Michael R N Dolbear wrote:

Ilford & Romford are nominally Essex for Post Code purposes and most
people assume they are in Essex but in fact they are in London Boroughs

Huh ?

The postcode system cares nothing for counties and nothing in outer
Greater London has a London postcode.

Depends what you mean by "outer Greater London". I live in Forest Gate in
Newham and we're E7 and part of outer London on the political definition
(strictly the boroughs that weren't in the Inner London Education
Authority's remit; this mostly matched the old London County Council Area
but part of Newham, namely North Woolwich, was a notable exception). *
Walthamstow is E17. The E post codes go right up to the Greater London
border and even beyond it in one direction, but stops rather short of it in
another.

Postal counties were abolished by the Royal Mail in the mid 1990s when
technology changed how addresses were read (although a series patchwork of
local government reforms at the time where some areas lost just the county
council but others lost the lord lieutenancy as well can't have been greeted
with pleasure). One can put any county they like on the mail although
"London" also being a post town does complicate things (and the
encouragement to write a post town all in UPPER CASE and the rest as normal
hasn't caught on well), and I've sold things on eBay to places in Greater
London but outside the LONDON post town with all manner of entries for
county and even none.

(* However the Office of National Statistics puts Newham, and also
Harringey, in Inner London and Greenwich in outer London.)

Bryan Morris wrote:

really - how many hgibe their address as Bromley Kent - I suspect that
Bromley at least think themselves as part of Kent not London

I'm in Loughton Essex, on the tube & most buses are red. Until fairly
recently the Police were Met (now Essex)

Ilford & Romford are nominally Essex for Post Code purposes and most
people assume they are in Essex but in fact they are in London Boroughs

The postal counties were only abolished in 1996 so there was a generation
plus who lived in London but still had to give their address as "Kent" or
"Essex" or "Middlesex" or "Surrey" or "Hertfordshire". The 1996 abolition
wasn't well publicised, plus a lot of online forms force a county onto
addresses (I've often had to use the nonsense of "London, London"!) so these
old locations persist.

Although this wouldn't have been a certainty - see the history of
Humberside - it's probably that if Royal Mail had updated postal addresses
in the 1960s then we wouldn't be having this discussion. Perhaps it would
have happened if Tony Benn had had better priorities than trying to remove
the Queen's head from stamps.

On 5 Sep 2015 18:30:57 GMT, Jeremy Double
wrote:

e27002 aurora wrote:
On Sat, 29 Aug 2015 12:27:22 +0200, Robin9
wrote:


e27002 aurora;149932 Wrote:
On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 16:18:14 -0500,
wrote:
-
In article ,
(e27002 aurora) wrote:
-
On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 08:02:07 +0100 (GMT+01:00), tolly57
wrote:
-
-- No not the country, London fares for children. Article on BBC
London news 6.30 p/m yesterday highlighted the cost of fares for
children across the capital. Because TFL run more services north
of the river children up to age 11 can travel free whereas in the
south, national rail charge over fives. About time the mayor got
control of services within the M25.
-
Or, have HMG return "London South of the Thames" to Kent and Surrey.
There are enough issues North of the River to resolve.-

Oi! Watch it you! I was born and brought up in that part of LONDON. It's

been part of the capital since at least 1854.-


The present GLA is an overweening structure that, like its predecessor
will fail. Its costs will rise, its employees will become complacent.
It will be a proxy political battle ground for national issues, and
tend towards corruption. Would that this were not so, but it is.
Power begets power.


This is already the situation but what you are suggesting is not the
solution.

So it is worse than I thought. Pretty poor show for what is still one
of the world's most important centers for commerce, banking, et al.

First, it is unlikely that most people in Bromley and Bexley will want
to re-join Kent.

Then Kentish Men and Kentish Maids are not rising up to regain their
heritage? Unlike the folks in the north of the County of Lincoln and
their Yorkshire neighbors who certainly did not like being in
Humberside.

Second, removing Bromley and Bexley will not change the
attitudes within the GLA or within County Hall.

No, it would merely release them from its ambit. Merciful release one
would have thought.

The real solution is to scrap the office of Mayor Of London and to
return
London to how it was before the Blair government inflicted this extra
layer of government upon us.

Here we agree. The whole thing is an expensive, unneeded, nonsense.

If the situation returned to the status quo ante however, Bromley and
Bexley would effectively become unitary authorities. (We called them
County Boroughs in my day. But, Whitehall is perfectly capable of
re-inventing at great taxpayer expense.). Were Bromley and Bexley
such, the county line would become arbitrary for governance purposes.

As there has been a huge change in attitude towards public transport
since 1997, most of the funding London has secured towards it in the
past
decade or so would have been forthcoming anyway.

IIRC the original LPTB covered an area much larger than the GLC, LCC
or Middlesex. Remember the green London Transport buses? We had them
all the way out to Aylesbury. The needs of commuters, and other rail
and bus users are not confined to the core of the metropolis. We need
a transportation body covering the Southeast.

The question is how should such a body be financed and regulated? One
possibility would be nominees from the local authorities in the area
covered meeting as a body to plan, finance, and provide.

A better solution might be a committee of the MPs covering the area.
Meeting as needed. In either case the body responsible for the new
LPTB would need to be able to raise funds through taxation, which
could be a portion of the Council Tax, a slice of VAT, or a mixture.

Apart from public
transport, what real, incontrovertible benefits have come with a Mayor
for
London?

Those United States have a federal law against providing aid and
comfort to the enemy in time of war. If the UK has such a law the
first GLA "Mayor" is almost certainly guilty. He is very poor excuse
for a human being.

He couldn't have been guilty: the UK hasn't declared war since the 1940s...

That depends what you regard as a declaration. A formal declaration of
war is a matter for the exercise of the royal prerogative (last used
in 1942 against Thailand according to Wonkypaedia) but when a little
local difficulty arose in the South Atlantic a few years ago the
relevant EEZ was declared to be an exclusion zone with consequences
threatened against the invading Argentinians. For practical purposes
that was an admission/declaration of a state of war with an implicit
"you started it".

On 05/09/2015 23:46, Charles Ellson wrote:
On 5 Sep 2015 18:30:57 GMT, Jeremy Double
wrote:

e27002 aurora wrote:
On Sat, 29 Aug 2015 12:27:22 +0200, Robin9
wrote:


e27002 aurora;149932 Wrote:
On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 16:18:14 -0500,
wrote:
-
In article ,
(e27002 aurora) wrote:
-
On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 08:02:07 +0100 (GMT+01:00), tolly57
wrote:
-
-- No not the country, London fares for children. Article on BBC
London news 6.30 p/m yesterday highlighted the cost of fares for
children across the capital. Because TFL run more services north
of the river children up to age 11 can travel free whereas in the
south, national rail charge over fives. About time the mayor got
control of services within the M25.
-
Or, have HMG return "London South of the Thames" to Kent and Surrey.
There are enough issues North of the River to resolve.-

Oi! Watch it you! I was born and brought up in that part of LONDON. It's

been part of the capital since at least 1854.-


The present GLA is an overweening structure that, like its predecessor
will fail. Its costs will rise, its employees will become complacent.
It will be a proxy political battle ground for national issues, and
tend towards corruption. Would that this were not so, but it is.
Power begets power.


This is already the situation but what you are suggesting is not the
solution.

So it is worse than I thought. Pretty poor show for what is still one
of the world's most important centers for commerce, banking, et al.

First, it is unlikely that most people in Bromley and Bexley will want
to re-join Kent.

Then Kentish Men and Kentish Maids are not rising up to regain their
heritage? Unlike the folks in the north of the County of Lincoln and
their Yorkshire neighbors who certainly did not like being in
Humberside.

Second, removing Bromley and Bexley will not change the
attitudes within the GLA or within County Hall.

No, it would merely release them from its ambit. Merciful release one
would have thought.

The real solution is to scrap the office of Mayor Of London and to
return
London to how it was before the Blair government inflicted this extra
layer of government upon us.

Here we agree. The whole thing is an expensive, unneeded, nonsense.

If the situation returned to the status quo ante however, Bromley and
Bexley would effectively become unitary authorities. (We called them
County Boroughs in my day. But, Whitehall is perfectly capable of
re-inventing at great taxpayer expense.). Were Bromley and Bexley
such, the county line would become arbitrary for governance purposes.

As there has been a huge change in attitude towards public transport
since 1997, most of the funding London has secured towards it in the
past
decade or so would have been forthcoming anyway.

IIRC the original LPTB covered an area much larger than the GLC, LCC
or Middlesex. Remember the green London Transport buses? We had them
all the way out to Aylesbury. The needs of commuters, and other rail
and bus users are not confined to the core of the metropolis. We need
a transportation body covering the Southeast.

The question is how should such a body be financed and regulated? One
possibility would be nominees from the local authorities in the area
covered meeting as a body to plan, finance, and provide.

A better solution might be a committee of the MPs covering the area.
Meeting as needed. In either case the body responsible for the new
LPTB would need to be able to raise funds through taxation, which
could be a portion of the Council Tax, a slice of VAT, or a mixture.

Apart from public
transport, what real, incontrovertible benefits have come with a Mayor
for
London?

Those United States have a federal law against providing aid and
comfort to the enemy in time of war. If the UK has such a law the
first GLA "Mayor" is almost certainly guilty. He is very poor excuse
for a human being.

He couldn't have been guilty: the UK hasn't declared war since the 1940s...

That depends what you regard as a declaration. A formal declaration of
war is a matter for the exercise of the royal prerogative (last used
in 1942 against Thailand according to Wonkypaedia) but when a little
local difficulty arose in the South Atlantic a few years ago the
relevant EEZ was declared to be an exclusion zone with consequences
threatened against the invading Argentinians. For practical purposes
that was an admission/declaration of a state of war with an implicit
"you started it".


Though described at the time, initially at any rate, as a police action.
Basically accusing the Argentines of Breaking and Entering.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read, substitute trains for rail.

In message , at 22:11:36 on Sat, 5 Sep
2015, Tim Roll-Pickering remarked:
Ilford & Romford are nominally Essex for Post Code purposes and most
people assume they are in Essex

Do they really? Having spent many years living in Brentwood on and off
over the last few decades it (Brentwood) is quite well understood by
people who don't live there as the "First town in Essex" - looking out -
and the "Last town in Essex" - looking in.

Wasn't there a pattern that many Essex residents tended to see it as the
first suburb of London and many Londoners tended to see it as the first town
outside London?

Yes, probably more that than my description. Perhaps the presence of one
Red Bus route reinforces that impression.
--
Roland Perry

As a long term resident of East London I have to disagree with you.
Notwithstanding political definitions, most people regard Forest Gate - birth
place of Dame Anna Neagle and Dame Vera Lynn - as an inner London suburb.

The E post codes do not go to the Greater London border. South Woodford is
E18 but Woodford Green and Woodford Bridge have IG postcodes.

Havering is the eastern-most London borough and none of it has an E
postcode.

Oh come on: a truly feeble line of argument.

Home ownership increased under Thatcher only through her corrupt "right-to-
buy" policy. Once the residents had bought the property - at a huge discount,
thus defrauding the previous owners - the Government jacked up interest
rates and the U. K saw something that had never previously happened:
homes being re-possessed in large numbers. So much for Thatcher's belief in
people owning their own homes.

Under Thatcher, and continuing under Major and Blair, house building declined
while the population increased. Within that suicidal framework, it is true that
the percentage of homes in private ownership increased and the percentage
in public ownership declined. As many of us predicted - not because we were
clever but merely because we were not stupid - this inevitably lead to a
crisis.

The resulting situation today is that the "buy-to-let" epidemic has in effect
transferred ownership of public housing to private hands: hence a further
"increase" in private home ownership, while in fact reducing the number of
houses available to purchase. This problem is then compounded by banks
preferring to give mortgages to "buy-to-let" prospective buyers than to people
who want to somewhere to live. This of course is in marked contrast to the
attitudes of building societies before Thatcher killed them off.

The end result of Thatcher's "right-to-buy" policy, "demutualising" building
societies and denying local authorities the right to build new public housing is
the current situation: a massive shortage of housing of all kinds, ever soaring
house prices, totally unsympathetic lenders, a declining construction industry,
over-crowding, falling standards and most young people unable to buy their
own homes and stuck forever on the treadmill of paying rent.

"Robin9" wrote in message
...

e27002 aurora;149992 Wrote:

Here we differ. The years of tepid socialism were culminating in
piles of garbage in the street, a growing rat population, and the dead
were unburied. Can you imagine how this added to the emotional load
of the families and friends of the recently decease?

Margaret Hilda Baroness Thatcher was raised up to restore our United
Kingdom. She achieved so much before the cowards in the tory party
had their palace coup.

This included trades union legislation and the defeat of Scargill and
co. Decent people were making a living again and the UK's national
esteem was being restored.

The refuse not being collected and the dead lying unburied were not
normal,
consistent features of life in the 1970s.

Thatcher did not restore the U. K. and because of her, huge numbers of
decent people were unable to make a proper living.

I was lucky. I was already a home-owner before 1979. In the 1970s,
before
Thatcher, normal people on normal incomes could aspire to owning their
own
home. Thatcher destroyed that dream. She created a housing shortage and

then, at the behest of her financial backers who could not compete, she

killed off building societies who dominated the mortgage market. I feel
sorry
for today's young people, most of whom have given up dreaming of their
own
home.

What utter nonsense

whatever Thatcher do, or did not do wrong, creating a housing shortage was
not one of them,

That came much later (mostly on the watch of Mt T Blair)

tim

On Sun, 6 Sep 2015 11:46:46 +0100
"tim....." wrote:
"Robin9" wrote in message
killed off building societies who dominated the mortgage market. I feel
sorry
for today's young people, most of whom have given up dreaming of their
own
home.

What utter nonsense

whatever Thatcher do, or did not do wrong, creating a housing shortage was
not one of them,

That came much later (mostly on the watch of Mt T Blair)

Letting in 8 million immigrants , most of them on Labours watch, might
have something to do with the housing shortage and NHS queues. Though no
doubt the left will continue to put their fingers in their ears and sing
La La La whenever this is mentioned, inbetween calling the person who said
it a Waaaacist! naturally.

--
Spud

You're obviously qualified to talk about utter nonsense.

Thatcher made it illegal for local authorities to spend the money they received
for council houses in building new homes. If you really believe that has nothing
to do with today's housing shortage, you are fantasising.

During Thatcher's period in office, house prices rose so sharply that in the London
area, it became the major subject of conversation. Prices rise when there is a shortage.