On 2010-08-01 12:57:35 +0100, Roland Perry said:

In message
, at
02:49:26 on Sun, 1 Aug 2010, MIG remarked:

I was particularly pleased to see the 'Romford is/is not in Essex'
argument being brought up immediately in the comments.

Having been brought up in the vicinity, I'd say that all of those were
in Essex, as is [ObLRT:] Upminster and Epping.

This change will finally sort out a couple of villages in the south
Chilterns which are physically in Bucks, but with a Henley (Oxon)
address, and a Reading (Berks) Postcode!

"Physically"?

As in... the county boundary on the map.

All these boundaries are administrative for one purpose
or another. (Although for some reason people seem to think that past
administrative boundaries are "real" and current ones are not.)

I'm not aware that the Bucks/Oxon border has changed very recently, in
that vicinity (other bits of Oxon border have changed in my lifetime).

The objections to the proposed change seem to come from people who
haven't cottoned on that their postal address is not meant to be a
description of where they live,

"Where you live" does have an effect on services provided by the
relevant councils, and hence on one's lifestyle. Planning and
Education, for example, can vary quite dramatically across a country
border.

but is a structured entry in a record of delivery points. It can have
whatever fields in it the owner of the record wants to store.

Addresses, however, come with lots of baggage. I once lived in a
village several miles inside south Cambridgeshire. But the postcode was
associated with Royston "Herts". As a result many providers of services
would insist it was their (eg) Stevenage branch which I should be
talking to, not the one much nearer (demographically as well as
physically) in Cambridge.

The worst was online estate agents, who in effect created a no-mans
land of houses that would not show up in a search when people expected
results from the southern fringe of Cambridge, but were also way
outside the area that anyone looking for a house in Stevenage would be
interested in.

The whole thing's a mess, due as others have hinted to people taking
the Royal Mail's version of the postal address as being
incontrovertible evidence as to the administrative area. This has a
whole raft of unintended consequences.

There was a very vigorous campaign in the local press a while back from
the village of Eastwick, just north of Harlow. They wanted their
address changed from Harlow, Essex to a Herts one as they seemed to
think that they were too good for a Harlow address. The Royal Mail
would have none of it.

I live in the converse: an Essex village with a Herts. address. I'm
happy with that, but the residents of East Herts. should be concerned
that their council tax pays for me to get East herts propoganda sheets
shoved through my door from time to time, although that may be postcode
rather than postal address related.

But the big problem is organisations that arrange services
geographically, as others have said. I've lost count of the times I've
had to explain "Yes, my address DOES say Bishop's Stortford, Herts. But
no, I live in Essex". It's even been a problem with the police,
although I hope modern technology has improved matters in that
particular case.

The real problem is the clueless nature of some organisations and their
systems. Will things really get better once we get in the habit of not
adding the county to addresses? I suspect they'll use postcodes
instead. With sufficient granularity that could be fine. OTOH it could
easily be a huge mess.