View Single Post
  #8   Report Post  
Old July 21st 09, 02:23 AM posted to uk.transport.london
Tim Roll-Pickering Tim Roll-Pickering is offline
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity at LondonBanter: May 2005
Posts: 739
Default HS1 Domestic trains are a bit busy

John B wrote:

I know you can't expect the PO necessarily to keep up with boundaries
that were created years after its own creation, but bloody hell - were
they really too inept at the time of starting the London-post-district
system to try and stick vaguely to boundaries that had been defined
very
clearly for over 500 years...?


Why would they do that? Postcodes are about delivering letters, not
sticking to ancient boundaries.


'vaguely' was the wrong word above: they did stick *vaguely* to said
boundaries, just not *actually*. Had they done one or the other,
it'd've been fine - but creating an area that's 95% contiguous with
another area is bizarre.


Yes but the City has expanded right up to the boundaries (which were
slightly modified in the 1990s) - it made sense to allocate the EC area in
terms of delivery, nothing more.

(also, much as it pains me to admit it, the Post Office's status -
especially back when the London districts were created - means that it
does bestow some kind of geographical status on addresses. Life would
be easier if London postcodes were aligned to boroughs...)


But in my experience it's only really in the London postal district where
this happens. Elsewhere you don't hear people using the post code as a short
hand for an area and they don't appear on street signs. I grew up in Epsom
and absolutely no-one there thinks of there being three distinct areas
called "KT17", "KT18" and "KT19" that divide up the town/borough/beyond.