The town of Newmarket is considered the centre of English racing, largely due to the famous Newmarket Racecourse.

The UK has proved successful in the international sporting arena in rowing. It is widely considered that the sport's most successful rower is Steven Redgrave who won five gold medals and one bronze medal at five consecutive Olympic Games as well as numerous wins at the World Rowing Championships and Henley Royal Regatta.

Golf is one of the most popular participation sports played in the UK, with St Andrews in Scotland being the sport's home course.

Shinty (or camanachd) (A sport derived from the same root as the Irish hurling and similar to bandy) is popular in the Scottish Highlands, sometimes attracting crowds numbering thousands in the most sparsely populated region of the UK.

The country is closely associated with motorsport. Many teams and drivers in Formula One (F1) are based in the UK and drivers from Britain have won more world titles than any other country. The country hosts legs of the F1 and World Rally Championship and has its own Touring Car Racing championship, the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC). The British Grand Prix takes place at Silverstone each July.

Culture

The origins of the UK as a political union of formerly independent countries has resulted in the preservation of distinctive cultures in each of the home nations.

For details, see articles on:Culture of England, Culture of Scotland, Culture of Wales, Culture of Northern Ireland.

The United Kingdom has been influential in the development of cinema, with the Ealing Studios claiming to be the oldest studios in the world. Despite a history of important and successful productions, the industry is characterised by an ongoing debate about its identity, and the influences of American and European cinema. Famous films include the Harry Potter and Ian Fleming's James Bond series which, although now made by American studios, used British source materials, locations, actors and filming crew.

The English playwright and poet William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest dramatist of all time.[126][127][128]

Among the earliest English writers are Geoffrey of Monmouth (12th century) , Geoffrey Chaucer (14th century) , and Thomas Malory (15th century). In the 18th century, Samuel Richardson is often credited with inventing the modern novel. In the 19th century, there followed further innovation by Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, the social campaigner Charles Dickens, the naturalist Thomas Hardy, the visionary poet William Blake and romantic poet William Wordsworth. Twentieth century writers include the science fiction novelist H. G. Wells, the controversial D. H. Lawrence, the modernist Virginia Woolf, the prophetic novelist George Orwell and the poet John Betjeman. Most recently, the children's fantasy Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling has recalled the popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Scotland's contribution includes the detective writer Arthur Conan Doyle, romantic literature by Sir Walter Scott, the epic adventures of Robert Louis Stevenson and the celebrated poet Robert Burns. More recently, the modernist and nationalist Hugh MacDiarmid and Neil M. Gunn contributed to the Scottish Renaissance. A more grim outlook is found in Ian Rankin's stories and the psychological horror-comedy of Iain Banks. Scotland's capital, Edinburgh, is UNESCO's first worldwide city of literature.

In the early medieval period, Welsh writers composed the Mabinogion. In modern times, the poets R.S. Thomas and Dylan Thomas have brought Welsh culture to an international audience.

Authors from other nationalities, particularly from Ireland, or from Commonwealth countries, have lived and worked in the UK. Significant examples through the centuries include Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and more recently British authors born abroad such as Kazuo Ishiguro and Sir Salman Rushdie.

In theatre, Shakespeare's contemporaries Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson added depth. More recently Alan Ayckbourn, Harold Pinter, Michael Frayn, Tom Stoppard and David Edgar have combined elements of surrealism, realism and radicalism.

The prominence of the English language gives the UK media a widespread international dimension.

The BBC is the UK's publicly funded radio, television and internet broadcasting corporation, and is the oldest and largest broadcaster in the world. It operates several television channels and radio stations in both the UK and abroad. The BBC's international television news service, BBC World, is broadcast throughout the world and the BBC World Service radio network is broadcast in thirty-three languages globally, as well as services in the national language of Wales on BBC Radio Cymru and programmes in Scottish Gaelic in Scotland and Irish in Northern Ireland.

The domestic services of the BBC are funded by the television licence, a legal requirement for any British household with a television receiver that is in use to receive broadcasts, regardless of whether or not the householders watch BBC channels. Households which are the principal residence of any person over 75 are exempt[129] and the requirement does not extend to radio listeners. The BBC World Service Radio is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the television stations are operated by BBC Worldwide on a commercial subscription basis over cable and satellite services. It is this commercial arm of the BBC that forms half of UKTV along with Virgin Media. There are five major nationwide television channels in the UK: BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, Channel 4 and Five - currently transmitted by analogue terrestrial, free-to-air signals with the latter three channels funded by commercial advertising. In Wales, S4/C the Welsh Fourth Channel replaces Channel 4, carrying Welsh language programmes at peak times. It also transmits Channel 4 programmes at other times.

The UK now has a large number of digital terrestrial channels including a further six from the BBC, five from ITV and three from Channel 4, and one from S4/C which is solely in Welsh, among a variety of others.

The vast majority of digital cable services are provided by Virgin Media with satellite being provided by BSkyB and free-to-air digital terrestrial television by Freeview. The entire country will switch to digital by 2012.

Radio in the UK is dominated by BBC Radio, which operates ten national networks and over forty local radio stations. The most popular radio station, by number of listeners, is BBC Radio 2, closely followed by BBC Radio 1. There are hundreds of mainly local commercial radio stations across the country offering a variety of music or talk formats.

Traditionally, British newspapers could be split into quality, serious-minded newspaper (usually referred to as "broadsheets" due to their large size) and the more populist, tabloid varieties. For convenience of reading, many traditional broadsheets have switched to a more compact-sized format, traditionally used by tabloids. The Sun has the highest circulation of any daily newspaper in the UK, with approximately a quarter of the market; its sister paper, The News of The World similarly leads the Sunday newspaper market,[130] and traditionally focuses on celebrity-led stories. The Daily Telegraph, a right wing broadsheet paper, has overtaken The Times (tabloid size format) as the highest-selling of the "quality" newspapers.[131] The Guardian is a more liberal "quality" broadsheet. The Financial Times is the main business paper, printed on distinctive salmon-pink broadsheet paper.

First printed in 1737, the Belfast News Letter is the oldest known English-speaking daily newspaper still in publication today. One of its fellow Northern Irish competitors, The Irish News, has been twice ranked as the best regional newspaper in the United Kingdom, in 2006 and 2007.[132] Aside from newspapers, British magazines and journals have achieved worldwide circulation including The Economist and Nature.

Scotland has a distinct tradition of newspaper readership (see List of newspapers in Scotland). The tabloid Daily Record has the highest circulation of any daily newspaper outselling the Scottish Sun by 4-1 while its sister paper, the Sunday Mail similarly leads the Sunday newspaper market. The leading "quality" daily newspaper in Scotland is The Herald, though it is the Scotsman's sister paper, the Scotland on Sunday that leads in the Sunday newspaper market. [133]

Classical music: Notable composers from the United Kingdom have included William Byrd, Henry Purcell, Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Arthur Sullivan (most famous for working with librettist Sir W. S. Gilbert), Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Benjamin Britten, pioneer of modern British opera. London remains one of the major classical music capitals of the world.

Popular music: Prominent among the UK contributors to the development of rock music in the 1960s and 1970s were The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Queen, and Black Sabbath. Heavy metal, hard rock, punk rock and New Wave were among the variations that followed. In the early 1980s, UK bands from the New Romantic scene such as Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Spandau Ballet, Soft Cell and Ultravox were prominent. In the 1990s, Britpop bands and electronica music attained international success. More recent pop acts, including The Smiths, Oasis and the Spice Girls, have ensured the continuation of the UK's massive contribution to popular music.

The United Kingdom is famous for the tradition of "British Empiricism", a branch of the philosophy of knowledge that states that only knowledge verified by experience is valid. The most famous philosophers of this tradition are John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. Britain is notable for a theory of moral philosophy, Utilitarianism, first used by Jeremy Bentham and later by John Stuart Mill, in his short work Utilitarianism. Other eminent philosophers from the UK include William of Ockham, Thomas Hobbes, Bertrand Russell, Adam Smith and Alfred Ayer. Foreign born philosophers who settled in the UK include Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx, Karl Popper, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The modern scientific method was promoted by the English philosopher Francis Bacon in the early seventeenth century, and subsequent advances credited to British scientists and engineers include:

Notable civil engineering projects, whose pioneers included Isambard Kingdom Brunel, contributed to the world's first national railway transport system. Other advances pioneered in the UK include the marine chronometer, television, the jet engine, the modern bicycle, electric lighting, the electric motor, the screw propeller, the internal combustion engine, military radar, the electronic computer, vaccination and antibiotics.

Scientific journals produced in the UK include Nature, the British Medical Journal and The Lancet. In 2006, it was reported that the UK provided 9% of the world's scientific research papers and a 12% share of citations.[134]

The Royal Academy is located in London. Other major schools of art include the Slade School of Art; the six-school University of the Arts, London, which includes the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Chelsea College of Art and Design; the Glasgow School of Art, and Goldsmiths, University of London. This commercial venture is one of Britain's foremost visual arts organisations. Major British artists include Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, William Blake, J. M. W. Turner, William Morris, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Gilbert and George, Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, Howard Hodgkin, Antony Gormley, and Anish Kapoor. During the late 1980s and 1990s, the Saatchi Gallery in London brought to public attention a group of multigenre artists who would become known as the Young British Artists. Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, Rachel Whiteread, Tracy Emin, Mark Wallinger, Steve McQueen, Sam Taylor-Wood, and the Chapman Brothers are among the better known members of this loosely affiliated movement.

Bristol

Politics and government

Bristol's constituencies in the House of Commons cross the borders with neighbouring authorities, and the city is divided into Bristol West, East, South and North-west and Kingswood. Northavon also covers some of the suburbs, but none of the administrative county. At the next General Election, the boundaries will be changed to coincide with the county boundary. Kingswood will no longer cover any of the county, and a new Filton and Bradley Stoke constituency will include the suburbs in South Gloucestershire. There are four Labour and one Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament.

Bristol has a tradition of local political activism, and has been home to many important political figures. Tony Benn, a veteran left-wing politician, was Member of Parliament (MP) for Bristol South East from 1950 to 1983. Edmund Burke, MP for the Bristol constituency for six years from 1774, famously insisted that he was a Member of Parliament first, rather than a representative of his constituents' interests. In 1963, there was a boycott of the city's buses after the Bristol Omnibus Co. refused to employ black drivers and conductors. The boycott is known to have influenced the creation of the UK's Race Relations Act in 1965. The women's rights campaigner Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (1867-1954) was born in Bristol. The city was the scene of the first of the 1980s riots or uprisings. In St. Paul's, a number of largely African-Caribbean people rose up against racism, police harassment and mounting disatifisfaction with their social and economic circumstances before similar disturbances followed across the UK. Local support of fair trade issues was recognised in 2005 when Bristol was granted Fairtrade City status.

Bristol is unusual in having been a city with county status since medieval times. The county was expanded to include suburbs such as Clifton in 1835, and it was named a county borough in 1889, when the term was first introduced. However, on 1 April 1974, it became a local government district of the short-lived county of Avon. On 1 April 1996, it once again regained its independence and county status, when the county of Avon was abolished and Bristol became a Unitary Authority.

Demographics

In 2005 the Office for National Statistics estimated Bristol's population at 398,300, making it the 47th-largest ceremonial county in England. Using Census 2001 data the ONS estimated the population of the contiguous built-up area to be 441,556, and that of the metropolitan area to be 551,066. This makes the city England's sixth most populous city, and ninth most populous metropolitan area. At 3,599 inhabitants per square kilometre (9,321 /sq mi) it has the seventh-highest population density of any English district.

According to 2005 estimates, 89.3% of the population were described as white, 3.9% as Asian or Asian British, 2.8% as black or black British, 2.2% as mixed race, 1.2% as Chinese and 0.6% other. National averages for England were 89.1%, 5.3%, 2.7%, 1.6%, 0.7% and 0.6% for the same groups. 60% of Bristol's population registered their religion as Christianity, and 25% as not religious in the 2001 census, compared with 72% and 15% nationally. 2% of the population follow Islam (3% nationally), with no other religion above one percent. Bristol had the ninth highest proportion of people refer to their religion in the last census as 'Jedi'.

Physical geography

Bristol is in a limestone area, which runs from the Mendip Hills to the south and the Cotswolds to the north east. The rivers Avon and Frome cut through this limestone to the underlying clays, creating Bristol's characteristic hilly landscape. The Avon flows from Bath in the east, through flood plains and areas which were marshy before the growth of the city. To the west the Avon has cut through the limestone to form the Avon Gorge, partly aided by glacial meltwater after the last ice age. The gorge aided in the protection of Bristol Harbour, and has been quarried for stone to build the city. The land surrounding the gorge has been protected from development, as The Downs and Leigh Woods. The gorge and estuary of the Avon form the county's boundary with North Somerset, and the river flows into the Bristol Channel at Avonmouth at the mouth of the River Severn. There is another gorge in the city, in the Blaise Castle estate to the north.

Situated in the south of the country, Bristol is one of the warmest cities in the UK, with a mean annual temperature of 10.2-12 °C (50-54°F). It is also amongst the sunniest, with 1541-1885 hours sunshine per year. The city is partially sheltered by Exmoor and the Mendip Hills, but exposed from the Bristol Channel, and annual rainfall is similar to the national average, at 741-1,060 mm (29.2-41.7 in).

Education, science and technology

Bristol is home to two major institutions of higher education: the University of Bristol, a "redbrick" chartered in 1909, and the University of the West of England, formerly Bristol Polytechnic, which gained university status in 1992. The city also has two dedicated further education institutions, City of Bristol College and Filton College, and three theological colleges, Trinity College, Bristol, Wesley College, Bristol & Bristol Baptist College. The city has 129 infant, junior and primary schools, 17 secondary schools, and three city learning centres. It has the country's second highest concentration of independent school places, after an exclusive corner of north London. The independent schools in the city include Clifton College, Colston's School, Clifton High School, Badminton School, Bristol Cathedral School, Bristol Grammar School, Redland High School, Queen Elizabeth's Hospital (the only all-boys school) and Red Maids' School, which is the oldest girls' school in England and was founded in 1634 by John Whitson. The division between state and independent education has led to the city being described as "among the most divided cities in the country" and an example of what Anthony Seldon called "educational apartheid".

In 2005 the Chancellor of the Exchequer recognised Bristol's ties to science and technology by naming it one of three "science cities", and promising funding for further development of science in the city, with a £300 million "Science Park" planned at Emerson's Green. As well as research at the two universities and Southmead Hospital, science education is important in the city, with At-Bristol, Bristol Zoo, Bristol Festival of Nature and the Create Centre being prominent local institutions involved in science communication. The city has a history of scientific achievement, including Sir Humphry Davy, the 19th century scientist who worked in Hotwells and discovered laughing gas. Bishopston has given the world two Nobel Prize winning physicists: Paul Dirac for crucial contributions to quantum mechanics in 1933, and Cecil Frank Powell, for a photographic method of studying nuclear processes and associated discoveries in 1950. The city was birth place of Colin Pillinger, planetary scientist behind the Beagle 2 Mars lander project, and is home to Adam Hart-Davis, presenter of various science related television programmes, and the psychologists Susan Blackmore and Richard Gregory.

Transport

There are two principal railway stations in Bristol. Bristol Parkway is located to the north of the city and Bristol Temple Meads located in the centre. Both stations offer direct services to many UK destinations. Principal operators are First Great Western and CrossCountry. There is also a limited service to London Waterloo from Bristol Temple Meads, operated by South West Trains. The main service to London is by First Great Western to Paddington station.

There are scheduled coach links to most major UK cities. The city is connected by road on an east-west axis from London to Wales by the M4 motorway, and on a north-southwest axis from Birmingham to Exeter by the M5 motorway. Also within the county is the M49 motorway, a shortcut between the M5 in the south and M4 Severn Crossing in the west. The M32 motorway is a spur from the M4 to the city centre. The city is also served by its own airport, Bristol International (BRS), at Lulsgate, which has seen substantial investments in its runway, terminal and other facilities since 2001.

Public transport in the city consists largely of its bus network, provided by First Group, formerly the Bristol Omnibus Company. Buses in the city have been widely criticised for being unreliable and expensive, and in 2005 First was fined for delays and safety violations. Use of private cars in Bristol is high, and the city suffers from congestion, which costs an estimated £350 million per year. Bristol is a motorcycle friendly city. The city recognises that motorcycle use eases congestion and encourages this allow motorcycles to use most of the city's bus lanes, as well as providing secure free parking. Since 2000 the city council has included a light rail system in its Local Transport Plan, but has so far been unable to fund the project. The city was offered European Union funding for the system, but the Department for Transport did not provide the required additional funding. As well as support for public transport, there are several road building schemes supported by the local council, including re-routing and improving the South Bristol Ring Road. There are also three park and ride sites serving the city, supported by the local council. The central part of the city has water-based transport, operated as the Bristol Ferry Boat, which provides both leisure and commuter services on the harbour.

Bristol was never well served by suburban railways, though the Severn Beach Line to Avonmouth and Severn Beach survived the Beeching Axe and is still in operation. The Portishead Railway was closed to passengers under the Beeching Axe, but was relaid in 2000-2002 as far as the Royal Portbury Dock with a Strategic Rail Authority rail-freight grant. Plans to relay a further three miles of track to Portishead, a largely dormitory town with only one connecting road, have been discussed but there is insufficient funding to rebuild stations.

Despite being hilly, Bristol is one of the prominent cycling cities of England, and is home to the national cycle campaigning group Sustrans. It has a number of urban cycle routes, as well as links to National Cycle Network routes to Bath and London, to Gloucester and Wales, and to the south-western peninsula of England. Cycling has grown rapidly in the city, with a 21% increase in journeys between 2001 and 2005.

Twin cities

Bristol was amongst the first cities to adopt the idea of town twinning. In 1947 it was twinned with Bordeaux and Hannover, the first post-war twinning of British and German cities. It is twinned with:

United Kingdom

Sport

The Scottish football league system is much smaller, with just two national leagues: the Scottish Premier League (SPL) and the Scottish Football League which has three divisions. There are, however, other regional leagues that are not connected to the national system, most notably the Highland Football League. One English club, Berwick Rangers, plays in the Scottish system. Scotland is home to world-renowned football clubs such as Rangers and Celtic. Scottish teams that have been successful in European Competitions include Celtic (European Cup in 1967), Rangers (European Cup Winners Cup 1972) and Aberdeen (European Cup Winners Cup and European Super Cup in 1983).

The Welsh football league system includes the League of Wales and regional leagues. League of Wales club The New Saints play their home matches on the English side of the border in Oswestry. The Welsh clubs of Cardiff City, Colwyn Bay, Merthyr Tydfil, Newport County, Swansea City and Wrexham play in the English system. Cardiff's 73,000 seater Millennium Stadium is the principal sporting stadium of Wales.

The Northern Irish football league system includes the Irish Football League. One Northern Irish club, Derry City, plays their football outside of the UK in the Republic of Ireland football league system.

Both forms of rugby are national sports. Rugby League originates from and is generally played in the Northern England, whilst Rugby Union is played predominantly in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and Southern England. Though supposedly originating from the actions of William Webb Ellis at the School at Rugby, it is now considered the national sport of Wales. In rugby league the UK has been represented by a single 'Great Britain' team but this will change for the 2008 Rugby League World Cup in which Scotland, England and Ireland will compete as separate nations.[125] This bring it into line with Rugby Union in which England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland (which consists of players from Ireland and Northern Ireland) already compete in international competition. However, every four years a British and Irish Lions team tours Australia, New Zealand or South Africa, composed of players selected from all the Home nations.

There is no UK-wide team in Cricket. The game was invented in England and the England Cricket Team, technically the England and Wales team, is the only national team in the UK with Test status. Irish and Scottish players have played for England because neither Scotland nor Ireland have Test status and only play in One Day Internationals. As of 2006, teams representing Scotland, England (and Wales), and Ireland (including Northern Ireland) compete at the One-Day International level. England and Wales has a professional league championship in which County teams compete.

The game of tennis first originated from the City of Birmingham between 1859 and 1865. The Wimbledon Championships are international tennis events held in Wimbledon in south London every summer and are regarded as the most prestigious event of the global tennis calendar.

Thoroughbred racing is popular throughout the UK. It originated under Charles II of England as the "Sport of Kings" and is a royal pastime to this day. World-famous horse races include the Grand National, the Epsom Derby and Royal Ascot. The town of Newmarket is considered the centre of English racing, largely due to the famous Newmarket Racecourse.

The UK has proved successful in the international sporting arena in rowing. It is widely considered that the sport's most successful rower is Steven Redgrave who won five gold medals and one bronze medal at five consecutive Olympic Games as well as numerous wins at the World Rowing Championships and Henley Royal Regatta.

Golf is one of the most popular participation sports played in the UK, with St Andrews in Scotland being the sport's home course.

Shinty (or camanachd) (A sport derived from the same root as the Irish hurling and similar to bandy) is popular in the Scottish Highlands, sometimes attracting crowds numbering thousands in the most sparsely populated region of the UK.

The country is closely associated with motorsport. Many teams and drivers in Formula One (F1) are based in the UK and drivers from Britain have won more world titles than any other country. The country hosts legs of the F1 and World Rally Championship and has its own Touring Car Racing championship, the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC). The British Grand Prix takes place at Silverstone each July.

Culture

The origins of the UK as a political union of formerly independent countries has resulted in the preservation of distinctive cultures in each of the home nations.

For details, see articles on:Culture of England, Culture of Scotland, Culture of Wales, Culture of Northern Ireland.

The United Kingdom has been influential in the development of cinema, with the Ealing Studios claiming to be the oldest studios in the world. Despite a history of important and successful productions, the industry is characterised by an ongoing debate about its identity, and the influences of American and European cinema. Famous films include the Harry Potter and Ian Fleming's James Bond series which, although now made by American studios, used British source materials, locations, actors and filming crew.

The English playwright and poet William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest dramatist of all time.[126][127][128]

Among the earliest English writers are Geoffrey of Monmouth (12th century) , Geoffrey Chaucer (14th century) , and Thomas Malory (15th century). In the 18th century, Samuel Richardson is often credited with inventing the modern novel. In the 19th century, there followed further innovation by Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, the social campaigner Charles Dickens, the naturalist Thomas Hardy, the visionary poet William Blake and romantic poet William Wordsworth. Twentieth century writers include the science fiction novelist H. G. Wells, the controversial D. H. Lawrence, the modernist Virginia Woolf, the prophetic novelist George Orwell and the poet John Betjeman. Most recently, the children's fantasy Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling has recalled the popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Scotland's contribution includes the detective writer Arthur Conan Doyle, romantic literature by Sir Walter Scott, the epic adventures of Robert Louis Stevenson and the celebrated poet Robert Burns. More recently, the modernist and nationalist Hugh MacDiarmid and Neil M. Gunn contributed to the Scottish Renaissance. A more grim outlook is found in Ian Rankin's stories and the psychological horror-comedy of Iain Banks. Scotland's capital, Edinburgh, is UNESCO's first worldwide city of literature.

In the early medieval period, Welsh writers composed the Mabinogion. In modern times, the poets R.S. Thomas and Dylan Thomas have brought Welsh culture to an international audience.

Authors from other nationalities, particularly from Ireland, or from Commonwealth countries, have lived and worked in the UK. Significant examples through the centuries include Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and more recently British authors born abroad such as Kazuo Ishiguro and Sir Salman Rushdie.

In theatre, Shakespeare's contemporaries Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson added depth. More recently Alan Ayckbourn, Harold Pinter, Michael Frayn, Tom Stoppard and David Edgar have combined elements of surrealism, realism and radicalism.

The prominence of the English language gives the UK media a widespread international dimension.

The BBC is the UK's publicly funded radio, television and internet broadcasting corporation, and is the oldest and largest broadcaster in the world. It operates several television channels and radio stations in both the UK and abroad. The BBC's international television news service, BBC World, is broadcast throughout the world and the BBC World Service radio network is broadcast in thirty-three languages globally, as well as services in the national language of Wales on BBC Radio Cymru and programmes in Scottish Gaelic in Scotland and Irish in Northern Ireland.

The domestic services of the BBC are funded by the television licence, a legal requirement for any British household with a television receiver that is in use to receive broadcasts, regardless of whether or not the householders watch BBC channels. Households which are the principal residence of any person over 75 are exempt[129] and the requirement does not extend to radio listeners. The BBC World Service Radio is funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the television stations are operated by BBC Worldwide on a commercial subscription basis over cable and satellite services. It is this commercial arm of the BBC that forms half of UKTV along with Virgin Media. There are five major nationwide television channels in the UK: BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1, Channel 4 and Five - currently transmitted by analogue terrestrial, free-to-air signals with the latter three channels funded by commercial advertising. In Wales, S4/C the Welsh Fourth Channel replaces Channel 4, carrying Welsh language programmes at peak times. It also transmits Channel 4 programmes at other times.

The UK now has a large number of digital terrestrial channels including a further six from the BBC, five from ITV and three from Channel 4, and one from S4/C which is solely in Welsh, among a variety of others.

The vast majority of digital cable services are provided by Virgin Media with satellite being provided by BSkyB and free-to-air digital terrestrial television by Freeview. The entire country will switch to digital by 2012.

Radio in the UK is dominated by BBC Radio, which operates ten national networks and over forty local radio stations. The most popular radio station, by number of listeners, is BBC Radio 2, closely followed by BBC Radio 1. There are hundreds of mainly local commercial radio stations across the country offering a variety of music or talk formats.

Traditionally, British newspapers could be split into quality, serious-minded newspaper (usually referred to as "broadsheets" due to their large size) and the more populist, tabloid varieties. For convenience of reading, many traditional broadsheets have switched to a more compact-sized format, traditionally used by tabloids. The Sun has the highest circulation of any daily newspaper in the UK, with approximately a quarter of the market; its sister paper, The News of The World similarly leads the Sunday newspaper market,[130] and traditionally focuses on celebrity-led stories. The Daily Telegraph, a right wing broadsheet paper, has overtaken The Times (tabloid size format) as the highest-selling of the "quality" newspapers.[131] The Guardian is a more liberal "quality" broadsheet. The Financial Times is the main business paper, printed on distinctive salmon-pink broadsheet paper.

First printed in 1737, the Belfast News Letter is the oldest known English-speaking daily newspaper still in publication today. One of its fellow Northern Irish competitors, The Irish News, has been twice ranked as the best regional newspaper in the United Kingdom, in 2006 and 2007.[132] Aside from newspapers, British magazines and journals have achieved worldwide circulation including The Economist and Nature.

Scotland has a distinct tradition of newspaper readership (see List of newspapers in Scotland). The tabloid Daily Record has the highest circulation of any daily newspaper outselling the Scottish Sun by 4-1 while its sister paper, the Sunday Mail similarly leads the Sunday newspaper market. The leading "quality" daily newspaper in Scotland is The Herald, though it is the Scotsman's sister paper, the Scotland on Sunday that leads in the Sunday newspaper market. [133]

Classical music: Notable composers from the United Kingdom have included William Byrd, Henry Purcell, Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Arthur Sullivan (most famous for working with librettist Sir W. S. Gilbert), Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Benjamin Britten, pioneer of modern British opera. London remains one of the major classical music capitals of the world.

Popular music: Prominent among the UK contributors to the development of rock music in the 1960s and 1970s were The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Queen, and Black Sabbath. Heavy metal, hard rock, punk rock and New Wave were among the variations that followed. In the early 1980s, UK bands from the New Romantic scene such as Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Spandau Ballet, Soft Cell and Ultravox were prominent. In the 1990s, Britpop bands and electronica music attained international success. More recent pop acts, including The Smiths, Oasis and the Spice Girls, have ensured the continuation of the UK's massive contribution to popular music.

The United Kingdom is famous for the tradition of "British Empiricism", a branch of the philosophy of knowledge that states that only knowledge verified by experience is valid. The most famous philosophers of this tradition are John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume. Britain is notable for a theory of moral philosophy, Utilitarianism, first used by Jeremy Bentham and later by John Stuart Mill, in his short work Utilitarianism. Other eminent philosophers from the UK include William of Ockham, Thomas Hobbes, Bertrand Russell, Adam Smith and Alfred Ayer. Foreign born philosophers who settled in the UK include Isaiah Berlin, Karl Marx, Karl Popper, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The modern scientific method was promoted by the English philosopher Francis Bacon in the early seventeenth century, and subsequent advances credited to British scientists and engineers include:

Notable civil engineering projects, whose pioneers included Isambard Kingdom Brunel, contributed to the world's first national railway transport system. Other advances pioneered in the UK include the marine chronometer, television, the jet engine, the modern bicycle, electric lighting, the electric motor, the screw propeller, the internal combustion engine, military radar, the electronic computer, vaccination and antibiotics.

Scientific journals produced in the UK include Nature, the British Medical Journal and The Lancet. In 2006, it was reported that the UK provided 9% of the world's scientific research papers and a 12% share of citations.[134]

The Royal Academy is located in London. Other major schools of art include the Slade School of Art; the six-school University of the Arts, London, which includes the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Chelsea College of Art and Design; the Glasgow School of Art, and Goldsmiths, University of London. This commercial venture is one of Britain's foremost visual arts organisations. Major British artists include Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, William Blake, J. M. W. Turner, William Morris, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Gilbert and George, Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, Howard Hodgkin, Antony Gormley, and Anish Kapoor. During the late 1980s and 1990s, the Saatchi Gallery in London brought to public attention a group of multigenre artists who would become known as the Young British Artists. Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili, Rachel Whiteread, Tracy Emin, Mark Wallinger, Steve McQueen, Sam Taylor-Wood, and the Chapman Brothers are among the better known members of this loosely affiliated movement.