Re: [GZG] [OT] GZG-stocked shops in London?

Roger Burton West wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Feb 10, 2006 at 12:26:16AM +0000, David Brewer wrote:
> 
> >Technically, London is the smallest city in England(*), covering
> >the area inside the medieval city bars and run by the medieval
> >chartered corporation, electing officials from the old craft
> >guilds. The surrounding boroughs all expanded out into a vast
> >conurbation grouped together as Metropolitan London.
> 
> Ah, I see what you mean. "Metro" would _never_ be used by an actual
> Londoner as opposed to a politician; "London" means Greater London or
> just everything inside the M25, whereas the City is just "the City" or
> sometimes "the City of London", never "London" alone.

I know, I'm trying to translate into American. There's one square
mile of "city proper" and 1,800-odd square miles of official
"metro area", so the utility of the distinction (if I've
understood it correctly) is small in this case. Maybe we should
cast Greater London as "city" and whatever BUAs fade into the
green belt as "metro area". I'm not sure exactly what would
qualify as the end of metro area. Wikipedia suggests vaguely that
"London is frequently listed with 13 million inhabitants" while
claiming Greater London as 7.5 million. It's going to to be a
whopping great chunk of South East England.

I just though it was humorous that London was England's smallest
city. The same process that creates a swathe of conurbation around
cities happened so much earlier to London that the city fathers
locked down the boundary of the City to keep their oligarchical
privileges forever, and the surrounding metropolis has it's own
mayor and metropolis.

-- 
David Brewer

"The mentally disturbed do not employ the Theory of Scientific 
Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of 
facts." - P.K.Dick (from VALIS)
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