Talk:British Overseas Territories


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]

What unit of currency?

The big Current overseas territories table lists GDP in "$", except for Turks and Caicos Islands, which is in "£". If nothing else, they should all be in the same units, but more than that, we need to specify which currency. I assume Pound Sterling would be the proper choice? And if so, is it just a matter of changing the symbol, or has somebody actually done some currency conversion? None of this is sourced, so no way to tell. RoySmith (talk) 14:30, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Citations should probably be provided for the GDP info as well. ~~ Jessintime (talk) 16:45, 5 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

UK Overseas Territories

Following up on a suggestion from CaribDigita on Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2025 March 29 § British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies upmerge, I checked to see if "United Kingdom Overseas Territories" is now the more common name. Based on this ngram search, it appears not yet. -- Beland (talk) 18:49, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]