On Dec 29, 9:49*pm, wrote:
any county is an administrative concept and its borders are
administrative and can't be anything else.

No, they can be geographic, ignoring recent administrative changes.

And there can be other meaningful definitions.

For a moment I thought you were falling into the nonsensical "it's
really in Cheshire but administratively in Greater Manchester" sort of
comment.

Nottingham City is still in(side) Nottinghamshire, despite being a
unitary authority.

Which is why there is another level of administrative boundaries,
lieutenancies, in which unitary are incorporated into wider counties. The
main exception is Stockton which is divided along the Tees between
Yorkshire and Durham lieutenancies.

I can accept the "feels like" and the boundaries used by different
utilities and transport systems, but I can't be doing with the idea
that current administrative boundaries are administrative, while
previous administrative boundaries are real.

It's only fairly recently that the administrative boundaries have
been tinkered with so that they don't line up with centuries-old
geographic boundaries.

Oh no it isn't! Royston used to straddle the border of Cambridgeshire and
Hertfordshire. The border was redrawn round it in the nineteenth century.

Indeed. Roland's statement is complete nonsense unless you count 1888
as "fairly recent", which it isn't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Government_Act_1888

--
John Band
john at johnband dot org
www.johnband.org