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How the fuck do English counties work?
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this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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askchapo
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And then there is the city vs town distinction, which is solely on royal decree, not self selected or population. There are large towns much larger than small cities.
I’d be remiss not to post Map Men: https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=Whqs8v1svyo
I know I'm losing my mind over this. I'm just trying to understand the counties but there's so much more incoherent shit going on. I can't tell if I just don't live there so I don't understand, or if anyone over there actually understands.
Also more Map Men: https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=hCc0OsyMbQk
tbh I did watch this and it didn't really help. But I think I'm at a disadvantage since I don't really have any familiarity with English counties in the first place, except for knowing a few by name in the back of my head.
Anyway, what I'm getting, just for the purposes of local government, is that counties are either two-tier or single tier. Single tier counties are run by the "unitary authority" which runs all local services in the county. Two tier counties are the non-metropolitan counties that have both a county council, but are also split into districts that run different local services. Then there are metropolitan counties which seem to be like the opposite of unitary authorities? Where the county council has been abolished and local services are now fully in the hands of the boroughs, which are the different districts of the county?
That's actually not too hard to understand (if I'm right), and some of that isn't too dissimilar from how we do it over here. I still don't understand what a ceremonial county is but I was mostly going down a rabbit hole trying to figure out how local gov't worked in England.
i love this sort of rabbithole because local government is sort of the water you're swimming in and you just know without investigation where specifically you are, what services you use and who you pay tax to
but actually studying it is brainmeltingly absurd bureaucratic horseshit.
I’m guessing ceremonial counties are just so that the nobility which used to own a whole ass county isn’t made to feel bad that the county that their granddad owned has had its borders changed.
yeah pretty much, it seems like ceremonial counties are just the area where the monarch's representative is appointed. Which for some reason is different from the local gov't administrative counties, but is also different from the "historic" counties. Based on what I've read I think this is the case.
Yeah, like in the US most counties manage any land that is not incorporated in a municipality, but some counties are exactly coincident with municipalities and some are sub-units of municipalities. We don’t make any distinction between them; I guess in the UK they do make the distinction.
ely is my favourite tiny city
it's a cathedral with a small village attached lol
That video was also the first thing I thought of when reading this post.