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RE: UK & USA counties
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Patti Ordower
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Oct 23, 2003 07:21 PDT
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| | Anne said:
| | This must be a win for the Post Office, as I don't think they ever
surrendered the 'traditional' county names and borders
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Then Beck said:
| | Do other countries have this problem - do the US state boundaries ever
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change? Or is it only in
| | the UK that we put up with this kind of nonsense?
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And Cathy added:
| | The USA and Australia are both a collective of states (call it a union
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or
federation or what you will). Changing the boundary would lead to a
major
consitutional crisis, I suspect.
| | On the other hand, in Australia we have entities called Shires and
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Municipalities, and their boundaries can be changed at the whim of any
state
government.
In the USA, as Cathy alluded to, we were states before we were a nation,
so those boundaries don't change. And I've never heard of our counties,
the next size downward in political entity (and called parishes in
Louisiana), changing borders; but townships, cities, and municipalities,
among the many names for local entities, change borders for political
and economic reasons.
Here in Indianapolis, the city government decided to annex the rest of
the county to itself, thereby gaining population and land. I suppose it
was for political advantage (and I think that's how Indy became one of
the top 10 cities in the US), and several of the smaller towns fought it
and won. So within the borders of the city of Indianapolis, we have the
cities of Beech Grove, Lawrence, and Speedway (home of the Indpls 500)
with their own mayors and government. I don't think the state
governments have any say-so--the entities battle it out amongst
themselves.
I found the annexation fascinating because I'm a transplant, so if I'm
wrong, I'd love to be corrected.
Patti
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