Great Britain (topic)
Great Britain is on the British Islands. It’s surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea and the English Channel. The climate is influenced by the surrounding waters, particularly by the Gulf stream. That’s why the climate is rather mild. Summers are not very hat and winters are not very cold. There is no snow in the greatest part of GB.
The landscape is nice. There are no high mountains in GB, but they have some high hills in Scotland, which they call Highlands. There are a lot of small lakes in Scotland, which are called lochs. The biggest river is the Thames.
GB is constitution monarchy. It has a monarch, but he doesn’t rule, he just reigns, controlled by the parliament. The King or the Queen is the symbol of the continuity of the state. Elizabeth II (the 2nd) is in the thrown now. The parliament consists of 2 Houses — the House of Lords and the House of Commons.
There are 2 main parties in Great Britain: labour and conservative. The conservators are in power now. The premier-minister is John Major. Naturally, his is conservative.
Great Britain consists of England, Scotland and Wales. Great Britain and Northern Ireland make up the UK.
England is the greatest part of GB. The capital of England is London. It’s one of the biggest and the oldest cities in the world. Its history goes back to the beginning of our Era. The population of London, including the suburbs, is about 10 million.
The other major cities of England are: Manchester — an industrial city, Liverpool — a port.
Stradford on Avon is very popular with the tourists. This is the birth place of Shakespeare. Every year theatre festival is held in the Royal Theatre there.
Windsor is a small town, famous for the Royal summer residence.
People make their living working in ship-building industry, light industry. “Rolls-Royce,” produced in England, is know all over the world. Scotland is the second biggest part of GB with the capital Edinburgh, and another big city is Glasgow. There are a lot of lochs in Scotland. The most famous is Lichens. People believe that some monster lives there. Scots have a very fine national costume. The most characteristic part of it is a kilt. A kilt is a pleated skirt, the pattern is tartan. The bagpipe is a national musical instrument. It’s a leather bag with pipes. They still wear their national costumes and play the bagpipes on the certain occasions. The Scottish language is an English dialect. At school and in the offices they speak the standard English. The capital of Wales is Cardiff. The speech is Walish. Northern Ireland is a part of Ireland. The capital of Northern Ireland is Belfast. Southern Ireland is an independent state with the capital Dublin. They have religious problems there. The Northern part of Ireland is Protestant, while the Southern Ireland is a catholic land.