On Sun, 19 Jul 2009 06:53:50 -0700 (PDT), John B
wrote:

On Jul 19, 2:03*pm, Mizter T wrote:
Is there a London postal district? AIUI, there are various postcodes
that fall within Greater London, including E ones, BR ones, and so on.
Some of these sorting offices also cover areas outside London.

You understand wrong - yes, there is a London postal district. It
consists of all postcodes that begin NW, N, E, SE and SW.

All other postcodes, e.g. BR (Bromley), CR (Croydon), IG (Ilford) are
emphatically *not* part of the London postal district.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_postal_district

Aha, thanks.

Beware of thanking someone for a Wonkypaedia reference. That article
is duff as the area described is the London Postal Area, as can be
determined by reference to the map in an old (or current?) London
Postal Area telephone directory. A London Postal District was one of
the geographically-defined subdivisions of the LPA, each had a
"District Office" as would have been seen painted on the side of the
mail vans serving that district. The Districts were further divided
into alpha-numeric Subdistricts.

Similarly, I'm sure there are pizza establishments in outer London
that deliver to Hertfordshire, Essex, Surrey and Kent, and pizza
establishments in Herts, Essex, Surrey and Kent that deliver to
London.

Eh?

The fact that one of many delivery services organises its network in a
particular way, even if it's (for the time being) the biggest, doesn't
define government or geographical boundaries.

And back when they were in Kent, they were in Kent. This isn't
relevant now.

No - the official Royal Mail requirement to include postal counties
continued past the creation of Greater London. I'll try and find the
date when the requirement was dropped.

Yes, I was aware of that - I expressed it badly above. First they
stopped being in Kent, then a delivery company stopped forcing people
to write their location incorrectly. Now neither of those things
happens, although as you've mentioned upthread people are allowed to
write their location incorrectly if they choose.

Also, like it or not, lots of people in the fringes of London in some
areas - e.g. parts of the London Borough of Bromley are a good example
- would give their address as Kent, and would furthermore identify
with Kent (and also as soft of being part of Kent), at least in a
number of ways - whilst also quite possibly identifying with London as
well. Some on the edges would likely recoil as being labelled
Londoners.

As I said, like it or not. I'm sure you won't, but identity is a multi-
layered, amorphous thing, not something decreed by John Band.

To some extent... but location is clearly decreed by official
boundaries. People who live in Bromley can identify as Kentish and not
Londoners if they like - but their geographical location is London.

Sewardstone, near Epping Forest, meanwhile is outside Greater London
but has a London postcode - E4.

It has a postcode that's primarily used within Greater London, yes.
I'm surprised by that actually - how did the PO's E district get so
far out...?

The E4 postcode is part of the London postal district. "Greater
London" has absolutely *no meaning* whatsoever in a postal address
sense - cast-iron fact.

As above, I didn't realise the entity 'London postal district' still
existed - I thought that N or E was a postal district, as is usually
the case for the initial letters of a postcode (e.g. GU or PO).
Nonetheless, it is clearly true that addresses within the LPD are
primarily within Greater London.

The London fares (aka Travelcard) zones of course cover an area larger
than Greater London - and that's the case even if we're only talking
about the 'proper' zones 1-6.

'The TfL zonal area'. Yes, OK, I'll give you that one, ish.

AFAICS it's not officially called the "TfL zonal area" (not least
because logically that would include zones 7-9, which aren't
recognised by the TOCs as such as they're more of a unilateral
creation by TfL.) FWIW, the London Connections map refers to the
"London Fare Zones".

...in its NR variant, although not in its TfL variant...!
www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/lon_con.pdf

And I've just looked up the PDF of the now out-of-date National Fares
Manual 98, section A to be precise, which refers to the "London Fares
Zones area" on page A4 (PDF page 6) - it's still online hehttp://www.atoc.org/retail/_download...8_Common_A.pdf

Obviously the 'proper' zones 1-6 firmly have their origins in the
boundaries of Greater London.

Yup, plus simplifications and subsidies from neighbouring counties
AIUI.

I think there's a number of other examples where an official or quasi-
official body of one sort or another defines London in different ways.

Examples (from the present day)?

Perhaps I've overstretched myself here... hmm! OK...

The Port of London Authority has, er, authority over the whole Port of
London, which consists of the tidal Thames from Teddington in the west
all the way out to the Thames estuary in the east - see:
http://www.pla.co.uk/display_fixedpa...d/178/site/pla

Yes, like it.

The London area of British Waterways stretches out to Bishop's
Stortford, Hertford and Slough.

Again, good.

I was going to say that there's plenty of references to a "London"
that isn't coterminous with Greater London in the broadcasting world -
however I've just checked the licenses for Carlton and LWT, the two
regional licensees for the Channel 3 service that cover London and
beyond, and there's no reference to "London" in the licenses apart
from where there's the list of transmitters. The BBC provide regional
television and radio services for a wide area that stretches beyond
Greater London that carry the name "BBC London", so one could argue
that's quasi-official. Of course broadcasting isn't really a very good
exemplar, as radio waves tend not to obey official boundaries!

Hehe. Is BBC TV 'BBC London'? I thought it was overall southeast, but
it's so long since I watched local BBC news I've no idea.

NATS has a "London Area Control" and "London Terminal Control", both
of which extend well beyond Greater London (OK, I'm stretching things
just a bit!). And then the government officially defines the "London
airports" as being Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted - only one of which
is inside Greater London (and until 1994, some of it wasn't in Greater
London) - though of course they're referring to airports that serve
London rather than airports that are within London.

The Church of England's Diocese of London only covers part of Greater
London (and includes at least one bit outside of Greater London,
Spelthorne), and doesn't stretch south of the river at all. Meanwhile
the Dioceses of Rochester, Southwark, Guildford, St Albans and
Chelmsford cover other areas in Greater London. Not official, you
might say? Well, the CoE has a number of unique responsibilities that
other churches don't have (AIUI basically the result of it being the
"established church")- e.g. marrying anyone at their parish church,
likewise providing funerals for those within the parish.

Interesting - I'm surprised it doesn't match up slightly better with
the county, I suppose that's the thing about Really Really Old
boundaries..

Erm... what else... I think the NHS used to define London in different
ways, but things have changed on that front (reflecting the general,
gradual move towards administering things in line with the Greater
London boundaries).

Of course sporting organisations define London in a great many
different ways - the very obvious example being cricket. One could I
suppose put forward an argument that some of these sporting bodies are
quasi-official, not least because the courts generally respect the
broad concept that they have authority over their respective sports.

Yes, it's a shame that cricket hasn't reorganised to match revised
county boundaries, if only for the reaction this would provoke among
Yorkshiremen g

Lastly, the really obvious point that I didn't make earlier is that
"London Underground" provides services to places outside of Greater
London (and it isn't underground in these places either!).

Good point. There aren't any underground bits of Underground outside
London, are there? Maybe some of LHR would have counted pre-1984...

In message , at 23:10:09 on
Sun, 19 Jul 2009, Charles Ellson remarked:

There *is* an underlying technical issue, in that out-of-area codes
don't scale, because they involve running wires from one exchange to
the other.

Surely it's all done with software now? In any case, the exchanges are
now connected by high bandwidth glass, not copper wire.

The software switches calls within the exchange, but they have to get
there first.

I'm not sure if it does any more. ISTR the exchange "owning" the
number now rejects the call and instructs the originating exchange
where to send it (all done in milliseconds) BICBW.

That's what they do for number portability. Perhaps it's also used for
out-of-area numbers, but I'm not aware of it.

The older version
on some exchanges required use of a directory number at the exchange
actually serving the subscriber to which calls were silently diverted
by the exchange which "owned" the number; IIRC that became unneccesary
once everything was replaced by System X or newer.

Call diversion tends to be charged by use, whereas an out of area number
would be a flat rate.

The originating exchange can only send to the receiving
exchange specified by the code (there won't be an "exception routing
table" for the out-of-area numbers). And that exchange then has to
deliver the call to a distant POTs line.

ITYF that like 0345, 0845 etc. it can deliver to a "numberless"
circuit.

The circuit still has to deliver to the premises via POTs. Geographic
numbers are done by ISDN, and/or the receiving party collecting the
calls from the exchange.
--
Roland Perry

Arthur Figgis wrote:

* Humberside was split into North Humberside and South Humberside.

Not that many locals would use the word in their addresses, especially
after it was put out of its misery in 1996.

I believe "Avon" has faded even faster, though Bristol addresses didn't need
it anyway as it's a large post town.

MIG wrote:

You seem to have implied that something was required after LONDON
until 1996, but it definitely wasn't.

Ah, I forgot the big post towns.

But I have often used "London" as the county when sending stuff to
Richmond-upon-Thames and Sutton (well actually Cheam but that's another can
of worms...) without a problem. Businesses in Ilford could easily start
giving their address as "Ilford, London" without waiting in vain for the
Royal Mail to turn IG1 into E20.

John B wrote in news:7d723f7c-0571-4d6f-a301-
:

On Jul 17, 8:52*pm, Bruce wrote:
There is a huge variation around the country in the local authorities'
requirements for minicabs. *I have a friend who use to run a minicab
business in Aylesbury, but now runs a similar business in Middlesex.

Time traveller, is he?

(for m.t.u-t'ers, Middlesex hasn't existed for 44 years)

It exists. The Local Government Act abolished only its council.

Or is Derby not in Derbyshire?

On Sun, 19 Jul 2009 14:06:03 +0100, Roland Perry
wrote:

In message , at 19:40:39
on Sun, 19 Jul 2009, DW downunder remarked:
You guys have got what we had dumped on us - 8 digit local numbers. We
had the same change-over issues.

In a big area like London, you need 8-digit numbers because there are so
many subscribers. (With things like DDI numbers in office blocks eating
up huge chunks of the numbering space).

Other areas still have at most 7-digit numbers (plus the code).

Northern Ireland, Southampton, Portsmouth and Caerdydd numbers are
also 8 digit. IIRC the latter was intended as a precursor to all of
Wales becoming 029 xxxx xxxx (029=0CY). Northern Ireland now seems to
be effectively one giant Belfast (0BT xxxx xxxx) numbering scheme.
These renumberings do not OTOH affect the charging areas.

John B wrote in news:7e4d44a7-3974-43c8-883a-
:

doesn't define government or geographical boundaries.

The two are not identical.

James Farrar wrote:

There is a huge variation around the country in the local authorities'
requirements for minicabs. I have a friend who use to run a minicab
business in Aylesbury, but now runs a similar business in Middlesex.

Time traveller, is he?

(for m.t.u-t'ers, Middlesex hasn't existed for 44 years)

It exists. The Local Government Act abolished only its council.

So where is the Lord Lieutenant of Middlesex?

Or is Derby not in Derbyshire?

The Lord Lieutenant of Derbyshire's responsibility includes Derby.

On Sun, 19 Jul 2009 20:14:07 +0100, "Tim Roll-Pickering"
wrote:

Recliner wrote:

I'm still forced to use Middlesex as part of my address by Web forms that
have a mandatory 'County' field.

Put "London" or "Greater London" and it will get through just as fast.

Not always if the destination is e.g. Hayes.

Mizter T wrote in
:


On Jul 19, 11:58*am, Arthur Figgis
wrote:

Mizter T wrote:
The London telephone dialling code 020 covers a larger area than
the London postal district, including many places outside of
Greater London. Meanwhile other places on the edges of Greater
London have dialling codes other than 020 London.

But try convincing many Londoners that the area code is 020, not 020x
:-)

I notice it, but it's not really something that bothers me. Some
people seem like they're going to implode with fury when they see or
hear the code being incorrectly used - so perhaps the whole serves a
useful purpose in identifying those who can't keep things in
proportion!

It becomes a problem when I (correctly) give out my work number in two
parts, pausing after the 7xxx part, and the muppet customer "repeats"
back "07xxx"...