I was born in Dorset (well, technically about half a mile into Somerset) and lived there for nine years and I still didn’t know where Maiden Castle was.
These days the test is about 75% history questions like that – so I came up smiling over that at least as I’ve been a history teacher for a long time.
The book’s depiction of UK history is interesting, to say the least. M Thatcher’s tenure as prime minister would make Tom Sawyer proud; there are also things that are downright incorrect. Lotta stuff was glossed over.
The chapter that gave me grief in the book was all the stuff about the courts – if you commit a minor criminal crime in England or Wales, what court will you use? A minor criminal crime in Scotland? A major criminal crime in Ireland? A civil trial in England goes to which type of court? In Scotland? Is David Cameron the dark lord of hosts? In which of the four countries are magistrates paid? In which are they not? Where will you find 15 jury members sat on a court case? Where do you find 12? Under which circumstances does the judge himself make the final decision of guilt? What’s the maximum worth of costs that you can bring to a civil trial in England? In Ireland?
There are also many, many points of trivia about the most recent Olympics and other sporting events because it’s really important to be able to name all of the gold medal winners in downhill cheese rolling and provide the number of wins Jackie Stewart has had in F1 (of those two sporting examples, one is a real question off the test; I leave it to the reader as a general exericse to determine which one).
Fortunately, now that I’ve passed, all of that information has melted away from my brain and I can use those valuable neurons to keep track of all the Casualty and Holby City plotlines again. (There really were questions about East Enders and Coronation St., though.)
I got a chuckle out of this one:
I mean, bit subjective, innit?
There are loads like that! And each of them has a corresponding sentence in the study guide booklet. I had a question on my exam (it’s 24 questions drawn off something like a 3500 question bank) that was along the lines of
To be a good neighbour, you should
- Play music as loudly as you can all hours of the day
- leave your bins overflowing
- go around to your neighbours’ houses and introduce yourself
- keep to yourself at all times.
The book of course expects you to chose #3, and has all sorts of advice about introducing yourself to all of your neighbours, asking if they have any chores they’d like help with, stuff like that. I once had a brief sojourn in Hackney; I wonder how that would have gone down.
But nothing about how to cope with yummy mummies who block your street if not actual drive twice a day in their chelsea tractors because precious Trevor and Penelope’s school property backs up onto your estate – you can wait for an hour on the main road for the school run folks to leave surely.
We Americans don’t get why this is so funny.
And you misspelled “honored.”
Nope, depending on who you ask, Spain’s national holiday is either October 12th (discovery of America, aka Dia de la Hispanidad and in other Hispanic countries Dia de la Raza; in Spain this last name has fallen into disfavor as some people were interpreting “the Race” to mean “the Conquistadores” rather than “Hispanics”) or July 25th (feast of St James the Greater, patron of Spain, aka that guy who’s supposed to be buried in Compostela). Most regional holidays are a patron saint or a local famous person (sometimes both, cf. Xavier for Navarre and Loyola for Euskadi). Catalonia celebrates the anniversary of almost having their capital razed during the War of Succession.
I wouldn’t be able to tell you the exact date of the signature of the Tratado de Hermandad, “Treaty of Sisterhood” (called Ley Paccionada, “Agreed-upon Law”, by the rest of Spain) by which Castille and Navarre became a single Kingdom of Spain. The Fall of Granada is also not a big date; I remember the exact date because it happens to match the birthday of one of my relatives, but that’s it.
And while for generations we were lied to and told that “Spain became unified when Carlos V acceded to the throne”, no it didn’t, and he actually got several thrones in different dates, so even if you wanted to pick a date from there you’d have to decide which one.
What a damned moralistic cheek, I had no idea people had to take some sort of test to gain citizenship here. What kind of feeble-minded moron thought up such a stupid crap-laden idea ? Why should anyone be asked questions about the place one is coming to, rather than about the place one is coming from ?
Only a fucking ninny would invent such stupidity.
Although it is wholly untrue that tolerance defines us ( as our masters like to pretend ) — as a cursory glance at our history shows — more like tolerance shown under threat of law: we have taken in millions of people ( mainly people just like us, such as the French [ which is a good enough reason to dislike anyone, family quarrels are the best ] ), if not with noted enthusiasm, at least with our trademark apathy, and we never asked them to fill in a form, let alone a prescriptive test; from treacherous little Huguenots to Old Karl now residing in Highgate, they would have been insulted to be asked this rubbish and ourselves embarrassed to have administered it. If one had to raise one’s right hand and swear allegiance, that would have been pushing it.
And since we don’t really talk to strangers, following our mummys’ injunctions, and have no interest in our neighbours, we have no idea what religion they are, where they are from, nor what they think on any subject. And we plan to keep it that way.
It’s like every so often they get the axe out, give it a little grind, and then go back to asking you about double yellow lines and the Archers.
[QUOTE=cmyk]
Sounds like as good a reason as any for a day off to eat BBQ and light explosives shaped like toys.
[/QUOTE]
There is no way I am going to be eating light explosives, whatever shape they are.
The ‘Life in the UK’ test is only a small part of the supporting documentation I’ve had to collect as part of my application package (the application itself is about 15 pages long; the one for the original visa was around 25).
The paperwork that’s accumulated (and that I’ve had to accumulate) first for my original two year visa, then the leave to remain/settlement visa, would easily make a stack about a foot high, no exaggeration.
I’ll have one more set of hoops, paperwork accumulation, and another horrendous fee to pay next summer to become an actual citizen.
Ah well! These things happen.
Missed the edit window, sorry
Apparently much of these regulations have been instituted over the past few years, as I have colleagues in my department who didn’t have to go through any of this; the other two Americans became naturalised in the 1990s simply by being married to her British husband for a certain amount of time, for example.
They’ve been just as astonished to hear about me having to provide a list of every place I’ve lived for the past twenty years, every time I ever travelled out of the US (duration, purpose of the trip) for the past decade. Loads of info about my parents and their nationalities. Everything about my financial history, savings, investments, previous half dozen jobs, current job, current savings (ditto for my spouse for all of the financial stuff as well as his pedigree). We’ve had to demonstrate that I’m not trying to get settlement immediately to go on benefits nor for him to claim them through me. I’ve also had to write out what ties I still have back to the US and if I plan to move any of my family over here once I get settlement. All sorts of things.
A minor nuance, but the current number of kids called Trevor whose mother drives them to school in a chelsea tractor is going to be vanishingly small. There’ll be more Horatios.
See, this is the sort of thing that needs to be in the book. 
Exactly 
I went through a few pages of the practice questions in the links posted, and it’s awful. Very little relevance to how to live in the country at all.
But don’t the Horatios get eaten by polar bears?
Oh, I think one might be able to put up a case based partly on the test involving useful information for new citizens, perhaps along the lines of “don’t go thinking you may drive a car without doing all the proper legal stuff” , or “be advised that you must send your kinds to school or otherwise make sure they receive an education”, but ye gods, some (MANY) of those questions are just silly. Plus, the Department of Daft Question seems to have lazy staff who repeat the same questions using only slightly different wording, plus some of the answers are not really correct, and some questions don’t quite make sense
… Oh, I am doing a bit of “grrr” and a bit of giggling.
Shit, some of it is really just crazy. :eek: I mean, it might be worthwhile knowing a thing or two about Hannukah, Ramadan and so on, as a mark of a reasonably educated person, but that, like guessing how many people in the last census said they were Sikh, or Christian, is the sort of thing that’s fine to know, but not immediately essential - I mean, they belong in the department of "things you can learn as and when they seem relevant or interesting, as do questions about horse-racing and tennis.
And which bridges Brunel built, and what the sodding Ashes is, and, why would you really need to care about the Bessemer process and about bloody soap operas …: smack:
aaarrrgggh.
In the spirit of cross-pond Special Relationship US-UK Anglophonic Mutual Aghastness Doctrine, here’s the American version of the quiz people wishing to become naturalized citizens must pass, with the distinction that the real test is oral, not multiple choice, and applicants may be asked up to ten questions out of a bank of one hundred, with six correct being required to pass. (I suppose if you get the first six right, they don’t bother asking the other four.)
(This isn’t the only test, but the others focus on the applicant’s ability to read, write, and speak English, so aren’t really interesting to us here on the SDMB. Well, maybe some of us. Here’s the main page to information about all the tests.)
I live in the south of England; it’s more about the penguins, sharks, and the French around here.
I’ve blocked most of the questions I was asked, but my version of the official test quizzed me on the location of the Isle of Wight, when is Christmas Day, and had one asking if the police were honest or should I pay a bribe if I have to get help. (That last one was tricky, as Mr Magnet put me on a steady diet of The Sweeny and Life on Mars as part of my revision for the test.
I find the complexities of Eurovision voting-blocks much more sensible than all the stuff I had to know about the many and varied court systems.
Celyn – one also has to memorise a table of population of Britain from between 1600 and the last census; my test had the question, ‘What was the population of the UK in 1950?’ And I did have to know the whole breakdown of 4% Muslim, .05% Jewish, and all that.
The history section was simplified to the point of inaccuracy as well; my colleagues were either amused or outraged by some of the information in that part. (It was also way, way more important that I know the wives of Henry VIII and how they fared rather than significanct events in the development of common law or English, then British, government.)
Fans of annoying tests in general will be pleased to know the test also does the arsehole teacher thing of pulling questions from the intro, references, and index of the book.
Yay – 100%! (I had 100% on the UK ones, too – Life in the UK and that wretched driving test).
There is a proof-of-English-speaking-ability requirement in the UK as well, but I was exempt because I’m from the US. Despite the objections of my colleagues at school, of course 
It was Blunketts idea!
It is a tradition in the UK for Home Secretaries to create political initiatives that appease the insecurities and prejudices of socially conservative voters. Blunketts job was to ensure that Labour government policy stole the conservative votes.
I guess this was a response to common complaint in sections of the media that there were too many foreigners coming to the UK and getting a passport easily. Living in communities that are isolated from the rest of British society, to which they have little loyalty, interest or knowledge, save for the workings of the benefit system.
Answer: make them pass a test.
The fact that it was cobbled together very hastily and contains all sorts of nonesense, is probably a secondary issue. New Labour got the votes it needed at the time.
The extremely onerous requirements imposed married couples to prove their were genuine is another example.
I knew someone who had a marriage of convenience and got paid hansomely for confering his nationality by marriage to his supposed partner. This was marriage visa fraud and it grew into a popular scandal, such that the government changed the law. I have also seen the pain that genuine couples go through now that the rules have been tightened up so much that people are obliged to provide a mountain of evidence to prove they are honest.
However, I can see how it came about. It is easy to grab votes in this way by passing a law. Making good laws is a different matter. In this case it came out of the Home Office. Which is not a department than is famed for its law making ability nor does it represent a high standard in administrative competence. The very genuine couple I knew went through Hell with the Home Office, who lost all their original documents, then tried to deport the wife during her pregnancy. They had to get their MP involved to sort it out. It is now very difficult for someone to marry a UK national and obtain nationality through marriage. They are assumed to be bogus and have to go to great lengths to prove otherwise.
Part of living in the UK is holding the authorities to account when they do this sort of thing. You have to fight back. Governments are often under the delusion that passing a law is the answer to everything. Tweaking the rules for who can become a UK national is an easy, populist vote grabber. Sadly, it does nothing to address many of the issues to do with nationality and immigration, which are rather more complicated than the common voter imagines.
I sympathise with anyone trapped in the kafkaesque world of Home Office procedures.
I heard that they did introduce a ceremony for achieving British Nationality. Apparently they copied the style of the US ceremony with its solemn oath and gravitas. That should do it.
They still ask the other four. They keep track of the scores so they know if the questions are too hard and whatnot.