Michael
>But from all the searching on the internet I have done, the journey seems
>to be in Scotland.
Yes, the journey is certainly in Scotland. As you say, the Tweed only forms
the border between England and Scotland further downstream.
>So if this is indeed Scotland do you think they use "parishes" but meant
>"communities" or do you think these could be ecclesiastical parishes?
Scotland had administrative parishes from the 16th century until 1973 when
they were replaced by communities (see
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/geography/parishes.asp). It will therefore be
a historical marker they're referring to.
As I mentioned in my previous message, people generally still have more
attachment to the old administrative divisions that were hardly changed for
centuries, and you still see many signs and the like with the old names.
Furthermore, the fact that there has been so many changes in the past
thirty or so years has merely confused everyone.
I think Scotland (and Wales) changed to using 'communities' to distinguish
the fact that the new areas were not necessarily based on old parish
boundaries.
>Seems to be a very complicated system, but it makes much more sense now.
The system is more-or-less the same in Scotland and Northern Ireland (and
to a certain extent Wales) and is reasonably easy to understand. For
various constitutional reasons, Scotland and Northern Ireland have always
maintained separate administrative and legal systems which is why they have
a different structure to England.
England is the problem because most counties are an awkward size in terms
of population (usually between 400,000 and 1 million). The 1995-96 reforms
aimed to create unitary authorities throughout, but in most places,
counties were considered to be too large, whilst districts/boroughs were
considered to be too small to base these on. Added to this, was a lot of
opposition to losing counties (particularly the traditional counties)
because they are the unit that everyone identifies with.
The end result was a mess, with some counties reverting to the old
county/county borough structure, the smaller ones (including the
resurrection of Rutland) becoming a unitary authority, some were
effectively dismembered, whilst the two-tier status-quo was retained in
other places. It wasn't very satisfactory, and now that there's talk of
regional assemblies, there will probably have to be another reorganisation
in a few years time.
Regards,
Kevin Meynell