This is part two of The Islands of the North Atlantic. In the first part of this occasional series of articles, I set the scene for what the United Kingdom is by tackling some common misconceptions of what the United Kingdom isn't.

1. This is not the United Kingdom You're Looking For
2. The Dis-united Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
3. The Geographies of England - An Exercise in Complexity
4. Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh Geographies - Simplicity not Complexity
5. Crown Dependencies, Overseas Territories and the Commonwealth of Nations

But the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland that we know today only dates back to 1922, so I'm going to start with what the United Kingdom was and for that we need to go back to circa 927 CE and the Kingdom of England.

It was back in February of 2009 that I first wrote about the complex and confusing geographies of the British Isles, the United Kingdom and many other terms of reference for the archipelago of islands that sit off of the north-west coast of Europe and that I call home. Since then, with one notable exception, I have found myself having the same conversations on this topic at pretty much every place I've worked at.

So this is the first in a series of articles about the physical, political, administrative and other geographies of what's sometimes called the Islands of the North Atlantic, which should put this to rest ... until something else changes.

1. This is not the United Kingdom You're Looking For
2. The Dis-united Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
3. The Geographies of England - An Exercise in Complexity
4. Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh Geographies - Simplicity not Complexity
5. Crown Dependencies, Overseas Territories and the Commonwealth of Nations

In his book A Zebra Is The Piano Of The Animal Kingdom, Jarod Kintz wrote "when you're a cartographer, having to make maps sort of comes with the territory". He's right. When your business is making maps you should be able to do just that. But what if you're not a cartographer? What if you had to draw a map of the country you live in? From memory? What would that map look like?

Maybe something like this perhaps? The shape of the United Kingdom and Ireland is vaguely right, though Cornwall and all of the Scottish islands bar the Shetlands seem to be lacking. Then again, the Isle Of Wight is on holiday off the North Coast of Wales. The Channel Islands have evicted the Isle Of Man, which is off sulking in the North Sea, probably annoying cross Channel ferries into the bargain. Also "Woo! Geography".

Last night I made another map. It tries to answer some of more perplexing and confusing facets of the geography surrounding the world's 9th largest island. I mean of course Great Britain. No, wait. I mean the United Kingdom. No, wait. I mean Britain. Or do I mean England? See, it's confusing.

• So if the ISO 3166-2 code is GBR, how come the country is called the United Kingdom?
• But if England is a country and the United Kingdom is a country, how come England is part of the United Kingdom?
• What about Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

This isn't the first time I've covered this topic. The first time was for a post on the now defunct Yahoo! Geo Technologies blog entitled UK Addressing, The Non Golden Rules Of Geo Or Help! My Country Doesn't Exist. The ygeoblog.com domain is now long gone and redirects to the Yahoo! corporate blog but I was able to reproduce this post here and it's also captured in the Internet Archive's WayBackMachine. The second time was when I made a variation of The Great British Venn Diagram. But this is the first time (though probably not the last) that I've used a map, which is odd as this is something that's tailor-made for a map.

There's a saying that travel broadens the mind. It's a cliche but cliches generally come about because they're true. This week my mind has been considerably broadened, visting the Tandale slum on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam and attending and judging the Sanitation Hackathon, but more about that in a later post.

The week started in Chicago, the Windy City, which lived up to its name, being cold, windy and with crystal clear skies. It's a classic example of the American style of high rise architecture and the view from one of the meeting rooms in Nokia's offices were spectacular.

On Thursday June 14th. 2012, Theresa May, the UK Secretary Of State published the draft Communications Data Bill. If you've been reading or watching the UK media you might well be aware of this. The bill is hugely controversial, not least because it requires all UK internet service providers to track and store for 12 months the details of every email sent within the UK, every website visited from within the UK and every use of a mobile phone within the UK. This is a huge undertaking and will gather an equally huge amount of data. It's also a costly undertaking, one that is ill conceived and impractical, one that is a massive invasion of our personal privacy and right to communicate with each other and one that is fundamentally undemocratic.

It's costly because the estimated price tag is £1.8bn over 10 years, a price tag that the country cannot afford given the current economic climate and the austerity measures which are being applied across all aspects of the United Kingdom. The estimated price tag is also just that, an estimate and the UK Home Office has already stated that the final figure is likely to be much higher.

Back when I used to work for Yahoo! I wrote a lot of posts for the Geo Technologies blog; for reasons partially explained in my last post, that blog is now offline, presumed dead. But one post that seems to keep catching people's imagination is the one in which I, somewhat tongue in cheek, codified the Six Non Golden Rules Of Geo. Much to my satisfaction, it keeps getting mentioned, although the full original post is inaccessible, as is the rest of that blog. Nate Kelso reproduced part of it, as did John Goodwin but until earlier today I'd not been able to find the full post.

Step forward the aforementioned John Goodwin who, with a bit of internet detective work, managed to find a mirror of the post. While I much prefer to link to blog posts rather than reproduce them in full, in this case I'm plagiarising myself and making an exception on the ground of inaccessibility, and have mirrored the post in full here. It's worth mentioning that this post was originally written in February of 2009, when I was still working for Yahoo! so it's a little out of date and was originally posted as ...

This is an open letter to Andy Bond, Chief Executive of Asda and to Mike Duke, CEO of Wal-Mart. As a British citizen who travels a lot in the US I understand that the "customer service" ethos which is so prevalent in the US doesn't travel or translate particularly well in the UK. I also understand that it's almost naive to expect that since Asda was taken over by Wal-Mart in 1999 any type of US values would transfer to the UK arm. I also understand that the UK supermarket business is highly competitive and that through Asda, Wal-Mart is competing head-to-head with Tesco, Morrison's and Sainsbury's. I understand and accept all of this.

What I do not understand and what I do not accept is the sheer bloody-mindedness and rudeness of your staff, especially those of your online retailer business.

Let me explain.

As a family we tried out Asda, as their prices are extremely competitive compared to those of their competitors, so on the 19th of October we booked a delivery slot for an online shop; the order wasn't particularly large or complex but it was still in excess of £100.00. The only delivery slot available was from 8.00 PM to 10.00 PM the following day.

Mr. Iain Banks is a Scottish author with two personas. As Iain Banks he writes mainstream, if slightly edgy, novels. As Iain M. Banks he writes science fiction novels, including the Culture series, which deals with a vast and sprawling interstellar utopian civilization. The M is important here. Without it you know you're getting a mainstream story. With it, you know you're getting sci-fi. But not in the USA apparently.