Stephen Timms
Stephen Creswell Timms is a British Labour Party politician, the Member of Parliament for East Ham since 1997. He has sat in Parliament since retaining the earlier Newham North East seat for his party at a 1994 byelection. Timms served in the government for several periods as the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, from 1999 to 2001, 2004 to 2005, 2008 to 2010, he was in the Cabinet from 2006 to 2007 as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2006 to 2007. At the 2017 general election, Timms' majority increased to 40,000 votes, making his the safest seat in the UK, with 83.2% of the vote. In May 2010, Timms survived an attempted murder by Islamic terrorist Roshonara Choudhry who stabbed him twice in the abdomen at his constituency surgery, his attacker was sentenced to life imprisonment. He returned to the backbenches in September 2015, after being offered a junior Treasury job by his party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Timms was born in Oldham, Lancashire, to Ronald James Timms, an engineer, Margaret Joyce Timms, a teacher.
He was educated at Farnborough Grammar School in Farnborough and read mathematics at Emmanuel College, Cambridge where he gained a degree in mathematics in 1977 and an MPhil in operational research in 1978. Before entering politics, Timms worked in the telecommunications industry for 15 years, first for Logica from 1978 to 1986, for Ovum from 1986 to 1994, where he worked as a manager responsible for producing reports on the future of telecommunications, he was elected as a councillor for the Little Ilford Ward on Newham London Borough Council in a by-election in 1984, served as Leader of the Council from 1990 to 1994. The Labour MP for Newham North East, Ron Leighton, died in February 1994. Timms was selected as the Labour candidate for the resulting by-election in June 1994, he won the seat with 75% of the votes. For the next election, his constituency was merged with part of Newham South, at the general election in May 1997 Timms was elected MP for the resulting new constituency of East Ham.
Timms served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Andrew Smith from May 1997 to March 1998, to Mo Mowlam from March to July 1998. In 1998, Timms was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Social Security, rising to Minister of State in that department the following year, he served as Minister of State for E-Commerce and Competitiveness, Minister of State for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services, at the Department of Trade and Industry. In May 2006, Timms was promoted to the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the Chancellor's second-in-command with responsibility for department budget issues, a post in which he remained until 28 June 2007, when he was dropped from the cabinet by new Prime Minister Gordon Brown, it was announced that he had been appointed Minister of State for Competitiveness at the newly created Department for Business and Regulatory Reform. Following the government reshuffle on 24 January 2008—a result of the resignation of Peter Hain—Timms moved to the Department for Work and Pensions, became Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform.
Tony McNulty replaced Timms on 3 October 2008, who returned to his former role as Financial Secretary to the Treasury. In August 2009, Timms was given additional responsibility for Digital Britain. In September 2009, he announced plans for a tax of £6 per year to be levied on each phone account in the UK. At the time, this was broadly characterised as a stealth tax in the UK media. In April 2010, Timms' department made an embarrassing slip when a letter purporting to be from him mistakenly identified IP address as "intellectual property address". According to the accountants' magazine Accountancy Age, he was regarded by finance professionals despite such gaffes. Timms was appointed to the role of Shadow Minister for Employment after the election of Ed Miliband as party leader, it was rumoured that Timms was one of three shadow ministers who threatened to resign from his front bench position if the Labour Party did not grant a free vote on the Marriage Act 2013. Timms abstained on the bill. On 14 May 2010, Timms was approached by 21-year-old female Islamist extremist Roshonara Choudhry, during a constituency surgery at the Beckton Globe Library in Kingsford Way, East London.
Choudhry stabbed Timms before being disarmed. She stated that she had been influenced by watching sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki, a leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, that her attack was to punish Timms for voting for the Iraq War, seek revenge for the Iraqi people, he suffered "potentially life-threatening" wounds—lacerations to his liver and a perforation to his stomach. A police officer at the scene remarked that Timms "was fortunate not to have been killed". Timms underwent emergency surgery at the Royal London Hospital, from which he was discharged on 19 May. On 2 November 2010, Choudhry was found guilty of Timms' attempted murder, she was subsequently given a life sentence, with a recommendation that she serve a minimum jail term of 15 years. After the court case, Timms said he was not bitter, but that forgiveness was not an issue until his attacker showed remorse, he has since sought the banning of incendiary material on popular internet sites "to protect other vulnerable young people from going down the same road."
YouTube removed some videos of al-Awlaki within hours of the
Old English
Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, as the language of the upper classes by Anglo-Norman, a relative of French; this is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, as during this period the English language was influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles and Jutes; as the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain: Common Brittonic, a Celtic language, Latin, brought to Britain by Roman invasion. Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: Mercian, Northumbrian and West Saxon.
It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the literary standard of the Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would develop from Mercian. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule and settlement beginning in the 9th century. Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Like other old Germanic languages, it is different from Modern English and difficult for Modern English speakers to understand without study. Old English grammar is similar to that of modern German: nouns, adjectives and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms, word order is much freer; the oldest Old English inscriptions were written using a runic system, but from about the 9th century this was replaced by a version of the Latin alphabet. Englisc, which the term English is derived from, means'pertaining to the Angles'. In Old English, this word was derived from Angles.
During the 9th century, all invading Germanic tribes were referred to as Englisc. It has been hypothesised that the Angles acquired their name because their land on the coast of Jutland resembled a fishhook. Proto-Germanic *anguz had the meaning of'narrow', referring to the shallow waters near the coast; that word goes back to Proto-Indo-European *h₂enǵʰ- meaning'narrow'. Another theory is that the derivation of'narrow' is the more connection to angling, which itself stems from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning bend, angle; the semantic link is the fishing hook, curved or bent at an angle. In any case, the Angles may have been called such because they were a fishing people or were descended from such, therefore England would mean'land of the fishermen', English would be'the fishermen's language'. Old English was not static, its usage covered a period of 700 years, from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century to the late 11th century, some time after the Norman invasion. While indicating that the establishment of dates is an arbitrary process, Albert Baugh dates Old English from 450 to 1150, a period of full inflections, a synthetic language.
Around 85 per cent of Old English words are no longer in use, but those that survived are basic elements of Modern English vocabulary. Old English is a West Germanic language, it came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England. This included most of present-day England, as well as part of what is now southeastern Scotland, which for several centuries belonged to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Other parts of the island – Wales and most of Scotland – continued to use Celtic languages, except in the areas of Scandinavian settlements where Old Norse was spoken. Celtic speech remained established in certain parts of England: Medieval Cornish was spoken all over Cornwall and in adjacent parts of Devon, while Cumbric survived to the 12th century in parts of Cumbria, Welsh may have been spoken on the English side of the Anglo-Welsh border. Norse was widely spoken in the parts of England which fell under Danish law. Anglo-Saxon literacy developed after Christianisation in the late 7th century.
The oldest surviving text of Old English literature is Cædmon's Hymn, composed between 658 and 680. There is a limited corpus of runic inscriptions from the 5th to 7th centuries, but the oldest coherent runic texts date to the 8th century; the Old English Latin alphabet was introduced around the 9th century. With the unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms by Alfred the Great in the 9th century, the language of government and literature became standardised around the West Saxon dialect. Alfred advocated education in English alongside Latin, had many works translated into the English language. In Old English, typical of the development of literature, poetry arose before prose, but King Alfred the Great chiefly inspired the growth of prose. A literary standard, dating from the 10th century, arose under the influence of Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, was followed by such writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham. Th
Fire services in the United Kingdom
The fire services in the United Kingdom operate under separate legislative and administrative arrangements in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland. Emergency cover is provided by over fifty agencies; these are known as a fire and rescue service, the term used in modern legislation and by government departments. The older terms of fire brigade and fire service survive in informal usage and in the names of a few organisations. England and Wales have local fire services which are each overseen by a fire authority, made up of representatives of local governments. Fire authorities have the power to raise a Council Tax levy for funding, with the remainder coming from the government. Scotland and Northern Ireland have centralised fire services, so their authorities are committees of the devolved parliaments; the total budget for fire services in 2014-15 was £2.9 billion. Central government maintains national standards and a body of independent advisers through the Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser, created in 2007, while Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services provides direct oversight.
The devolved government in Scotland has HMFSI Scotland. Firefighters in the United Kingdom are allowed to join unions, the main one being the Fire Brigades Union, while chief fire officers are members of the National Fire Chiefs Council, which has some role in national co-ordination; the fire services have undergone significant changes since the beginning of the 21st century, a process, propelled by a devolution of central government powers, new legislation and a change to operational procedures in the light of terrorism attacks and threats. See separate article History of fire safety legislation in the United Kingdom Comprehensive list of recent UK fire and rescue service legislation: Fire services are established and granted their powers under new legislation which has replaced a number of Acts of Parliament dating back more than 60 years, but is still undergoing change. 1938: Fire Brigades Act 1938. This Act provided for centralised co-ordination of fire brigades in Great Britain and made it mandatory for local authorities to arrange an effective fire service.
1947: Fire Services Act 1947 This Act transferred the functions of the National Fire Service to local authorities. Now repealed in England and Wales by Schedule 2 of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004. 1959: Fire Services Act 1959 This Act amended the 1947 Act. It was repealed in Wales along with the 1947 Act. 1999: Greater London Authority Act 1999 This act was necessary to allow for the formation of the Greater London Authority and in turn the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. In 2002, there was a series of national fire strikes, with much of the discontent caused by the aforementioned report into the fire service conducted by Prof Sir George Bain. In December 2002, the Independent Review of the Fire Service was published with the industrial action still ongoing. Bain's report led to a change in the laws relating to firefighting. 2002: Independent Review of the Fire Service published 2004: Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 only applying to England and Wales. 2006: The Regulatory Reform Order 2005 This piece of secondary legislation or statutory instrument replaces several other acts that dealt with fire precautions and fire safety in premises, including the now defunct process of issuing fire certificates.
It came into force on 1 October 2006. The DfCLG has published a set of guides for non-domestic premises: 2006: The Government of Wales Act 2006 gave the National Assembly for Wales powers to pass laws on "Fire and rescue services. Promotion of fire safety otherwise than by prohibition or regulation." But does not prevent future legislation being passed by the UK government which applies to two or more constituent countries. There are further plans to modernise the fire service according to the Local Government Association, its website outlines future changes, specific projects: "The aim of the Fire Modernisation Programme is to adopt modern work practices within the Fire & Rescue Service to become more efficient and effective, while strengthening the contingency and resilience of the Service to react to incidents. " The fire service in England and Wales is scrutinised by a House of Commons select committee. In June 2006, the fire and rescue service select committee, under the auspices of the Communities and Local Government Committee, published its latest report.
Committee report The committee's brief is described on its website: The Communities and Local Government Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure and policy of the Department for Communities and Local Government and its associated bodies. Government response This document, the subsequent government response in September 2006, are important as they outlined progress on the FiReControl, efforts to address diversity and the planned closure of HMFSI in 2007 among many issues. Both documents are interesting as they refer back to Professor Bain's report and the many recommendations it made and continue to put forward the notion that there is an ongoing need to modernise FRSs. For example, where FRSs were inspected by HMFSI, much of this work is now carried out by the National Audit Office. Fire Control On 8 February 2010 the House of Commons Communities and Local Governm
Women's Institutes
The Women's Institute, a community-based organisation for women, was founded in Stoney Creek, Canada, by Adelaide Hoodless in 1897. It was based on the British concept of Women's Guilds, created by Rev Archibald Charteris in 1887 and confined to the Church of Scotland. From Canada the organisation spread back to the motherland, throughout the British Empire and Commonwealth, thence to other countries. Many WIs belong to the Associated Country Women of the World organization; the WI movement began at Stoney Creek, Ontario in Canada in 1897 when Adelaide Hoodless addressed a meeting for the wives of members of the Farmers' Institute. WIs spread throughout Ontario and Canada, with 130 branches launched by 1905 in Ontario alone, the groups flourish in their home province today; as of 2013, the Federated Women's Institutes of Ontario had more than 300 branches with more than 4,500 members. Madge Watt, a founder member of the first WI in British Columbia, organised the first WI meeting in Great Britain, which took place on 16 September 1915 at Llanfairpwll on Anglesey, Wales.
The organisation had two aims: to revitalise rural communities and to encourage women to become more involved in producing food during the First World War. Since the organisation's aims have broadened and it is now the largest women's voluntary organisation in the UK; the organisation celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2015 and as of 2017 had 220,000 members in 6,300 WIs. Today it plays a unique role in enabling women to gain new skills, take part in wide-ranging activities, campaign on issues that matter to them and their communities; the WI is a diverse organisation open to all women, there are now WIs in towns and cities as well as villages. Women's Institutes were formed in Scotland and Northern Ireland independently of those in England and Wales; the first Women's Rural Institute started in Scotland on 26 June 1917, Madge Watt travelled up from London to speak to a meeting at Longniddry. After the end of the Great War, Watt returned to Canada where she continued as an activist for the interests of rural women.
In 1930 she founded the Associated Country Women of the World. After the end of the First World War, the Board of Agriculture withdrew its sponsorship, although the Development Commission financially supported the work of the forming of new WIs and gave core funding to the National Federation until it could become financially independent. By 1926 the Women's Institutes were independent and became an essential part of rural life. One of their features was an independence from political parties or institutions, or church or chapel, which encouraged activism by non-establishment women, which helps to explain why the WI has been reluctant to support anything that can be construed as war work, despite their wartime formation. During the Second World War, they limited their contribution to such activities as looking after evacuees, running the Government-sponsored Preservation Centres where volunteers canned or made jam of excess produce. Women's Institutes in England, Jersey and the Isle of Man are affiliated with the National Federation of Women's Institutes.
In Scotland and Northern Ireland there are similar organisations tied to the WI through the Associated Country Women of the World: the Scottish Women's Rural Institutes and the Women's Institutes of Northern Ireland. Each individual WI is a separate charitable organisation, run by and for its own members with a constitution agreed at national level but the possibility of local bye-laws. WIs are grouped into Federations corresponding to counties, which each have a local office and one or more paid staff; the National Federation of Women's Institutes is the overall body of the WI in England, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, with headquarters in London. There is an office in Cardiff, NFWI-Wales, a residential college in Oxfordshire, Denman College. WI Enterprises is the trading arm of the organisation and exists to raise funds and provide benefits for members; as of January 2019 there were 220,000 members of 6,300 Women's Institutes in England and the islands, linked through the Associated Country Women of the World to other WIs worldwide.
The WI is a women-only organisation, has clarified in a 2017 statement Transgender WI membership that "Anyone, living as a woman is welcome to join the WI and to participate in any WI activities in the same way as any other woman". Colonel Richard Stapleton-Cotton and his dog Tinker are the only two males to be accepted as paid-up WI members: the Colonel, a "highly influential man locally", played a major part in setting up the first WI meeting in Anglesey in 1915; the WI campaigns on a wide range of issues affecting women, based on resolutions agreed at each year's national Annual Meeting. Its first resolution, passed in 1918, called for "sufficient supply of convenient and sanitary houses, being of vital importance to women in the country". In 1943 they called for "Equal Pay for Equal Work" and continued to argue for this until the Equal Pay Act 1970 was passed. 1954's resolution to "‘preserve the countryside against desecration by litter" lead to the formation of the Keep Britain Tidy group, which became a registered charity in 1960.
The WI discussed HIV/AIDS in 1986, agreeing to "to inform the general public of the true facts concerning the disease AIDS" and subsequently working with the Terence Higgins Trust to produce a leaflet on "Women and AIDS". The 2017 meeting passed a motion on microplastics pollution or "Plastic soup", in 2018 the WI agreed to "Make Time for Mental Health", "calling on members to take action to make it as acceptable to t
River Lea
The River Lea originates in the Chiltern Hills and flows southeast through east London where it meets the River Thames, the last looping section being known as Bow Creek. It is one of the easternmost major tributary of the Thames, its valley creates a long chain of marshy ground along its lower length, much of, used for gravel and mineral extraction and industry. Much of the river has been canalised to provide a navigable route for boats into eastern Hertfordshire, known as the Lee Navigation. While the lower Lea remains somewhat polluted, its upper stretch and tributaries, classified as chalk streams, are a major source of drinking water for London. A diversion known as the New River, opened in 1613, abstracts clean water away from the lower stretch of the river for drinking, its origins in the Chilterns contribute to the extreme hardness of London tap water. The name of the River Lea was first recorded in the 9th century, although is believed to be much older. Spellings from the Anglo-Saxon period include Ligan in 880 and Lygan in 895, in the early medieval period it is Luye or Leye.
It seems to be derived from a Celtic root lug-meaning'bright or light', the derivation of a name for a deity, so the meaning may be'bright river' or'river dedicated to the god Lugus'. A simpler derivation may well be the Brythonic word cognate with the modern Welsh "Li" pronounced "Lea" which means a flow or a current; the spelling Lea predominates west of Hertford, but both spellings are used from Hertford to the River Thames. The Lee Navigation was established by Acts of Parliament and only that spelling is used in this context; the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority uses this spelling for leisure facilities. However, the spelling Lea is used for road names and other infrastructure in the capital, such as Leamouth, Lea Bridge, the Lea Valley Walk and the Lea Valley Railway Lines; this spelling is used in geology, etc. to refer to the Lea Valley. The divergent spellings of the river are reflected in place-names, including Leagrave, the suburb of Luton where the source of the river is located, of Luton and Leyton: both mean "farmstead on the River Lea".
The source is said to be at Well Head inside Waulud's Bank at Leagrave, but there the River Lea is fed by Houghton Brook, a stream that starts 2 miles further west in Houghton Regis. The river flows through Luton, Welwyn Garden City, to Hertford where it changes from a small shallow river to a deep canal at Hertford Castle Weir, which flows on to Ware, Stanstead Abbotts, Broxbourne, Waltham Abbey, Enfield Lock, Ponders End, Chingford, Walthamstow, Upper Clapton, Hackney Wick, Bromley-by-Bow, Canning Town and Leamouth where it meets the River Thames, it forms the traditional boundary between the counties of Middlesex and Essex, was used for part of the Danelaw boundary. It forms part of the boundary between Essex and Hertfordshire. For much of its distance the river runs as a boundary to the Lee Valley Park. Between Tottenham and Hackney the Lea feeds Tottenham Marshes, Walthamstow Marshes and Hackney Marshes. In their early days, Tottenham Hotspur and Leyton Orient played their matches as football amateurs on the Marshes.
South of Hackney Wick the river's course is split, running completely in man made channels flowing through an area, once a thriving industrial zone. Inside Greater London below Enfield Lock the river forms the boundary with the former Royal Small Arms Factory, now known as Enfield Island Village, a housing development. Just downstream the river is joined by the River Lee Flood Relief Channel; the man-made, concrete-banked watercourse is known as the River Lee Diversion at this point as it passes to the east of a pair of reservoirs: the King George V Reservoir at Ponders End/Chingford and William Girling Reservoir at Edmonton known collectively as the Chingford Reservoirs. At Tottenham Hale there is a connected set of reservoirs, it passes the Three Mills, a restored tidal mill near Bow. In the Roman era, Old Ford, as the name suggests, was the ancient, most downstream, crossing point of the River Lea; this was part of a pre-Roman route that followed the modern Oxford Street, Old Street, through Bethnal Green to Old Ford and thence across a causeway through the marshes, known as Wanstead Slip.
The route continued through Essex to Colchester. At this time, the Lea was a wide, fast flowing river, the tidal estuary stretched as far as Hackney Wick. Evidence of a late Roman settlement at Old Ford, dating from the 4th and 5th centuries, has been found. Somewhere between 878 and 890 the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum was drawn up that amongst other things used the course of the Lea to define the border between the Danes and the English. In 894, a force of Danes sailed up the river to Hertford, in about 895 they built a fortified camp, in the higher reaches of the Lea, about 20 miles north of London. Alfred the Great saw an opportunity to defeat the Danes and ordered the lower reaches of the Lea drained, at Leamouth; this left the Danes' boats stranded, but increased the flow of the river and caused the tidal head to move downriver to Old Ford. In 1110, wife of Henry I, reputedly took a tumble at the ford, on her way to B
London postal district
The London postal district is the area in England of 241 square miles to which mail addressed to the LONDON post town is delivered. The General Post Office at the control of the Postmaster General directed Sir Rowland Hill to devise the area in 1856 and throughout its history has been subject to gradual periodic reorganisation and division into smaller postal units, with the early loss of two compass points and a minor retraction in 1866, it was integrated by the Post Office into the national postcode system of the United Kingdom during the early 1970s and corresponds to the N, NW, SW, SE, W, WC, E and EC postcode areas. The postal district has been known as the London postal area; the County of London was much smaller at 117 square miles, but Greater London is much larger at 607 square miles. By the 1850s, the rapid growth of the metropolitan area meant it became too large to operate efficiently as a single post town. A Post Office inquiry into the problem had been set up in 1837 and a House of Commons committee was initiated in 1843.
In 1854 Charles Canning, the Postmaster General, set up a committee at the Post Office in St. Martin's Le Grand to investigate how London could best be divided for the purposes of directing mail. In 1856, of the 470 million items of mail sent in the United Kingdom during the year one fifth were for delivery in London and half of these originated there; the General Post Office thus at the control of the Postmaster General devised the area in 1856 project-managed by Sir Rowland Hill. Hill produced an perfectly circular area of 12 miles radius from the central post office at St. Martin's Le Grand, near St Paul's Cathedral in central London; as devised, it extended from Waltham Cross in the north to Carshalton in the south and from Romford in the east to Sunbury in the west — six counties at the time if including the City of London. Within the district it was divided into two central areas and eight compass points which operated much like separate post towns; each was constituted "London" with a suffix indicating the area.
The system was introduced during 1857 and completed on 1 January 1858. The NE and S divisions were abolished following a report by Anthony Trollope: in 1866 NE was merged into the E district, the large districts transferred included Walthamstow and Leytonstone; the remaining eight letter prefixes have not changed. At the same time, the London postal district boundary was retracted in the east, removing places such as Ilford for good. In 1868 the S district was split between SE and SW; the NE and S codes have been re-used in the national postcode system and now refer to the NE postcode area around Newcastle upon Tyne and the S postcode area around Sheffield. In 1917, as a wartime measure to improve efficiency, the districts were further subdivided with a number applied to each sub-district; this was achieved by designating a sub-area served most conveniently by the head office in each district "1" and allocating the rest alphabetically by the name of the location of each delivery office. Exceptionally and esoterically, W2 and SW11 are also'head districts'.
The boundaries of each sub-district correspond to any units of civil administration: the parishes and hamlets/chapelries with chapels that traditionally define settlement names everywhere in England and Wales or the larger boroughs. The numbered sub-districts became the "outward code" of the postcode system as expanded into longer codes during the 1970s. Ad hoc changes have taken place to the organisation of the districts, such as the creation of SE28 from existing districts because of the construction of the high-density Thamesmead development. Subdivisions of postcode sub-districtsOwing to heavier demand, seven high-density postcode districts in central London have been subdivided to create new, smaller postcode districts; this is achieved by adding a letter after the original postcode district, for example W1P. Where such sub-districts are used elsewhere such as on street signs and maps, the original unsuffixed catch-all versions remain in use instead; the districts subdivided are E1, N1, EC SW1, W1, WC1 and WC2.
There are non-geographic suffixed sub-districts for PO boxes in NW1 and SE1. The London postal district has never been aligned with the London boundary; when the initial system was designed, the London boundary was restricted to the square mile of the small, ancient City of London. The wider metropolitan postal area covered parts of Middlesex, Kent and Hertfordshire. In 1889 a County of London, smaller than the postal district, was created from parts of Middlesex and Kent; the bulk of 40 fringe sub-districts lay outside its boundary including, for example: Leyton, Ealing and Wimbledon In 1965 the creation of Greater London boundary went beyond these postal districts except for part of the parish of Waltham Holy Cross. The General Post Office was unwilling to follow this change and expand the postal district to match because of the cost. Places in London's outer boroughs such as Harrow, Wembley, Ilford, Bexleyheath, Hounslow, Croydon, Sutton and Uxbridge are therefore covered by parts of twelve adjoining postcode areas from postal districts of 5 different counties including Middlesex, abolished upon the creation of Gr
County borough
County borough is a term introduced in 1889 in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to refer to a borough or a city independent of county council control. They were abolished by the Local Government Act 1972 in England and Wales, but continue in use for lieutenancy and shrievalty in Northern Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland they remain in existence but have been renamed cities under the provisions of the Local Government Act 2001; the Local Government Act 1994 re-introduced the term for certain "principal areas" in Wales. Scotland did not have county boroughs but instead counties of cities; these were abolished on 16 May 1975. All four Scottish cities of the time — Aberdeen, Dundee and Glasgow — were included in this category. There was an additional category of large burgh in the Scottish system, which were responsible for all services apart from police and fire; when county councils were first created in 1889, it was decided that to let them have authority over large towns or cities would be impractical, so any large incorporated place would have the right to be a county borough, thus independent from the administrative county it would otherwise come under.
Some cities and towns were independent counties corporate, most were to become county boroughs. Ten county boroughs were proposed; the Local Government Act 1888 as passed required a population of over 50,000 except in the case of existing counties corporate. This resulted in 61 county boroughs in two in Wales. Several exceptions were allowed for historic towns: Bath and Oxford were all under the 50,000 limit in the 1901 census; some of the smaller counties corporate—Berwick upon Tweed, Lincoln, Poole and Haverfordwest—did not become county boroughs, although Canterbury, with a population under 25,000, did. Various new county boroughs were constituted in the following decades as more boroughs reached the 50,000 minimum and promoted Acts to constitute them county boroughs; the granting of county borough status was the subject of much disagreement between the large municipal boroughs and the county councils. The population limit provided county councils with a disincentive to allow mergers or boundary amendments to districts that would create authorities with large populations, as this would allow them to seek county borough status and remove the tax base from the administrative county.
County boroughs to be constituted in this era were a mixed bag, including some towns that would continue to expand such as Bournemouth and Southend-on-Sea. Other towns such as Burton upon Trent and Dewsbury were not to increase in population much past 50,000. 1913 saw the attempts of Luton and Cambridge to gain county borough status defeated in the House of Commons, despite the approval of the Local Government Board — the removal of Cambridge from Cambridgeshire would have reduced the income of Cambridgeshire County Council by over half. Upon recommendation of a commission chaired by the Earl of Onslow, the population threshold was raised to 75,000 in 1926, by the Local Government Act 1926, which made it much harder to expand boundaries; the threshold was raised to 100,000 by the Local Government Act 1958. The viability of the county borough of Merthyr Tydfil came into question in the 1930s. Due to a decline in the heavy industries of the town, by 1932 more than half the male population was unemployed, resulting in high municipal rates in order to make public assistance payments.
At the same time the population of the borough was lower than when it had been created in 1908. A royal commission was appointed in May 1935 to "investigate whether the existing status of Merthyr Tydfil as a county borough should be continued, if not, what other arrangements should be made"; the commission reported the following November, recommended that Merthyr should revert to the status of a non-county borough, that public assistance should be taken over by central government. In the event county borough status was retained by the town, with the chairman of the Welsh Board of Health appointed as administrative adviser in 1936. After the Second World War the creation of new county boroughs in England and Wales was suspended, pending a local government review. A government white paper published in 1945 stated that "it is expected that there will be a number of Bills for extending or creating county boroughs" and proposed the creation of a boundary commission to bring coordination to local government reform.
The policy in the paper ruled out the creation of new county boroughs in Middlesex "owing to its special problems". The Local Government Boundary Commission was appointed on 26 October 1945, under the chairmanship of Sir Malcolm Trustram Eve, delivering its report in 1947; the Commission recommended that towns with a population of 200,000 or more should become one-tier "new counties", with "new county boroughs" having a population of 60,000 - 200,000 being "most-purpose authorities", with the county council of the administrative county providing certain limited services. The report envisaged the creation of 47 two-tiered "new counties", 21 one-tiered "new counties" and 63 "new county boroughs"; the recommendations of the Commission extended to a review of the division of functions between different tiers of local government, thus fell outside its terms of reference, its report was not acted upon. The next attempt at reform was by the Local Government Act 1958, which established the Local Government Commission for England and the Local Government
