is the uk moving closer to the north pole?

Contrary to the other answers the British Isles are moving northwards and have been for millions of years.

There is only one tectonic plate near the UK and that is the Eurasian Plate that we are on. The western edge of it is half way across the Atlantic and the nearest southern edge goes through the Straits of Gibraltar and along the north coast of Morocco and Libya.

The Eurasian Plate is moving generally eastwards but is also twisting and the twist means the western side of the plate where we are is moving north east on a bearing of around 060 degrees and the eastern side is moving south east. The south western side is moving northwards too and is where the big crunch with the Indian Plate is happening and is pushing the mountains of Himalaya like Everest and K2 even higher by resisting the impact of the Indian Plate.

The Indian Plate is also moving northwards but at a different rate, nearly six times faster according to one estimate but that may be a bit high and it has certainly slowed down since it hit the huge mass of the Eurasion Plate and the rock crumpled upwards to form the huge mountain chain of the Himalya , which is spelt without an 's'. Adding one was a British invention to use the word for it's many mountains rather than for the region.

Well described here, with a reference to our own Eurasian plate being far south of where it is now.

Pangea was a southern hemisphere continent.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/everest/earth/birth.h... . . . . .

Here is the sequence leading to the collision of the Indian Plate and the Eurasian Plate...scroll down

http://www.platetectonics.com/book/page_11.asp . . . . .

See the map on here. made from satellite measurements.

http://geology.about.com/library/bl/maps/blplatemo... . . .

Here is the whole world map of tectonic movements from NASA.

http://geology.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?si...

.The bit of land that became the British Isles was actually in the southern hemisphere long ago close to where Australia is now and has been moving northwards for hundreds of millions of years.

In the Triassic Period it was a few degrees north of the equator.

Full story here up to the present day. We are moving north east by about 8mm a year.

http://www.bbm.me.uk/portsdown/PH_065_Palaeo.htm . . . . . .

There are few tectonic plates near England and there not as active as other plates around the globe. I think you'll find that the UK is more subject to East West movement than North South and that movement is tiny. They measure it in mm in centuries, I think something like 3-6cm in 150 years or so

No, the entire Eurasian plate is moving south and east, which is why it's gobbling up India. Then of course you have the Mid-Atlantic Ridge spreading Eurasia eastward. There's a bit of rotational motion to the plate (there always is), so the eastern edge is spinning south faster than the western edge by a very small degree.

But, no the British Isles are not moving closer to the North Pole.

Jonal may be right after all, the original site of the piece of land, we call home, was the South pole, ( magnetic tests confirm this to be true ), and longterm drift says we are moving in this direction but this assumes that we are going to go on in this direction and this is clearly not the case, the plate we sit on, is being "subducted" below the North Atlantic plate, in the middle of this ocean,.

(We are going under America , people ), and present research says that within 28,000 years all of Europe, will be under water to a depth of the Eiffel tower, the only part of this island that will survive, is Scotland, which is still rising at a rate in excess of the rate of subduction of this continental plate, all of this is known to the government, from talks given to parliament during Tony Blair's governments first years, from the countries chief geological officer, at parliaments request ( you can look this talk up in Hansard, the daily record of proceedings in Parliament),

So a great idea to increase our population through immigration, by 3 million in eight years, then Tony ?, and tie us to Europe like a sinking dinghy ? yeah, right..... way to go, Tony, way to go, there is no avoiding this coming event, and all of Europe will come to an end, dumping all it's poisons in the seas, when it goes, and millions will die for Blair's stupidity. .

It may seem like forever away, but it is coming, and we are acting irresponsibly, if we think that they way we are behaving, is the way to go....disasters do not stop, just because we are here....we are borrowing this planet from future generations, and we have a responsibility to those yet to come , and we are doing little that will gain their respect ....

It is often said the Kent coast is moving away from France, but this is more due to the south east corner of England sinking a little, and the north west of Scotland being pushed up, than it is due to continental drift to the north, which is not as severe as the tilting of the land.

This is the new exercise of the year. It's called polercise. Some places have classes. I suggest looking in the exercise dvd section. Not sure of the name but have seen one recently available. I got one for my birthday in the summer but i'm pregnant now so won't be using it for a while yet.

No, Instead the whole Eurasian plate is moving southeast wards.