[OSM-talk] National borders in the British Islands

[Karl Newman]

On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 8:47 AM, Bruce Cowan <lists at bcowan.fastmail.co.uk>
wrote:

> On Thu, 2008-05-29 at 14:26 +0100, Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote:
>
> > I've always thought that England / Scotland / Wales / Northern Ireland
> > forming the UK are pretty similar to the 50 states forming the USA - I
> > think it would be reasonable to use the same markings on the default map
> > to divide them.
> >
> > Legal purists may want different (or extra) tags in the database on the
> > grounds that it's a completely different situation, but they could be
> > rendered the same.
>
> For all purposes, this is probably reasonably accurate apart from the
> fact that one "state" has no devolution, 2 have devolution and one has
> further devolution. For the purposes of a map, the precise nature of the
> powers of each part are negligible.
>
> I suppose technically the USA is similar as each state has different
> powers available to them (or I think they do).
> --
> Bruce Cowan <bcowan at fastmail.co.uk>
>

Yes, that was the idea to begin with anyway. States rights have been
steadily eroded over the years, mostly in the name of the "inter-state
commerce clause" in the constitution. You'd be amazed how many things are
considered to be related to "inter-state commerce". So while in the
beginning the United States were intended to be a sort of federation of
somewhat autonomous states, the current situation is much more centralized.
The states in the US do not have the history and identity like the countries
that compose the UK, so there hasn't been a strong nationalistic resistance
to this centralization. What resistance there has been has generally been of
the ideological sort, which just doesn't carry the same weight.

Sorry for the long diatribe. I'm married to a high school history teacher...

Karl
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