In article
,
"Lüko Willms" wrote:

Am Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:00:40 UTC, schrieb "John Salmon"
auf uk.railway :

"Lüko Willms" wrote
DB could do what you formulate in your question above, or they could
simply dispend of ICRR and manage the Eurostar traffic on Great
Britain themselves,

Er, we've been here before... it's *in* Great Britain to everyone here

Great Britain is an island.

In case you go to vacations to the largest of the Balearen islands,
would you spend your time _on_ Mallorca, or _in_ Mallorca?

We'd say "in Mallorca" (actually we'd say "in Majorca" but we'd
pronounce it as if it were a German word!). We'd say "in Ireland" too.
We generally reserve "on" for islands you can see most of at the same
time: on the Isle of Wight, on Arran, on Lindisfarne, on Barra. We
might use "in" for islands that are also states of some kind so you
could use either "in" or "on" for the Isle of Man or Jersey. The phrase
"in the island of Ireland" is common but then so is "on the island of
Ireland".

It's pretty weird.

Sam