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For further confusion, ‘London’ does not exist at all as a well defined entity and the UK has no de jure capital.
by turbonaut 10mo ago
For further confusion, ‘London’ does not exist at all as a well defined entity and the UK has no de jure capital.
- globular-toast 10mo agoFor even further confusion "London" actually contains two cities: London and Westminster. London was a walled city but Westminster was not. So "London" was we know it today is more like Westminster than London.
- zeristor 10mo agoWhat about Southwark? That has a cathedral too.
- globular-toast 10mo agoA cathedral is neither necessary nor sufficient for city status. City status in the UK is given by the monarch and that's all there is to it. Cambridge is a city without a cathedral and Bury St Edmunds is a town with a cathedral.
- walthamstow 10mo agoIndeed. Southend got city status mostly because their MP was murdered.
- zeristor 10mo agoAs is Southwell.
- Scarblac 10mo agoWhat is the exact job of the mayor of London then?
- defrost 10mo agoBuying and selling cats for profit, since 1423. For the people that don't know the City of London history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Whittington_and_His_Cat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Whittington_and_His_Cat
- kergonath 10mo agoThat’s the Lord Mayor of London. The Mayor of London is The head of the Greater London Authority (which is not a city). No, it is not confusing.
- 4ndrewl 10mo agoFor further confusion there are two cities within the (historical) county of London - the city of Westminster and the city of London.
- tialaramex 10mo agoVery few people on HN will have been alive when there was a county of London. It ceased to exist in the 1960s. The UK does not require this layer of subdivision to exist, so it's not that there's a different county or set of counties covering the same area now but rather there is no county. This is a contrast to say the US system where AIUI there must be a county and in some cases that county doesn't really matter (e.g. New York County in New York City aka Manhattan) but it has to exist anyway. City status is very different here, the Monarch (ie now Charlie) gets to decide what is or is not a city, but because that's arbitrary it also has very few consequences, it's a cosmetic basically, you can write "City" on some signs if you like, but if you feel like a small town you still feel like a small town, and if you already feel like a bustling city then having the word doesn't make a real difference.
- mavhc 10mo agoUK is a country made up of 4 countries, I guess we really like to annoy anyone trying to define a hierarchy
- tialaramex 10mo ago"And by 'country' we mean a sovereign state that is a member of the UN in its own right"
- wongarsu 10mo agoAnd the US the a sovereign state made up of 50 states. They used to be called that because they were independent countries There are other offenders, but the US and UK together are probably the main reason English no longer has concise but unambiguous way to refer to sovereign states
- School-Cotton 10mo ago> ‘London’ does not exist at all as a well defined entity I think it does: the territory administered by the Greater London Authority; i.e. the 32 places called "London Borough of X", plus the City.