In article ,
"Graham J" wrote:

Describing locations by administrative areas, particularly as they
seem to change so relatively frequently in the UK, makes no sense
to me, though this seems increasingly common.

Absolutely, and it is not helped by the Ordnance Survey using administrative
boundaries on their maps.

The OS using admin boundaries is very useful to people who want to know
where current admin boundaries go. They can't really use out-of-date
boundaries.

http://www.abcounties.co.uk/ gives a good background to all this sort of
thing.

There is always going to be a problem over which county boundary to
use. The 'traditional counties' have themselves had boundaries which
shifted - many were undefined until the later middle ages, then some
former counties were made exclaves of other counties (Islandshire
being possibly the best known example). The exclaves were mostly
abolished in the 1830s and other changes were made in the 1880s.

--
http://www.election.demon.co.uk
"The guilty party was the Liberal Democrats and they were hardened offenders,
and coded racism was again in evidence in leaflets distributed in September
1993." - Nigel Copsey, "Contemporary British Fascism", page 62.