A post in April on the Nominet News blog has largely escaped under the radar - the key point being the results of a survey:
"We were encouraged by the news that British Internet users are six times more likely to choose a .uk rather than .com address when looking for information via an Internet search engine."
Due to the vast registration rate of .com (over 67,000,000 registered as of today) it is almost accepted by internet users that any domain name they wish to register in .com has already been taken. This requires an alternative to be found, usually resulting in the country code eg. .CO.UK . With governmental sites ending in .GOV.uk and organisations actually using .ORG.uk in the correct manner the .UK branding has permeated into the minds of UK citizens. Soon, anything without a .UK at the end can be perceived to be a ‘foreign’ website and therefore ignored and in turn boosting .UK usage further.
Following on from the previous Domainer City post it seems that ccTLD’s will become identifiers for specific districts - .UK for the Brits, .DE for the Germans and so on and the above survey is one of the first formal signs that it is happening.