In article ,
(Optimist) wrote:

On Fri, 22 Jan 2016 09:20:58 -0000 (UTC), Recliner
wrote:

Roland Perry wrote:
In message

-septembe
r.org, at 08:42:10 on Fri, 22 Jan 2016, Recliner
remarked:
The Royal Mail dropped county names from addresses years ago.

Yes, but too many web forms still make it a mandatory field, probably
because they were originally designed to collect US addresses.

Not literally so, because US addresses don't include the county. In
general they are shorter than UK addresses, only having Street, Town,
State (universally abbreviated) and Zipcode.

For example, Microsoft is: One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA, 98052-7329.
No mention at all of King County.

I know. I meant that they insist on a county here because a state is
mandatory in US addresses. Web site designers think they've
internationalised a US site for the UK by changing the State field name
into County.

I find "England" is accepted.

So is "x" I find.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article ,
(Martin Coffee) wrote:

My address is also not in the post code data base which can cause
problems. In my case my land line had to be installed in an
"outbuilding" at my postcode!

You can get the PAF changed. We had to because our new house in 2103 was
described there as a gallery, something it ceased to be when we moved in. I
rang up and it got fixed. I can tell nowadays who is too mean to pay for PAF
updates. ;-)

Post Office Address Management are (or were) on 08456 011110. Maybe it's an
03456 number these days.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article ,
(aurora) wrote:

On Fri, 22 Jan 2016 09:14:43 +0000, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message
-sept
ember.org, at 08:42:10 on Fri, 22 Jan 2016, Recliner
remarked:
The Royal Mail dropped county names from addresses years ago.

Yes, but too many web forms still make it a mandatory field, probably
because they were originally designed to collect US addresses.

Not literally so, because US addresses don't include the county. In
general they are shorter than UK addresses, only having Street, Town,
State (universally abbreviated) and Zipcode.

For example, Microsoft is: One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA, 98052-7329.
No mention at all of King County.

One would have expected Nigel to have known that.

Is there any postal authority that still uses counties, or their
functional equivalent?

Cantons in Switzerland?

--
Colin Rosenstiel

"Basil Jet" wrote in message
...
On 2016\01\21 16:41, Recliner wrote:

The strange anomaly is Middlesex, which has been entirely absorbed into
Greater London,

Not quite... Potters Bar was handed over to Hertfordshire.

sunbury and staines moved to surrey

In article ,
(aurora) wrote:

On Fri, 22 Jan 2016 05:26:11 -0800 (PST), "R. Mark Clayton"
wrote:

Do remind me of when the residents of Middlesex were polled in a
referendum regarding their future.

It was abolished in the days when the consensus was that referendums were
the tools of dictators and our system of representative government was
wholly accepted (except for Sunday pub opening in Wales).

The London County Council was unique in being
granted powers not given to other counties. Why these powers could
not have been granted the Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent is a mystery.

Because they related to a capital city (and the largest urban centre
by a large margin)?

IIRC the extra powers related to education and orphanages. These are
hardly matters that could not be handled by the existing boroughs, or
counties.

Much the greatest extra power was to build and manage council housing. No
other county had that. All counties had education powers.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article ,
(aurora) wrote:

BTW, Re. your earlier post: Do you not consider the Thames to be the
most natural of boundaries?

Not in Richmond for sure. I was brought up in Putney but went to school
across the river in Hammersmith.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In article ,
(aurora) wrote:

So, in 1889, without the consent of the governed, half of Middlese,x
and parts of neighboring Surrey, and Kent were annexed into the London
County Council Area. The London County Council was unique in being
granted powers not given to other counties. Why these powers could
not have been granted the Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent is a mystery.

You are wrong. Middlesex County Council was also given powers not given to
other counties, over tramways.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

aurora wrote:
[re local government arrangements in the London area]
So, England's historic core was being changed.

Arguably, England's historic core was Wessex and Mercia, not London.
England (as a single kingdom) was formed by the unification of the crowns
of Mercia and Wessex under Æthelstan and subsequent absorption of other
Anglo-Saxon territories...
--
Jeremy Double

In article ,
Optimist wrote:

On Fri, 22 Jan 2016 01:12:39 -0000, "Michael R N Dolbear"
wrote:


"Recliner" wrote

happening with Greater London, perhaps because so much of so many
historic counties came together that no group dominated.

The strange anomaly is Middlesex, which has been entirely absorbed into
Greater London, but whose name persists in postal addresses in some
boroughs, but not others.

"entirely absorbed"

Not so, thus Surrey got Sunbury, Shepperton, Ashford and Staines;
Hertfordshire got Potters Bar and in further changes Berkshire got Poyle.

For extra credit, point out the bit of Surrey that was north of the Thames
before these changes.

The Royal Mail dropped county names from addresses years ago.

Edinburgh hasn't been in Midlothian[1] for 40 years (or much more,
depending on what you count) but that didn't stop someone (and most
people blame the Royal Mail) from including Midlothian in address
databases until very recently.

Sam

[1] The administrative district. It's still in the registration county
of Midlothian, aka Edinburghshire.

--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

On 22/01/2016 12:30, aurora wrote:
On Fri, 22 Jan 2016 02:09:50 +0000, Basil Jet
wrote:

On 2016\01\22 02:00, wrote:
In article , (Basil Jet)
wrote:

Middlesex still exists, it just doesn't have a council. It existed
for hundreds of years before it had a council.

We are discussing administrative areas. There is none for Middlesex. When it
was a county its HQ was in London anyway. It was wiped out by the growth of
London. It's gone. It is an ex-county as far as administration of services
for people as opposed to backward-looking sentimentality is concerned.

It's not backward or sentimental. It's a place. Same as Friern Barnet is
a place even though its former Town Hall is a block of flats now. Same
as "The West End" has been a place for centuries despite never appearing
on any map.

Time for an historic review: From the time of Edward I, the City of
London was outwith any county, it is a county in its own right if you
will.

The City was bordered to the south by the Thames and on the other
three sides by Middlesex, the territory of the Middle Saxons.

By the late 19th century, southeast Middlesex was largely urbanized,
like northeast Surrey, and northwest Kent. The northwest of
Middlesex, i.e. the Ruislip's, Uxbridge, et al, were still very rural.
Southeast Middlesex included Westminster.

In 1855 the Metropolitan Board of Works was imposed on the urbanized
parts of Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent adjacent to the City. This was
an unelected, unpopular body that descended into corruption.

So, in 1889, without the consent of the governed, half of Middlese,x
and parts of neighboring Surrey, and Kent were annexed into the London
County Council Area. The London County Council was unique in being
granted powers not given to other counties. Why these powers could
not have been granted the Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent is a mystery.

So, England's historic core was being changed. The one good thing
about the LCC years was that its Boroughs were sensibly sized. One
could certainly relate to, say, The Borough of St Marylebone.

Then in 1965 came the ultimate land grab. Newly created Greater
London stretched from Chessington to Enfield. Middlesex ceased to
exist as a county authority. Most of remaining Middlesex became
Greater London, with small enclaves transferring to Surrey.

Are folks better off with these expensive monolithic structures? Let's
attribute good motives to the Whitehall instigators of this mishigas.
But, people are losing touch with their history, and who they really
are. This is not healthy.

Let's not ascribe good motives to the Whitehall crowd. They, along with
many "business" counterparts have decreed that "large is good", "small
is bad / inefficient, etc". Whether or not the people liked it (or
wanted it), in 1974, disparate towns were lumped together into invented
"boroughs" of some "ideal" size. Groups of boroughs were lumped together
into invented pseudo-counties, etc.

Now, we have one part of a government proclaiming a need for local
decision making, whilst another half (Commissar Osborne) insists that we
must have city regions, or he won't let us "play with his toys" (i.e.
money)

What we really need is smaller units, in touch with local opinion,
supplemented by a mandate to cooperate with neighbours where that can
improve efficiency of some services. In the case of London, that could
mean that counties as far away as Northamptonshire, Hampshire, Suffolk,
etc., would remain independent, but have a mandate to cooperate on (and
support) rail services in "London Commuterland" - with some independent
panel to resolve arguments on funding, etc.