posted
I'm afraid these days having a cathedral is nothing to do with becoming a city.
quote:City status is a rare mark of distinction granted by the Sovereign and conferred by Letters Patent. It is granted by personal Command of The Queen, on the advice of Her Ministers. It is for Her Majesty The Queen to decide when a competition for city status should be held. Competitions are usually held on occasions such as important Royal anniversaries.
So basically, the Queen needs to think "Milton Keynes is as good as Truro or Ripon" for it to happen.
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posted
The trouble is that at the moment there are no technical criteria which guarantee city status. A Town must fulfil certain criteria in order to be considered for city status, and then it's reviewed by the government who make the decision. I think each year a certain number of towns are upgraded, and certain ones just never seem to get it. There are lots of town on the outskirts of London which aren't granted City status because they're not distinct enough from London itself. In the case of MK, I think it's just become this long-running practical joke, to not grant us City status.
There are places which are officially cities, with populations of less than 10,000 people. There's a city in Wales with a population lower than 2000.
I think realistically it's because there's no real benefit for upgrading our status. In the case of smaller areas the upgrade to being a city allows the new city to plan a lot more development and makes it more attractive to businesses and industry. MK is already very large and is one of the main business centres in England, so realistically it's not awfully important for us. There are places which will see much more benefit from it so they tend to be granted it first.
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posted
Ralph, I'm genuinely interested in the use of the term village in the States. Not for any particular reason, I'm just curious. It never occurred to me when I was actually living there, but it doesn't seem to be a term that is used at all, except in New York City, ironically.
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quote:Originally posted by ralph: MK is 34 sq miles...my town is 37 sq miles. How the hell do you fit 200,000 people in 34 sq miles?
going by wikipedia's stats, you might find the following information fairly interesting:
MK is 34 square miles and has a population of 184,506 souls. This gives an average of 5426 per square mile. Sounds like a lot, right?
But check out London, which is 660 square miles and has 7,556,900 people, which gives an average of 11,450 people per square mile. That's over twice the population density of Milton Keynes.
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posted
lol. my town has a population density of 26 persons per square mile. and it *still* seems too crowded to me. how do you big city folk stand the constant noise?
quote:Originally posted by mart: Ralph, I'm genuinely interested in the use of the term village in the States. Not for any particular reason, I'm just curious. It never occurred to me when I was actually living there, but it doesn't seem to be a term that is used at all, except in New York City, ironically.
Where did you live when you were in the states? In the northeast the term village is quite common. more in New England than in the mid-Atlantic states, but there are plenty of villages near my town.
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quote:Originally posted by ralph: lol. my town has a population density of 26 persons per square mile. and it *still* seems too crowded to me. how do you big city folk stand the constant noise?
Y'know, I think there are almost no places in England, or even maybe the UK, where you can find a ~40 square mile area with a population density as low as that. And that's the bits in between the towns and villages. So by my reckoning you don't live in a town at all. You just live in the countryside.
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posted
Ralph's militia are very distrustful and they ensure, through a brainwashing programme that's as brutal and it is thorough, that new inductees, like Ralph, share that suspicious viewpoint of the outside world. It's not Roy's fault that he swallowed their distorted rhetoric so completely, hook, like and sinker.
posted
I've never been to that part of the country. What's it like? Lots of hillbillies and god botherers I assume? No villages?
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Very very beautiful, rolling boothills. Shawnee national forest. The majestic River Ohio right outside our house. Trail of Tears. Lots of country folk, yes, and most of them perfectly nice and very friendly (keen to take me out shooting and telling me how great Reagan was). LOTS of hunting camo worn. 100% WASP county. Fair bit of crystal meth (people with fucked-up teeth, etc.), no work prospects, most people seemed to be either on welfare or working the barges up and down the river. Or in the army. We mixed with the well-off bunch who actually had jobs, had been to college, etc.
I had a great time, but we ran out of money, so we gave the UK a try.
No villages, no. The town we lived in had a population of 950, and there were much smaller ones around, but they were never referred to as villages. I guess the term village would be too cosy for most of them, as they were mostly run-down meth-holes of poverty and desperation.
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posted
Nice to see you're as parochial about your own country as you are about the rest of the world. Do I recall your saying you'd never travelled abroad, Ralph?
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quote:Originally posted by Suckmonster: Nice to see you're as parochial about your own country as you are about the rest of the world. Do I recall your saying you'd never travelled abroad, Ralph?
But...according to marts description (thank you, mart) my view of that area was 100% accurate.
I've been no further than 3,000 miles from my place of birth. I've not been out of the US (Canada obviously doesn't count) but the US is so large that going through it is like visiting a multitude of coutries.
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quote:Originally posted by ralph: the US is so large that going through it is like visiting a multitude of coutries.
wow. It isn't at all. and not all Americans think it is.
So do you think Alaska is like Texas? I mean really?
I've never been to Alaska, but none of the vastly different areas of the US I've been to are as different from each other as the different countries I've been to.
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quote:Originally posted by rooster: I've never been to Alaska, but none of the vastly different areas of the US I've been to are as different from each other as the different countries I've been to.
Well...I have been. And I certainly didn't confuse it with New Jersey. ffs.
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posted
Ralph how can you say travelling in America is like visiting other countries, when you've never visited another country?
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quote:Originally posted by rooster: I've never been to Alaska, but none of the vastly different areas of the US I've been to are as different from each other as the different countries I've been to.
Well...I have been. And I certainly didn't confuse it with New Jersey. ffs.
I must be reading this wrong because it looks like ralph is making no sense whatsoever. Surely that can't be the case.
You could make the same argument about areas of the UK. No-one's going to confuse Wimborne with London 'ffs' but it's hardly comporable to going to Russia, for example, where hundreds of years of a completely different history has shaped a completely different culture.
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quote:Originally posted by rooster: I've never been to Alaska, but none of the vastly different areas of the US I've been to are as different from each other as the different countries I've been to.
Well...I have been. And I certainly didn't confuse it with New Jersey. ffs.
but that's not the point you made. You said it was like going to different countries.
I suppose you could have just meant the relative size thing, but that's a pretty lame/obvious observation.
Culturally, there is still an American thread that holds all states together. There is an otherness to non-US places I've visited that isn't present when I'm still in the country whether it be New York, Texas, Florida, Hawaii, Alabama or any of the other states.
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quote:Originally posted by Ringo: Ralph how can you say travelling in America is like visiting other countries, when you've never visited another country?
I've been to Canada. Which is another country. That's how.
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quote:Originally posted by rooster: Culturally, there is still an American thread that holds all states together. There is an otherness to non-US places I've visited that isn't present when I'm still in the country whether it be New York, Texas, Florida, Hawaii, Alabama or any of the other states.
The culture in Alaska (at least the part I stayed in) is totally different then anything I experienced in any part of the US. The same could be said of the times I've spent amongst the Amish in Lancaster, PA. Different culture.
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quote:Originally posted by Ringo: Ralph how can you say travelling in America is like visiting other countries, when you've never visited another country?
I've been to Canada. Which is another country. That's how.
Would a Canadian who'd travelled to other places in Canada also be able to claim that he had no need to travel abroad because the diversity of Canadian culture was so great, that every part of his land was like visiting another country?
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