Campaign to bring back county names backed by MPS
BRITAIN needs to bring back historic counties on signs, maps and posts to “eliminate confusion” for hundreds of villages and towns, MPS say today
Five Tory MPS and one DUP MP have signed a letter in The Daily Telegraph today which urges ministers to support a new law to clearly set out county boundaries.
The British Counties Campaign has compiled a list of more than 600 towns and villages which are considered by some to exist in more than one county. The full list is published on The Telegraph’s website today.
Examples include Wigan, which is considered by some to be in Lancashire and Greater Manchester, Stokenchurch – in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire – and Grange-over-sands – in Lancashire and Cumbria.
The MPS, including former ministers Sir Henry Bellingham and Sir Edward Leigh, blame new administrative areas in the Sixties and Seventies for confusing county names that dated back more than 1,000 years.
They say: “Recent government initiatives tried to offset confusion by emphasising the continued existence of counties. But the job is half done.
“The counties must be re-established as the standard geographic reference, used for cultural, sporting and other activities.”
The group is backing a draft bill “to ensure ‘county’ refers to traditional counties only, with no separate administrative or ceremonial ‘counties’”.
It adds: “The Government must encourage use of county names and boundaries for maps, signs, post, national media and business, including online. Councils should promote counties, children be taught, and tourist centres refer.
The campaign is now planning to formally launch a bid to reform county names in 2018 and is seeking crossparty support.
Surveys are planned in relation to county identity in Scotland, general cost benefits and usage of county nomenclature on an area-by-area basis.
Pam Moorhouse, 71, the campaign’s founder who lives in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, told The Telegraph: “The present government is still wasting public money destroying the traditional counties against the wishes of the population.”
Tony Blair described himself yesterday as a “man with a renewed mission”. The former prime minister has always had the touch of the zealot about him, a self-belief that transformed the Labour Party and secured three general election victories. But, like all zealots, he simply cannot see when he is wrong, even when – as with the aftermath of the Iraq invasion – the evidence is staring him in the face.
So it is with Brexit. A referendum has been conducted in which all the objections that Mr Blair continues to raise were aired and still the Leave side won. He maintains that no one knew at the time what the consequences of doing so would be, and we still don’t know for certain. It is true that the manner of leaving was not on the ballot paper, but the fact of doing so was. It is, therefore, incumbent upon all leading politicians to work together to make that exit as painless as possible, and resist the European Commission’s attempts to punish the UK for its temerity.
Mr Blair, however, is intent on reversing the decision taken in the referendum. He says there should be another vote on the terms; and, to the astonishment of everyone who remembers the record of his government, believes the EU would make concessions on immigration, which he now accepts needs to be controlled. Why did we not hear this from Mr Blair during the campaign? Why did he not urge EU leaders and Brussels bureaucrats – with whom he evidently has a good relationship – to offer reforms to the principle of free movement to David Cameron when he was trying to secure a deal to put to voters?
Mr Blair asserted, in print and on television yesterday, that warnings were not given about the impact on public services when the UK became the only major economy to allow free movement from the eastern European nations that joined the EU in 2004, when he was in office. This is simply not true.
Mr Blair’s call on Tory MPS to vote against the EU Withdrawal Bill at its Second Reading tonight or to sabotage its progress through Parliament is breathtaking in its arrogance. This legislation is intended to smooth the Brexit process by translating into UK law many of the EU provisions implemented while Mr Blair was prime minister. This is needed to fulfil the decision taken in the referendum. It is called democracy, a concept that Mr Blair seems to have difficulty comprehending.