To think if you live in a London Borough you live in London

[MariahLynn]

Saw this on twitter and thought about it twitter.com/yougov/status/1319226163278057472?s=21

Why does this create such controversy?

Surely If you live in a London Borough you are part of London.

I can’t see how anyone can live somewhere which has red buses, can vote for London mayor, pays council tax to a London Borough and maintain they live in Essex or Kent or Surrey.

Is it about pretending to be posher?

@IHateCoronavirus

I think people often describe their location as London/‘not London’ depending on who they are talking to. When living in the area I would have described myself as living in Ruislip to people living within Greater London and the surrounding areas, such as West Wickham, and just London to everyone else.

I have read London too many times and it is starting to sound strange. When typing London I was almost questioning myself if our capital is called London at all!
London, London, London...

Me too ! Every now and then I think it’s a really odd place name. Also now reminded of petula Clarke from goodby mr chips London is London, Is anyone in doubt about it, London is London, It's easy to find out about it,

Etc may have to go listen to get it out of my head.

@TheWristBoundLatexBitch

‘Surrey’ is not part of your postal address.

I don’t know why people insist on Surrey, Kent, Essex etc. There are NOT part of postal addresses.

But if you vote for the mayor of London you are subject to the decisions his administration make so you are defacto living in London by at least one concrete non-fluffy definition

I lived in varying parts of London and grew up there (in zone 2) so even when I was living in zone 6 and had a county postcode , I said I lived in London because I felt like a Londoner. To be fair even when I lived in the zone 6 address I had a London phone prefix and was ' just' inside the boundary to vote for the London mayor.

I don’t really care where I live but it is incorrect to say that it’s not up for discussion.

I live in a London borough but my postal address is Kent. So it’s not straightforward is it?

JoJo
Yes. Kent is in my address for post.
I don’t understand your point.

I've always lived in London. The bit I live in now (zone 3/4 boundary) doesn't have a London postcode. Two sides roads down does. Lots of roads around here either have a London postcode or not depending on where the boundary line is drawn and you'd never know just from walking around which is which, the landscape is the same. I use the same services now as I did when I lived in a different road in the same area. At that time I had no idea this particular bit of the area didn't have a London postcode, and definitely considered it London.

[quote JoJoSM2]@TheWristBoundLatexBitch

‘Surrey’ is not part of your postal address.

I don’t know why people insist on Surrey, Kent, Essex etc. There are NOT part of postal addresses.[/quote]
It definitely is

Number street name
Mitcham
Surrey
CR4 XXX

It's on every letter, parcel etc I receive.

I can categorically state that everybody born and bred in Havering will say they're from Essex. This has nothing to do with appearing "posh" and everything to do with the fact with this is what we were always brought up to think. We don't have a London postcode nor dialling code. Whilst I understand we are in fact a London borough, I've not idea why it infuriates outsiders so much when we say we're from Essex?

Growing up, if I met someone out of our area I would generally say I lived near Romford in Essex (I was in Upminster) as it was more widely known. If I was abroad and a local asked where I was from, I'd say London, as more familiar to them than Essex.

Further to the poster who said Havering has a Romford postcode and therefore isn't Essex.... please do enlighten me to what an Essex postcode is? The fact is we do not have a London postcode, however dated this may be. Just to add I went to school in the 80s/90s, not prior to 1965

All the post office need to deliver anything is a postcode and housenumber. The writing of the rest of the address was actually a plan by a shadowy cabal of pen manufacturers to reduce the life of ball points.

I may have made some of that up. But the point remains: if you put your postcode, the country, town and district are ignored.

I work as a teacher in Havering. I’m not originally from the South East, and I still find it surprising how the kids don’t go to (central) London that often and see a trip to London as something notable (to go for shopping, or a theatre trip - like I would have as a child) even though central London is less than half an hour away on the train/tube. For context, growing up my journey to school took longer than that!

Surrey is on the deeds to my flat and I have just renewed the leasehold

Not London borough of .... Or London then the postcode It’s Surrey then postcode

@TheDowagerDuchessofMwwwahaha

I like in Croydon and that is definitely not trying to be posher.

Normally if you say Croydon is London everyone laughs. Even though it technically is, we don’t have a London postcode

It’s annoying at the moment because our CV rate is relatively low - way below the national average and below a lot of rural areas - and suddenly we’ve been lumped in with central London etc in Tier 2.

I grew up in Croydon. When I was a child our address was definitely Croydon, Surrey, not Croydon, London. Croydon has its own postcodes as well.

I now tell people I grew up in South London.

It definitely is hmm

Number street name
Mitcham
Surrey
CR4 XXX

It's on every letter, parcel etc I receive.
But it shouldn't be. The Surrey bit is not part of anyone's postal address whether you live in Mitcham or Dorking.

Yes. Kent is in my address for post.
If you look it up on the Royal Mail address finder Kent will not be part of it.

But it is on deeds when selling a property

Not London or London Borough

If I could put London I would as it would increase in value

If I were to have a conversation with someone and they said they lived in London and I asked where and they replied Mitcham, Croydon, Sutton, Kingston, Beckenham, Bromley I wouldn’t count this as London (and few people do regardless of being in the Borough its not London postal address there is no such address as Croydon/Sutton/Bromley London and never had been

I used to live in zone 6, I refer to living in London to anyone outside of London about that time (as all my family were nowhere near London) commuted into central London etc. But when talking to colleagues at the time very much referred to it by the town name, or zone 6. It was all the same to those outside of London, but not within it!

Kingston is The Royal Borough of Kingston no mention of London even though it’s in London.

The village of Knockholt in Kent was included in the Orpington district in 1934. After the GLC came about Orpington was integrated into the London Borough of Bromley. The villagers campaigned, and in 1969 became part of the Sevenoaks district of Kent, severing its ties with London.

However, TfL London buses R5 and R10 serve the village, and is still in TfL's Zone 6.

Bonkers, really. (Sources from Londonist.com and Wikipedia)

@whiteroseredrose

It's all administrative. Changes in administrative boundaries.

If Romford was in Essex for 500+ years it doesn't suddenly become London because a bureaucrat decided it was easier to lump it in with London. Same with places like Croydon and Richmond.

It happens all over the country. For some reason Hull, which had been in East Yorkshire for centuries, suddenly became part of an administrative area called Humberside. The residents didn't then stop being Yorkshire folk.

Yes and this affected North Lincolnshire as well

Only five of the areas on your list are actually London though. Slough and Reading are administratively Berkshire. Dartford is Kent.

Yes, the next borough along might be a Greater London one but people living in Dartford can't vote for the London Mayor, and pay their council tax to a subsidiary of Kent County Council.

I currently live in Kent, in a district which abuts the London Borough of Bexley. I am within the M25, a five minute drive from the Bexley border. No vote for mayor, pay my council tax to a Kent council, and am currently in Tier 1 for covid - all of this despite the fact that a red bus that comes practically to my door terminates in the London borough in which I work.

I may be close to its boundary, which runs across a field close to my house, but I do not live in London.

Surrey, Sussex, Middlesex etc all still exist, just the boundaries have changed over time as London has expanded.

Postcodes aren't necessarily a good indicator unless they're a standard London compass points one btw. Bexley has DA (Dartford) postcodes, Swanley has BR (Bromley) postcodes. Bexley and Bromley are administratively London. Dartford and Swanley aren't.

Surrey, Sussex, Middlesex etc all still exist, just the boundaries have changed over time as London has expanded.

Middlesex does not exist! Has not done since 1964. Surrey and Sussex obviously do though none of Sussex has been incorporated into London.

@DappledThings

**Pops in to remind everyone that counties do not appear in correct postal addresses.

Hopes to provide amusement to @StanfordPines by doing this

**Withdraws

Hello!! I opened this thread just to see if you were here to tell people that they most certainly do not have a Middlesex postal address, @DappledThings

@cecilyp ah oops, of course it doesn't

@Smileyaxolotl1

JoJo Yes. Kent is in my address for post. I don’t understand your point.

But it isn’t. @DappledThings helped me understand that. Your county does not form any part of your postal address.