On 29 Dec, 09:48, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
, at
00:50:31 on Tue, 29 Dec 2009, MIG
remarked:

London stops, and Essex, starts at the end of the Shenfield metro.

Having once lived in Brentwood [1] for many years, it's fascinating the
way Londoners regard it as "the first town outside London", whereas
Essex people regard it as "the first suburb inside London".

[1] And Shenfield is just the posh bit of Brentwood.

The railway crosses the London border almost exactly where the M25 is,
which happens to be between Harold Wood and Brentwood stations.

Yes, that's where the administrative boundary is today.

And what other kind of boundary has there ever been?

The administrative boundary in the past.

The furthest that London Buses used to travel.

Where the suburban railway today (and Crosslink in future) has a
terminus.

Where it "feels like" the edge of London is, and those feelings do
depend on whether you are looking outwards or inwards.

For further information about the various complexities, I recommend you
review the debate when this newsgroup was formed, regarding the
definition of "London" to be adopted.
--
Roland Perry

Yes, I appreciate all these things. It's just that any county is an
administrative concept and its borders are administrative and can't be
anything else.

For a moment I thought you were falling into the nonsensical "it's
really in Cheshire but administratively in Greater Manchester" sort of
comment.

I can accept the "feels like" and the boundaries used by different
utilities and transport systems, but I can't be doing with the idea
that current administrative boundaries are administrative, while
previous administrative boundaries are real.