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National Postcodes to be introduced
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I don't think anybody is saying that. It makes sense for BT to cover the whole of Northern Ireland, but the next level doesn't have to follow counties or other administrative areas (as it happens counties aren't administrative areas in NI anyway).
The point that you're missing is that hierarchical areas are useful regardless of what the areas actually are, so long as they reasonably regular. It is very helpful if at the lowest level, the so-called small areas do at least align with administrative areas. And the Irish small areas, do align with electoral divisions, which are the smallest area that have a statutory basis.
Again you're responding to a point I didn't make. The only complaint I made about the BT postcode area was that it didn't have any link to NI placenames apart from Belfast, which isn't necessarily meaningful to someone from Co. Fermanagh or other parts of NI.
I don't know why people persist in not replying to this point instead of replying to some other points they've imagined I've made.
Could it be because they're DFAWANFC? :PIt makes sense for BT to cover the whole of Northern Ireland, but the next level doesn't have to follow counties or other administrative areas (as it happens counties aren't administrative areas in NI anyway).
I don't see why it makes sense from the social perspective to use BT for all of Northern Ireland especially since postal counties (based largely on the historic counties of NI and other parts of the UK) were in use by Royal Mail as an official part of the correct postal address right up to 1996.
Here's a map of the now former postal counties that Royal Mail used up until 1996.
As you can see, there are six for NI, corresponding more or less to the six former administrative/historic counties of NI. These postal counties were used by Royal Mail as part of the correct, official postal address right up until 1996.
The names of the Royal Mail NI postal counties used up to 1996 were Co. Antrim, Co. Armagh, Co. Down, Co. Derry (accepted by Royal Mail as official or alternatively Co. Londonderry also accepted by RM as official), Co. Fermanagh and Co. Tyrone. Sound familiar? :P
Now if NI had been assigned the BT postcode area after 1996, it might have made sense for Royal Mail to ignore the counties of Northern Ireland and not to divide NI into smaller postcode areas based on the postal counties, using codes such as AM (Armagh), DN (Down) etc instead of just one BT code for all of NI.
But since postcodes were assigned to NI during a period when Royal Mail was using postal counties as an official part of postal addresses, then it seems to make little sense for Royal Mail to have ignored the NI postal counties when deciding on postcode area codes for NI.
If it was feasible for Royal Mail to carry on using the historic Scottish county names as the postal county element of official addresses right up to 1996 (even though many of the historic counties had been abolished as administrative areas by the 1974 local government reforms) then why wouldn't it have been feasible to carry on using the historic NI county names after 1974 and to assign postcode areas based on these postal counties (which in NI at least were pretty close in terms of their boundaries to the pre-reform historic counties) even if they were no longer used (as in most of Scotland) as administrative areas?The point that you're missing is that hierarchical areas are useful regardless of what the areas actually are, so long as they reasonably regular.
On that specific point, you might want to look at the maps I've posted of several UK postcode areas (AB, DG, DH, HR).
Can you discern any regular pattern common to all those postcode areas by which they're sub-divided into postal districts?
For example, the DH postcode area is sub-divided into 9 postal districts.
The numbering 'spirals' out from DH1 and we end up with DH8 being further away from DH6 than DH6 is from DH1!
The HR postcode area is also sub-divided into 9 postal districts.
However, the way it's sub-divided doesn't follow the pattern of the sub-division of the DH postcode area.
And if you look at the DG postcode area you'll see that it uses two patterns to sub-divide into postal districts.
Broadly speaking, DG1 is the central postal district and postal districts DG2, DG3, DG4, DG5, DG6, DG7, DG8 and DG9 are to the west (sometimes south-west or north-west) of DG1.
Based on a visual inspection of DG1 to DG9 postcodes (and with some partial prior knowledge about the roughly east to west pattern) it would be reasonable to assume that DG10, DG11, DG12, DG13, DG14 and DG16 postcodes also follow the same roughly east to west pattern.
But they don't. All of those postal districts are to the east of DG1 and they're sorted roughly from north to south with three rows and two columns.
If we look at the AB postcode area we can see that it's roughly divided with odd first-number postal districts (i.e. AB1x and AB3x postal districts) in the southern part with even first-number postal districts (i.e. AB 2x and AB4x postal districts) in the northern part. However, the AB5x postal districts are mainly in the northern part too. And then there's the discrepancy in the AB3x postal districts whereby AB39 doesn't even come close to sharing a boundary, let alone being within the general vicinity, of AB38, unlike nearly all of the lower numbered A3x postal districts. For example, the largest village in AB38, Aberlour, is about 68 miles by road from Stonehaven, the largest town in the AB39 postal district.
There isn't much regularity in the sub-division of UK postcode areas into numbered postal districts, is there? Perhaps the postal districts themselves use boundaries that are (partly) related to other boundaries (e.g. perhaps a postal district is made up of a collection of local authority wards, with some differences in its outer boundary to the outer boundaries of the wards) but adherence to pre-existing area boundaries (whether those areas are local authority wards or historic civil parishes or, most likely, local delivery office areas) doesn't explain why the numbering pattern of postal districts within postcode areas is so irregular, even to the extent of having two distinct patterns in the DG postcode area.
Would it have been so hard to start the DG numbering from east to west, with the eastern most postal district being DG1 and the highest numbered postal district (DG16) being at the western extremity of the postcode area (i.e. where DG9 is now)?
And would it have been so hard to have all postcode areas follow a similar pattern so that you would be able by visual inspection alone to see that a higher numbered postal district (e.g. AB55) was always to the west of a lower numbered postal district (e.g. AB11)?
Would it have been so hard to ensure that all postcode areas had numbered postal districts which started with 1, rather than having a few that start with much higher numbers (e.g. AB10 is the 'starting' postal district within the AB postcode area) or even lower numbers (e.g. CR0 is the 'starting' postal district within the CR postcode area)?
Following those numbering patterns (or any other regular pattern) might have been useful for the purpose of ensuring that the hierarchical areas that make up UK postcodes were "reasonably regular", thus making them a good deal more amenable to "useful" visual inspection.0 -
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And this is what I hate about ireland. Doing something badly is considered better than doing stuff properly.
It's not being done badly. It's being done excellently without rejigging the entire Irish address system at God knows what cost, over God knows what timeframe and with God knows what level of public resistance.
We've already seen how upset people are at learning that their postal address is not what they'd imagined it to be.
Can you imagine the level of public outrage if Irish postal addresses were further changed, if people were told they had to use a state-mandated postal address or their post wouldn't be delivered? :eek:
Cop on to yourself will you - Eircodes are the cheapest and most efficient solution to the problem of non-unique addresses in Ireland (35% of all addresses remember?) and also the ingrained habit of many Irish people who don't use their correct postal address.
BTW, I sell stuff online from my own website in the UK and on ebay UK.
Since 1996, postal counties haven't been part of the Royal Mail official postal address.
Guess what percentage of my ebay customers use the postal county name in their addresses? If you'd guessed 100% you'd be right.
My website allows people to either ignore a drop-down list of UK counties or to choose the 'correct' (i.e. incorrect since it's not part of the postal address - :P) county for the area, village, town or city they live in.
People in cities like Birmingham tend not to bother, nor do people in smaller cities like Leicester or Durham, especially since a. Royal Mail never required the use of Leicester, Leicestershire in the official postal address* and b. it just looks a bit fecking stupid to put Durham, Co. Durham on your address!
*Royal Mail had a list of locations where you didn't have to put the name of the county as part of the address.
But people in places like Bangor do (can't think why -
) as do people in places like Ballymena or Coleraine or Torquay or Sidcup or Shrewsbury etc, etc etc.
Why? Because they like putting the name of the county on their addresses because they feel a connection with that county (even the modern, post-1974 counties, some of which have been abolished as administrative counties since), even though it means that their postal address is wrong.
When I lived in Stonehaven I thought I lived in Aberdeenshire. I was surprised to get lots of post, including from commercial organisations, with Kincardineshire on the address.
Not knowing what the hell Kincardinshire was I googled it. It was a small county which was abolished as an administrative county in 1974. But people are so attached to the county name, and so many businesses didn't bother fully updating their address databases, that it's use in addresses continues, more than 40 years after it was scrapped.
And guess what? From 1974 to 1996 Royal Mail accepted the names of the scrapped Scottish counties as part of the official postal address because of public resistance to changing addresses.
So if Royal Mail had to bow to public pressure in Scotland for over 20 years and keep defunct county names as part of official addresses, and if Royal Mail can't stop the majority of people in the UK from using county names in their address nearly 20 years after they were removed from official postal addresses, what makes you think that the Irish authorities would have any better luck in getting hundreds of thousands of people to adopt a new postal address format?0 -
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Ok, but my point is that it doesn't matter all that much whether the code is BT or NI. Whatever the code is, it refers to Northern Ireland,marmurr1916 wrote: »Again you're responding to a point I didn't make. The only complaint I made about the BT postcode area was that it didn't have any link to NI placenames apart from Belfast, which isn't necessarily meaningful to someone from Co. Fermanagh or other parts of NI.
Interesting view of the history, but your point seems to be whether one set of hierarchical areas (historic counties) versus another (current postal areas) is better than the other. That is a second order problem. The debate here is whether the postcode should be based on hierarchical areas at all.I don't know why people persist in not replying to this point instead of replying to some other points they've imagined I've made.
Could it be because they're DFAWANFC? :P
I don't see why it makes sense from the social perspective to use BT for all of Northern Ireland especially since postal counties (based largely on the historic counties of NI and other parts of the UK) were in use by Royal Mail as an official part of the correct postal address right up to 1996.
Here's a map of the now former postal counties that Royal Mail used up until 1996.
As you can see, there are six for NI, corresponding more or less to the six former administrative/historic counties of NI. These postal counties were used by Royal Mail as part of the correct, official postal address right up until 1996.
The names of the Royal Mail NI postal counties used up to 1996 were Co. Antrim, Co. Armagh, Co. Down, Co. Derry (accepted by Royal Mail as official or alternatively Co. Londonderry also accepted by RM as official), Co. Fermanagh and Co. Tyrone. Sound familiar? :P
I really mean it when I say that any areas are better than none at all. As regards Eircode, I think the best design would have been to identify CSO small areas, and then aggregate them any way at all eg to suit An Post, or not etc.0 -
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Eircodes are issued for actual postal addresses, not potential ones. If recent years should have taught us anything it's that commencement of building doesn't guarantee completion of building. Otherwise why would Ireland be littered with partially completed residential and commercial developments? If every field with a few overgrown house foundations had been issued with eircodes for each house, how long do you think it would be before its critics were howling their outrage? Never give your enemies ammunition.
Regarding standardisation of addreses, I don't believe I've said that eircodes would be an impediment to this. I actually said that eircodes facilitate non-standard addresses.
Why should addresses be standardised anyway? How do we deal with somewhere like Athlone (nuking it is not an option)? Do we stop delivering mail to people who use Co. Roscommon as part of an Athlone address, create a new post-town of Athlone, Co. Roscommon, change the administrative boundaries so that every current part of Co. Roscommon that uses Athlone as its post-town is transferred to Co. Westmeath or do we abolish the use of county names in official postal addresses (either banning them outright and refusing to deliver mail when they're used or adopting the UK's Flexible Addressing Policy whereby their use is discouraged but still permitted)?
If we do stop the use of county names as part of postal adresses how do we deal with cases like Stradbally (one in English in Co. Waterford, one in English in Co. Laois)? Do we permit exceptions in those cases (and what about Irish language versions of places - An tSráidbhaile is the Irish language name for at least three villages, one each in Co. Laois, Co. Waterford and Co. Kerry?) or do we make the use of eircodes (or some other code) compulsory?
Or do we just accept that there's always going to be a minority of postal addresses that don't match physical addresses because of the way that delivery offices have been configured and just let people at those addresses use their preferred form of address, without making a big deal out of it, like we do now?
If we did decide to standardise addresses (for no good reason that I can see) we'd have to standardise the placenames used as part of addresses in two languages. That should guarantee years of fun and laughter as An Post, local residents, Irish language enthusiasts and organisations and other state departments and agencies haggle with each other over which is the correct form of the Irish name for tens of thousands of places across the country! As I'm sure you know the work of the official placenames authorities (http://www.ahg.gov.ie/en/irish/theplacenamesbranch/) has generated an enormous amount of controversy and dispute down the years (see examples below). What makes you think that this database of official Irish language placenames is going to be accepted as definitive by the general public or even by the postal service when the name for Dingle appears as Daingean Uí Chúis on official Ordnance Survey maps but as An Daingean on signposts erected by Kerry County Council which is a branch of the state's administration?,
Is An Daingean acceptable rather than Daingean Uí Chúis?Note: Section 48 of the Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2011 amended the Placenames (Ceantair Ghaeltachta) Order 2004 (S.I. No. 872 of 2004) made under the Official Languages Act insofar as it relates to the placename "An Daingean". This amendment provides that "Daingean Uí Chúis" in Irish and "Dingle" in English are now the official placenames rather than "An Daingean"
http://www.logainm.ie/en/ord/
And yet:
If by some miracle you get complete agreement on the Irish language placenames to be used in postal addresses (should it be An Daingean or Daingean Uí Chúis, Mainistir Fhear Maí or Fhearmaí, An Ráth or Ráth Luirc, An Scoil or Scoil Mhuire, An Pasáiste or An Pasáiste Thiar?) agreement would still be needed on the English language versions of placenames.
My sister lives in a townland that starts with Kil- (or should it be Kill-?) a very common placename element in Ireland.
Good luck telling people that it always has to be Kil- and never Kill-... Especially if they live in Kill, Co. Kildare (or Kill, Co. Waterford, a favourite village of people from Kilkenny)! :P
What are you going to do with mail that uses Kill- instead of Kil-, a fairly common mistake? Are you going to mark it 'Return to Sender. Incorrect Address.'?
Good luck telling people that it should always be Tober- and never Tubber-, good luck enforcing Caher or Cahir...0 -
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