Paul Birch

To me, and I suspect to most other people, they are indeed parts of London. I used to live in Bushey Heath, and although it is technically in Herts, mostly thought of it as being on the edge of London, an outer suburb. (Originally I'm from West Derby, a village and parish with its own identity and importance dating back to the Domesday book - but no one doubts that it's now part of Liverpool).

None of the routes within the M25 are really circular, and they all cut through continuous urban areas. The M25 is the obvious boundary; over most of its length it is close to the edge of the London conurbation and the current county boundaries, and a reasonable match for the termini of the London Underground and suburban lines.

nyorks-patriot

All the historic counties should be brought back.

Britannist

The dastardly works of Heath-Heseltine must be undone/reversed - including restoring all county councils to their original 1000 year-old historic boundaries. The Middlesex County (which still has a Queen's representative) must return in full, exactly on its proper and tradition boundaries as its 2.5 million people want.
Monstrosities like Humberside :evil: , Avon :evil: , 'West' Midlands' :evil: , 'Merseyside' :evil: and other similar artificial constructions must go and Yorkshire should be returned to the boundaries of its historic Ridings . The names of all these Heathite entities must be banned from usage in postal addresses. :twisted:
Even minor alterations, such as changes on the Derbyshire-Cheshire border made by Heath must be reversed. The ludicrous division between 'West' and 'East' Sussex must go.
The entire postcode system should be revamped. No one who lives in Bedfordshire - for instance - should have to have the postcode of a Buckinghamshire town :x .

Paul Birch

The county boundaries are not 1000 years old. Not even the counties themselves are. They have changed many times. Tradition is all very well, but let's not make a fetish of it.

Why?

Why must the administration of London be split inconveniently among four counties? London is now longer the London of four centuries ago - or even of one century ago. Wouldn't it be better to preserve the heritage of Middlesex through its Cricket Club, its mention in the Boat Race and other cultural matters, rather than try to make it do a bureaucratic job it's just not cut out for?

As for the idea that 2.4 million living there want it, I doubt if more than one in twenty even knows where the Middlesex boundaries used to run.

Britannist

The administration of London would not be split to four counties :shock: . It comes from 4 counties and should be given back to them. In 1965 the Greater London Council was established without a referendum - just like British membership of the EEC/EU came about without the people being asked. Just as our sovereignty must be recovered from Brussels - so the powers that Middlesex lost to Greater London must be got back .
As for Paul's claim that most people would not know what the boundaries of Middlesex are - does he not know that the whole of west and north west London have Middlesex addresses and postcodes? Harrow, Wembley, Twickenham, Teddington, Feltham, Heston, Heathrow, Enfield and so on :?: .
The counties of Essex, Surrey, Hertfordshire and Kent will willingly take back all the parts of the Greater London area which used to be within their boundaries.
Perhaps Paul is unaware of the huge opposition to the London Assembly (the successor to the Greater London Assembly) that exists in the outer parts of Greater London which were once in the surrounding four counties. I take it Paul would prefer to live under the jurisdiction of the europhile Mayor (of London) Livingstone who is so fanatical about the EU he has said he wants the Greater London area put under continental time rather than Greenwich Mean Time :evil: ?

Aardvark

Counties? What's wrong with Mercia, Norhumbria, Wessex etc?

nyorks-patriot wants a mere 4 tiers of Government. When I was born I had 2 - Coventry City Council and Parliament. Simple and easy to understand.

I think it is possible now in extremis for some places, particularly small Scottish fishing villages, to have 9 tiers of government:

EU
North Sea Countries Regional Forum
UK Parliament
Scottish Parliament
Scottish Region
District
Parish

The region and district are capable of sub-division INTO phpbb_'local' assemblies with small budgets and administrative powers.

Personally I would like to return to the traditional counties in terms of addresses, sports, civic functionaries such as Lords Lieutenant and Sherriffs, regiments (the TA can carry on County associations and links) and so forth. Being a pragmatist I think that we are stuck for management purposes only with some of the combined authorities that we now have. The cost implications of unravelling everything are phenomenal and administration might be worsened if new estates, shopping centres, roads, etc were split up for simple things like maintenance, street lighting etc.

Certainly some of the artificial, and non-functioning, 'authorities' should go. When the useless West Midlands County Council was abolished the name should have gone with it. There is nothing wrong with writing Birmingham, Staffs or Coventry, Warks on an address - indeed we were told that we still could all those years ago.

The Scottish and Welsh talking shops are unnecessary. Scottish and Welsh matters should have been delegated to their repective MPs meeting as Grand Councils, whilst exclusively English matters should have been treated the same way. English regional assemblies should be scrapped.

More powers should be delegated down to the counties, cities, districts, parishes etc as should the powers to raise business rates taxes at a local level. Central governement should be minimalist and light touch. There should be less laws and rules with more pragmatic operation.

Paul Birch

Of course it would. Even if it had been divided that way in the past (which London as it is today was not), that would still be an inconvenient split.

Why?

National sovereignty is completely different from the practical administration of evolving urban areas.

Postcodes don't go by county, and in general the county is no longer part of the official postal address. It is many years since I last saw an address with Middx in it. Most of them have London postcodes, anyway.

I still say that almost no one knows where the old boundaries were unless they've been deliberately reading up on it. Off the top of your head, do you know if Rickmansworth or Harefield are in Middx? What about Bethnal Green or Wapping?

I don't think any of Greater London used to be in Herts. However, some of what is now in Herts used to be in Middx (a leg around Potters Bar).

Irrelevant. The GLC goes back long before Ken Livingstone and recent shenanigans over the London Assembly. None of which has any real bearing on the question of the most appropriate and logical boundaries for the administration of London.

Paul Birch

Or, sticking to post-conquest counties, Twixt-Ribble-and-Mersey, Craven, Richmond, St Cuthbert's Land, Tynedale, Redesdale, Hexham, Holderness, and York (as distinct from Yorkshire).

I have some experience of living with unnecessary layers. The IOW used to be subdivided under borough councils. It was a pain. You never knew who was responsible for what. At least with the unitary authority we now know which council to complain to. Going in the opposite direction, Liverpool has now had large chunks hived off to other councils, like Sefton, Huyton, Knowsley, with weird boundaries no one can remember. That's a pain too. The taxis can now pick up only in their own part of the city - each of the authorities has a separate licensing scheme.

Frankly, I consider trying to force everything back INTO phpbb_the straightjacket of the exact county structure of some arbitrary point in time (say 1603), in abject obeisance to the holy mantra of tradition, as silly as deliberately eradicating those counties under the ideology of political correctness. Let's use a bit of common sense, and accept that occasional boundary adjustments to cope with evolving land uses are legitimate and reasonable, and that major cities should be treated differently from the scattering of towns and countryside that constitute most existing counties.

John-C

Britannist wrote that the people of Middlesex want a return to the County of Middlesex. This is entirely right, as is most or all of what he or she has said on this in this thread. A few years ago, there was an organization called the Friends of the County of Middlesex. It was a very popular and sucessful campaign to raise awareness, and got some "Welcome to the County of Middlesex" road signs erected and a few other such things. The other counties would, as he/she says, welcome their territory back from the obscene entity that is "Greater London".

London could, in some suggestions for re-organization, have it's own County, i.e. the old L.C.C. (which is about the London Post Code area.

Paul Brich wrote that most people in Middlesex don't even know they're there. This is wrong. It is also incorrect to say or imply that Middlesex hasn't been on postal addresses for years and that the towns are given London addresses and postcodes. This is not true, other than for the areas more near to London, i.e. those within the London postcode area, which roughly corresponds with the old L.C.C.

Paul is wrong to imply that people in Middlesex don't have any County loyalty or knowledge of their area. He may have lived in Middlesex but so did I, and my experience is markedly different to his. I'm not saying everyone thought like I do and not like him, but he can't say it is the other way round.

What's so Libertarian about allowing a monstrous entity such as "Greater London" to swallow up most of the County of Middlesex, thereby depriving people of their link to their history, just the sort of thing George Orwell vigorously opposed and warned against.

I do suggest that the old L.C.C. area could form a modern London area council, to compromise with those who oppose full Middlesex independence as unrealistic. However, the current situation is highly offensive, and must go.

I have put a copy of this onto the Middlesex County Council thread, as that seems to be the best place for a strictly Middlesex based discussion. Pl

Paul Birch

Where is your evidence? I strongly suspect that what most people want is a few pleasant cultural reminders - but not a wholesale reorganisation and break-up of London, with all the inconveniences that experience shows would certainly follow.

Then you would be excluding most of old Middlesex from the new Middlesex, a recipe for widespread dissension.

No, I didn't. I said that they don't know where the boundaries are.

It is not part of the official postal address. Perhaps people still use it, even though it's not necessary. But I have not personally seen any address published, or written to one, with Middx in it, for years.

I didn't claim that all Middlesex towns have London postcodes - but most of the addresses within Middlesex do.

I haven't. I lived in a more outlying suburb. That you don't realise that Bushey Heath (apart from a few streets at its southern edge) is not in Middlesex doesn't say much for your vaunted knowledge of the area.

I see nothing "monstrous" about Greater London, any more than I do about Great Britain. London is a great city. Why do you want to deny this and seek to break it up? London is at least as important a link to history as the County of Middlesex. Indeed, any objective historian, or any ordinary tourist, would surely consider it immensely more important. Anyway, nobody's removing the historical links; your cultural Middlesex can carry on regardless. There has never been a city called Middlesex - why should we make one now?

I have no doubt that many people (probably a lot more people) would find the break-up of London even more offensive. Not to mention stupid. Especially if it's divided INTO phpbb_odd-shaped chunks, with boundaries lacking current significance or utility.