Having just attempted the the official practice test released by the stationary office, I've come to the conclusion that it's the biggest load of pretentious b***cks I've ever seen!
I thought this had to be someone having a joke until I checked the domain and it is in fact registered to the stationary office.
OK, it's important to be aware that their is a mix of ethnicities in our society (but surely any immigrant is going to be well aware of that fact anyway?), but why do you need to know the largest immigrant group in the 1980s or the exact proportion of muslims.
Constituencies are an important part of our system of government and it's certainly useful to know about them, but I've never found I've needed to know exactly how many there are.
The fact that married women can get divorced is an important part of society, so is worth knowing, but although it may be interesting from a historical point of view why do citizens need to know the year it was introduced?
Why assume everyone is going drive? Question about that belong in the driving test not in a citizen test.
The only actual relevant questions I can see in amongst that lot appear to be 4, 5, 14, 15, 19 and possibly 17 and 22. That's only 7 of the 24 questions if you include dubious ones.
I managed to get more right then those 7, but I still failed and I'm ethnically British, have lived here my entire life, appear not to be completely stupid and I seem to integrate well enough into society. So, if I don't need to know some of this stuff, why does someone applying for UK citizenship?
This just seems to be an excuse for us to be elitist and turn around and say to people, "you are not worthy our country".
As far as I can see UK nationality seems to be like heriditary peerage, except more of us have it here, so it's somehow more acceptable.
Could we just get rid of this and be more friendly and less up ourselves for a change?