Geography US vs Europe

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

hey, robin wanted to show azim the country
using his transporter that he borrowed from the star trek set next door

[Nurvingiel]

Originally Posted by Draken

In the 70s some major cities and industrual areas were made into self-contained metropolitan counties. This was because it was becoming difficult to balance (say) running both the big Yorkshire cities and the rural parts of the county in the same organisation. Also, London had by then sprawled across several county borders. So the industrial cities of Yorkshire were split off from the rest of the county and became West Yorkshire, Manchester (which was in Lancashire) became Greater Manchester, Birmingham and nearby towns became West Midlands, London became Greater London, etc. In the 80s, the Londoners insistence on electing fairly radical Labour local politicians led to the Conservative government abolishing the GLC and breaking down the city into 33 (I think) separate bourough councils. Realising this is a crap way to run a city, an overall Mayor of London post was established - and the guy who won was the radical Labour politician who had been in charge of the GLC!

Thanks Draken! That makes loads of sense now. Obviously such a problem has not happened in Canada, unless you count Montréal (Québec) and Hull (Ontario), which are right accross the river from each other, but that doesn't really count.

I posted a question in the UK politics thread.