[OSM-talk] National borders in the British Islands

[Dermot McNally]

2008/5/29 Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net>:
> Dermot McNally wrote:
>
>> 2008/5/29 Steve Chilton <S.L.Chilton at mdx.ac.uk>:
>>> Scotland and Wales are countries.
>>
>> Only in the same traditional folk-consciousness way that Bavaria or
>> Hessen are.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom
>
> thinks it's a bit more than that.

On the contrary - certainly in the case of Bavaria, which really was a
country until 1918. But we've neatly illustrated the point.
Non-Germans don't see why Bavaria would see itself as a country, even
though it does. Non-British people (and, it seems, half of England)
don't as a rule regard Scotland or Wales as countries on a par with,
say, France. And as an Irish person, I've encountered my share of
people who don't think my country is a real one either.

But the clue here is that we're discussing the appropriate use of
boundary tagging, specifically a thing we call admin_level. I guess
none of us will disagree that Germany and the UK get to exercise a
higher level of administration than a "country" like England or Wales?

Dermot

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