On Tue, 28 Jul 2009, Tim Roll-Pickering wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

Axe Greater London, i say. Let's have a mayor of London elected by people
who live in London, not some transcluded home counties buffoons who mostly
still insist that they live in 'Metropolitan Kent' or some such nonsense.

As one who grew up in north east Surrey can I say that Croydon, Sutton
and Kingston are London far more than they are Surrey!

I've usually got the impression that people who live there feel the
opposite, so it's interesting to hear a contrasting opinion.

And how would you decide who does and doesn't "live in London" - do I,
living in Forest Gate in Newham, "live in London"? It sure feels that
way, bendy bus & all.

Easy - anywhere that voted for Boris isn't, anywhere that voted for Ken
is!

More seriously, the question is not really about whether X is in London or
not, but whether the same policies are appropriate for P and Q. I don't
mean to suggest that Forest Gate isn't really in London, just that it's
possible that policies that are right for Forest Gate might not be right
for Finsbury Park. Although from what little i know of Newham, perhaps
they are - perhaps a better example for my case would be Friern Barnet and
Finsbury Park.

Where this idea falls apart is in the bank account. I would imagine that
the outer boroughs provide more per-capita funding than the inner ones
(BICBW), so trying to run Ken-style large public transport projects using
inner-London revenues might not be possible. You then get into arguments
like "well, inner London transport projects benefit outer Londoners who
work in inner London, so they should contribute towards them", but then it
all gets very complicated - my boss commutes down from rural Scotland
every week by plane, so should a share of his council tax be diverted to
every transport authority whose network he passes through? There's also a
question of scale - is Crossrail something that you just couldn't build if
only inner London was behind it, even if it had as much money per capita
as outer London?

tom

--
uk.local groups TO BE RENAMED uk.lunatic.fringe groups