Talk:South Midlands

Boundaries
As a long term resident of Oxford, I don't recognize this definition of the South Midlands at all. To me it is Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire. I've certainly never heard the term applied to places like Corby - much too far east. I suspect the stub has been written by somebody who isn't actually familiar with the area. --80.176.142.11 (talk) 15:34, 8 June 2008 (UTC)


 * It's worse than that. Aylesbury Vale (and Buckinghamshire as a whole, including MK) is in the south-east - not the midlands!
 * Sadly though, the muppet who wrote it and isn't familiar with the area is someone from the ODPM!  L.J.Skinner wot 16:40, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this definition is quite strange, mainly because it only includes areas in the East Midlands and South East regions rather than areas to the west in the West Midlands and South West regions. I know someone from Gloucestershire who considers his county as being part of the South Midlands. South Leicestershire (Market Harborough) is too far north to be part of the South Midlands geographically and is still included in some defnitions while Gloucestershire is excluded from all formal defnitions. 2.24.174.132 (talk) 13:56, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, we can only report what is documented by reliable external sources and HMG is eminently so. Of course if you can find a reliable source that has a definition of SM that included Gloucestershire then of course that definition can and should be added too. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:56, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I probably would also point out that most of East Anglia (including Norfolk and Suffolk) would have a far bigger claim to be in the South Midlands or even Midlands in general than counties like Oxfordshire, Buckingshamshire etc. (which to me are too far south) with most of that area lying east of Birmingham, yet it doesn't feature as much in these definitions (though I have seen a few rare instances in which the East Anglia area has been included among the Midlands, and the infobox map in the Southern England article currently seems to treat it as such) and most people consider that area to be in Southern England as it is culturally closer to the south than Midlands (even though a few could argue it is physically in the Midlands area). I think its best we use whatever information is sourced about this region regardless of our perceptions because the South Midlands probably always will be a vaguely defined area. Broman178 (talk) 09:40, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Proposed Deletion
No such region as the "South Midlands". A cursory glance at google (with "south midlands" in inverted commas) yields 172,000, the second of which is the wikipidea page. The first, by the way, is the South Midlands Football League, and copntains clubs as far apart as Kingsbury, Tring, Milton Keynes and Cockfosters - but nothing from [{Corby]] or Northampton.  L.J.Skinner wot 17:05, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Although the term isn't well defined, it is used extensively and a Wikipedia article is warranted, so I would oppose deletion. Central TV operated a successful and popular 'Central South' subregion based in Abingdon and Gloucester for about a decade before it was axed to save money.


 * More emphasis on the concept as it is actually used rather than arbitrary government usage for their own purposes would improve the article though. I'm still not keen on all this 'MK and South Midlands Growth Area' New Labour cobblers and would be happier if it were removed completely. --80.176.142.11 (talk) 21:14, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Reading

 * The Amnesty International link is broken. It's also hokey, and beyond arbitrary to call Reading "South Midlands", it's on the Thames for crissake.  Further South than the City Of London. 160.83.42.136 (talk) 14:38, 5 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Take it up with AI then, it's their definition. Wikipedia only reports what happens in the real world. If they have reorganised, then change it or delete it. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:14, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Examples
I have restructured the article to emphasise the lack of agreed definition by a series of examples. The government growth area and Joint Industrial Councils were already included in the article. I added the Spartan League because it has a Wikipedia article. I then searched google.co.uk for "South Midlands" and looked through the top-ranked pages for organisations that are notable enough to have their own Wikipedia articles and have a well-defined regional structure including the South Midlands. In this way I found Amnesty International, the Council for British Archaeology, and the Pagan Federation. JonH (talk) 14:52, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I have reverted most of the latest changes by User:PeterEastern because the lead no longer made the essential point that different organisations use South Midlands to refer to different areas. The list of main settlements and the 2002 report only refer to the government Milton Keynes South Midlands area, and so they do not include Oxford (see the above section on Boundaries). For this reason I moved one paragraph back to the section on that area. The wording of the article can no doubt be improved, but I think it should avoid any attempt to present a "correct" definition of the term. JonH (talk) 22:07, 29 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I *still* think there is too much emphasis given to this 'Milton Keynes and South Midlands growth area' business, which appears to be some sort of government quango that I hadn't heard of before I encountered it here. Governments (and particularly the post 1997 Labour government and the ODPM) are very keen on making arbitrary geographical groupings like this which have little significance on the ground. There is clearly some disagreement concerning what this article should be about though, so I won't modify it. --80.176.142.11 (talk) 10:54, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Like it or not, there is a government definition of SM, so we have to reflect it. We don't have many usages with as solid a citation as this one. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:16, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Infobox
I'm wondering if the infobox is creating more problems than it solves? There is no such formal organisation/mayoralty/region (and proabably never will). The real problem is that different organisations (and people) use the term to mean "exactly what [they] want it to mean, no more and no less". The map is one that HMG used for a growth area centred on Milton Keynes, as the centre of the Oxford Cambridge Arc. With a prospective Sandy/St Neots New Town on the drawing board, it probably does include east Cambridgeshire. In some mental maps,it is a broad stripe from the Welsh border to Lincolnshire and certainly included Gloucestershire, all of Oxfordshire and all of Cambridgeshire. But that takes us straight into WP:OR. That is why I think that it was better to keep it vague and that the infobox was a mistake. But let's discuss. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:01, 14 April 2020 (UTC)