Analyzing this situation as a Canadian, I strongly believe that the mere fact that there are real people in this world who will use the word “forthwith” out loud is practically tantamount to a formal logical proof that London necessarily _must_ exist. Even if not geographically, then spiritually, at the very least.
Nonsense. The English don’t have a monopoly on Shakespearean English-it’s public domain! If you want proof of London you’ll want rhyming slang. Bloody impenetrable.
Often referred to as "Fake London" by one of its sons here on RUclips, on the channel Not Just Bikes. Which would mean that the only real London is Fake London.
who do you think you are? get in the car Imma take you to London like a star sike bruh imma take you to the grave they be calling me all day I'm brave nah bruh you better 🤫 and listen your facing a bull dog not some kitten --- I write freestyle raps based on YT comments, like so I can keep it up 👊💪
Lol!!😂😂 Used to live just outside London, ON, Canada. Came to comment as someone now in Toronto that there's also technically no actual Toronto too - we do boroughs - just like NYC. XO
Having worked phone support, my way of defining the edge of London is how far away from the City a caller has to be before they will tell you what town or city they’re calling from unprompted. My favourite caller is still the one who wanted to report a problem at a school but kept insisting on only giving me its street, not a full address. Eventually they got cross and said “it’s london of course, where the hell are you if you don’t know that?”. I was in Manchester. They had only vaguely heard of it. 🤦♀️
Someone came into my mum’s shop in Down and asked her where in London she was from and she said she was from England but not London(we’re from portsea) and the guy was like ‘yeah same thing’
Same. She is doing a great job. I always imagine when she is a guide, she pop up out of nothing from different places and tell something interesting about the place. Like she does in her short videos. 🙂
It's like 'No such thing as a fish' Cities tend to have this issue all over. Take Edinburgh as an example. There's a sign welcoming you to Edinburgh as you approach Queensferry* from the west, but Queensferry is only in the Edinburgh council area, and is a separate town in West Lothian (Edinburgh is in Midlothian.) The wikipedia page even tells you it is 'west of Edinburgh.' *NOT "South Queensferry" by the way. Only the Post Office calls it that, and the locals are rarely pleased to hear the term.
In my parochial Sussex/Kent view, 'London' begins where there stop being breaks in the houses between 'towns'. So basically Orpington from this end, all the way up to whichever town north of London finally has a field next to it instead of some arbitrary line bisecting a street. If you think that's extreme, my other half is from Margate and defines 'London' as anywhere you can tune into Capital FM 😂
Given that the UK is functionally a city state at this point and the tories seem to have no interest in changing that, I say we just rename the British Isles "Greatest London".
My favourite bit of the oddness that is London is that Greater London does encompass the spectre of the County of Middlesex that it completely absorbed. Its moldering skeleton preserved in postal addresses.
It didn’t absorb all of it! Two small pieces of it were given to Hertfordshire and Surrey instead. Jay Foreman briefly mentions it in his video “Where does London stop?”
@@DJVLDNWasn't Staines a town that was in Middlesex that was reassigned to another Home County when Middlesex was partitioned betwern Greater London and other Home Counties in 1965? Is Slough the same? Or Luton?
Having lived in Dagenham and Romford for like 11 years and having to move back to the states afterward again, this is about the most English video I've ever come across besides ones that disdainfully correct Americans on what biscuits really are. :D
Also, not the old 01 -> 0171 / 0181 -> 020 7 / 020 8 dialing code areas either! But please, don't even joke about shutting down this lovely and interesting channel!
Please join my totally real campaign to make the government define, in law, “London” as “everything inside the M25 ring road or controlled by a borough located within the M25 ring road”. North Ockenden needs respect.
I've been an English teacher for nearly 20 years and I'm still not sure if and to what extent 'Great Britain' means just the biggest island or the biggest island and all the smaller ones around it, like the Isle of Wight or Skye or the Orkneys - except the Isle of Man, which has some sort of autonomy that I've never understood either. And that of course is different from the UK.
Top Gear did an episode on the Isle of Man. They said the open road had no speed limit because while the Queen was the Queen [or more correctly, the Lord of Mann], whoever was the PM at the time was not the PM of IoM. They are Crown Dependencies. Isle of Wight is a county of England. Scilly is part of Cornwall, and thus the English will tell you it is part of England. The two groups to the north are part of Scotland. No part of Ireland is part of GB, but Six Counties are occupied by the UK.
@@jacksteven781 The UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Great Britain is the mainland only, and great is a differentiation from Little Britain, now called Brittany. People in NI can choose to be part of Team GB, or to play for Ireland.
The confusion results from historical "flexibility" with spelling. The actual term is "Grate Britain" - the main island (England, Scotland, Wales) plus anything that could have been shaved off with a cheesegrater.
"London" is the name of a synthetic Elder deity that was created to initiate the idea of a power nexus a long time ago. Right now it's terrified and lashing out for more sacrifices after understanding just how vulnerable and temporary it really is.
Just want to say that you are now the voice of my internal monologue, and thus, the voice I hear explaining my disdain for elbow pasta to myself at 2am. Thank you.
Yes, out of the 18 (!) Railway stations/termini in “London” only a handful are actually in the “CIty of London” and they are: Blackfriars, Cannon Street, Fenchurch Street, Liverpool Street, Moorgate and City Thameslink. Not exactly as famous as some of the other ones in “London” (though if you’re a Douglas Adams fan you’ve heard of Fenchurch Street.)
You don't need dear Douglas to have heard of Fenchurch St. Station. It's one of the four stations on the original UK Monopoly board. (King's Cross, Marylebone, Fenchurch St., Liverpool St.). 🚂
I would have said the Square Mile is the core, indispensable "London", but this video is making me think that maybe we should only include the area inside the Roman walls...
This is just being extremely pedantic, lol. If you are insisting on only using full names, than there are quite a lot of other places that don't exist, either.
Is not just that those are the full names, is that they are full names that imply... 1) that is all of London, when it most obviously is far from being it (City) 2) that is not London, but London PLUS other stuff that is not London (Greater London).
It seems to me that it's not that there is no such place as London but that London is imprecisely defined. I think it would be hard to argue that Oxford Circus isn't in London, which implies that London exists. It's just that as you go out from the centre and want to know if a particular place is in London or not, the point "it depends what you mean by London" becomes valid.
For a great trick question, or just to be an ass at pub trivia night, try asking something like "Oxford Circus tube station, served by the Bakerloo, Central, and Victoria lines, is in what city?" Most people would reflexively answer London even if they happen to know that Westminster is the only London borough that's up itself so much that it's also a city in its own right.
Would the area of the pre-1965 London County Council be more what some people think of as London, being the more central sections? Interestingly, Bromley is 30% farming land, the highest in London.
@J. Draper if London is not real then you should come visit the real London in Ontario, Canada. 🇨🇦 I would love to see a series of videos of you comparing the two Londons and how the Canadian one took inspiration from the original London. Also, historically how long has London, England not known how big their city boundaries are?
The City of London had walls clearly defining inside and outside; only a few of them are still standing. The current Greater London dates to the borough reorganization of 1965.
The City of London has never been the capital of the UK, nor of Britain or England, but it's been a globally important financial center for really long time
the same problem with other metro cities all over the world - Tokyo city - Greater Tokyo, Mumbai city - suburban region, Greater Mumbai, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Delhi - New Delhi, Old Delhi, National Capital Region.
I've heard of this phenomenon (the legal non-existence of "London"), but I found this to be quite an informative summary of the situation! In short, there's a rather large area called Greater London, plus a small area called the City of London (which isn't just "London") that doesn't contain many of the major tourist attractions. Thanks for the information!n
Sing along now - 'Oh maybe its because I'm a - Oh...' Conversely everyone born within the sound of Bow Bells is a Cockney - which when you know about the effects of quantun gravity includes every living thing in the universe. Just say'in...
Do you have any titbits about London and its relation to being the centre of a colonial empire? Yes the museums, but i mean more like thoughts of Londoners from the past and what they thought about their city's position in the world?
The structure of the various Colonial and other offices can be found by putting this term, or Commonwealth Office into Wikipedia. They were things like the India Office as part of this. They were / are located in Whitehall.
in the legal sense, London does exist... it is The Summary of London City (City of London) & It's Estate (Greater London) except such estate necessarily defined free of London by the clause of it's existence (The City & the territory of exterritorial entities such as embassies or London City airport, though at one point in time, also certain naval yards and other military areas)
"Greater than, then."😂 I love that you used that phrase in a sentence, and it was completely correct! But please be joking about shutting down your channel!
Of course it’s not London, it’s LONDINIUM, outpost of the ROMAN EMPIRE! Therefore, it is everything that was previously inside the walls before it was abandoned in 500 CE 😜
My boyfriend is a train nerd and we've had so many discussions about the many confusing definitions for what is "London" until we finally agreed on a definition that sort of works: London has a fuzzy edge kind of like an electron, which is determined by how many people will yell "You bloody Londoners!" at you when they find out your postcode. So, is your postcode NW1? Okay, there's a 99.999999% chance that you're in London. Is your postcode HA8? 80% chance that you're in London. Is your postcode B8 (in Birmingham)? There is a 0.0000001% chance that you're in London.
Reminds me of the Map Men episode about what a county is. Turns out there's like four different county maps and everything's a bloody mess and has only gotten worse in the last 50 years.
Add to that the fact that the City of London has its own separate police force, apart from the Metropolitan Police Force. The Met covers 32 boroughs, but not the City of London!
@@JulianSortland MODPLOD? I'm not sure how good they are. Their German shepherds may have higher IQs than them. I know someone who calls the dogs, "the officers."
I feel like if "London" has a municipal government with a mayor then it makes sense for it to be the area that is required to abide by the rulings of that government, regardless of whether that's called Greater London (or whatever else it might be)
Which one? The City of London and Greater London Both have their own mayor and are completely unaffiliated with each other (The City of London in particular isn't a part of Greater London). Which one (or both?) is London?
@@timseguine2 I think if they have separate governments it should be one or the other not both & my inclination would be to say Greater London and not City of London but that's just on vibes.
@@DavidChong that's a bit historically problematic since the City of London has existed since the middle ages and has been settled and called London since Roman times, whereas Greater London has only been an official thing since the 1960s. On the other hand most of the landmarks people consider as being "in London" are in Greater London, and it has a massively larger population. I dunno what that means put together, just seemed worthwhile to point out that there isn't really a simple answer.
@@timseguine2 to clarify on the vibes bit, I guess my thinking is if you say Mexico City, it's a thing that is both within but is not the same as Mexico. So if we follow the same reasoning with City of London, it is both within but not the same as London.
Right now Greater London has a mayor; sometimes it didn't. This is different from the City of London, which has had a Lord Mayor for over a thousand years and the selection process for the office is completely bonkers. (CGP Grey did a video on it; go watch that.)
Prior to the 1960s there was actually an authority called the County of London. Nowadays, Greater London has a mayor whose title is Mayor of London, and the (very weak) assembly is called the London Assembly. The observation that "there's no such thing as London" was true between 1986 and 2000 when there was no municipal authority of any kind responsible for all of Greater London, but it isn't now. The notion people had in the outer suburbs that "this isn't London, this is Surrey/Middlesex" has largely ebbed away as the people who remember the time before Greater London have died off and the last vestiges of the pre-1965 counties, the postal counties, were done away with in 1996. What is true is that London is not formally a city; the Cities of London and Westminster have city status but no other borough nor Greater London. This means that the largest city in its own right by population is in fact Birmingham, not London.
It’s very similar to the situation with Manila. There is the small city of Manila, but a large area around it that includes other cities, that is referred to as “Metro Manila”, or “Greater Manila area”. Or “National Capital Region”.
You could say the same for "New York City" It has 5 separate autonomous Boroughs each with it's own President and council. When you ask someone from there "Where do you live?", they will say the name of the borough not "New York City". There is a greater "New York City" Council to handle things that affect all the Boroughs like Transportation, Police and Fire Coverage, Water and Electricity.
There is. If you look at Hansard records you will see that the consensus is the size of Greater London is whatever land is within 1 hour (by either public or private transport) of City of London. So technically the size of Greater London actually grew further eastward with the Elizabeth Line. the choice between Public or Private transportation is because the road speeds within Greater London is decided so as to ensure travelling by car takes just as long as travelling by the tube. That last fact could be more of a cabbie myth but actually tracks.
@@namvu2362 Idk what you're smoking but Cambridge is 1.5 hours from London by public transport. closer to 2 by road. Luton is barely is London for scale. Brixton too.
@@jacksteven781 it's 50mins~ to KGX. Just because there's no fast service to Liverpool Street doesn't mean there couldn't be one and it'd probably be just about an hour. Anyway even if it's a smidge over an hour (and it'd be close!) then we're really considering as far north as say... Royston as Greater London? Obviously it's not but it seems like _only_ because Anglian Rail doesn't do a service there which seems rather arbitrary.
I lived in the London Borough of Havering for quite a while , on the "Harold" bits right on the border with Essex. It had been a London Borough since the mid to late 1960s. I don't guess I'd have classified it as London or East London. I thought more of it as Urbanised West Essex ! Hearing it get called East London in a news report recently does make me either chuckle, or raise the hairs on the bike of my neck spike up ! East London to me is more the part inside the A406 North Circular up to the City of London. To the East of the A406 it slowly becomes less East London and more West Essex ! I'd still say "Romford, Essex" an even "Ilford , Essex" (although that is pushing it these days)
@ 0:48 : "Well, what's the London that that's "Greater" than then?" @ 0:55 : "... inform you that that area is called "the City of London", never just "London", and... [isn't the actual city; is only the ancient traditional Roman and Mediaeval Walled City and is only 1 Square Mile large {my version of "Buckingham Palace" etc.}]" What‽? No, it isn't! "It", i.e. the "London" that "Greater London" is "Greater" than i.e. "that area", isn't called "the City of London" it's called "the County of London" - and was arguably a city too just not a "City of" with a capital 'C' - and _could_ sometimes (not "never") be called "London". It was created, along with its goverment, the London County Council (LCC), in 1889 and expanded in 1965 into a new County called "Greater London" (and the old "London" being labelled "Inner London", b. t. w.). The "London" that "Greater London" is "Greater" than is the 1889-1965 County and city of London, now called Inner London. So please don't say "I'm sorry to inform you that..." and then misinform people with misinformation. 1889 - 1965 London would be "London", that land plus the land added in 1965 is "Greater London". Therefore there is a place called "London". Whether it's just The City of London + the County of London or if the whole of Greater London ("the City" included) is exactly the same thing as "London" because it's all been assimilated into London, is something people can debate but there's a London in there somewhere (the County of Greater London) for sure! - or rather 2 because of the accursed mis‐named City of London!
Hang on, what?! I’m in Melbourne- which is defined by the Central Business District, the city of Melbourne (council area), and the greater metropolitan Melbourne (the suburbs of Melbourne)- is this the same?
I've always been in favour of referring to London as 'The Great Twin City' since the London we know formed from the two settlements of The City of London and Westminster. Or maybe just 'The Twin City of London'. Calling it 'The Great Twin City' would probably irk residents of other twin cities, like Manhattan and Brooklyn AKA New York, or Buda and Pest, AKA Budapest 😅
Just like how there is no "Tokyo City" in Japan. The old Tokyo City was abolished in 1943 and amalgamted into the surrounding Tokyo prefecture to form what is today called Tokyo Metropolis; the city's old wards became independent municalities of their own (special wards), and are usually called cities in English (e.g. Shibuya City, Shinjuku City, etc.). What used to be the City of Tokyo is now governed by 23 separate municipal corporations with clearly defined boundaries. All this to say that, technically and legally, the most populous city in Japan is actually the nearby Yokohama, clocking in almost 4 million inhabitants (whereas if Tokyo was still legally a city its population would be nearly 10 million).
I believe Ducky (played by the late great David McCallum) alluded to this in an episode of NCIS. I’m from the U.K. and didn’t know it until an American TV show told me 😅
I can relate to this from living in the Kansas City metropolis, and if you're offended by me comparing KC to London you shouldn't be...but I understand completely. Our KC metropolis is 120 cities in nine main counties spread over two states. We try to disguise our problems with urban sprawl by having four streets per number (e.g. 1st Street, 1st Terrace, 1st Place, 1st Court, and only then do we have 2nd Street). So if you're on 699th Street, I kid you not, you're on what would be 2797th Street in what my relatives call "a real city." When my relatives tell me I should move to a real city I just joke that we had considered living in a city that was an internet desert instead of a global telecommunications hub and that still burns coal to heat some of its buildings but decided that New York City was too overpriced. So if you have the pleasure of living in KC, NYC or London, let's enjoy the beautiful nuances of the complexity of living in what I love to call a real city.
Uber-pedantic. Although you're right that the area is officially still called Greater London, it is also officially called London in most contexts, eg Mayor of London, London boroughs, London Assembly, Transport for London. All of these are statutory terms and refer to the Greater London area.
Why is it called London? The earliest account of the toponym's derivation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth. In Historia Regum Britanniae, the name is described as originating from King Lud, who seized the city Trinovantum and ordered it to be renamed in his honour as Kaerlud. This eventually developed into Karelundein and then London. London was s Fort. Basically today it would be small compared to its evolution and history. In fact, there is snd Island in the Thamesis that only shows when water level goes down, where a ver wise man named John made a del with merchants yet he never signed Himself. He just stamp the Richard the lion heart seal on it. Seems many people dont know their history. And that is your londinium a Island that is alloat flooded like for years. Till water level on the river drops and then oh there it is the Island of london.
Then there is the Anglican Diocese of London, which is only north of the Thames. The Diocese of Southwark covers the south. Maybe bits of Rochester too? If you are Catholic there is no Diocese of London, just Westminster, Southwark, and Brentwood, plus maybe a bit of Diocese of Arundel and Brighton.
I'd like to add something: "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch, pigs and diamonds" gave the rest of the world an image of London not entirely false...
Analyzing this situation as a Canadian, I strongly believe that the mere fact that there are real people in this world who will use the word “forthwith” out loud is practically tantamount to a formal logical proof that London necessarily _must_ exist. Even if not geographically, then spiritually, at the very least.
Forthcoming having been replaced by upcoming, the logical progression will be upwith. Ouch.
@@johneames-petersen277Haha!
Nonsense. The English don’t have a monopoly on Shakespearean English-it’s public domain! If you want proof of London you’ll want rhyming slang. Bloody impenetrable.
Wait until you go to Scotland and hear 'outwith' in normal conversation.
_If London did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it._
London is most certainly real. Its a city that sits along the Thames river in Ontario, Canada
I just looked it up, MAN you Canadians were a little too on the nose there.
@@ajs787 We've got a Stratford on an Avon River, too (with a Shakespeare festival & everything)! 😂
Often referred to as "Fake London" by one of its sons here on RUclips, on the channel Not Just Bikes. Which would mean that the only real London is Fake London.
@@iloveprivacy8167and a place called Guildford, in a place called Surrey. Much like the original.
Is this the same London from where (whence?) the London Knights come from? The junior ice hockey team.
I'm unreasonable proud of myself for knowing the City of London is London and everything else is ... London and friends.
“What if the real London was the friends we made along the way?” 🤣
London and friends reminds me of Thomas and friends
“London had to leave, for he had seen everything”
@@deadfr0g 😂😂❤️🫂
London and friends? 🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
who do you think you are?
get in the car
Imma take you to London like a star
sike bruh imma take you to the grave
they be calling me all day I'm brave
nah bruh you better 🤫 and listen
your facing a bull dog not some kitten
---
I write freestyle raps based on YT comments, like so I can keep it up 👊💪
Iceberg of Uncertainty for Field Experts:
• What is a chair?
•• There is no such thing as a fish.
••• LONDON?!?
****** What counts as a sandwich?
This has "Pregananant?!" energy.
@@NonFatMead👀
- What is a fruit?
Where is the line between animal and plant?
Technically, London is a place, it’s just in Canada 😂
A Google search turns up over 20 different Londons including in Canada, USA and Chile
Well, it's also in Texas, so perhaps this is sort of a quantum question - London can be in multiple places at once, but only if you don't look.
Bah! Fake London in say!
London is also in Kentucky, USA 😀
Lol!!😂😂 Used to live just outside London, ON, Canada. Came to comment as someone now in Toronto that there's also technically no actual Toronto too - we do boroughs - just like NYC. XO
London is a state of mind not a city 😂
New York certainly is. So why not London?
We are all London on this blessed day.
@@Brasswatchman Nice Billy Joel reference. 🤣
yes, the city is England. England is my city.
@@numanuma20 Oh, man. I didn't think *anyone* was gonna pick that up. Well done. 😁
Maybe London is the friends we made along the way.
Having worked phone support, my way of defining the edge of London is how far away from the City a caller has to be before they will tell you what town or city they’re calling from unprompted. My favourite caller is still the one who wanted to report a problem at a school but kept insisting on only giving me its street, not a full address. Eventually they got cross and said “it’s london of course, where the hell are you if you don’t know that?”. I was in Manchester. They had only vaguely heard of it. 🤦♀️
Someone came into my mum’s shop in Down and asked her where in London she was from and she said she was from England but not London(we’re from portsea) and the guy was like ‘yeah same thing’
_"I shall be shutting down this channel forthwith."_
Eat your heart out Tom Scott
😂😂
So Sweeney Todd was right when he said "there's no place like London" 😂
Yet it still somehow has the worst pies
@@greenhowieonly the ones you eat.
I don't care if London isn't real. I love your videos. Keep going! Carry on.
Same. She is doing a great job.
I always imagine when she is a guide, she pop up out of nothing from different places and tell something interesting about the place. Like she does in her short videos. 🙂
Carry On London - missed opportunity for a great film there!
It's like 'No such thing as a fish'
Cities tend to have this issue all over. Take Edinburgh as an example. There's a sign welcoming you to Edinburgh as you approach Queensferry* from the west, but Queensferry is only in the Edinburgh council area, and is a separate town in West Lothian (Edinburgh is in Midlothian.) The wikipedia page even tells you it is 'west of Edinburgh.'
*NOT "South Queensferry" by the way. Only the Post Office calls it that, and the locals are rarely pleased to hear the term.
😂😂😂😂
Did you visit London last year??
No! There is No such place!!!!
😂😂😂
You are an international treasure. I hope that someday you are awarded the honor you deserve.
In my parochial Sussex/Kent view, 'London' begins where there stop being breaks in the houses between 'towns'. So basically Orpington from this end, all the way up to whichever town north of London finally has a field next to it instead of some arbitrary line bisecting a street.
If you think that's extreme, my other half is from Margate and defines 'London' as anywhere you can tune into Capital FM 😂
I can see that working with FM in Kent... how about DAB?
@@johnathanh2660 That's a textbook example of Capital overreach 😂
That's pretty much how I think of it too, so the Tolworth tower on the A3 marks where I think I'm back in London.
@@retiredbore378A park is more of a hole in the urban landscape, not an entire swath of agricultural land that you have to cross.
Well, you didn't have to go far a-field to meet your other half!
Given that the UK is functionally a city state at this point and the tories seem to have no interest in changing that, I say we just rename the British Isles "Greatest London".
Oh dear, if there's no London, then who was calling to the far away towns?! To the underworld?! To the boys and girls in cupboards?!
Jago Hazzard recently did a video entitled "What is a tram?"
Exactly the same vibes... 😆
What changes the nature of a tram?
I think London is the two counties Greater London and the City. People also say zone 6 on a tube map but that includes bits of Essex
Essex County Council actually subsidise that. In theory, any location could be in Zone 6 if someone was willing. to pay TFL enough to do it.
My favourite bit of the oddness that is London is that Greater London does encompass the spectre of the County of Middlesex that it completely absorbed. Its moldering skeleton preserved in postal addresses.
It didn’t absorb all of it! Two small pieces of it were given to Hertfordshire and Surrey instead. Jay Foreman briefly mentions it in his video “Where does London stop?”
Middlesex is a Lich and the Royal Mail is its phylactery
Plus a university.
@@Grim_Beard and a cricket team I believe
@@DJVLDNWasn't Staines a town that was in Middlesex that was reassigned to another Home County when Middlesex was partitioned betwern Greater London and other Home Counties in 1965?
Is Slough the same? Or Luton?
Having lived in Dagenham and Romford for like 11 years and having to move back to the states afterward again, this is about the most English video I've ever come across besides ones that disdainfully correct Americans on what biscuits really are. :D
OK - that was funny and you're having WAY too much fun!! Thanks for sharing.
Also, not the old 01 -> 0171 / 0181 -> 020 7 / 020 8 dialing code areas either!
But please, don't even joke about shutting down this lovely and interesting channel!
You mean the GPO definition... How about the A2Z definition?
The word London has lost all meaning
I genuinely have the weirdest semantic satiation right now
Oh are we coming back around to this again? CGP Grey made a video about that a few years ago...
WHAT DO YOU MEAN POSTED 11 YEARS AGO?!
Please join my totally real campaign to make the government define, in law, “London” as “everything inside the M25 ring road or controlled by a borough located within the M25 ring road”. North Ockenden needs respect.
I've been an English teacher for nearly 20 years and I'm still not sure if and to what extent 'Great Britain' means just the biggest island or the biggest island and all the smaller ones around it, like the Isle of Wight or Skye or the Orkneys - except the Isle of Man, which has some sort of autonomy that I've never understood either. And that of course is different from the UK.
I found diagram for that.
Top Gear did an episode on the Isle of Man. They said the open road had no speed limit because while the Queen was the Queen [or more correctly, the Lord of Mann], whoever was the PM at the time was not the PM of IoM. They are Crown Dependencies. Isle of Wight is a county of England. Scilly is part of Cornwall, and thus the English will tell you it is part of England. The two groups to the north are part of Scotland. No part of Ireland is part of GB, but Six Counties are occupied by the UK.
GB is all small islands and colonial remnants included? Britain is just NI, Scotland, Wales & England?
@@jacksteven781 The UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Great Britain is the mainland only, and great is a differentiation from Little Britain, now called Brittany. People in NI can choose to be part of Team GB, or to play for Ireland.
The confusion results from historical "flexibility" with spelling. The actual term is "Grate Britain" - the main island (England, Scotland, Wales) plus anything that could have been shaved off with a cheesegrater.
"London" is the name of a synthetic Elder deity that was created to initiate the idea of a power nexus a long time ago.
Right now it's terrified and lashing out for more sacrifices after understanding just how vulnerable and temporary it really is.
I now add this to my map I use to distinguish "England, Britain, British Isles, British Islands, United Kingdom, etc."
"The Islands of the North Atlantic", or "Britain and Ireland".
Just want to say that you are now the voice of my internal monologue, and thus, the voice I hear explaining my disdain for elbow pasta to myself at 2am. Thank you.
Ontario would like a word.
Surprisingly, so would France (a small village in Burgundy).
Yes, out of the 18 (!) Railway stations/termini in “London” only a handful are actually in the “CIty of London” and they are: Blackfriars, Cannon Street, Fenchurch Street, Liverpool Street, Moorgate and City Thameslink. Not exactly as famous as some of the other ones in “London” (though if you’re a Douglas Adams fan you’ve heard of Fenchurch Street.)
You don't need dear Douglas to have heard of Fenchurch St. Station. It's one of the four stations on the original UK Monopoly board. (King's Cross, Marylebone, Fenchurch St., Liverpool St.). 🚂
or if you've played Monopoly
I would have said the Square Mile is the core, indispensable "London", but this video is making me think that maybe we should only include the area inside the Roman walls...
No, that's Londinium
Please don't shut down the channel. Thank you.
I believe that was a joke
This is just being extremely pedantic, lol. If you are insisting on only using full names, than there are quite a lot of other places that don't exist, either.
Is not just that those are the full names, is that they are full names that imply...
1) that is all of London, when it most obviously is far from being it (City)
2) that is not London, but London PLUS other stuff that is not London (Greater London).
It seems to me that it's not that there is no such place as London but that London is imprecisely defined. I think it would be hard to argue that Oxford Circus isn't in London, which implies that London exists. It's just that as you go out from the centre and want to know if a particular place is in London or not, the point "it depends what you mean by London" becomes valid.
For a great trick question, or just to be an ass at pub trivia night, try asking something like "Oxford Circus tube station, served by the Bakerloo, Central, and Victoria lines, is in what city?" Most people would reflexively answer London even if they happen to know that Westminster is the only London borough that's up itself so much that it's also a city in its own right.
Would the area of the pre-1965 London County Council be more what some people think of as London, being the more central sections? Interestingly, Bromley is 30% farming land, the highest in London.
Are you joining the QI Elves on an upcoming "No Such Thing as a Fish" podcast? (That's the kind of crossover we'd love to hear.)
@J. Draper if London is not real then you should come visit the real London in Ontario, Canada. 🇨🇦
I would love to see a series of videos of you comparing the two Londons and how the Canadian one took inspiration from the original London.
Also, historically how long has London, England not known how big their city boundaries are?
The City of London had walls clearly defining inside and outside; only a few of them are still standing. The current Greater London dates to the borough reorganization of 1965.
I've always wondered, has London ever been the capital of the UK? Or is that the City of Westminster?
The City of London has never been the capital of the UK, nor of Britain or England, but it's been a globally important financial center for really long time
the same problem with other metro cities all over the world - Tokyo city - Greater Tokyo, Mumbai city - suburban region, Greater Mumbai, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Delhi - New Delhi, Old Delhi, National Capital Region.
Explain Londons Wikipedia article then? I'm genuinely curious.
Fuzzy ontology when it comes to geography gotta love it. It makes the field interesting.
I've heard of this phenomenon (the legal non-existence of "London"), but I found this to be quite an informative summary of the situation! In short, there's a rather large area called Greater London, plus a small area called the City of London (which isn't just "London") that doesn't contain many of the major tourist attractions.
Thanks for the information!n
* phenomenon
"phenomena" = plural
Thanks, @@Doctor_Who_Rocks! I fixed my comment accordingly!
Sing along now - 'Oh maybe its because I'm a - Oh...'
Conversely everyone born within the sound of Bow Bells is a Cockney - which when you know about the effects of quantun gravity includes every living thing in the universe. Just say'in...
Do you have any titbits about London and its relation to being the centre of a colonial empire? Yes the museums, but i mean more like thoughts of Londoners from the past and what they thought about their city's position in the world?
The structure of the various Colonial and other offices can be found by putting this term, or Commonwealth Office into Wikipedia. They were things like the India Office as part of this. They were / are located in Whitehall.
Well, you’ve gotten away with it for a good while and had a nice long run! Best of luck in your next fake city venture! May I propose Atlantis? 😂
And as a cockney we regard anywhere south of the river as a cultural desert…
Whereas Bristol City is the peak of culture for Cockneys. 😉
Thank you, you have throughly confused me. Nothing has made me feel more French than you explaining why London doesn’t exist, for some reason.
We provincial types have long suspected this to be true.
in the legal sense, London does exist... it is The Summary of London City (City of London) & It's Estate (Greater London) except such estate necessarily defined free of London by the clause of it's existence (The City & the territory of exterritorial entities such as embassies or London City airport, though at one point in time, also certain naval yards and other military areas)
@J.Draper my dad told me this when I was still in school (my mother didn’t believe him). Don’t close your channel, 🙏!
It's been nice knowing you. Thank you and farewell. 😂
"Greater than, then."😂 I love that you used that phrase in a sentence, and it was completely correct! But please be joking about shutting down your channel!
Well, there are 17 Londons in the United States, three being cities. One in Ohio, one in Arkansas, and one in Kentucky.
The answer is clearly, anywhere which claims to have a “London” airport.
I don't need to be English to tell that Caterham isn't London. Caterham is car.
Other day someone said Lotus is leaf. No, Lotus is car.
Leaf is a car too
@@edwardlane1255 barely
Of course it’s not London, it’s LONDINIUM, outpost of the ROMAN EMPIRE! Therefore, it is everything that was previously inside the walls before it was abandoned in 500 CE 😜
@atlander4204 Or was it called Londinio, Londiniensi, Londiniensium.or Augusta in Roman times?
My boyfriend is a train nerd and we've had so many discussions about the many confusing definitions for what is "London" until we finally agreed on a definition that sort of works:
London has a fuzzy edge kind of like an electron, which is determined by how many people will yell "You bloody Londoners!" at you when they find out your postcode. So, is your postcode NW1? Okay, there's a 99.999999% chance that you're in London. Is your postcode HA8? 80% chance that you're in London. Is your postcode B8 (in Birmingham)? There is a 0.0000001% chance that you're in London.
New favorite definition XD
I still see London and I still See France. And I Still see Your Underpants. Lol
And I thank you, once again, for being your lovely self and sharing just a bit of you on this channel. ❤
I feel like i just consider London as Greater London + City of London
Noooooo ! Don't Shut down J. Draper. Change the name to The Greater J. Draper !
Reminds me of the Map Men episode about what a county is. Turns out there's like four different county maps and everything's a bloody mess and has only gotten worse in the last 50 years.
"Except in Scotland, where it's *different*."
I love this channel so much.
Add to that the fact that the City of London has its own separate police force, apart from the Metropolitan Police Force. The Met covers 32 boroughs, but not the City of London!
The Met is considered the 3rd best police force in London, behind City and Transport.
@@_Mentat Fourth? MDP (Ministry of Defence Police) also operates around Whitehall. They were blue uniforms and are civilian, as opposed to the MPs.
@@JulianSortland MODPLOD? I'm not sure how good they are. Their German shepherds may have higher IQs than them. I know someone who calls the dogs, "the officers."
You said London so many times in this video that it stopped sounding like a word to me 😂
So you're telling me we have been deceived 🤔😂
I feel like if "London" has a municipal government with a mayor then it makes sense for it to be the area that is required to abide by the rulings of that government, regardless of whether that's called Greater London (or whatever else it might be)
Which one? The City of London and Greater London Both have their own mayor and are completely unaffiliated with each other (The City of London in particular isn't a part of Greater London). Which one (or both?) is London?
@@timseguine2
I think if they have separate governments it should be one or the other not both & my inclination would be to say Greater London and not City of London but that's just on vibes.
@@DavidChong that's a bit historically problematic since the City of London has existed since the middle ages and has been settled and called London since Roman times, whereas Greater London has only been an official thing since the 1960s.
On the other hand most of the landmarks people consider as being "in London" are in Greater London, and it has a massively larger population. I dunno what that means put together, just seemed worthwhile to point out that there isn't really a simple answer.
@@timseguine2 to clarify on the vibes bit, I guess my thinking is if you say Mexico City, it's a thing that is both within but is not the same as Mexico. So if we follow the same reasoning with City of London, it is both within but not the same as London.
Right now Greater London has a mayor; sometimes it didn't. This is different from the City of London, which has had a Lord Mayor for over a thousand years and the selection process for the office is completely bonkers. (CGP Grey did a video on it; go watch that.)
Sending a message off to Sandi Toksvig at QI...
Just in case you did not realise, we are a little bit odd round here.
Oh god, I remember Jay Foreman's Map Men video on this!
Map Men, Map Men, Map Map Map Men (Men)
As a proud Midlander, woohoo!
London transcended being a mere city and became a landscape, an abstract concept and a semi magical historical origin for itself.
So if London doesn't exist....
DO YOU?!
It seems a bit of pedantry
Starting a petition to rename the entire South East 'London't', because apparently none of it is London, even the bits that are! 😂😂
Prior to the 1960s there was actually an authority called the County of London. Nowadays, Greater London has a mayor whose title is Mayor of London, and the (very weak) assembly is called the London Assembly. The observation that "there's no such thing as London" was true between 1986 and 2000 when there was no municipal authority of any kind responsible for all of Greater London, but it isn't now. The notion people had in the outer suburbs that "this isn't London, this is Surrey/Middlesex" has largely ebbed away as the people who remember the time before Greater London have died off and the last vestiges of the pre-1965 counties, the postal counties, were done away with in 1996. What is true is that London is not formally a city; the Cities of London and Westminster have city status but no other borough nor Greater London. This means that the largest city in its own right by population is in fact Birmingham, not London.
Your last sentence. You mean city not county right?
That means he's mayor of a place that doesn't officially exist. 😁
@@namvu2362 Yes thank you, I have corrected it now.
It’s very similar to the situation with Manila. There is the small city of Manila, but a large area around it that includes other cities, that is referred to as “Metro Manila”, or “Greater Manila area”. Or “National Capital Region”.
The real London is the friends we made along the way
😭💀
That's also true of Los Angeles which has been described as"100 suburbs in search of a city",
You could say the same for "New York City" It has 5 separate autonomous Boroughs each with it's own President and council. When you ask someone from there "Where do you live?", they will say the name of the borough not "New York City". There is a greater "New York City" Council to handle things that affect all the Boroughs like Transportation, Police and Fire Coverage, Water and Electricity.
@@stuartm6069Although for NYC one can point to midtown Manhattan. Los Angeles just sprawls and wanders...
There is. If you look at Hansard records you will see that the consensus is the size of Greater London is whatever land is within 1 hour (by either public or private transport) of City of London. So technically the size of Greater London actually grew further eastward with the Elizabeth Line. the choice between Public or Private transportation is because the road speeds within Greater London is decided so as to ensure travelling by car takes just as long as travelling by the tube. That last fact could be more of a cabbie myth but actually tracks.
Crikey Cambridge is in Greater London!
@@namvu2362 Idk what you're smoking but Cambridge is 1.5 hours from London by public transport. closer to 2 by road. Luton is barely is London for scale. Brixton too.
@@jacksteven781 it's 50mins~ to KGX. Just because there's no fast service to Liverpool Street doesn't mean there couldn't be one and it'd probably be just about an hour. Anyway even if it's a smidge over an hour (and it'd be close!) then we're really considering as far north as say... Royston as Greater London? Obviously it's not but it seems like _only_ because Anglian Rail doesn't do a service there which seems rather arbitrary.
Oh well, nice knowing ya. 😬
We need a new Italo Calvino to write a story about a city that is and isn't at the same time.
Oh… then London is the name of the infamous cat in a box? :-)
This is a very well put together video:) I am very much looking forwards to what you have planned for the First of April :)
Good morning
I lived in the London Borough of Havering for quite a while , on the "Harold" bits right on the border with Essex.
It had been a London Borough since the mid to late 1960s. I don't guess I'd have classified it as London or East London. I thought more of it as Urbanised West Essex !
Hearing it get called East London in a news report recently does make me either chuckle, or raise the hairs on the bike of my neck spike up !
East London to me is more the part inside the A406 North Circular up to the City of London. To the East of the A406 it slowly becomes less East London and more West Essex !
I'd still say "Romford, Essex" an even "Ilford , Essex" (although that is pushing it these days)
@ 0:48 : "Well, what's the London that that's "Greater" than then?"
@ 0:55 : "... inform you that that area is called "the City of London", never just "London", and... [isn't the actual city; is only the ancient traditional Roman and Mediaeval Walled City and is only 1 Square Mile large {my version of "Buckingham Palace" etc.}]"
What‽? No, it isn't! "It", i.e. the "London" that "Greater London" is "Greater" than i.e. "that area", isn't called "the City of London" it's called "the County of London" - and was arguably a city too just not a "City of" with a capital 'C' - and _could_ sometimes (not "never") be called "London". It was created, along with its goverment, the London County Council (LCC), in 1889 and expanded in 1965 into a new County called "Greater London" (and the old "London" being labelled "Inner London", b. t. w.). The "London" that "Greater London" is "Greater" than is the 1889-1965 County and city of London, now called Inner London. So please don't say "I'm sorry to inform you that..." and then misinform people with misinformation.
1889 - 1965 London would be "London", that land plus the land added in 1965 is "Greater London". Therefore there is a place called "London". Whether it's just The City of London + the County of London or if the whole of Greater London ("the City" included) is exactly the same thing as "London" because it's all been assimilated into London, is something people can debate but there's a London in there somewhere (the County of Greater London) for sure!
- or rather 2 because of the accursed mis‐named City of London!
J. Draper: "... and I shall be shutting down this channel forthwith."
Me: Nnooooooo-o-o-o-o ! ! !
Hang on, what?! I’m in Melbourne- which is defined by the Central Business District, the city of Melbourne (council area), and the greater metropolitan Melbourne (the suburbs of Melbourne)- is this the same?
I've always been in favour of referring to London as 'The Great Twin City' since the London we know formed from the two settlements of The City of London and Westminster.
Or maybe just 'The Twin City of London'. Calling it 'The Great Twin City' would probably irk residents of other twin cities, like Manhattan and Brooklyn AKA New York, or Buda and Pest, AKA Budapest 😅
Just like how there is no "Tokyo City" in Japan. The old Tokyo City was abolished in 1943 and amalgamted into the surrounding Tokyo prefecture to form what is today called Tokyo Metropolis; the city's old wards became independent municalities of their own (special wards), and are usually called cities in English (e.g. Shibuya City, Shinjuku City, etc.). What used to be the City of Tokyo is now governed by 23 separate municipal corporations with clearly defined boundaries.
All this to say that, technically and legally, the most populous city in Japan is actually the nearby Yokohama, clocking in almost 4 million inhabitants (whereas if Tokyo was still legally a city its population would be nearly 10 million).
I believe Ducky (played by the late great David McCallum) alluded to this in an episode of NCIS. I’m from the U.K. and didn’t know it until an American TV show told me 😅
Johnny Depp was right...
🎶 There's no place like London... 🎶
I can relate to this from living in the Kansas City metropolis, and if you're offended by me comparing KC to London you shouldn't be...but I understand completely. Our KC metropolis is 120 cities in nine main counties spread over two states. We try to disguise our problems with urban sprawl by having four streets per number (e.g. 1st Street, 1st Terrace, 1st Place, 1st Court, and only then do we have 2nd Street). So if you're on 699th Street, I kid you not, you're on what would be 2797th Street in what my relatives call "a real city." When my relatives tell me I should move to a real city I just joke that we had considered living in a city that was an internet desert instead of a global telecommunications hub and that still burns coal to heat some of its buildings but decided that New York City was too overpriced. So if you have the pleasure of living in KC, NYC or London, let's enjoy the beautiful nuances of the complexity of living in what I love to call a real city.
Uber-pedantic. Although you're right that the area is officially still called Greater London, it is also officially called London in most contexts, eg Mayor of London, London boroughs, London Assembly, Transport for London. All of these are statutory terms and refer to the Greater London area.
Why is it called London?
The earliest account of the toponym's derivation can be attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth. In Historia Regum Britanniae, the name is described as originating from King Lud, who seized the city Trinovantum and ordered it to be renamed in his honour as Kaerlud. This eventually developed into Karelundein and then London.
London was s Fort. Basically today it would be small compared to its evolution and history.
In fact, there is snd Island in the Thamesis that only shows when water level goes down, where a ver wise man named John made a del with merchants yet he never signed Himself. He just stamp the Richard the lion heart seal on it.
Seems many people dont know their history. And that is your londinium a Island that is alloat flooded like for years. Till water level on the river drops and then oh there it is the Island of london.
Then there is the Anglican Diocese of London, which is only north of the Thames. The Diocese of Southwark covers the south. Maybe bits of Rochester too?
If you are Catholic there is no Diocese of London, just Westminster, Southwark, and Brentwood, plus maybe a bit of Diocese of Arundel and Brighton.
You're forgetting that most of "central London" is actually a city, called Westminster! 😅😃😆😀🤣😃😆😅
I'd like to add something: "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch, pigs and diamonds" gave the rest of the world an image of London not entirely false...