On 2 Aug, 07:01, Neil Williams wrote:
On Sun, 01 Aug 2010 23:35:36 +0100, "Richard J."

wrote:
I don't see why the UK postal addresses shouldn't be the same as
Continental ones - i.e. just "number streetname, town postcode".

Because our postcode system has a far finer resolution than most other
countries, and therefore enables greater automation and efficiency in
Royal Mail (in theory), as well as enabling many other applications such
as satnav and location finding on online maps. *Why would you want to
degrade our excellent postcode system?

When did I say I wanted to do that? *I basically agreed that the
principle of a county in an address was pointless and that we should
use:-

"20 Anystreet
Anytown AB1 2CD"

as our address format. *Of course, you only *need* "20 AB1 2CD", but
the inclusion of the street and post town provide a useful "checksum"
to ensure the postcode is correct, and the street address probably
assists the postman on his walk as well.

We could feasibly go to "20 Anystreet AB1 2CD" and even remove the
post town, but without any kind of "checksum" I would imagine a lot
more post would end up in the wrong place.

Your first suggestion is already the "correct" postal address
according to the Royal Mail. I think the story was about dropping the
county field from the database, rather than not having to use it.

Deleting anything from databases always seems risky practice to me,
but I suppose it would be archived somehow.