Talk:British Overseas Territories

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This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Police and Enforcement

Regarding the Police and Enforcement part of section 5 Government Currently there is nothing about uniforms and equipment those police forces use. There was something about that in previous versions of the Police uniforms and equipment in the United Kingdom article. That could be added to this article. --Dreddmoto (talk) 22:05, 10 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Dreddmoto: Uniforms aren't something I generally work on. As far as the article goes, it's probably better to cover it in the UK police article. I don't see the main article on a topic like BOT as suitable for such details, other than a brief, cited mention. BilCat (talk) 01:19, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your view. I'll keep that in mind. Would it better to cover the subject of uniforms and equipment in a new, separate article? --Dreddmoto (talk) 01:36, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If you have enough cited material to make a decent article, sure. BilCat (talk) 01:45, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. --Dreddmoto (talk) 02:12, 2 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Currency instead of motto?

Does the motto really deserve its high-profile place in this table? I suggest that the currency in use is more valuable to the general reader. Any objections to my moving the motto to a new column at the end of each row and using the current column for currency? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 12:15, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We probably shouldn't have either. Neither feels a key attribute of each territory, or helpful to a reader in understanding the topic of BOTs. CMD (talk) 12:36, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

TBH, I can't see the value of mottoes either but hesitated to go trampling in. But I suggest that the currency is interesting in that it shows which have decoupled from Sterling despite being still nominally British territories. Obviously if it just says e.g. "Bermudan Dollar", that is not useful but that it is pegged to USD certainly is. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 13:16, 24 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

confusing, possibly contradictory sentence

"Although the British Government is the national government, much of governance within the territories has been delegated to local government, with all of those that have permanent populations having some degree of representative government (which was not the case for British Hong Kong) which have been delegated responsibility for local legislation (although the inhabitants of the first colony established, Virginia (including Bermuda from 1612), were in 1606 (a century before the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland united to form the Kingdom of Great Britain)), irrevocably guaranteed the same rights and representation they would have if born in England, representation in the national Parliament of the United Kingdom has yet to be extended to any overseas territory."

This sentence is overly long, with way too many parentheses; confusing; and possibly self-contradictory - Do inhabitants have the same representation as people in England, or not? I can't tell if this sentence is saying that a) they do; b) they don't; c) legally they should but in practice they don't; d) the 17th century charter should give that right to Bermuda but now they don't have it.

I'm surprised by the 17th century charter aspect, too, because the *lack* of representation of the Thirteen Colonies, including Virginia, in Parliament was a major grievance leading to the American Revolution (taxation without representation) so it would be very odd to find that Virginia did have that right.

I am also not sure why the dates of founding of the Virginia colony and Bermuda belong in this paragraph, which is about current government, not history. Vultur~enwiki (talk) 14:49, 23 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Syntax error

There is a problem of which requires professional handling for Syntax error, can someone please help me. Thanks. The problem seems to be when I place the following command British Overseas Territories, instead of explaining about the place, it shows Error: Missing Redirect Perimeter 180.129.33.96 (talk) 11:30, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

redirects are for automatically sending someone to a different article. They are not used at the top of an article. Please leave the header templates alone if you are unfamiliar with them. Cambial — foliar❧ 11:42, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How many British Overseas Territories are there?

The section Current Overseas Territories says there are 14 but lists 13. The next section says that Akrotiri and Dhekelia are not Overseas Territories, but are Sovereign Base Areas (SBAs).

The situation (afaics) is that there are indeed 14 overseas territories and that the Sovereign Base Areas are included in that. Though they are not overseen by the FCDO but come under the Ministry of Defence.

See British Overseas Territories Act, British Overseas Territories Act 2002, British Nationality Act 1981 Schedule 6, The UK Overseas Territories and their Governors a British House of Commons paper that seeks to clarify and hence shows that it's actually really very complicated.

Anyway, long and short is that there are 14, they include Akrotiri and Dhekelia. There are substantial differences between the way it all works in the SBAs and in other overseas territories but there are quite a lot of differences between the other overseas territories too. Jo0228 (talk) 20:16, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Legally, there are only 13. The Sovereign Base Areas (A & D) are not legally BOTs. However, many sources say 14 because they don't want to bother with the technical details. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 22:13, 5 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Where you say "Legally", it would be useful to have a reference. My understanding of the British Overseas Territories Act, which is primary legislation, is that the Sovereign Base Areas are indeed British Overseas Territories.

In section 1. (1)

"As the territories mentioned in Schedule 6 to the British Nationality Act 1981 (c. 61) are now known as “British overseas territories”

In British Nationality Act 1981 Schedule 6, there is the following list which includes the SBAs

Anguilla

Bermuda

British Antarctic Territory

British Indian Ocean Territory

Cayman Islands

Falkland Islands F2. . .

Gibraltar

[F3Hong Kong]

Montserrat

Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie and Oeno Islands

. . . F4

[F5St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha]

[F6South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands]

The Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (that is to say the areas mentioned in section 2(1) of the M1Cyprus Act 1960)

Turks and Caicos Islands

Virgin Islands. Jo0228 (talk) 15:30, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure you are right. The source cited in the lead says much the same thing. Obviously in the case of the SBRs, the (non-HM forces and their families) residents have no say in their administration as they do on the 'ordinary' BOTs. So I suspect that "it depends". The same might be said of the BAT, of course. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:03, 6 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We need a source that explains this. Probably when Cyprus became independent in 1960 and the UK retained bases, they did not want to call them colonies, for both legal and political reasons, which is what BOTs were called at the time. TFD (talk) 02:13, 7 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]