Hacker News Reader

Comment by jon889 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what happens to .co.uk if the UK dissolves, which seems more possible than it should be after Brexit?

If Scotland leaves, I imagine we'll switch from "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" to "The United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland", thus keeping the "uk". ".scot" already exists.

If Northern Ireland leaves, I guess the UK no longer exists, and we switch to ".gb". Could clone .uk at .gb for a while (ten years?) and give people time to switch, but seems more likely Nominet would prefer to just charge people twice for a .uk and a .gb.

If Scotland and Northern Ireland leaves, that leaves us as just "Britain". Maybe we create a new ".brit" (or whever the 2 char country code will be), and give time for .uk to disappear again.

Wales wont leave.

[edit] I just saw emmelaich's comment that .gb already exists.

Great Britain (or Britain) refers to geographic feature (the island) which includes Scotland whether it be part of the UK or possibly not.

Wales has .cymru and .wales.

Neither of those are two letter TLDs.

The United Kingdom of England and Wales will remain.

The United Kingdom bit comes from joining together the Scottish and English crowns, it wouldn't be affected by whatever happens to Northern Ireland.

Check your passport, it's the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

"The medieval conquest and subsequent annexation of Wales by the Kingdom of England, followed by the union between England and Scotland in 1707 to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the union in 1801 of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom

The three kingdoms which are united are the Kingdom of England, Scotland and Ireland, the first two by the Acts of Union 1707 [1], and Ireland added by the Acts of Union 1800 [2].

Wales is part of the Kingdom of England, under the "Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542" [3].

Without Scotland, it becomes the United Kingdom of England and Northern Ireland, leaving the Kingdom of Scotland. Scotland would be assigned an ISO 3166 code. SC, SO, ST, SL, SA, SN and SD are all taken. Perhaps they can have "AB" for "Alba". The "GB" code would be unassigned.

Without Ireland, it becomes the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Northern Ireland presumably joins the Republic of Ireland in this case.

Without both, it becomes the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of Scotland, etc. England would then need an ISO code, "EN" is available.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1707

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Union_1800

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_in_Wales_Acts_1535_and_15...

According to wikipedia [0] and UK government sources [1] there are 4 countries in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: England, Scotland, Wales (together forming Great Britain) and Northern Ireland. If Scotland and Northern Ireland left the UK, it is conceivable therefore that the United Kingdom would continue to exist but as the United Kingdom of England and Wales.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_United_Kingdo... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom

[1] https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20080909013512/ht...

Wales is a constituent country of the UK but not a kingdom.

The 1707 Union created the Kingdom of Great Britain. 1801 created United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The creation of the Irish Free State in 1922 gave us the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. So if Scotland leaves, the Kingdom of Great Britain ceases to exist. "Britain" ceases to exists as a political/national state. IMHO any reconfigured UK after that is an absurdity.

Are you implying that European Union shouldn't be called that because it does not include all of Europe's countries?

I assume no, so perhaps it's ok for a Kingdom of Great Britain not to include all of it :)

FWIW, Serbia almost kept with the Yugoslavia for as long as it had someone to unite with. It did turn into Serbia and Montenegro in 2003, before ultimately splitting in 2006.

It even got a first case of ISO country code reuse with CS (hi Czechoslovakia), but I don't think there was ever a TLD .cs for it.

The constitutional position of Wales has significantly changed with the three devolution acts introduced in the last 20 years. The Wales Act 2017 in particular made the assembly/parliament permanent and Welsh law as a separate body; that means Wales is effectively its own country in the UK, on par with the other three.

> I guess the UK no longer exists

Meh, it will become "the United Kingdom of England and Overseas Territories" or something to that effect. UK is a brand and a symbol that Westminster will never abandon. Serbia, for example, tried really hard to remain "Yugoslavia", and if it weren't for the tensions it generates, that name would still be around.

TLDs based on political entities do seem like a bit of a bad idea https://eurid.eu/en/register-a-eu-domain/brexit-notice/

Oh, hadn't considered that...

"Should the UK leave the EU with no deal on 1st November 2019, EURid will enforce the following measures as far as .eu domain names that have GB/GI as the registrant’s residence country code are concerned..."

Is the nation state itself not a political entity?

Yes, that's what I was suggesting

Sorry, I thought you were just referring to the .eu tld.

Definitely a danger. The worst is that ppl can't even redirect their old traffic if they have to switch domains.

If someone really wants uk in their TLD they can always go with .uk.com - totally unrestricted.

Depends on the identity goin forward. If England+Wales stick to the name for some reason they will continue using it, and Scots and NI get new ones. (Well, later not if they merge with Republic of Ireland) If they form a new country and rename to "England" (poor Welsh) or "South Britain" they likely will be legal successor of treaties and stuff (like Russia being legal successor of USSR) and can use .UK for the time being.

One effect can be seen on .eu: After Brexit UK entities aren't eligible for .eu domains anymore and depending on the outcome on Oct 31st might lose it immediately (while there are statements for a grace period even on Brexit without further agreement ... but no deal leads to no legal requirement)

Cool fact - .uk isn't the official tld for great britain.

The official one is .gb

.uk is also the UK's though. The country code is explicitly reserved by the UK, and it exists in DNS because they grandfathered in some old system's domains.

Cooler fact, GB and UK are different. UK is GB + Northern Ireland.

Scotland already have .Scot and I think Wales have thier own also. Not sure I've seen a .England though.

.en would seem apt.

No. The official TLD – i.e. “Top Level Domain”, is .uk. It differs from the normal ISO 3166 two-character country code, GB, even though most other countries have an identical TLD and ISO two-character code. The TLD .gb is merely reserved to deter shenanigans.

Both .GB and .UK are the country code top-level domains; .GB because that's the official code, and .UK for legacy reasons.

UK is a reserved ISO 3166 code, to prevent complications with DNS TLD assignment.

The .GB TLD is in use, but there are only three known domains. This is one:

  host hermes.dra.hmg.gb
  hermes.dra.hmg.gb has address 146.80.9.16
  hermes.dra.hmg.gb mail is handled by 10 relay.dstl.gov.uk.

There were some mil.gb domains at one point.

Maybe Ukraine would like the TLD :)

If you'd asked people in 2015 which country, UK or Ukraine, they expected to last the longest, I guess most people would have said UK. I wonder what the answer would be now :/

It wouldn't be any great upheaval. The component kingdoms of the UK would still be separately sovereign realms of the Commonwealth with the same monarch and royal succession. I imagine the process is now well established, as the Commonwealth has more than 50 countries in it, with 16 of them still constitutional monarchies.

.uk would probably remain just as grandfathered-in as it is right now, given that the official 2-letter country code is gb .

.scot seems to be the main Scottish TLD (e.g. gov.scot) and Wales has .cymru and .wales. Don't think there are ones for England and NI though - maybe .ruk would do?

Unlikely Brexit ever happens. There's too much at stake here, globalists would never let it happen. If UK detaches from the EU and it becomes successful, the EU project is over.

There's big forces at play that do want it to happen though; financial, in that there's a lot of people that want UK businesses and real estate to drop in value so they can buy it up for cheap, and political, political forces who have an interest in destabilizing Europe (and the world).

Isn't a contradiction that "globalists" are the bad guys in your story and at the same time UK wants to keep the benefits of being part of EU market ?

What I see happening is that in some countries the EU become the scapegoat for the government corruption and incompetence, usually you could use the other party that was before to blame them but if your party was in power for more then 8 years then is harder to find scapegoats.

Why do you think that it's some external force trying to keep the UK in the EU?

With Jacob Reece Mogg and James Dyson moving their assets overseas, are they not now 'globalists'?

> If UK detaches from the EU and it becomes successful, the EU project is over.

I think that's a big _if_ here. Most probably the economy will crumble and there will be fights in Northern Ireland again. Also whatever kind of border has to be established, to separate UK and Ireland, as people would obviously not be allowed to enter the UK/Schengen area without proper border checks...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com