What you should know about UK

United Kingdom located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe spans the island of Great Britain, the northeast part of the island of Ireland, and many small islands, including Virgin Islands near to Florida, USA. The United Kingdom consists of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. While the capital is London, three national administrations are located in Belfast (North Ireland), Cardiff( Wales) and Edinburgh.( Scotland).

The UK are the fifth (GDP) or sixth (Purchasing Power Parity) largest economy in the world. It was the world's first industrialized country and the world's foremost power in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The UK still remains a great power with strong economic, cultural, military and political influence. It is a Member of the European Union and once you are in UK you can freely travel anywhere in the European Union.

England 's population by mid-2007 was ca 51.1 million. It is one of the most densely populated countries in the world with particular concentration in London and South East. Mid-2007 estimates put Scotland's population at 5.1 million, Wales at 3 million and Northern Ireland at 1.8 million with much lower population densities than England.

Contrary to some other European countries, high immigration contributes a lion share to a rising population. United Kingdom is set to become Europe’s most highly populated nation within two generations, driven by immigration. Official figures showed that 2.3 million net migrants have moved to Britain since 1997, 84% of them from outside Europe, and a further 7 million expected up to 2031. The overwhelming majority of new citizens come from Africa (32%) and Asia (40%), the largest three groups are people from Pakistan, India and Somalia. The UK government is currently introducing a new points-based immigration system to replace the existing schemes for immigration from outside of the European Economic Area.

The UK economy is made up in descending order of size of the economies of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom is today the fifth largest economy in the world and the second largest in Europe after Germany.

While the industrial sector is declining, the service sector has grown substantially over the past years and now makes up about 73% of GDP. The service sector is dominated by financial services, especially in banking and insurance. London is the world's largest financial centre followed by New York and Tokyo with most of the financial institutions based in London. Many multinational companies that are not primarily UK-based have chosen to site their European or rest-of-world headquarters there. Besides London Edinburgh, has one of the large financial centres of Europe

Tourism is very important to the British economy. With ca 27 million tourists arriving in 2004, the United Kingdom is ranked as the sixth major tourist destination in the world. London has with 15.6 million visitors in 2006 the worlds highest number of tourists, ahead of 2nd placed Bangkok 10.4 million visitors and 3rd placed Paris 9.7 million.

England , Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales have separate education systems. Education in England is the responsibility of the central government though the day to day administration and funding of state schools is the responsibility of Local Education Authorities.

Education is mandatory from ages five to sixteen. Despite a fall in actual numbers, the proportion of children in England attending private schools has risen to over 7%. Over half of students at the leading universities of Cambridge and Oxford came from state schools. State schools which are allowed to select pupils according to intelligence and academic ability can achieve comparable results to the most selective private schools: England has some of the top universities in the world; University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, and University of London are ranked among the top 20 in the 2007 World University Rankings.

The proportion of children in Scotland attending private schools is just over 4%, although it has been rising slowly in recent years. Scottish students who attend Scottish universities pay neither tuition fees nor graduate endowment as the fees were abolished in 2001 and the graduate endowment scheme was abolished in 2008.

The Program for International Student Assessment ranked the UK 14th in science, which was higher than the OECD average.

The United Kingdom and the countries that preceded it have produced scientists and engineers credited with important advances, including;

The modern scientific method, developed by English philosopher Francis Bacon
The laws of motion and illumination of gravity, by English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist and theologian, Sir Isaac Newton
The unification of electromagnetism, by James Clerk Maxwell
The discovery of hydrogen, by Henry Cavendish
The steam locomotive, by Richard Trevithick and Andrew Vivian
The world's first working television system, by Scottish engineer and inventor John Logie Baird
Evolution by natural selection, by Charles Darwin
The Turing machine, by Alan Turing, the basis of modern computers
The structure of DNA, by Francis Crick and others
The development of the World Wide Web, largely attributed to Tim Berners-Lee
The discovery of penicillin, by Scottish biologist and pharmacologist, Sir Alexander Fleming

Notable civil engineering projects, whose pioneers included Isambard Kingdom Brunel, contributed to the world's first national railway transport system. Other advances pioneered in the UK include the marine chronometer, the jet engine, the electric lighting, the electric motor, the screw propeller, the internal combustion engine, military radar, the electronic computer, vaccination and antibiotics.

UK is also famous for education of fine Artists. The Royal Academy is located in London. Other major schools of art include the Slade School of Fine Art; the six-school University of the Arts London, which includes the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Chelsea College of Art and Design; the Glasgow School of Art, and Goldsmiths, University of London. This commercial venture is one of Britain's foremost visual arts organisations. Major British artists include Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable, William Blake, J. M. W. Turner, William Morris, L. S. Lowry, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Gilbert and George, Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, Howard Hodgkin, Antony Gormley, and Anish Kapoor.