United Kingdom is a country located in Europe. According to AbbreviationFinder, GB is the two-letter ISO code of United Kingdom, and GBR is the three-letter country abbreviation for United Kingdom.
Yearbook 1997
UK. The May 1 parliamentary elections ended 18 years of conservative rule and gave Labor a large majority with 419 of the lower house’s 659 seats. The Conservatives’ parliamentary group was halved to 165 seats. Labor’s headwind continued throughout the year with very high opinion rates for the government and Prime Minister Tony Blair. Outgoing Prime Minister John Major also left the post of leader of the Conservative Party and was replaced by former Wales Minister William Hague.
Labor went to the election on promises of shorter health care queues, better state schools and faster action against young criminals. Labor also promised a “constructive” EU policy, which stated that the new government signed the EU social charter and introduced a guaranteed minimum wage and expressed interest in participating in the EMU, but not from the start.
Labor’s election promises also included increased regional self-government. According to Countryaah, the national day of United Kingdom is June 4. A referendum in Scotland on a parliament of its own with taxing powers was supported by a large majority. A Scottish Parliament can be formed in 2000. The residents of Wales also voted – but with a very small majority – in 1999 to form their own decision-making assembly, though with more limited powers.
An important consequence of the change of government was the resumption of peace talks in Northern Ireland. The IRA’s political branch Sinn Féin made its best choice in 40 years and got its two leading representatives in parliament. However, they did not take their places because they refused to obey the British crown. In the municipal elections in Northern Ireland later in May, Sinn Féin also made strong progress and demanded that they be allowed to participate in the peace negotiations. After several official contacts between the government and Sinn Féin, the IRA resumed the ceasefire that was broken in February 1996 on 20 July. On 29 August, the government considered that the ceasefire was stable and invited Sinn Féin to the negotiations. After Sinn Fein signed a declaration of principle on non-violence, the government agreed that a disarmament of the IRA could take place during the negotiations.
The peace talks began in October and will end in May 1998, after which residents of Northern Ireland and Ireland will decide on the result in referendums. The negotiations concern both confidence-building measures between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland and how the relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland should be regulated.
Tony Blair’s meeting with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams on Downing Street in December was described as the clearest sign of a new spirit entering the relationship between the British authorities and Republicans. Just a few weeks later, however, new adversities in peace work were feared after members of an IRA outbreak group shot dead a Protestant terrorist inside the Maze prison in Belfast and protesters were immediately avenged with two murders of Catholics.
During the summer and autumn, the Bank of England raised the interest rate five times to counteract an overheating of the economy. The pound strengthened strongly against other currencies during the summer and inflationary pressure increased. A rapid increase in retail sales increased the GDP growth rate to 3.4%.
Labour’s budget in July was aimed at creating financial stability, increased investment and new jobs for young people and single parents. The corporate tax rate was reduced and companies employing long-term unemployed were promised support. Additional grants totaling £ 3.5 billion for the school and health care were funded through a one-off tax on particularly profitable companies in the energy and communications sectors.
A legal scandal shook the country in February when it was revealed that three men convicted of murder in 1979 have been innocently jailed for 18 years. A new investigation showed that “the Bridgewater Three” was convicted of police manipulated evidence.
Princess Diana’s death in a car crash in Paris on August 31 sparked a heated debate over the sensation press’s responsibilities and led to stricter ethical rules for the mass media. The royal house’s rigid reaction to the death of the displaced princess caused a storm of opinion. Confidence in the royal family was restored somewhat by Queen Elizabeth’s and Prince Philip’s golden wedding celebration in the fall and a successful African public relations trip by Prince Charles.
In February 2011, the London court decided that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be extradited to Sweden. His lawyers appealed the case further, and in June 2012, the British Supreme Court upheld the extradition. Assange then sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
In March-September 2011, Britain, together with France and Denmark, played a key role in the war against Libya. Until a few years before, Gadhafi had been allied with Britain, but the “Arab Spring” and lack of knowledge of alliance conditions made the British government keen to have Gadhafi removed. In September, he was assassinated in Libya and was therefore unable to tell secrets about his cooperation with the West.
The Murdoch newspaper News of the World closed in July 2011. Until then it had been the country’s largest daily newspaper, but it is revealed to have carried out hundreds of illegal interceptions by politicians. Several of the intercepts had led to deaths. The editor-in-chief did not understand the closure. She simply had Murdoch’s order to make the newspaper the country’s largest – “no matter what”. Cameron’s spin doctor smokes in the fall. He was previously editor of the newspaper and was now arrested as part of the investigation into the illegalities.
In August, police kill 29-year-old Mark Duggan in Tottenham, London. It is a racist killing that triggers a week of riots in the borough. Several thousands are arrested. The Conservatives fear the “mob” and therefore recommend the introduction of standards. Those arrested must be tried and sentenced within a few days. This will result in hundreds of arbitrary convictions in the following weeks, where people – most often Britons of other ethnic origin – are arbitrarily sentenced to lengthy prison sentences. A mother of 2 got e.g. 5 months of unconditional jail for possessing a pair of stolen shorts, and 2 youngsters were given 4 years in prison for soliciting solicitation via Facebook alone. If the Egyptian authorities, with the same zeal, had been monitoring Facebook, Twitter and Internet activists in February 2011, dictator Mubarak would never have been overthrown in Egypt.
The Conservative government’s policy is fully reflected in the UK in 2012, and the country is therefore in recession in the first half.
The UK and Scottish authorities agree in October on the roadmap for a Scottish referendum on independence in autumn 2014.
In December 2012, Sami al Saadi and his family accepted a compensation from the British state as compensation for the British intelligence in 2004 handing him over to the Gadhafi torture chambers in Libya. A similar case filed by Libyan Abdel Hakim Belhaj in the UK courts continued to run in late 2012. (How Britain did Gaddafi’s dirty work. Secret papers show how Father MI6 went to please Libya’s ruthless intelligence agents – including helping to kidnap the dictator’s enemies, Guardian 9/11 2017).
In September, the European Parliament called on the United Kingdom and other EU member states to publish all information about their participation in the United States torture program, which for 10 years had transported prisoners around the world from torture centers to torture centers. Britain, as a close ally of the United States, played a prominent role in the program but refused to disclose the details.
- Shopareview: Offers climate information of United Kingdom in Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, covering maximum and minimum temperature for each of 12 months. Also includes when is best time to visit this country.
In June 2013, former NSA analyst Edward Snowden reveals that the United States has a gigantic program for monitoring Internet traffic and telecommunications worldwide. It is further revealed that the UK intelligence service GCHQ plays a key role in the criminal activities. For example. GCHQ has hacked itself into the Belgian telephone company Belgacom. EU Commission and Parliament. GCHQ also intercepted the heads of state who attended the G20 summit in London in 2009. The British daily The Guardian plays an important role in the disclosures, just as it played a key role in WikiLeaks a few years before revelations. As neither the United States nor the United Kingdom can get hold of Snowden who has obtained a humanitarian permit in Russia, they instead go after the Guardian and its journalists. In August, intelligence officers turn up at the editorial office and demand that all the newspaper’s material about NSA be released. The newspaper’s editor refuses and is instead set to crush hard drives that the spies believe is data. That same month, Brazilian David Miranda is detained at Heathrow Airport for over 9 hours, citing UK terrorism law and confiscating all his electronic equipment. He is then expelled. Miranda’s offense is that he is girlfriend with Glenn Greenwald, who is the Guardian journalist who has been writing about the case since June. The British authorities cannot get hold of Miranda as he is in Brazil. In October, the British authorities and their Conservative supporters tighten the grip on the Guardian. Several conservative newspapers, Conservative MPs and ministers say the Guardian is guilty of high treason for his revelations of the state’s criminal activities. The largest newspapers in Europe and the United States are now defending the Guardian and freedom of speech. A month later, the Conservative government adopts an amendment to the Press Act so that the British press board is no longer founded in the press, but is a government body. In other words, the press committee is transformed into a censorship instrument for the state.
In July 2013, Parliament passed a change to marriage law that opened up marriage to same-sex people.
Cameron lost in September 2013 a vote in the House of Commons to go to war with Syria. The British population was very tired of the wars to which it had dispatched soldiers through the ’00s. First in Afghanistan and then Iraq. A number of the Prime Minister’s own conservatives therefore voted against the proposal to bomb Syria. Cameron thus became the first foreign minister in 100 years to lose a vote on foreign policy in the Lower House.
In November, the Prime Minister visited the country’s old colony of Sri Lanka. Jaffna in the north of the country. Hundreds of Tamis broke through the police barricades here and surrounded the prime minister’s car with pictures of their slain family members. Sri Lanka committed genocide in 2009, killing about 50,000 Tamils without protests from the West.
David Cameron attended the Nelson Mandela State Funeral in South Africa in December 2013. In 1989, he had visited South Africa as a representative of the Conservative government, actively supporting the then apartheid regime. The leaders of three countries – Denmark, the United Kingdom and the United States – who in their time were secure supporters of the apartheid regime therefore found an opportunity to take a selfie.