 Hello, what's poppin? We are on twitch. We are not live, but you can leave a like comment subscribe turn on your post notification Bells let's continue to go to family from Chicago to the UK right behind me Twitch.com, you know I'm saying if we go live you happen to miss it man Just go to this website and type it in this username and you can rewind fast for do your thing man, you know Don't forget. We do got patreon. We post Monday through Friday We have posted for today, and we are all caught up Don't forget. We got merch as well. Yeah, get me Anyway, let's get into this man. Why? Does London have 32 boroughs? This is my J4 man I recently even realized that this was shut up like New York with boroughs and things of that nature, but 32 of them Talk to me. Let me figure out why New York City is divided into five iconic boroughs Paris is divided into 20 unimaginatively named arrondissement and London too is divided into boroughs 32 of them But why 32 why not four or 703? Why does London or indeed any big city need to split itself up into bits? Greater London is fucking enormous with the population about the same as an entire Switzerland If it were run by just one council It would be gargantuanly huge compared to the next biggest one in England a Supercounsel like this would be bureaucratic and inefficient and that inevitably be whole neighborhoods that get totally forgotten about Another reason to divide London up is that it's not just big. It's that makes sense That makes sense. You can't put it put it all on one little piece like yeah, okay Even though whole pieces of it is probably still forgotten or ignored But anyway diverse from the touristy West End to the density populated Victorian inner city to the leafy 20th century suburbs different parts of the capital have different needs and what they spend their money on is a local decision That should I hope that was your son. We decided locally That's why the city is split into several subservient subsections While London had been subdivided like this for centuries. It had never been subdivided very well Before 1965 the area we now call Greater London was made up of 86 This is great effort right here in this video It's why it broke up 1.5 million whatever subscribers Based mostly on ancient church parishes many dating back to the Middle Ages There's lots of evidence of the pre 1965 authorities. You can still see today Walking around London. You may notice street signs that bear unfamiliar names like borough of St. Pancras borough of Hampstead Borough of Finnsbury borough of Hoban borough Paddington Some of these old names survive today as parliamentary constituencies and they also turn up in some unexpected places such as St. Marlven crematorium, which is nowhere near Marlven and St. Pancras cemetery, which is nowhere near St. Pancras These were named after the council that is Look at the cinematography Look at the togetherness. Look at the look at the this is a vibe How come I never found out about this dude until today? That built them and not their locations which in those days were empty countryside The presence of the X-bar as can also be felt in some of the lovely town halls They left behind lots of these gray two-listed buildings have been turned into things Battersea town hall is now Battersea Art Center Hampstead town hall is now WAC art center Hornsey town hall is now Hornsey town hall art center, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. Are they all art centers? I like how they still reuse the buildings instead of tearing them down, man It keeps that keeps that whole vibe that whole I want to come check it out vibe For for tourists. Do you get me? So what was wrong with these old boroughs and why were they gotten rid of? Under the old system in this small area of North Willich The primary school was run by the county borough of East Ham the emergency services by the county borough of West Ham The public Barton library by the Metropolitan borough of Willich and the secondary school by the London county council or within a five-minute walk of each other The 86 authorities varied massively in size and what powers they had there were too many of them And it was a cluttery mess and so in the late 50s. It was decided to slim down from 86 to a more manageable number Suddenly every authority in London was in danger of disappearing except one Right in the middle of the map is the very small and very confusingly named city of London This square mile on the site of roman londinium has always done things differently from the london that surrounds it To this day, they have their own separate police force. I'm not gonna lie london be looking amazing at some point Sometimes it don't be but like a lot of the time It do Anyways, wait, he's teaching me something. Okay Fusingly named city of london This square mile on the site of roman londinium has always done things differently from the london that surrounds it To this day, they have their own separate police force separate taxes and separate lord mayor The corporation that runs the city of london is so old nobody knows how old it is The oldest document we can find is from around 12 something with a little paragraph We could talk for hours about what makes the city of london weird Hey, nah, bro You going crazy At this point, I didn't know that this level of editing was going to even be in this video How can you do this? From around 12 something with a little paragraph we could talk for hours I might have edited this video for him That's rough All right That's about what makes the city of london weird basically due to its historical importance The city was going to be left alone as it was but the rest of london was getting a complete overhaul This is the first attempt at a new map drawn up in 1957 by the inventor of greater london Sir Edwin Herbert with 52 new boroughs So why wasn't it kind of looks like a cranium with a brain inside of it Used When this map was shown to the man who had to approve the new boroughs Minister for housing and local government Keith St. John Joseph He didn't like it for two reasons. I don't like it for two reasons One these suburban fringes aren't going to be part of london after all and b These boroughs are still too small a proper borough should function like a city in its own right It should Is this some type of a hidden message? What's going on? This not a shape of a real borough in there a borough in there Could have a natural center for shops and services good unbroken lines of communication like roads and rail and a population No smaller than 200,000 a tried and tested size for an efficient council And they began the task of creating the new bigger more powerful boroughs each one more equal than the last This would be achieved by merging the old 86 authorities together in new combinations Some neighbors were happy to dutifully partner up But some authorities actually most of them were not feeling cooperative making the puzzle much trickier to solve Bitter long-term rivals east ham and west ham were furious about being made to merge Hornsey was begging for an up-down alliance with lovely south gate rather than a side-to-side one with smelly totnam Woolwich was refusing to give up its weird little enclaves north of the river Thames A map anomaly dating back to william the conqueror But this was precisely the sort of silliness getting rid of this entire exercise was the point of Wandsworth argued that it already met the criteria to carry on as a borough on its own And it did but what would then have happened to little Battersea? It couldn't join the surrounding Wandsworth or the new combined borough would be too big The only solution was to slice the old ones within two Fights like this were happening in every corner of the capital But arguably Keith's most controversial combination was here in northwest london Wembley was a mostly homoaning mostly Tory voting leafy suburb Wilson was a mostly renting mostly labor voting urban neighborhood As well as being nothing alike the two sides were isolated from each other There were only two small roads connecting them Keith was inundated with angry letters from both sides opposing the merger But since all the surrounding boroughs had been solved really nicely and he was in no mood to start all over again The improbable and impractical shotgun marriage between Wembley and wilson had to go ahead There was no way to give all 86 Is this is this honestly the what editing does to a video? You make it this more entertaining like if I feel like he was just reading this straight through without these edits Like I'd be a little bit bored This guy has got it figured out She started editing more More than I already do because I am one of the best on the platform. That's crazy Authorities what they wanted but of the thousands of potential solutions Keith calculated that the pattern to make the fewest people unhappy was this one The answer to the question how many boroughs should greater london have was 32 In the end Keith did rather a neat job But the fighting was far from finished the 32 new boroughs now needed names I'll never make the mistake of Rather than cause any more arguments Keith let the new boroughs come up with their own suggestions for what they should be called But they came back with some really stupid names like I don't even know the 30 Osselton Gore Sorenson spread chiggle wanwood 32 and three of them wanted to be called riverside including one not on the river If they want to be trusted to come up with their own names, they have to stick to these rules A give clear indication of location. It's got to be somewhere people have heard of two No silly made-up words and most important of all for Absolutely no double-barreled or unwieldy long names Under these new rules most boroughs chose one of their existing names in most cases It was obvious which one was most deserving especially harrow Usually the honor went to the borough with the biggest population But sometimes it went instead to the borough considered to be the most historically significant and yes, this makes sense Did cause massive arguments It was bad enough being conquered by your neighbor, but imagine having to take their name as well That's like telling the people of scotland. You're called england now except know when near as big a deal If councils couldn't agree on an existing name They either had to come up with a neutral compromise or have a neutral compromise imposed upon them East ham and west ham put it to local residents to pick a new name Which predictably resulted in the suggestions hamstrung ham sandwich and ham sweet ham The councils ignored these and became new ham or knew them The rest of the new solutions however were nowhere near as inspired and nearly all broke rule a Before 1965 hardly anyone was familiar with the ancient names of havering tower hamlets Or hillington which was only chosen because the grandfather of one of the civil servants was a rector of the tiny parish with that name More low lights include red bridge named after a red bridge demolished in 1921 that no one That's not bad though remembers the dully monosyllabic brent a poor choice given that a brent tube station already existed and wasn't in brent And in my opinion the worst one haringate named after a small neighborhood at the southern tip of the borough But with one of the a's removed and one of the a's turned Hang on one of the gag got the members in there though into an e the two spellings have been confusing londoners ever since The 32 names had nearly all been agreed when keith received a letter from the influential and very important Captain john litchfield member of parliament for chelsea the letter said you better not forget the name chelsea when you name Our new borough or i'm gonna come around here. I'm gonna feel I'm gonna watch this in the foolish wiffy, but I already promised the royal borough of kensington They could keep their name. He said what could he do? To save his own skin He let both sides have their way producing the absurd dodeca syllabic the royal borough of kensington and chelsea Keith's own rules made it very clear that this sort of name wasn't allowed and it was quite an insult to the much Oh well get over it larger groups of people who'd campaigned Hard for and deppford and and battersy as usual It was one rule for the very posh who get taken seriously when they complain and another rule for everyone else After the decades of pressure the ministry relaxed the ban on and in 1979 when hammer smith gained an and fulham and in 1980 when barking gained an and dagginham And that's how we got the 32 boroughs with the 32 names that we're still using today I'm not gonna lie. This is very informal And very entertaining at the same time. I had no idea But that's only half the story. How are the london boroughs run today? How is life different from one borough to the next? How can you tell when you've crossed a border from one to the other and which borough has the best logo? Find out all of this and less in part two What is it part two? I'm thinking of downloading Nord VPN to encrypt that into my VPN See y'all don't leave a like, comment, subscribe, turn on your post, like that