Talk:Gloucestershire

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--78.150.45.109 (talk) 17:50, 26 February 2008 (UTC)Insert non-formatted text here

Certainly, policy clearly states that:

Articles about counties should not be split up and should not be disambiguation pages. They should treat the counties as one entity which has changed its boundaries with time. We should not take the minority position that they still exist with the former boundaries.

G-Man 21:01, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I don't want to get involved in matters of policy, but as a matter of fact, all three Gloucestershires (traditional, administrative and ceremonial) can be accurately described as comprising part of the Cotswolds, part of the Severn Valley and the entire of the Forest of Dean. Furthermore, the changes in the borders were perfectly clear in the original text, so I don't really see that clarification was needed. Cambyses 21:14, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
If you're treating counties as a "single entity" then obviously you must make a choice between the administrative county and the ceremonial county, since they cannot both exist and be a "single entity"!
The policy (what was actually voted on) states that we should "state which county a place is in is to use the current (administrative) county." (aproach 1) - this is obviously contrary to the current organisation using ceremonial counties, which are certainly not used for administration. In short, the policy is already a mess, self-contradictory and every single county article breaks it.
However, I shall quote from the same policy:
Examples of acceptable things: Middlesex is a traditional county of England"
Thus, so is gloucesterhire! It is also quite obvious that (even ingoring traditional counties) we must make a distinction between administrative and ceremonial counties, since they are manifestly different, and both refered to. Therefore, I shall continue to qualify them with "administrative" and "ceremonial" as appropriate. This is also perfectly acceptable under the policy. You will also notice that given Middlesex is a traditional county is acceptable, traditional counties should also be qualified in a similar way. Such clarification goes without saying in an encyclopaedia. The policy may be extremely badly written and full of contradiction, but I am not breaking it! 80.255 21:42, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The 1972 legislation clearly refered to "administrative counties" as "counties" therefore the use of the term "administrative counties" is obsolete. Legally speaking administrative counties are counties, you may not like this fact but that is how it stands.

This also assumes that traditional counties still legally exist, a view which is far from universally accepted. G-Man 19:12, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Terms can have more than one meaning in different contexts. "X, Y and Z shall be known as 'counties'" is very different from saying "All counties shall be abolished and replaced with X, Y and Z". Any legal entity that has never been abolished exists, whether you like it or not. The fact that a seperate set of entities has been created with a similar name is neither here nor there.
Another fact which completely demolishes your argument is this: in the 1888 legalislation, and subsequent legislation dealing with consituency boundaries (which continued to be defined using the historic Counties until around the 1920s) explicitly refered to these boundaries as belonging to the "ancient or geographic Counties". These, of course, haven't never been abolished, and no subsequent legislation has ever sought to name new entities "Ancient Counties". Thus, "ancient or geographic counties" exist (and before you claim that "geographic county" mean "lieutenecy area" or "ceremonial county", it doesn't - this terminology has never been used in law, and was created single-handedly by ordnance survey). So, to recap...
  1. entities are refered to in law as existing as "ancient or geographic counties"
  2. "ancient or geographic counties" have never been abolished, either implicitly or explicitly
  3. No subsequently created legal entities have ever been legally called "ancient or geographic counties"
  4. Thus, "ancient or geographic counties" exist - this cannot be disputed on a factual basis! 80.255 00:38, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

As has been pointed out the 1888 legislation has been overwritten several times, so whether 'traditional counties' still have any legal existance or not is anyone's guess. It is certainly far from the ironclad fact you claim it is. I dont know how long your going to keep up this absurd pretence that medieval county boundaries still exist unchanged in the present tense. If you insist upon adding this claim then it should be stated as an opinion not as a fact G-Man 22:17, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Secondly, this article was using a perfectly sensible compromise of using the ceremonial county for geographic reference. I really dont care what you say, everyone else seems to think they exist.

See this: http://www.tellmeabout.thelocalchannel.co.uk/home.aspx?p=0&m=86

Which states

Ceremonial County – These are areas for which a Lord Lieutenant acts as the Queen’s Deputy – every Administrative County has a ceremonial County of the same name, but the ceremonial county is in many cases larger, as it takes in areas served by Unitary Authorities. (So, for example, the Ceremonial County of Hampshire includes the area administered by Hampshire County Council, plus the Unitary Authority areas of Portsmouth & Southampton.)

And interestingly also states:

Traditional Counties – These are counties that have no LEGAL or administrative standing, but still represent what many people continue to think of as “Counties” (These include Rutland, Berkshire, Herefordshire, Bristol, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, East Riding of Yorkshire

Pehaps you should also read this: http://jonathan.rawle.org/counties/hist.htm

Which states:

There is much debate as to what constitutes a 'county' today. Really, this is a matter of personal choice and opinion. Some people use the names of unitary authorities as counties, others advocate the use of the so called 'historical counties' which EXISTED before the 1974 reorganisation.

Firstly, POV websites don't prove much, as you have many times pointed out! Facts prove, opinions on websites do not. So let's get on to the facts!
Reference to the 1888 (and 89) Acts as being still in force are not necessary to demonstrate the "Ancient or Geographical Counties" have never been abolished. The fact that after both these acts had been passed the term "Ancient or Geographical Counties" was still used to define entities that obviously still existed. Therefore, your argument that because the 1972 LGA Act refered to the newly created areas as just "counties", it somehow "overwrote" the original entities obviously doesn't apply - because the original entities had already been previously called "Ancient or Geographical Counties" in law - and as such obviously weren't "Overwritten".
The General Register Office's Census Report of 1891 distinguished between what it called the "Ancient or Geographical Counties" and the new "administrative counties". It made it clear that the two were distinct entities and that the former still existed. It provided detailed population statistics for both sets in its 1891, 1901 and 1911 reports. Note that this report does not refer to counties and administrative counties, but Ancient or Geographical counties and administrative counties - redefining the term "county" in 1972 had absolutely no effect on the former!
Prior to 1917, parliamentary constituencies were also defined using "Ancient or Geographical counties", so the term obviously had full legal currency. This being the case, it matters not that the 1888 act was repealed, nor that the 1972 act used the term "county", because it neither altered nor abolished the Ancient or Geographical Counties, which thus still exist.
You have yet to offer any reasoning to the contrary of this, and I rather doubt that you could, because it is fact, not opinion. By all means demolish it if you can, but simply claiming that it is and "absurd pretence" while all the legal and leglislative evidence goes against you is not very convincing! 80.255 20:12, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

That is merely your interpretation of the law 80.255. As I have clearly demonstrated to you many well informed and knowledgeable people obviously do not share your view that traditional counties still 'exist' (In what form exactly you think that they still exist I really dont know). I am no legal expert but your claim that just because the traditional counties were not formally abolished means that the legislation still applies sounds mightily dodgy to me. The fact that you are refering to reports from 1911 merely reveals the anachronistic nature of your arguments G-Man 11:53, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I have protected this page, as a request was made to Secretlondon, who is not available at present. I have protected the current version. Please continue the discussion on the talk page with a view to resolution of the debate. Reference to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (places) may prove useful, and in particular Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (places) with the discussion which produce those guidelines. Warofdreams 14:25, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

(Sorry for the curious edit description; as I sent "Added links", my browser autofilled the rest from some previous page!) Bill 08:42, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Gloucestershire Airport

I think there should be a link in here somewhere since it is quite a major feature of the county. Not sure where to add it though, so if anyone would like to give it a go... Robotmannick 10:54, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Info box - Traditional County

I've parked this at the bottom of the page for now. Unfortunately twin infoboxes are pushing the text way down the page (at least in IE 6.0) and the article appears blank unless the reader realises they need to scroll right down.

One solution might be to merge the infoboxes, but there may be other ways of dealing with this. I've experimented a bit but not found a quick solution. Does anyone have any other way of fixing it? Chris Jefferies 07:49, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Where this has occured on other articles its been moved to the History of.... article. I've done this now with this one too. I didn't realise there were any left still on the main article. MRSC 08:01, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure that I'm entirely happy with the infobox disappearing altogether to a different article with no link from the main article. Futhermore I don't experience the "pushing text way down the page" effect either. Both boxes are right floats which (unless there is a wide image in the main body of the article) shouldn't interfere with the main text at all. Owain 08:18, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Hi Owain, what browser are you using? I'm running IE 6.0 under Windows XP, if you're not seeing the issue at all it would be interesting to know why. Mrsteviec's remark 'Where this has occured on other articles' suggests it's not an unusual problem. Chris Jefferies 08:28, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I think this started after the last wiki update. Berkshire still has this problem for me in IE6 on XP SP2 but is ok in Firefox. MRSC 08:43, 28 October 2005 (UTC)
Firefox 1.07 on XP and Camino 0.8 on Mac OS X. I have seen the problem before as I say when the window size is too narrow and there is a wide image that won't fit across the page when there are infoboxes on the right. It shouldn't matter if there are one or ten infoboxes because they are all right floats... Owain

Hmm, definitely browser dependent, then. I've just tried Mozilla 1.6 on Win2K and it's fine too. Chris Jefferies 09:15, 28 October 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Famous Residents

I know some towns/counties have this as a section, not sure how many there are for Glos. However, Sir Chay Blyth (although he was born in Scotland) currently lives in Box, which doesn't currently have a page of it's own. Kert01 14:44, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ashcroft, Gloucestershire?

Hi; I just cribbed a bio of a Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, the Hon. Clement Francis Cornwall, who was born in Gloucestershire, but at a place called Ashcroft, which I don't find on your towns list here, or on the list page, or on the South Gloucestershire page. I do find it on a google search as an Ashcroft Road in Gloucestershire. Is this an older or smaller village or locality that's off the beaten track or otherwise obscure today, or has its name changed? Just wondering about dab'ing the link to it if there is one; currently to the Ashcroft disambiguation page, where I've put a mention of "Ashcroft, Gloucestershire" without actually knowing if there is one (ahem) other than because of my source (publ. 1890). It's important to the Cornwall story as the name of the ranch - where English culture was pursued in fortu, with fox-hunting (well, coyote-hunting with foxhounds) and the main venue for horse racing in the BC Interior - was the Ashcroft Manor, and the nearby town of Ashcroft has the same namesake, or rather being named because of the ranch, which predated the town y'see...though just barely...1860s; there's also an Ashcroft NSW in Oz which may be named for the place in Gloucestershire, whatever it is named now or whatever it was, vs being named for one of the many people named Ashcroft. Skookum1 10:25, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

According to the OS Landranger Map (avalable online at www.streetmap.co.uk) the only extant likely candidate is a large building called Ashcroft House, near Bagpath, about 10km ENE of Wotton-under-Edge. It might be a (more or less) stately home of some kind, in which case both it or its estate could have been referred to just as "Ashcroft" - the word "House" would probably be used only in order to distinguish the house itself from the rest of the estate. So it could mean he was born either at the house, or just somewhere on the estate, or of course somewhere else which doesn't exist or isn't called Ashcroft any more.... Best wishes, Cambyses 15:16, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

That would be it, then; Cornwall's family, if you read his bio, were "untitled nobility" and no doubt had a stately home; from what I can see his father was a high-ranking Anglican cleric, and he married the daughter of one as well; it may be that the stately home was better-known at the time of publication (1890) also.Skookum1 21:54, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External links

Noticed that an external link had been removed here and on other pages by user 'Jjasi', however a user reverted the change as stated the link was to an 'online mag without an objectionable amount of advertising'. Suggest the user who made the revert/undo change is correct - Wiki policy on external links normally to be avoided does indeed state that sites with an objectionable amount of advertising should be avoided - IMO this external link isn't overridden with advertising in the slightest, and is a useful resource for users of this and the other pages in question. Jjasi, perhaps discuss here before removing the links again? Please see.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links#Links_normally_to_be_avoided. GloucestershireGuardian 01:00, 05 July 2007 (UTC)

It most certainly does conravene the guidelines! "3. Links mainly intended to promote a website." Jjasi 07:51, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Jjasi, following what's happenening here and hope to help. The Wiki links and external links policies do indeed state that websites with an objectionable amount of advertising (your first reason for removing the links)and links mainly intended to promote a website (your second reason) should be avoided. I don't believe that the linked-to site in question has an objectionable amount of advertising, and also that it is an extrememly useful resource for readers of this page. Events happening in Gloucestershire is undoubtedly something readers on this page would find of use. As for the claim the link is 'mainly intended to promote a website', I think the usefullness outweighs this and every link, to an extent, is intented to promote a website. I'm not sure why you have removed this link when there are some questionnable external links on the pages which you removed it from? Cheers, GloucestershireGuardian 11:00, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Quick update, I wasn't sure about the link's format but have just had a quick look at the relevant guidelines... 'If you link to another website, you should give your reader a good summary of the site's contents, and the reasons why this specific website is relevant to the article in question. If you cite an online article, try to provide as much meaningful citation information as possible.' GloucestershireGuardian 11:08, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Hi GG, the website appears to be a commercial website with banner advertising created to make money for the website owner! The same individual has added this website to various Wiki pages in Glos which looks like the website owner adding their own site to promote it rather than a Wiki user having found a useful site and adding it. Perhaps the person posting the would like to demonstrate that the site is not commercial or is in some way offical? As it stands it just looks like an anonymous IP posting links to their own site (which has adverts) to promote it. if you've found "questionnable external links on the pages which you removed it from" then follow the Wiki principle of "Be Bold" and remove them! Cheers. Jjasi 10:39, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Hi again Jjasi. It does look like there's some commercial content, but I don't think this is reason enough to remove the link. Looking through, I think it's a great additional to the Gloucestershire page. However, I do agree with your point about one user adding multiple references which, as you stated, isn't the right way to go about things. However, I suppose it's one of those situations where the user has to be given, at least a bit!, the benefit of the doubt. I think re-posting the external link to the Gloucestershire page would be the best way forward, then letting other editors pick up the link for the other pages if they see fit. What do you think?
Regarding other sites - you're probably right! - I think being bold is the way forward but I do find that many sites, even with commercial content and probably added by the owners, are useful resources for the people visiting the respective pages.
What's the official external link format by the way? Is it 'Website URL - information about the link'? Cheers! GloucestershireGuardian 17:38, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Hi again GG. I spent alot of time last night going through SoGlos and researching the owners (a couple of journalists/marketeers) and have to agree it is different from the normal run of the mill listing site. It's defintely a commercial venture and doesn't appear to have any links to the council/TIC etc. but does appear to have relevant content. I'm still concerened about the banner adverts on it but I suppose it's no different to the Echo/Citizen thisisgloucestershire site so as long as the content is relevant, informative and up to date it would be wrong to exclude it without also excluding the Echo/Citizen website (which would obviously be silly). I have reseravtion about whether the SoGlos editors will be able to keep the site up to date and actually make money from it (there being so many listing sites) but that's just personal opinion. As such I'm agreeing with you that it should go back on the page. As for the link format I'm not sure what to do. I've had a look at various random pages and normally the "External Links" section at the end is just a list with no justification, this would appear not to conform to the Wiki guidelines. I guess we should add brief information about all the links. Cheers. Jjasi 07:13, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Well I'll be ... the ECHO/Citizen thisisgloucestershire.co.uk isn't linked anyway! I'll add it. Jjasi 07:17, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
Nice work Jjasi! GloucestershireGuardian 19:18, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Broadway Tower photo - Broadway is Worcestershire

The article prominently features a photo of Broadway Tower. Although undeniably in the Cotswolds, Broadway is in Worcestershire, not Gloucestershire.

Can someone please confirm whether the tower itself- some 3-4 miles from Broadway village- is in Gloucestershire, and if not, replace the photo with a landmark actually from Gloucestershire? I suggest Gloucester Cathedral, Pittville Pump Rooms in Cheltenham, Bourton-on-the-Water high street or the Subscription Rooms in Stroud. I will go out and take photos of these myself if no legally-viable ones exist. 62.231.149.155 15:09, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I've just checked my OS map and although the road alongside the tower is in Glos the tower itself is most definitely in Worcs (all be it only by about 100m). Jjasi 19:26, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My School's Better Than Yours

I came here to read about the county, but found a bizarre pushy parents' contest. Is a comparison of local schools' A level statistics really, honestly, one of the most notable things about this historic part of the country? I think this is a dire case of schoolcruft - Cheltenham has managed to eliminate it amicably. Can we adopt the same model? Behind The Wall Of Sleep (talk) 11:31, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

In an attempt to be constructive, rather than just saying "it's all rubbish, this", I've added a brief section on the university and glos college. Maybe someone who knows could write a sentence at the top about the education system in gloucestershire, which I think is more appropriate to an encyclopaedia entry on a county. Maybe something along the lines of "gloucestershire operates the two-tier system of primary and secondary schools", etc? Behind The Wall Of Sleep (talk) 14:57, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
My above comment refers to a previous revision of this page. I think the current version looks pretty good. Behind The Wall Of Sleep (talk) 13:43, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Flag of Gloucestershire

A link to the Flag of Gloucestershire keeps being added to the See also section of the page. I keep removing it as it has absolutely no official standing, has not been officially adopted and is simply as far as I can tell the result of an unofficial competition to design one. Does anyone think we should actually have the link? Jjasi (talk) 08:38, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the link is useful. If anyone comes across references to this flag and looks it up under the county name, the link will enable them to discover its unofficial status. No link, no information. Myopic Bookworm (talk) 09:46, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Weak oppose. I'm not bothered by the flag itself, but the actual content of the article is of marginal notability. It seems to be of interest only to enthusiasts of obscure flags (granted a valid activity) or those involved with the competition it talks about. On a list of the highest value Gloucestershire topics we could have articles on (and hence links) I'd rate it a long way down. If we do keep the link, I think it's because we don't have many decent articles on Glos topics, which is a bit sad. Behind The Wall Of Sleep (talk) 07:41, 29 April 2008 (UTC)