Butterfield wrote:

cosmictanya wrote:

Would you accept Stratford as London? Administratively, it wasn't until 1965, although it always fell within the E post code area. What about Tottenham? Definitely London? It wasn't part of the county of London either, despite being N for North London. These people who insist on a pre Greater London state of affairs have simply picked that date as the day some modernist Whitehall mandarin wrenched away their identity, forgetting that borders have always changed, that what was outside the county of London sometimes had London postal sectors, that most of it was already within the Met police zone, etc, etc.

What about Kensington, or Westminster? Are they London? In the lifetimes of our great grandparents, they were technically outside London, very much within Middlesex. Is Brixton Surrey? It was. The only reason it isn't now is because people moved on and accepted the new line on the updated map.

I do think of those as being in London, and they are officially. But I tend to naively class anything within the M25 as "London" - as it's just easy and I don't know the specific boundaries without looking. I personally think London is far too big and if I had it my way I wouldn't include places like Croydon and Kingston Upon Thames, but that's just me. I think of those as separate towns, like Sutton Coldfield to Birmingham.

See, there's that very British desire to draw lines on maps due to personal preference, regardless of local facts. I wonder if it's inbuilt deep within our education system to think we can simply wave a pen.

Technically, everything outside the Roman walls is quotation mark London, rather than actual London, and was officially until within the lifetimes of people who were alive and well during our own lifetimes.

What you've said literally makes no sense. On the one hand you class everything within the M25 as London, yet immediately go on to say that two places very much within it are separate towns.

'Too big' is entirely arbitrary. It's nowhere near as big as some cities, either in land coverage or in population. There's no reason why Thornton Heath is less London than the next street in Streatham.

That's like me saying Birmingham/West Midlands/Wolverhampton etc is too small to worry about having to cling onto fables of lots of separate towns (and I do kind of think that). It's all Birmingham to me.

Butterfield wrote:

cosmictanya wrote:

I bet they don't, hence my choice of it to demonstrate my point. That is London E4. Not London in quotation marks, but actual London Town. Administratively, it still is partly Essex, but no, they don't write Essex E4 on their addresses, because it is and always has been within the London postal town. There is no such place as Essex E4.

This on the other hand, is London in quotation marks, but is probably nobody's idea of Surrey, despite what some twee snob who thinks it should be forever 1952 might try to convince themselves...

So those hills aren't actually in the official Greater London, but Essex? I don't include modern postal towns, postcodes or telephone numbers. Dudley's name stretches out into rural South Staffordshire and its postcode into Shropshire - but those areas are definitely not Dudley. It's just a name the locals were lumped with for mere easy postal reasons.

I know people identify with different things and Londoners especially do things a bit differently so if people want to believe it's London or Essex it's up to them.

They not part of what's designated as 'Greater London', but they are definitely greater London - however those are semantics. What is absolute fact is that they are in London, in the county of Essex. It's an anomaly. Life is full of them.

The people of Didley still safely exist in whatever world they live in. The post office had every right to make life as easy as possible for those working for it. I'd say they had an absolute duty to their employees do so, regardless of history.

History is an interesting place which in which nobody can live, however much they might want to. Only Zionists and people in Greater Birmingham think otherwise, and think that everyone else's reality should be altered to accommodate.

cosmictanya wrote:

The people of Didley still safely exist in whatever world they live in.

Yeah, just squatting there.

cosmictanya wrote:

What you've said literally makes no sense. On the one hand you class everything within the M25 as London, yet immediately go on to say that two places very much within it are separate towns.

They were the first and only two that came to my head; actually, I thought of Watford too but I can't remember if that's classed as Greater London or Hertfordshire these days. The rest is pretty much just one big anonymous, ambiguous splodge.

Quote :

That's like me saying Birmingham/West Midlands/Wolverhampton etc is too small to worry about having to cling onto fables of lots of separate towns (and I do kind of think that). It's all Birmingham to me.

Everyone does that all the time, and it was always a hot topic on that other forum. I've been called a Brummie by naive outsiders more times than I can count on my two hands. In a faux outrage and a smile I correct them. I'm not from Birmingham, I've never really hung around in Birmingham, Birmingham was just a village when some of my area was thriving, it was in a different shire county and I have a different accent to a Brummie. For a start they say the peculiar southern "larf", whereas we in the Black Country say the correct "laff".

I've always preferred to see individual towns and smaller cities rather than one stupidly big city, which thankfully the West Midlands conurbation still isn't. But I still try and stick by official boundaries, even if they're silly like the Bradford/Ilkley one which has miles of open moorland in between.

cosmictanya wrote:

They not part of what's designated as 'Greater London', but they are definitely greater London

And that's fine. But Ilkley and Ilkley Moor ARE in the actual city of Bradford! So you're not comparing like for like. Those hills you show are in rural Essex whereas the ones I showed are in rural... the official City of Bradford.

It's like being back on *** all over again.

My original points were pretty much that:

a) I didn't realise that the town of Ilkley was in Bradford, I just thought it was a humble stand-alone Yorkshire town

and b) the famous wilderness of Ilkley Moor is actually in a city - which I find quite strange and utterly, utterly wrong.

That's all.

Butterfield wrote:

cosmictanya wrote:

They not part of what's designated as 'Greater London', but they are definitely greater London

And that's fine. But Ilkley and Ilkley Moor ARE in the actual city of Bradford! So you're not comparing like for like. Those hills you show are in rural Essex whereas the ones I showed are in rural... the official City of Bradford.

They are not in rural Essex. They are in suburban London. Rural Essex is miles away to the north east. Even much of actual official Essex isn't exactly rural.

What you've said about London's size doesn't make sense. Simply re-assigning random suburbs to former counties doesn't reduce population. If anything London would work better if it was extended, and if backward places like Bromley and Romford came to terms with the fact that it's now 2022. Even 1922 was a bit late for them to be pretending they had a sustainable future as county towns rather than suburbs.

Your own part of the world might be more successful if it came together as the majority of London did, for reasons of transport, ease of administration, stopping needless and expensive duplication of provision while competing little areas spread themselves too thinly to work efficiently.

It makes no sense to carve Croydon out of modern London. Some of it is actually London SW16 and other parts are London SE25 or SE19. Why would someone living in Crystal Palace (parts of which are Croydon) be better served by suddenly becoming Surrey? What does that area have in common with someone in Shere or Gomshall? You yourself say you think of the M25 as the boundary, before saying in the very next sentence that you actually don't, so you do know it doesn't make sense.

Cooperation is key to life, which Manchester is learning and benefiting from, the Paris area is learning as it comes together more along Greater London lines, just as NY/NJ/Connecticut learned during Covid - no point in massively different restrictions in one street when the people over the back fence are doing something else.

'Madrid' contains vast areas of not just countryside but mountainous terrain many miles from the central urban area. Lisbon too, Dublin, Brussels as well, there's a capital region in addition to the historically defined small city, as with London. Attica likewise in addition to the much smaller city of Athens - you don't even know when you pass out of Athens - it's literally crossing the street from one side to the other - it makes no sense, in any aspect, for these individual districts to be entirely separate entities.

It's really only the West Midlands standing against the tide, and professing to be shocked that it's wet. I doubt anyone in those villages actually thinks they live in Leeds, it's just an admin thing. However much they might identify with the romance of living in a Catherine Cookson fantasy, I bet they'd all be pretty annoyed by the reality of paying for the entire structure of stuff like separate social service provision, and separate everything else, duplicated in the bounds of each ancient parish.

Butterfield wrote:

My original points were pretty much that:

a) I didn't realise that the town of Ilkley was in Bradford, I just thought it was a humble stand-alone Yorkshire town

and b) the famous wilderness of Ilkley Moor is actually in a city - which I find quite strange and utterly, utterly wrong.

That's all.

A) It still is. Nobody moved it. They just drew a new line on a map.

B) The famous wilderness of Hampstead Heath is Inner London. New York City has beaches by the ocean. Berlin has forests. Edinburgh has a mountain. Cities contain a multitude of landscapes.

Butterfield wrote:

cosmictanya wrote:

What you've said literally makes no sense. On the one hand you class everything within the M25 as London, yet immediately go on to say that two places very much within it are separate towns.

They were the first and only two that came to my head; actually, I thought of Watford too but I can't remember if that's classed as Greater London or Hertfordshire these days. The rest is pretty much just one big anonymous, ambiguous splodge.

Quote :

That's like me saying Birmingham/West Midlands/Wolverhampton etc is too small to worry about having to cling onto fables of lots of separate towns (and I do kind of think that). It's all Birmingham to me.

Everyone does that all the time, and it was always a hot topic on that other forum. I've been called a Brummie by naive outsiders more times than I can count on my two hands. In a faux outrage and a smile I correct them. I'm not from Birmingham, I've never really hung around in Birmingham, Birmingham was just a village when some of my area was thriving, it was in a different shire county and I have a different accent to a Brummie. For a start they say the peculiar southern "larf", whereas we in the Black Country say the correct "laff".

I've always preferred to see individual towns and smaller cities rather than one stupidly big city, which thankfully the West Midlands conurbation still isn't. But I still try and stick by official boundaries, even if they're silly like the Bradford/Ilkley one which has miles of open moorland in between.

This is why Jackie Weaver became a celebrity.

London was a barren marshy wasteland when Babylon was a highly cultured and thriving place. That has nothing to do with the price of fish.

Different parts of London have (or had) different accents too, but I bet you couldn't tell the difference between some old dear from the East End and one from Camberwell. That's exactly like how nobody outside the West Midlands can distinguish between your accent and a Birmingham one, and how only very slightly fewer think it matters.

Residents of Glasgow, in Glasgow...



Not the general area, but within actual 'would be approved by Butterfield' inner city Glasgow.

Madrid...



Almost 100 miles from Sol, but still Madrid.

That's all lovely, and yes, Sutton Park *in the city of Birmingham* has cattle, and open common land (the biggest "city park" in Europe?). Though some residents there want to split from Birmingham and create its own council, which I wouldn't be against. I've also walked in Richmond Park in Surrey London and seen the deer - though you can see loads of tower blocks very close by so it kind of feels more city-like.

I still think it's silly extending city boundaries to wilderness way beyond the city-proper, as with parts of Leeds and Ilkley with its expansive moors separating it from Bradford. It also means all the locals are forced to see Bradford branding on everything from welcome signposts to bins, despite being a relative distance away. People are territorial, whether it's country folk or city folk, posh or poor. I've seen it from all angles. Though I admit day to day most people couldn't care less.

In this day and age we're told to embrace our unique, individual identities, and I feel cities swallowing up smaller surrounding areas totally goes against that. Everything becomes the same, under one brand. That's boring.

If we start ignoring city boundaries then where will those cities ever end? Pretty much everywhere from Yeovil to Norwich would just be "London". I've heard it all on the other forum many times. Liverpool and Manchester forumers fighting over which city "owned" Warrington. Neither of them!!! Honestly. Someone once said that the whole of the West Midlands should just be called Birmingham because the name covered the whole area on the BBC weather map or something. And you think I'm crazy over these things!

There are several tube stations in east London which have the Essex seaxes on their platform wall tiles. Wanstead is one I think. This is on account of their having been in Essex formerly.

John Savident, aka Fred Elliott, I say, Fred Elliott, was in the original production of The Phantom of the Opera with Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman, complete with singing role.

As was Hyacinth Bucket's t*rty sister, Rose.

Mark Lewisohn the writer is not the bald bloke who presented the Late Show.

I often wonder if either of them is one of the Lewisohn kids mentioned by Joe Orton during his disastrous weekend in Brighton, shortly before Halliwell decided it was hammer time.

Succour to moo-moos the world over!