The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy, with a queen and a parliament that has two houses: the House of Lords, with 574 life peers, 92 hereditary peers, and 26 bishops; and the House of Commons, which has 651 popularly elected members.
The United Kingdom and the countries that preceded Science, engineering and innovation have produced scientists and engineers credited with important advances.
The UK has 66 'official' cities, though perhaps confusingly it has many more towns easily large enough to be considered cities, and some of its official cities are even smaller than large villages or small towns. See the articles on the right for more about this.
We have created special individual directories of local shops and services for most of the larger cities including Greater London, Bristol, Leicester, Greater Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
The United Kingdom's population in 2004 surpassed 60 million--the third-largest in the European Union. Its overall population density is one of the highest in the world.