I was walking to the supermarket on Friday, as the sun set on Britain's last day in the European Union, mulling the nature of xenophobia and the stupidity of labelling people 'foreigners'.
"Go back to your own Country!" is an appalling thing to say to anyone; worse if they are a refugee. I found myself wondering just how big the UK is in relation to the rest of the world.
After a bit of research and a quiet afternoon, I ended up with this...!
The world has a surface area of 510,072,000 sq. km / 196,940,000 mi2 of which 148,940,000 km2 / 57,510,000 sq. mi is land.
The United Kingdom has an area of 242,910 sq. km / 93,788 sq. mi. That’s 0.16% of the world’s land surface (0.05% including seas).
This means that a UK national is a foreigner on 99.84% of the planet.
An American is a foreigner on 93.4% of the Earth (same for Canadians & Chinese).
Russians are only foreigners on 88.5% of the globe.
Australians? 94.8%
The Pope is a foreigner on 99.9999997% of the world (ignoring his birth nationality).
Nothing against the Pope, it’s just that the Vatican is world’s smallest state/country, while Russia is the biggest.
If we're all Foreigners, then we're all Jukebox Heroes who Want to Know What Love Is. And that's Urgent.
Thanks to@pel23 for spotting the mistake - now corrected.
Land mass data from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density
Image links:
Earth c/o BBC
Clanger original by Oliver Postages / Smallfilms
Starscape
well and this actually ignores the fact that even in the land of your birth, you are still a "foreigner" in all likelihood unless you happen to descend from an aboriginal population, who in turn were likely foreigners at one point. DNA analysis has shown us that ancient human populations moved around way more than we thought at one point, and pretty much everyone is a blend of different populations that moved around all over the place in prehistory.
True on a genetic point but I was thinking of the idiots in the UK (and other countries) who divide the world into "them" and "us".
For them, it's not genetic, it's skin colour or language (a disgusting letter went around social media at the weekend from a Norwich tower block about "speak English or leave) or clothing or religion.
We are all "us". The only "them" are those who can't see this.
How about a Belgian? And isn’t Russia way bigger tha Australia? !trdo
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Aaaargh! you're right - typo!
Belgian? 99.98%
The top 10 countries by sq. km
Russia 17,125,242
Canada 9,984,670
United States 9,833,517
China 9,640,821
Brazil 8,515,767
Australia 7,692,024
India 3,287,240
Argentina 2,780,400
Kazakhstan 2,724,900
Algeria 2,381,741
The thing is that every country is so small relative to the size of the planet, that differences in size
Funnily enough I heard Juke Box Hero on Planet Rock this morning for the first time in a while. Nationality is an accident of birth and you don't get to choose it. What matters is what you do with your life and if it is spent hating others who happen to be born elsewhere then you have wasted it.
Build bridges, not walls.
Very true!
I'm waiting for it to be misunderstood as a misanthropic rant against 99.84% of the planet. But I only feel like that when I watch the news :)
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