As I said back in October, there are different possibilities here. The old counties have actually never been changed, but the administrative bounderies have departed from their traditional lines. One of the problems being that the administrative bodies invariably call themselves 'county' councils. The other problem being that they seem to have an unlimited budget for advertising themselves and putting up signs along their administrative borders.
It would be quite a simple thing to ban both these practises. This would have several benefits, as far as I can see:
1, there would be cost savings as signage would not be put up and then replaced at every boundary reallignment.
2, it would be irrelevant what the name of the administration area was called (i.e. Humberside)
3, people would be able to separate belonging and identity from administrative bureauocracy.
4, people would regain their original counties, which people seem to be in favour of.
5, maps would be consistent and stay valid for longer.
The second possibility is the reverting back to the county boundaries for administrative purposes. Although I actually favour something along these lines, I don't think it has a chance in a million. There are also many complications with trying to implement this.
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