User talk:Morwen/essay

at the time, despite any disclaimers, these county boundaries were regarded as new county boundaries.
 * Regarded by whom? People living in Lincolnshire didn't think they weren't in Lincolnshre any more despite there being no administrative county of Lincolnshire.

the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica openly refers to say, Cromartyshire in Scotland as being a "former county", and Middlesex as having been reduced in size.
 * But that doesn't necessarily make it right though does it? Encyclopaedia are full of contradictions, assumptions and simplifications like that. encyclopedia.com refers to traditional counties such as Berkshire as a "former county" and Sussex as an extant county. It also refers to modern administrative counties such as Merseyside as a "former county"

maps made at this time use the 1888 borders
 * Because the OS has a legal requirement to use administrative boundaries and most map-makers license OS data. There is nothing stoping anyone drawing a map with traditional county boundaries, as was done for the book "The Real Counties of Britain".

at this point these geographic/ceremonial counties supplanted the 'ancient and historic ones' in actual use
 * Hard to quantify given that they were very similar to the traditional ones. As has been pointed out before, there was minor annoyance in certain places affected by certain administrative boundary changes, but overall the majority of people weren't affected, and so didn't care that slowly "the rug was being pulled from under them".

''in 1974 the first major revision happened. the Local Government Act 1972 was popularly opposed, but the opposition to it reveals several key features that indicate that the opposition was not aligned with what we today call the traditional counties movement.''
 * There are clearly two different sets of opposition:
 * Opposition from well-known towns and cities regretting losing their county borough status - such well-known towns wouldn't have needed to be referred to by county anyway
 * Opposition from other towns and villages regretting losing their county identity.
 * The existence of the former does not preclude the existence of the latter. It cannot be said that it was merely a case of "being ruled from X", as many of the most-hated 1974 creations were actually smaller than the 1888 administrative counties they replaced - e.g. Avon, Cleveland, Humberside, Gwent, Greater Manchester.

if the counties became traditional counties by use in popular tradition, they can stop being traditional counties for the same reason
 * Except that they are specifically defined in the 1891 census as "ancient or geographic counties". That set of entities and borders is fixed. There is no benefit to be gained from abandoning them, just even more confusion.

use by an activist minority who wish to see them restored does not constitute "tradition"
 * That is not what is meant by "traditional". Traditional is merely short-hand for "ancient or geographic".

''whether or not the "ancient and geographic counties" still exist in law is irrelevant. lots of things in UK law haven't been formally repealed or abolished but are not presumed to still exist.''
 * What about metropoltan counties? They still exist in law and have no perceptible existence, yet they are presumed to still exist.

for something to substantively exist, then has to be a detectable difference between it existing and it not existing.
 * There are societies that exist to promote and celebrate these counties, there are border signs, &c - which is more than can be said about the metropolitain county of West Midlands for example.

Owain 16:12, 1 November 2005 (UTC)