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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To be annoyed at people who live in a London Borough but insist they don't (i.e Im in Surrey, Kent etc)

794 replies

Rosehip10 · 06/10/2019 18:36

As in people in places such as Richmond, Kingston (insisting they live in Surrey) or places such as Bromley (insisting they are in Kent).

These places may used to have in a different county but have been part of greater London and a London Borough since 1965.

Is is snobbery? They usually drone only about postal towns which also no longer exist.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
13
Ilnome · 07/10/2019 21:26

Whoop whoop @RuffleCrow the best thing ab that area was going to uni v far away and having people tell me that it is or isn’t in essex or london like pls advise me with your expertise from growing up in stoke on trent and studying classics as to where I am from

DappledThings · 07/10/2019 21:26

Ah yes, to wash the horse manure down the road into Kent, the allotment of England apparently.

It really pained him when we moved to Kent and he had to start being nice about it!

Walkaround · 07/10/2019 21:29

The inclusion of a county in an address is only meaningless to a sorting machine... I do not find counties meaningless. I find where people have an emotional attachment to very meaningful. I also find it weird that other people would be particularly annoyed by someone saying, eg, they live in Kent or Surrey rather than a London Borough. It's not as if I give a tinker's cuss who they pay council tax to. To me, it just indicates they don't see themselves as particularly metropolitan at heart. It tells me something about them that has bugger all to do with snobbery, given that plenty of outrageous snobs will happily tell you they live in London.

PancakeAndKeith · 07/10/2019 21:33

pls advise me with your expertise from growing up in stoke on trent and studying classics as to where I am from

Don’t get started on Stoke. It’s not even one town.......

DappledThings · 07/10/2019 21:33

The inclusion of a county in an address is only meaningless to a sorting machine... I do not find counties meaningless. I find where people have an emotional attachment to very meaningful

An address on an envelope is a purely factual piece of data which should be in the correct form so it can be used quickly and effectively.

I live in Kent, used to live here as a child and back after 30 years. I definitely have an emotional attachment to it and I'm also interested in where people are from and counties they know. Still shouldn't include counties in an address and I get annoyed when I receive post that includes one.

Dreamscomingtrue · 07/10/2019 21:33
PancakeAndKeith · 07/10/2019 21:38

An address on an envelope is a purely factual piece of data which should be in the correct form so it can be used quickly and effectively.

Really. The nanoseconds it takes to write the county every time I write an address (which is when I send a Christmas card) are going to be saved and put to good use this year now.

Unless you are hand writing or typing hundreds of envelopes or address a day I cannot see how it impacts efficiency.
And who the heck is still writing a stack of envelopes?

DappledThings · 07/10/2019 21:41

Efficiency for machines to read and sort envelopes and for humans to read and sort them without extraneous and incorrect information. Not for the person writing it.

I take great satisfaction in knowing I've written all my Xmas card addresses correctly which has included checking each one online because most people give them out wrong.

It's one of my very few weirdness I promise.

Svalberg · 07/10/2019 21:46

However if you walk to the south along the river from Bentalls, you will reach the Surrey border. You do not have to be particularly fit to do so! I think it is just over a mile.

You obviously don't get diverted into Laithwaites Blush

PancakeAndKeith · 07/10/2019 21:47

I’ve just used the online address checker to check my parents address as it is an odd one. The online thingy has got it wrong. It pointed to the wrong house.

JoJoSM2 · 07/10/2019 21:48

I find where people have an emotional attachment to very meaningful.

Most people in London aren't from the UK so they'll hardly have an attachment. So they might as well be factually correct. I live in an outer borough as I like being on the edge of the countryside. But I won't pretend to live in Surrey... That would be a tax ridiculous.

DappledThings · 07/10/2019 21:51

The map bit of it points to the wrong house for me too, to one over the road. Doesn't make the address itself wrong, just that the map link up isn't entirely accurate.

Postcodes cover more than one house. Doesn't make any difference to counties being included being wrong.

JoJoSM2 · 07/10/2019 21:53

@Dreamscomingtrue

Cool video! I had no idea that there were parts of London outside zone 6 or the M25!

PancakeAndKeith · 07/10/2019 21:57

The postcode covers the entire village.
The houses in the village don’t have numbers, only names, and no road names.
However my parents house has the same name as four other houses in the village (out of the 25 houses there), so one day the post office decided to give the 4 houses numbers. But the online thing points to number 4, which is at the other end of the village as opposed to just a few doors down.

So who is right? (I don’t use the number to be fair and I don’t think anyone else does to be honest, and I put the county on 😁)

Walkaround · 07/10/2019 21:58

DappledThings - I still don't get why you find it annoying. Machines don't find it annoying, they just ignore it and read the postcode. If the postcode is inaccurate, or unknown and therefore not even on the letter, and the village name obscure, then the county is likely to be a helpful piece of evidence to work out how to deliver the letter.

DappledThings · 07/10/2019 22:00

Sounds like a fun village! My street has no numbers, only names.

But the county wouldn't make it any clearer for one village.

aaeg22 · 07/10/2019 22:04

If you check every single address online then you don't need a county or a town . If you know an address but cant remember/check the postcode or use the wrong post code, putting the (old) county will still get it to the right place.

A Bank
High Street
Sutton
can go to 18 places called Sutton in the UK

A Bank
High Street
Sutton
Surrey

will get to the one in the London Borough of Sutton

Walkaround · 07/10/2019 22:07

My parents lived in a house that had one postcode on one side of it and another postcode on another side of it. They only had a letterbox on one side of the house, but the post office search facility kept allocating their address to the other postcode and when people used that one, the postman couldn't find the correct letterbox and posted all my parents' letters through a neighbour's door. I am not very impressed by postcodes.

PancakeAndKeith · 07/10/2019 22:07

But the county wouldn't make it any clearer for one village.

No. But it shows that the online address checker is not infallible and checking someone’s address as you think they have got it wrong might not work. If you were checking their address, then you would be sending it to the wrong place.

DappledThings · 07/10/2019 22:08

If you check every single address online then you don't need a county or a town
But the town is included in the official address, county is not. So I use the right format.

I wouldn't ever send something without being certain of the correct address having checked it online so the Sutton example is irrelevant.

Walkaround · 07/10/2019 22:11

DappledThings - having checked my parents's address, you would have pissed off my parents no end - and their neighbours.

DappledThings · 07/10/2019 22:13

I still don't get why you find it annoying Because it's wrong! My address is:
House name
Street name
Village
TOWN
Postcode.

Anything else is just incorrect and I am annoyed by people using this specific piece of data incorrectly. It's a very mild irritation, but I find addresses interesting too hence my ongoing interest in the thread.

DappledThings · 07/10/2019 22:15

having checked my parents's address, you would have pissed off my parents no end - and their neighbours

Sounds like one that might have created a query for me and I'd probably have checked it with them. 99% of the time it's people not including the postal town. Or including an urban district that shouldn't be there.

BeautifulBlackBamboo · 07/10/2019 22:16

London Postcode = London

London Boroughs without London postcode = Greater London (not London)

PancakeAndKeith · 07/10/2019 22:17

As an aside I once received a post card addressed to (Details changed to protect the innocent)

9 Pancake Street
Town
USA.

I lived at
9 Pancake Street,
Town,
UK.