[Omah]

Originally Posted by lostalex

No the UK is a single country. What you call countries are called states or provinces in other countries. The UK has 1 single seat at the UN and 1 single team at the olympics, why? because the UK is one single country. If you think england, wales, and scotland are separate countries, well then take it up with the UN, not me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The country includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea.

The United Kingdom is a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system, with its seat of government in the capital city of London. It is a country in its own right and consists of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There are three devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

The UK does not have a team at the Olympics :

Team GB is an abbreviation of the official nickname given to the representative teams of the British Olympic Association and British Paralympic Association (who are officially known as "ParalympicsGB"[1] ), Team GB and Northern Ireland. The nickname has courted controversy outside of England, Scotland and Wales, who together form Great Britain, mainly from Northern Ireland Unionist MPs who feel it excludes and alienates nations outside of the Island of Great Britain.

The British Isles are made up of several overlapping components :

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...diagram_15.svg

They are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain, Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom) and the Republic of Ireland (officially and also known commonly as Ireland). The British Isles also include three dependencies of the British Crown: the Isle of Man and, by tradition, the Bailiwick of Jersey and the Bailiwick of Guernsey in the Channel Islands, although the latter are not physically a part of the archipelago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termino..._British_Isles

It's rather more complicated than the simple country/state analogy