I was tempted to stick this under politics, but I think its too obvious for my political readers, and it is more of a rant than anything so it is going under general.
I was reading Phil Plait's (aka the Bad Astronomer) blog, as I do every day. One of his entries was titled "Wipe England off the map".
On a brief side note, I do wonder what sort of feedback he would have got if it said wipe Israel off the map. He goes on to say:
Here’s a bit of apocalyptic fun: simulate dropping an asteroid on the UK.
[...]
Too bad the simulator only uses a map of England, because obviously if this were to really happen in England the Doctor would save us.
Well he seems to be using England and the UK interchangeably, I have always found this extremely irritating, and it no doubt helps reinforce Welsh and Scottish nationalist sentiment, worse still is when some people refer to the whole of the British Isles as England.
Funnily enough one of the comments left on this entry tried to clarify what the United Kingdom was.
Just to clarify:
The United Kingdom is a combo of England, Wales, Scotland, and The Republic of Ireland
I'm sure the Queen would be somewhat confused having a republic as part of her Kingdom. Anyway...
What he's talking about this website here, which is based on a Java applet I ran across several years ago which would calculate the damage from an impactor upon the Earth. This new version has a couple of graphics, showing the size of the crater etc.
The best bit comes next....
Yes, it's not even a map of the United Kingdom, nor England. It's a map of Wales! Uragghh.
Here's the deal. Americans, sort yourselves out or else I'm going to start referring to the United States as the District of Columbia, and start calling you all Columbians, yeah you Wyomingians had better make sure them Columbian folk aren't taking you for a ride, no I mean the other Columbians.
I don't know what's worse, Americans who think a map of Wales is England, or the "Free" Tibet (how ironic) supporters not even knowing where Tibet is.
Update: The Bad Astronomer has updated his site with the appropriate corrections - thanks Phil.
Hopefully now his corrections will go on to further educate those Americans people (who may or may not be Americans) who don't understand what the UK is, nor Great Britain, nor what England, Wales and Scotland are and their relationship with Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (sorry had to add all that to further clarify what I meant when I used Americans, before I get more comments from my American readers), and to try and resist any further attempts at upsetting the Welsh nationalists by referring to their corner of the UK as England. Phew........ Right back to my inbox.