Can you pass the British citizenship test?

[muriel_volestrangler]

http://www.howbritishareyou.com/quiz.html

I'm not quite sure if it's exactly the same questions asked each time - I was asked 24 questions, when a blog pointing at it gave their score out of 30.

6 out of 7 have failed so far, they say, which doesn't surprise me - I passed, but narrowly, and if this is the real standard and type of questions, it's not easy.

[LeftishBrit]

1. I passed (18 out of 24)...

certainly not an easy test, though. I've seen the American equivalent one, and ours seems more difficult.

[Libertas1776]

2. Wow

that was a difficult test. What percentage of the population has used illicit drugs? What percentage of the population is Muslim? What year did women gain the right to divorce their husband? Those questions seem very much out there for a citizenship test. Over here, its what are the 3 branches of government?, what does the 1st Amendment entitle you to? What to the 13 stars and strips stand for? Real basic grade school history lesson type stuff. Although, I will admit it does get difficult when they start asking you for more specifics about the constitution, its amendments, immigration forms etc. Naturalized citizens in America can be considered outright constitutional scholars compared to us born in the States.

Anyway, I did take the test; failed miserably, something like 40%. I knew most of the stuff on Parliament, unwritten constitution, national holidays etc, but when you start getting into statistics on illicit drug use and the name of the parliamentary recorder, you lose me.:crazy: I did, however, pass the second time around. :evilgrin:

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Yeah, I was surprised on the statistics questions

I got 20 out of 24; one question I got was "how many people say they go to church services?" and phrased like that, it's almost impossible to answer - there are many who'll go to weddings and funerals - do you count them? People who go once a year at Christmas? The figures tend to vary a lot depending on how such a question is asked, too.

And things like "what year did women gain the right to divorce their husband" is very difficult. I made an educated guess, and happened to get it right, but I reckon that needs pretty good knowledge of British legal history.

It's not an official test site, though, so it's possible they've put in too many difficult questions or something. Not to be taken as a true likeness of the test until someone who's taken it for real has confirmed it, perhaps.

[amandabeech]

4. Failed--15 of 24.

However, I'm a yank who has never lived in the U.K. nor studied your customs.

All I did was make some guesses based on what goes on here in the U.S., your cousin country.

If I study a bit, may I become a U.K. citizen?

[oldironside]

5. I'm another 18/24...

... which isn't sooooo bad considering i don't live in the UK anymore. I would take issue with some of the questions I was asked. Is the one about drug use strictly relevant? And St. George's day is only sort of quasi official as our English national day. It isn't a public holiday - or at least it wasn't when I left.

Anyone interested in an entertaining snapshot of the UK should go here:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/if-the-uk-were-a-village-of-100-people-1754307.html

Oh, and to the poster above I would like to add that the people of the UK are not citizens, we are subjects to her Britannic Majesty. You'd think Cromwell spent his life as a farmer.

[non sociopath skin]

6. The site won't let me take the test LOL

Maybe it knows that I actually teach the Citizenship course for a local authority in the North East ... all the questions that people have quoted here ARE in the bank of questions which aspirant citizens may be asked, and I often tell my students, only half jokingly, that if we pulled in a random sample from the High Street, I doubt whether half would pass.

An additional problem is that the test hasn't been updated since its inception, so that some of the information they have to learn is outdated and no longer accurate.

The Skin

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Thanks for the expert information

I'm amazed they'd ask that question about church attendance - so sloppy, it wouldn't pass for a moment as a question on a TV quiz show.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

7. I scraped through on 18

Some of the questions are silly. Does really knowing if the proportion of UK residents who have done illicit drugs is 33% really a good indicator of one's integration into British society?

[T_i_B]

9. You can say that about a lot of these questions

The ones about the percentage of the population that is Muslim or has taken drugs just got me thinking of Disraeli's old line about lies, dammed lies and statistics. There was some pretty obscure stuff in there.

[non sociopath skin]

10. The text of the "official" information to be mugged up on ...

... for the Citizenship Test is here.

http://www.lifeintheunitedkingdomtest.co.uk/?page_id=10

The Skin

[Dutch]

11. 22/24

In all fairness, I really didn't think it was a particularly unreasonable set of questions. But then, I'm not a British citizen...

[oldironside]

12. There's no such thing...

... as a British citizen. We are subjects, at least until the revolution. Then it's number 4 on the list of What Is To Be Done, after evicting the royal family, abolishing marriage and putting everyone who went to a public school in a chain gang. And, before you ask, I am proud of my idealism.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

13. but there is

The term is clarified in British nationality law, and the former term "British subject" no longer has any legal use. Britain being a constitutional monarchy doesn't mean that that there's no citizenship or British citizens, but I do share your sincere desire for British republicanism.

[oldironside]

14. Ah,

... thanks mate. I've been away longer than I thought. I do feel, however, that our desire for a British Republic may not go down too well with some of our fellow DUers. Did you read the recent thread related to the photos of Buck House? Some of those comments were just shocking for a supposedly progressive blog.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

15. I didn't see that thread, but there is some strange affection for the royal family on here

partly to do with the institution's perceived "apolitical" nature coupled with frustration of having Bush as Head of State for eight years.

[oldironside]

16. I agree with you...

... and the comment about the "perceived" apolitical nature of our monarchy is, I think, the hub. Even with the supposedly perfectly democratic system they have in the States power ends up in the hands of a few greedy bastards sooner or later. However, one should never forget that Mussolini was appointed by Victor Emmanuel III, Edward VIII was a great admirer of Hitler and Henry VIII used to cut people's heads off out of spite. And don't start me on Charles II.

There is, of course, more to it than that. One thing you can't underestimate is that they have a tourist's delight in our Ruritanian monarchical system (strangely none of my Germany friends show the same symptoms) and I get the feeling that some of my American friends would love to live in a deodorized and air conditioned middle ages (Did you ever see Red Dwarf's Queen of Camelot?). Still, given the chance I would have ridden with Cromwell at Naseby, or would swap my life to be the Prime Minister of Grand Fenwick, so I don't feel qualified to criticize that kind of historical fantasising.

Jeremy Harding once said that being apolitical is expecting others to be right wing on your behalf, and you can't really blame the Windsors for being who they are. Put yourself in Charles' shoes. Who would you be? If I'd been born in Germany in 1916...?

We should really have had the 1776 revolution, and would have if the men of the Hell Fire Club had had their eyes on history, rather than gorgeous female buttocks (I plead guilty by association). No, better still, we should never have had the Restoration. Government by whim of Charles II. Forget justice and logic. "These are the guys that killed my dad." I bowed my head last time I was at Marble Arch - for the countless wretches tortured to death there, including the regicides. Cromwell was lucky enough to already be dead.

To paraphrase Churchill, the human race will make the right decisions, but only when we've exhausted all other possibilities. For Sarah Palin we may have to wait a bit longer.

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. But what was the alternative to the Restoration?

'Parliament' may have won the Civil War, but that degenerated into the Lord Protectorship in just a few years, and plenty of Cromwell's acts were tyrannical too. And when Oliver died, others had no idea what to do except offer it to his son Richard. Who turned out to have little interest in it, and little aptitude, and so they ended up with the Restoration.

Even rule by a Parliament elected by property owners turned out not to be an non-starter, let alone something approaching democracy. And the French Revolution went much the same way - a Terror, and an Emperor within a few years. I think there's something to be said for gradually taking away the monarchical powers.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. I got 50%, did better on the cultural than the governmental matters

I attribute that to all the British mysteries I have read and watched in the past few decades. :evilgrin:

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. You mean like "name 5 beers available in Oxford pubs", that kind of thing?

:D

[legin]

20. 13 out of 24 for me (54%)

:dunce:

[legin]

21. I'm declaring myself an independent republic

It seems I'm not wanted.

Basically I've really got the hump now.

:grr:

[mrfrapp]

22. Ridiculous.

That's a ridiculous test. Compared to the US equivalent those questions are simply embarrassing. I'm guessing the Government picked the lowest bidder yet again and went with the guys who write the Trivial Pursuit questions.

[Penguin31]

23. 23 out of 24, and...

...I've never stepped foot in the UK - though I'd love nothing more than to immigrate there.

[Matilda]

24. I gave it a go.

Failed, with 15/24.

I got one of the emergency numbers wrong (there was only 999 when I
lived in the UK), and one of the offices to apply for National
Insurance (we had to get ours from the Home Office). I think I deserved
half a point each for those, which would have brought me up to 16!

Interesting.

[Violet_Crumble]

26. I got 15 out of 24 too...

I was hopeless on the Things You'd Only Know If You'd Lived There ones, but I did okay on the governmental type questions....

[BooScout]

25. If you think this test is a joke........

You should see the Life in the UK Test I had to take to get my ILR Visa. Now that was a joke.

[fedsron2us]

27. Stupifyingly boring and trivial set of questions

The most revealing point being that we apparently define our country to new citizens by asking them to know the answers to a set of questions about the bureaucratic regulations regarding

a) Film viewing classifications
b) The hours paper boys are supposed to work
c) The age at which you can go into a betting shop

Forget Shakespeare, Newton, Watt, Brunel etc what defines Britain is the existence of quangos.

Possibly the saddest comment on modern Britain you are ever likely to find.