Talk:Second city of the United Kingdom/Archive 1

Split from Second city article

This page has been separated from the main Second city article because of the controversial history of the title of "second city of the United Kingdom". The constant edits and reversions to the UK section were seen as damaging to the development of the other nations' sections, so it was decided to confine the heated debate to this separate article. This will then, hopefully, allow the main article to develop in peace. I would ask any future editors to think twice before merging the two articles back together again. Thank you. Road Wizard 17:20, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Past discussions

There has been a long series of discussions about which city deserves the title of "second city of the United Kingdom", many of which can be found on the Talk:Second city page. Road Wizard 17:20, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Great Idea!

This is a great idea seperating the United Kindom's Second City article because there is so much information to go with this and alot of edits are made to the old one!

Environmental factors

As I don't want to get in to a revert war with the anonymous user on 88.104.160.21 (talk · contribs) and 88.104.168.43 (talk · contribs) I don't want to revert his/her changes to the article for a second time, so I'm prompting a discussion here.

The 'Environmental Factors' paragraph basically boils down, once the hyperbole is taken out, to 'Manchester has more environmental initiatives than Birmingham'. I don't think this says anything particularly relevant about which is considered the 'second city', so I don't think it should be in the article. Any other opinions? --Nick Boalch 09:14, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

• I must admit that I am a little wary of this paragraph, as trying to decide which city has a better set of 'Environmental Factors' comes very close to breaking the no original research rule. Simply stating one of the possible factors and then saying that it shows Manchester is better is not really a balanced argument. To make it a balanced argument, you would have to include questions like:

• Which city has the better air quality? (Manchester has a greater density of motorways than Birmingham, so this may adversely affect Manchester's claim).
• Which city has more open spaces and park land? (Physical environment of the city would be very important).
• What are the comparative levels of noise nuisance in each city? (Many people find a noisy city to be a poor environment).
• What recycling facilities do the 2 cities offer?

There are other questions which could be asked about the Environment, but even trying to answer the ones above will break the no original research rule, unless you can find a source which has already studied them.

Having said that though, we can at least try to come up with a phrasing that is NPOV enough for the article. The current paragraph will need to be watered down tremendously, the sources removed, other possible factors mentioned and a conclusion that it is impossible to determine which city comes out on top on environmental factors. Road Wizard 09:40, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I wrote the paragraph because the environment is very important and Manchester does have a larger stronghold on Environment. I added what I could find on Birmingham to make it NPOV but how can an article about two competing cities ever become NPOV as there is no fixed answer to the Question of what is the second city. I simply added this as today it has relevance to the potential of a city. This article should give facts from both cities and allow the reader to determin which is greater on all counts because if you tell them which is then that is completly biased. 88.104.168.43 (talk · contribs) 14:01, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

First of all, thanks for adding the Environmental Factors section to the article, without your contribution we wouldn't even be considering including environmental issues in the article. Wikipedia is a collaborative effort and a lot of the advantage it gains is through editors having differing perspectives on an issue and coming up with new ideas.

Getting to your point above, I must agree with some of what you say. The environment of a city and its environmental policies often affect people's perceptions of that city greatly. It is useful to have this as a section of the article, and it is good that you have tried to make the section NPOV by including information about Birmingham. Even so, it is still an unbalanced argument. This is not meant as a criticism of you however, because as I said, Wikipedia is a collaborative effort - one editor adds a statement and another editor can come along and tidy it up. The problem I have with the section is that it only really mentions one aspect of the environment - biofuel. That one particular company has said it will trial a scheme involving one type of biofuel in Manchester, whilst being a useful fact, does not in itself give Manchester a greater claim to being second city. In fact, you could counter that argument by saying that Birmingham hosted the "Environmentally Friendly Vehicles Conference" in 2005. By hosting an international conference on how to move forward in cleaner fuels, you could say that Birmingham is the one to "lead the way in the UK" as you have claimed for Manchester. The only way I can see this moving forward is if we try to balance out the section as you cannot really prove which city's policies have had a greater effect on the environment without doing original research.

As a final point, you may wish to consider alternative forms of action when your edits have been reverted. Simply putting a section back into an article once someone has removed it won't really solve anything, as the other editor is likely to remove it again later. What is often a better way of handling the issue is placing a comment on the user's talk page asking for their reasons for reverting your work. Once you know their reasons you can try to find a phrasing of your statements that they won't object to and then put them back into the article. If for some reason you are unable to resolve the issue that way, you can also place the reverted statement on the article's talk page and ask for comments from other editors - if the other editors agree that your statements are justified then it is less likely that a single editor will be able to revert your work. I hope this advice helps you in your work at Wikipedia. Thanks. Road Wizard 14:25, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I did not want to do too much original research as then it would mean me writing paragraphs full of facts about one topic when this article is supposed to be about the Second City of the United Kingdom I just wanted to write a short paragraph outlining the main points each city has for researchers to decide for themselves which they believe to be the second city. There is no answer so again all we can do is give the facts which are important to a city's status. Manchester2k6 16:37, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Other

Would it be possible for this article not to read like, for want of a better phrase, a pissing contest? It's not an essay to prove which city is the second city, but this seems to be the intent behind most of the points presented in the article at my time of writing. Matthew 10:14, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Matthew the only reason you say this is because you are from the West Midlands yourself and there are several more points for Manchester than there are for Birmingham. Please contribute to the article but remember to use NPOV and balance out the Manchester facts. User:Manchester2k6 16:29, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd say it wherever I was from (which, incidentally, isn't the West Midlands - I just live here). It's quite tiresome to see the 'Rah rah rah Birmingham/Manchester is best!' arguments over and over and over again: it just goes round and round in circles and the lists of facts can potentially go on for just as long. Can't we simply stick to the point of the article and leave the incessant second-city supremacy argument for the pub? Matthew 18:57, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

No, leave this article if you do not like it nobody is forcing you to read it. Wikipedia is about giving the facts and just because you may have heard them more than once does not mean the whole world should not be able to view them.

Manchester2k6 20:29, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I suppose that what I'm trying to articulate is that there comes a point when all this points-scoring will overburden the article and any point will get lost in the detail. What exactly do all the minor points - especially those introduced with emotive words such as 'lead' or 'forefront', which cannot easily be quantified and proven - add to the overall theme of 'Traditionally Birmingham has been seen as the UK's second city but now some consider it to be Manchester'? Aren't the links to the BBC stories sufficient to demonstrate this? Matthew 20:51, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I have to say that, as I've previously commented on Talk:Second_city, I largely agree with Matthew. I'm far from convinced that any of this extra detail is helpful. --Nick Boalch 21:38, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Recent views of second city

I've reverted the wording of this to remove the wording 'many' and put something more NPOV. It's better to let the reader decide the scale of the recent views of Manchester's status. Matthew 21:58, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't think anyone should have a problem with this. --Nick Boalch 22:11, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

We should find someone from London to write this article because the only people who write it are West Midlanders and Mancunians so there will never be a NPOV especially when the West Midlanders revert the comment that many believe that Manchester deserves the title it is just plain petty. ALSO the point that Birmingham has generally been considered the second city is not backed up. A book, written by somebody in Stroud which is not very far from Birmingham, is not very good evidence for this claim so perhaps we should all start to change this daily?

One's location is not a barrier to being objective and presenting the facts in such a way that the reader can make up his own mind over what they mean. 'Many' isn't a very good word to use in the context it was used - what does it mean? More than one? A million? Better to use something objective and to let the reader decide whether or not there are 'many' involved.

NB Stroud's about as far from Birmingham as York is from Manchester, and I wouldn't expect people from Stroud to identify with Birmingham any more than I would expect people from York to identify with Manchester (i.e., not much). I agree, though, that there could perhaps be a better source to verify that Birmingham has generally considered the second city: how about something like [[1]]? Matthew 18:43, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

You would think that The Economist would be reliable but really they have done no research into what the second city is. They are not interested. They think the United Kingdom is made up of London and the rest of it. The magazine rarely has anything about business or economics outside the capital as if it doesn't go on anywhere else. As The Economist has nothing to back up the Birmingham claim in my opinion it is not massively useful.

The point isn't that The Economist has performed research into which city is the second city. Rather, it is that The Economist has used 'second city' to refer to Birmingham in a context that is not concerned with evaluating which city is the second city, thus reflecting the traditional view of Birmingham as the second city. Scanning the first few pages of results of searches for '"second city"' on other national UK news websites (e.g., The Guardian, BBC News, and The Telegraph shows a continuation of this trend. In these returned results I don't see any that use 'second city' to refer to Manchester - the only items that come up are those that report the recent surveys noted in the main Wikipedia article. Matthew 22:31, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I did a googlefight on 'Manchester second city' and 'Birmingham second city'. Manchester won 19.5 million to 19.3 million. Pretty conclusive evidence... and you can hardly get more up to date!!

Two points:

1) Try Googlefighting 'Manchester "second city"' and 'Birmingham "second city"', to prevent sites with text such as 'Manchester City scored their second goal in the 59th minute' from being recorded in the scores. Doing this I get 115,000 returns for the first search term versus 195,000 for the second.

2) Googlefight makes no reference to the quality of the results - look at what exactly is being returned, and you'll see a very high number of it of it is the same news reports about those surveys being recycled over and over again across different sites. This doesn't reflect any changes in usage or the general view held. See comments further up for how the media at least is using the term 'second city'.

So not exactly compelling. Matthew 21:52, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

My research was a little tongue-in-cheek! Merely a comment on the state of the argument. Maybe the nebulous defintion of a second city should be pinned down to the most number of comedy clubs per square mile or would a one mile radius of the town hall be better? I'm living in Buenos Aires at the moment. Down here nobody has really heard of Birmingham, (and I do mention it as I went to university there). Everybody talks of Manchester United (of course), and knows Manchester music. Regarding a city's importance, is that observation any less valid than another? I did another googlefight on "Manchester, UK" and "Birmingham, UK" (just to rule out any interference from those US namesakes). Manchester returns 16.2 million to Birmingham's 5.7 million. London returns 95 million. The web has spoken!!

Heh - point taken. But any large Google result can be explained away because the detail is impossible to analyse! For instance, 'Manchester, UK' would return hits for addresses ending 'Greater Manchester, UK' whereas 'Birmingham, UK' would miss out because there's a West Midlands, UK, but no Greater Birmingham, UK. Lies, damned lies, and statistics, and all that.

Incidentally, tying into the mention of nebulous definitions, I plan a re-write of this article at some point in the future. It will attempt to strip out the advocacy back and forths of 'We have more people!' 'But we have biodiesel and Liam Gallagher!' 'Yeah, but we have Ozzy and Spaghetti Junction!' 'We have a bigger airport!' 'We have a bigger railway station!' 'We've had an IRA bomb!' 'So have we!' etc. and report what appears to be the actual position. Also, factual inaccuracies would be removed - for instance, York, Winchester, etc. have never been a contender for second city of the UK. England, perhaps; UK, no. Matthew 12:33, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, it is interesting that you mention the music scene, because it's something I was thinking about a few days ago when someone was making edits to the music section of the Birmingham page. For all its big-selling artists (Led Zeppelin 250m+, Black Sabbath 100m+, Duran Duran 50m+ - all figures from Best_selling_music_artists, Birmingham isn't really thought of as having a particular music scene. This is perhaps because of the album art for Led Zep IV featuring a picture of some now-demolished flats in the Black Country. ;-) Matthew 12:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Article stance

Once again I don't want to breach a personal 1RR by reverting the edits of 88.104.165.91 (talk · contribs), although I must say I'm becoming more than a little fed up of having accusations of vandalism thrown at me by this user.

We need to have a clear plan for this article. In the past there has been a clear consensus to maintain as balanced a coverage as possible between Manchester and Birmingham in order to avoid precisely what's happening now: anonymous users with non-NPOV agenda pointlessly lengthening the article with arbitrary facts and statistics intended to assert the dominance of one city over the other.

Can we please reaffirm that this is the stance we, as editors, intend this article to take? --Nick Boalch 11:40, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Balancing between Manchester and Birmingham does not mean you have to delete peoples facts or else this article will never develop. Do something constructive for once and add stuff about Birmingham to balance rather than being destructive and destoying other peoples work. It repulses me to the core when people behave like that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.219.47.2 (talk • contribs) 09:42, 16 May 2006

Arbitrary, random and often unencyclopaedic facts transparently intended to bias the article one way or the other can hardly be described as 'constructive' (or, for that matter, 'work'). Believe me, we've been fighting the NPOV battle on this article for a long, long time. --Nick Boalch 11:15, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Population edits

I disagree with the recent edits to the Population section for the following reasons:

1) People in Wolverhampton, Dudley, Walsall, etc. do not think of themselves as part of the same 'city' as Birmingham. These towns all have perfectly well-defined centres of their own, though they. Residents would think of themselves as part of the same conurbation, but one wouldn't ever catch someone from Wolverhampton saying that he was from Birmingham and he certainly wouldn't think of himself as a Brummie. I am just supposing here, but I would expect residents of Bolton, Stockport, Oldham, etc. to think along similar lines with regard to being part of the same 'city' as Manchester.

2) The claim that the Greater Manchester conurbation is significantly larger than the West Midlands conurbation does not stack up with Largest_urban_areas_of_the_European_Union, which shows the two conurbations to be of such similar size that I don't think the difference is worth noting (it states that there is a difference of only 38,000 people between the two conurbations).

Thoughts?

(For an indication that User:131.111.8.102 may not be writing according to NPOV, I note that he has been playing silly buggers recently on the Birmingham page with regard to the second-city debate, but not on the Manchester page. Sigh.) Matthew 00:25, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I've been bold and updated the population information to compare conurbation with conurbation, and - fingers crossed - made this part of the article relatively future proof (assuming the two conurbations remain approximately equally sized). What seems to have been happening previously was the comparison of a county to a conurbation, with the concomitant anomaly being produced.

I'm still uncomfortable with the wording with regard to the conurbations being thought of as 'cities', though, at least on the part of Birmingham and the West Midlands. Matthew 11:40, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I've added 2001 Census data about both populations. In my view, the fact that some residents dislike being thought of as Brummies or Mancs does not negate including a poulation comparison of the two conurbations. Conurbations are generally formed as the result of an influencial central city. In light of this, I believe the paragaph about the London parallel should be revised. --Adzz 07:52, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Agreed - people around these parts (I'm in the Black Country), at least, don't think of themselves as being part of Birmingham or even 'Greater Birmingham', which seems to imply to the locals that they are somehow less than the residents of Birmingham. They're quite happy to accept, however, that they're part of the same conurbation as Birmingham. London seems different in that a resident of a given borough seems to identify as part of a rather large city, and hence I do not think the parallel stands on a West Mids:London basis at least. Matthew 18:21, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I live in Bromsgrove and would be more than happy to be labelled as Greater Birmingham, it makes sense as all bus routes and rail routes seem to lead into Brum, most people seem to speak the same, have the same brands of shops, head to Brum for entertainment etc, I have friends in other parts of the black country who feel exactly the same, the only acception I can think of is Coventry. I don't see Greater Birmingham as taking anything away from the smaller towns or their identities, it just seems to make great sense? When you abroad the discussion goes.. "where are you from?" - "England" - "where in England?" - "Walsall" - "where?" - "by Birmingham" - "Ok" then you tell them everything great about Walsall Nick Boulevard 11:07, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Nick - I think that this just serves to prove my point. People would say that they are from Walsall, Wolverhampton, etc., and then further pinpoint where this is (if the other person doesn't know) by saying that they're by Birmingham, rather than considering themselves part of the city. This doesn't preclude acceptance that they're all part of the same conurbation, centred (however wonky this centring actually is! ;-)) around Birmingham.

I can't speak for our north-western cousins, but the impression that I get is that they're more likely to say that they're from Manchester right off the bat, perhaps in good part due to the county being named Greater Manchester and therefore containing the name of its main city.

NB My ears can tell a definite difference between Brummie and Yam-Yam, and I've only lived in the region for under three years! ;-) And at work (in Brum) there's a fair bit of friendly banter between the two sides about the respective accents. Matthew 14:00, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

No, I'm afraid most people from the larger Black Country towns (and the city of Wolverhampton) do not consider themselves to be part of Birmingham, and get rather uppity about the suggestion. Comparing like with like, Wolverhampton, Dudley and Walsall are rather larger than, say, Bolton, Stockport and Oldham and so have more "gravity" of their own. Indeed, according to List of English cities by population, Wolverhampton is the 13th largest urban area in England, Dudley is 19th and Walsall is 28th, with the largest of the "other" Greater Manchester towns being Bolton at 37th.

West Midlands is pretty much a true multi-centred conurbation which is less and less dominated by Birmingham (which is off the to SE of the centre) the more northerly and westerly that you go, whereas Greater Manchester is centred on Manchester which dominates the surrounding towns more fully. Steven J 00:49, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Wilmslow Road bus route

Is this claim actually verifiable by reference to any kind of statistics? I wouldn't be surprised if it's a student urban myth to impress freshers; I recall a few similar - equally unsubstantiated - claims about where I was at university (York).

And is a single busy bus route of any real relevance to this article?

PS I have made some edits to this article today to try to make this article a bit more objective than it is. Your thoughts are appreciated - see the edit history for details. Matthew 00:25, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

As a York alumnus who knows what the number 4 is like on a bad day, I wouldn't be able to make any grand claims about York buses and keep a straight face. On the other hand I have heard various factoids not about Wilmslow Road but about Oxford Road, supposedly the busiest bus route in the UK, Europe or even the whole world depending on who you ask. Still, like you I question the relevance of bus frequencies to the second city debate. 172.206.82.254 03:04, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality dispute

As predicted the back-and-forth additions for one city or the other has escalated into a neutrality dispute. I've reverted right back to the initial version of this article which I excerpted from Second city back in May, most of which is carefully phrased to take a neutral stance between Manchester and Birmingham. In general it avoids unnecessary detail, however I think there is a lot that could still be cut: I don't particularly see the usefulness of the 'Other criteria' section, for instance. -ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 14:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

This looks good from where I'm sat. And I wouldn't dispute the removal of the 'Other criteria' section. The point of this article, IMHO, should be to describe the situation of the UK's second city as it is, not to advocate one city over another or to try to set out what the criteria for measuring a second city are. The former is not a subject for Wikipedia, if I have the site's aims correctly interpreted, and the latter is a subject for the more general Second city page, unless there are specific criteria that apply to the UK alone. Matthew 19:52, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

This is an incredibly POV-ist and pro-Brummie-is-the-second-city-as-decreed-by-God page. I suggest we de-POV both this page and the Birmingham and Manchester pages to bring them back into line with Wikipedia NPOV guidelines. MarkThomas 11:53, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

What, in particular? As I say above, the article has been very carefully phrased to take a neutral stance. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 12:24, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

NGB - for context, you may also want to refer to the discussion on the Talk:Birmingham page. I would suggest that MarkThomas is pushing a POV agenda of his own, according to his own criteria, though your view may differ. Matthew 16:49, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

To clarify, the point on the Birmingham page is that there is considerable contention that Manchester is the second city, not Birmingham; this is so well known that it ought to be reflected in the intro, but users like Majabl and others who live in or around Birmingham (according to their pages) repeatedly try to claim on the page that incontrovertibly Birmingham is the second city; I think it speaks for itself that they have the POV and not me and those like me who try to correct this in the interests of a balanced WP. The POV on this page arises from the opening statements like "In England, Birmingham has generally been considered the second city since around the First World War [1]. More recently, many have claimed that Manchester deserves the distinction [2] [3]. " Firstly, if anything, the position was clearer historically that Manchester was regarded as second city; that is why for example it was the only city outside London to have national newspapers published there, and why in the early part of World War 2 it was considered as an alternative base of government if London became unlivable, just to give a couple of pertinent supporting arguments. Secondly, the joke immediately following the Manchester reference scorns a perfectly valid discussion. Manchester is effectively the number 2 outside London for governmental headquarters; for the media; for transportation (eg, Manchester airport); for conurbation population and by many other criteria. The whole discussion of "second city" on WP is distorted on WP by pro-Birmingham irrational commentators; survey after survey in the UK gives huge leads to Manchester for this role. Hence the NPOV warning. Really the whole thing should be edited. MarkThomas 18:59, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Expansion

Expansion of this article under the different headings no longer seems possible with some many people breathing down your neck. Every little point you put in is scrutinized and most of the time opposed because it then makes this article to look like a "pissing contest" as someone said above. You would end up with someone saying that that point is making the article appear biased to one city causing someone to request a point to oppose it from the other city. Personally, I find this ridiculous and we should loosen up. If we cannot expand this article with all these restrictions, then the point of the article appears ridiculous. - Erebus555 17:37, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Westminster

Technically, Westminster is counted as a city, even though it is in the centre of London. Nonetheless, would this qualify? Simply south 17:10, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

No, because the capital city, London, covers Westminster. In fact, if you want to be very technical, Westminster is the actual capital city as it is where the British government is based! David 15:38, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Dublin

Georgian Dublin was is often referred to as having been "the second city of the British Empire". it was obviously in the UK at the time. It should get a mention shouldn't it? Lozleader 19:56, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I dug into this a little when I was writing a brief overview of the history of the UK's second city at Second city. In the end I didn't mention Dublin on that page because the impression I got was that Dublin was the second city of the Empire in the 18th century, but Ireland didn't become a part of the UK until 1801, by which time it seems to have been surpassed. I certainly think that in the history section of this page it would be worth mentioning why Dublin wasn't the second city of the UK yet was known for a time as the second city of the British Empire. Matthew 23:45, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Right. it was before the Union. i should have spotted that. Lozleader 08:25, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

No problem - I thought exactly the same as you before looking into things a bit more deeply! Matthew 18:07, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Hong Kong

When Hong Kong was a part of the UK was it ever argued that it was its second city, or does this only take Great Britain as an Island into account? 84.70.158.149 14:25, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Hong Kong was never part of the UK as such. It was a Crown Colony. This page takes into account anything that is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. MarkThomas 14:36, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Recent edits

Quite predictably, one particular editor, majabl, has just hosed the page down with fact tags. Come on - if you want to debate the facts, debate them, but don't destroy perfectly good readable pages. It's an abuse of the tag to do that and there is already an POV warning at the top. We already know from your track record majabl that you have a deeply pro-Birmingham agenda, and that's fine, just come clean about it and say that's your POV. Mine is that there is considerable dispute as to which is the second city and this article should reflect that. Anyone can play games with tags. MarkThomas 19:17, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

For the record, I do not consider myself have a particular POV and am happy to concede all these points if they are satisfactorily backed up. If not then they amount to nothing more than speculation - perhaps this is rigorous enough for you but I prefer a bit more meat to such things. My agenda, as you would term it, is pro-evidence, something you have in the past been poor at providing conclusively. Matthew 20:03, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Just to expand a little further, you're again coming up with your own criteria, making assertions that support these criteria, and concluding accordingly. This is far from encyclopaedic. Matthew 20:11, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Ah yes, another Birmingham fan! And this from the man who believes Dublin is part of the UK. (see above) MarkThomas 20:13, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

For over a hundred years, Dublin was part of the UK. Your point being? Matthew 20:22, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

England v United Kingdom

This article can't make its mind up between being "Second city of the United Kingdom" or the "Second city of England". The Birmingham v. Manchester lark really is an English matter - the second city of the United Kingdom is quite frankly got to be Edinburgh.

I see that Second city of England is a deadlink. Time for expansion? David 15:41, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

If you can cite Edinburgh, reliably, without it being original research, go ahead. But quite frankly I think you have more chance of making a square circle. And hence I don't see what an expansion would really add, unless you want to pull an article together about the time when Glasgow was the UK's second city. Though that'd probably require a trip to the library rather than to the web, I'd imagine, to dig out decent sources. Matthew 23:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

This article is blatant POV

Just because Manchester wants to be the second city, or thinks it ought to be, doesn't mean that it is. This article makes it seem like its claim is almost as valid as Birmingham's. All the cultural garbage is unquantifiable. B'ham is twice as big as Manchester, and its metropolital area is also bigger than Manchester's. TharkunColl 12:52, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Birmingham has a European-standard shopping centre in the Bull Ring. Only Mancunians think Manchester is the second city. It's famous for its prostitution and gang warMerkinsmum 20:56, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

In my experience many people from other parts of Britain do not believe Birmingham to be the second city; I recall for example that the BBC, when deciding where to site their major regional office outside London, immediately and unhesitatingly chose Manchester. Similarly, national newspapers always had their second office in Manchester rather than Birmingham, and many more international consulates are present in Manchester than Brum. So it's not just a Manchester or Birmingham set of opinions. That's what this page is about - the controversy. Denying the controversy exists is a POV but not a valid POV. MarkThomas 19:32, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Birmingham is the second city by any definition:

• City of Birmingham: 1,001,200; City of Manchester: 441,200
• Birmingham conurbation: 2,284,093; Manchester conurbation: 2,240,230
• West Midlands county: 2,591,300; Greater Manchester county: 2,547,700

By what right, therefore, should the picture of Manchester go above that of B'ham? TharkunColl 16:07, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The point of the article (carried on from our article at Second city) is that second city 'status' isn't just a question of population numbers, and that in the case of the UK a combination of other factors complicate the question of which city can be called 'second'. There's no agreement in the country as to which city is 'second', which is why our article doesn't attempt to claim that one is or isn't. Does it really matter which order the pictures come in? --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 16:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

And that's why the whole article is fundamentally flawed, because apart from population size, what other objective criteria are there? For every Oasis (or what-have-you) that Manchester produces, Birmingham could counter with a Moody Blues, Led Zep, or Black Sabbath - in other words, all other factors are purely subjective. And in any case, you are incorrect. Birmingham is generally known as the second city - it's just that Manchester wants to be, and its supporters have been somewhat vocal about it. I've a very good mind to make this article just a redirect to Birmingham. TharkunColl 17:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Go ahead - you will be overturned. Your extreme POV on this is not shared by everyone, and more importantly, has often been disputed nationally in the press and elsewhere - hence the very reason for the existence of the page. And for god's sake, it doesn't bloody matter which order the pictures are in! MarkThomas 17:26, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Clearly you thought it mattered, otherwise you wouldn't have bothered reverting. Since Birmingham is actually bigger than Manchester, however you define their boundaries, then it makes more sense to put it first. TharkunColl 18:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually the figures you cite are subject to considerable doubt; they are estimates and given the wide latitude that National Statistics has to do those, and given the underlying huge gaps in data in the last census for the largest cities in the UK, and the narrow gap in the figures you quote, it's actually anyone's guess which is for example the largest conurbation. Also it is not categorically agreed what should be put into each conurbation and what's out; and the UK govt do not officially define either conurbations or the more internationally accepted "metropolitan areas". See the archives of this page and talk Birmingham and talk Manchester for more, where this has been endlessly discussed; there is nothing either original or (as you think) objectively accurate beyond all doubt in your POV. MarkThomas 19:30, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I hate to upset this one (as I fundamentally agree with the argument), the ONS do define the conurbations as being continuous built up areas within (I think) 50m. As the ONS are a Government body, then the Government do define the extents of the conurbations. Fingerpuppet 22:21, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

To dispute the figures is special pleading, especially when all three, independently, state B'ham's as bigger. I assume you are not suggesting that the city figures might be off by half a million or so? In which case the city of Birmingham is far, far bigger than the city of Manchester, and this, after all, is an article entitled "second city", not "second conurbation". I have seen it argued that Manchester's boundaries were drawn "artifically tight", or some such rot - try telling that to Salford, which I'm sure would appreciate the implication that it has no right to exist. Yet Manchester could annex the whole of Salford, and still wouldn't have enough people to beat B'ham. TharkunColl 19:40, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

But your figure of "half a million" comes from the Local Authority area populations. If Wikipedia treats those as definitive, the London pages should be removed, apart from a small page for the City of London. Will you deal with that TharkunColl? MarkThomas 20:58, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

This is just an attempt to muddy the waters and create the impression that there might be some dispute as to sizes. London - the whole of it - does have a local goernment; it's called the Greater London Authority and has Ken Livingstone at its head. TharkunColl 00:06, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

The rationale, I think (and I kid you not), is that it's by alphabetical order based on the name of the square. The original ordering when this page was created (see here) was Birmingham's Centenary Square followed by Manchester's Exchange Square. Cue a few reordering edit wars, and someone swapped Exchange Square for Albert Square. This either satisfied whoever was involved in the editing back and forth, or someone got bored, or whatever, and A followed by C is how things have remained until currently, when it seems B before M is becoming more important. Or whatever. Matthew 20:46, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm. Perhaps I should change the photo to Aadvark Square in B'ham (joke). TharkunColl 00:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

This is all completely mad. Yes, by any census population definition, whether that be by Local Authority or by Urban Sub-area, Birmingham is far bigger than Manchester. However, Manchester dominates the Greater Manchester conurbation far more than Birmingham dominates the West Midlands conurbation (probably because there is no Black Country equivalent, nor other city the size and economic importance of Wolverhampton within the GMUA), and the population of the conurbations are within the error tolerance of the census away from one another. If you look at other indicators of importance, then the waters are muddied - for example Manchester is far more important a financial centre than Birmingham. Population size alone is not the exclusive indicator, again as an example Newcastle-upon-Tyne is relatively small, but is still an important regional centre. Fingerpuppet 22:21, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

The Black Country and Birmingham are part of the same conurbation. Just look at a map and you will see that all major roads radiate out from B'ham city centre (which is not located in the geographical centre of B'ham but is actually a lot closer to its western side - i.e. towards the Black Country). And unlike Manchester, B'ham is by far the biggest city in its entire region, the West Midlands (not to be confused with the county of the same name). TharkunColl 00:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid you're completely wrong regarding the road network. Once you get west of the M5 all the A roads go from town centre to town centre within the Black Country, before you get to the NW of the area where they all radiate from Wolverhampton, and in the NE of the area they all radiate from Walsall. The A461, for example, goes nowhere near Birmingham City Centre, the A457 actually goes Sedgley - Tipton - Oldbury - Smethwick before turning into a Birmingham radial, A4031 Walsall - West Bromwich, A459 Wolverhampton - Sedgley - Dudley - Netherton - Halesowen. Need I go on? And Birmingham city centre's only offset because of Smethwick getting in the way - once you're north or south of the town, the Birmingham border moves a lot further west. You don't need to desperately claim (incorrectly) the Black Country to back up your Birmingham population point, as I mentioned above. I notice that you argued earlier (quite correctly) that Salford is a separate city from Manchester - why are you arguing the reverse about the towns of the Black Country? Fingerpuppet 00:52, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not arguing that those Black Country towns are part of the city of B'ham - simply that they are part of the B'ham conurbation. Sandwell metropolitan borough, for example, stands in an almost identical geographical relation to B'ham as Salford does to Manchester. As for the roads, what about the major road that runs from B'ham city centre, through Handsworth, then through West Bromwich, Wednesbury, Bilston and finally to Wolverhampton (the A41, if I'm not mistaken)? And yes, of course Wolvo and those other towns have roads radiating from them - that's why they're towns - but that doesn't change the fact that they're part of a bigger system that radiates from B'ham. (As, of course, everywhere in England is from London, ultimately - but were talking conurbations here.) TharkunColl 01:03, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

You mean the A41? It's as much a Wolverhampton radial as it is a Birmingham one. Once again it (or at least the original route prior to the new Black Country Spine Road) goes from town centre to town centre, as you've said yourself. One road does not "all major roads" make. As for your "bigger system that radiates from Birmingham", let's take all the A roads that leave the West Midlands county west of the M5, round Stourbridge, Wolverhampton, Walsall until we meet the Birmingham MBC boundary at Sutton Coldfield. Only A456 is a Birmingham radial; A458 goes via Stourbridge and Halesowen; A451's a Stourbridge radial; A4101 comes from Dudley; A463 goes cross-Black Country; A449, A454, A41, A449, A460 are all Wolverhampton radials; A34, A461 and A454 are Walsall radials, and A452 manages to avoid Birmingham city centre entirely by about 4 miles at the closest point, despite spending a lot of time travelling through the city boundaries. Of course, the routes to the northeast, east and south of Birmingham are clearly all Birmingham radials, but that's to be expected as Solihull isn't large enough to affect things, whereas the urban sub-area of Wolverhampton is comparable with that of Nottingham. This has gone way off on a tangent now, so I'll try to bring it back on topic!

Sandwell MBC (an agglomeration of towns) and Salford (the city, not the MBC) aren't not particularly similar in their geographical relationships to the large city next door. Manchester city centre and Salford city centre are literally on opposite sides of the River Irwell - Sandwell has no "town centre". Imagine if, say, West Bromwich Town Centre was in the location of Aston University - that's how close Manchester and Salford are.

I think you're also misunderstanding the Mancunian argument regarding boundaries as well. I've lived and worked in both conurbations, and it's kind of hard to explain what they mean, but I'll try. In a Birmingham context, it's kind of like the fuzzy feeling that Shirley is part of Birmingham (even though it's in Solihull MBC), as is Great Barr (even though it's in Sandwell MBC) but Sutton Coldfield isn't really (even though it's in Birmingham MBC). Manchester has the same sort of thing, but on a larger scale - Prestwich is part of Manchester (but in Bury MBC), as is Old Trafford (but it's in Trafford MBC) and so on. I guess having your city centre on the edge of the city does that to you!

This whole article, though, is all about the fact that a large number of people think different things regarding the second city, and jusify them in different ways. The debate exists, so what's so wrong with documenting it? (I'm of the mind that it's Birmingham, BTW, though I try to adopt a non-POV attitude to the whole thing) Fingerpuppet 01:44, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

for example Manchester is far more important a financial centre than Birmingham. - out of interest, do you have anything to back that up? I've had a look at Invest in Manchester and at Locate Birmingham, but the Invest in Manchester site doesn't seem to have any figures regarding the output of its financial services sector. Matthew 22:47, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

No, I don't - it was an impression given to me by the fact that I was aware that, for example, there was a branch of the Stock Exchange in Manchester, but until I just double-checked, I didn't think there was one in Birmingham. Fingerpuppet 00:52, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Google Maps indicates that there's a branch in Birmingham too. I'd say that the key measure of the financial sectors is the output figure, rather than branches of x and offices of y. Matthew 01:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I quite agree! I'd be interested to see what figures come out of this. Fingerpuppet 02:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

It's quite tough to track down figures - there's plenty of anecdotal stuff (eg, the large professional-services firm I work for employs a lot more people in Birmingham than it does in Manchester), but that's all just anecdotal. When I was applying for jobs before leaving university in 2003, and deciding which bit of Not London the most opportunity lay in, all the employment blurb was saying that Birmingham had the largest financial and professional services sector outside of London, and that Leeds had the fastest-growing such sector. But, again, no figures, and I'm not sure whether this is for the UK or just for England. :-S Matthew 12:07, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

That's interesting, because Leeds has a very good claim to be the "third city of the UK" (if such an accolade actually exists). With a population of 723,100, it is itself almost twice as big as Manchester. It seems odd, therefore, that Leeds isn't mentioned in the article. By any objective standard that can be measured, B'ham is bigger/more important than Manchester, so the latter always has to fall back on nebulous cultural factures that are literally impossible to quantify. Which is better, Oasis or Led Zepp? Who cares? TharkunColl 12:59, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Leeds is different to the other two in population terms. The population figure of nearly 750,000 refers to the entire local government district which unlike Birmingham MBC and Manchester MBC contains large rural areas and totally separate urban areas such as Wetherby, Guiseley and Garforth. The population of "Leeds proper" is the Leeds Urban Sub-area at 443,237. In addition to that, the conurbation of West Yorkshire is quite a bit smaller than both WM conurbation and the GM Urban Area, and there's an even bigger "Wolverhampton effect" in Bradford, which is right next door. The combination of the above probably causes Leeds to drop out of the equation. Liverpool is possibly too close to Manchester (though interestingly in EU 200m terms, Liverpool and Manchester are part of the same conurbation). The interesting one from my point of view is Glasgow - totally dominant in a relatively large conurbation, yet barely gets mentioned in any "second city" debate.

On another note, this morning BBC Radio WM and BBC Radio Manchester had a combined broadcast today debating the "second city" status. It was very noticeable that "Manchester" used the entire conurbation (plus Wigan) as the basis of their arguments, but "Birmingham" avoided the Black Country/Wolverhampton faux pas. Fingerpuppet 14:03, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Having lived in both Wolvo and Brum for many years in each case, I can assure you that whereas no one suggests that they are not separate towns, at the same time no one disputes that they are part of the same conurbation. There is the Midland Metro that runs directly between the two city centres, and West Midlands buses cover the whole area. Culturally, people from all over will go to B'ham city centre for special nights out, and will make use of the Bull Ring in B'ham. There is indeed a rivalry between B'ham and the Black Country, but local rivalries also exist within B'ham and within the Black Country, and such things always change depending on scale. This massive conurbation supports 4 huge football teams (Blues, Villa, Albion, and Wolves), and local rivalries between these four are very interesting in their shifting alliances - yet no one disputes that all four are "ours" in a way that other teams just aren't. It doesn't surprise me that Manchester, as always, ignores its actual boundaries and concentrates solely on its conurbation - it would be a non-starter otherwise. Personally, I fully accept that the Manchester conurbation is almost as big as B'ham's - but almost is not quite good enough. TharkunColl 15:52, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

That's not what you said before Tharkie baby - you previously kept saying Birmingham was massively bigger than Mancie land. Seems like the worm can turn. :-) Personally I think it's too close to call - the ONS say for example that they "lost" 1m people from Britain's biggest cities in the last census, so god only knows what the true popns of Brum and Manc are. And on the other factors that make a city important such as culture, media, govt, arts, etc, Manchester is well in the lead over Birmingham. MarkThomas 18:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

That is not what I said, and you know it. The city of Birmingham is indeed massively bigger than the city of Manchester - more than twice the size in fact. As for the conurbations, the figures I posted at the top of this section speak for themselves - Manchester's is big, but not quite as big as B'ham's. Same for the metropolitan counties. To state that they are "too close to call" is pure POV, original research, and special pleading - especially when both the conurbation and metropolitan county figures put B'ham ahead by roughly the same amount. As for all your cultural references, they are all hogwash, because you cannot measure them. How about these: crimes per head of population, home of the most hated football team in the world, poverty, polution, etc. etc. Manchester wins with all of these, and frankly it can keep them! None of these, however, have any bearing on the figures. Why do you think B'ham was called the second city in the first place? Because of its size, pure and simple. That's what the term "second city" actually means. For Manchester to claim the title, it first needs to redefine the term, then it needs to convince the rest of us that it's possible to measure culture. It just won't work I'm afraid. TharkunColl 19:13, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I quote from your edits - city of Birmingham is indeed massively bigger than the city of Manchester - more than twice the size in fact. - the conurbation population gap using the ONS estimates you quote is 40,000 on a population of more than 2.2 million. I would hardly call that "massively bigger". It's terribly difficult to keep track of the shifying sands of what passes for logic in your arguments! :-) MarkThomas 22:06, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Presuming to answer for TharkunColl here, the <2% difference in conurbation sizes may be why he wrote 'city of Birmingham is indeed massively bigger than the city of Manchester' and not 'conurbation of Birmingham is ...' Matthew 22:17, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't bother, he's very good at answering! I think we all understand the difference between the local authority definitions and other definitions like conurbation and metropolitan area. My point above that the difference between the conurbation populations is too close to call and that TharkunColl appeared to accept that above in his comment "Personally, I fully accept that the Manchester conurbation is almost as big as B'ham's" which is a change in his position as I pointed out. He then gets in a huff and goes back to the difference in LA estimates which nobody disputes. Given all his shouting all over the place on different talk pages, I find it important to explain the wierd illogic of his thrusts, that's all. :-) MarkThomas 23:28, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

You are deliberately misrepresenting what I wrote (but that appears to be your standard debating tactic - that and trying to get people banned who have the nerve to disagree with you). Matthew above is perfectly correct of course - and I even made it plain that I was referring to the cities by writing "city of" in each case, which was not strictly necessary. You, on the other hand, are deliberately trying to blur the distinction between the cities and the conurbations - for obvious reasons, because the city of Manchester is less than half the size of Birmingham. Please bear in mind that this article is titled "second city", not "second conurbation", so comparing city sizes (not conurbation sizes) is the proper thing to do. I have never claimed that Manchester's conurbation is not almost the size of B'ham's. It is clearly the third biggest conurbation in the UK. TharkunColl 08:34, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

As has been pointed out many times, if we go down the road purely of 'comparing city sizes (not conurbation sizes)' and working only from population statistics then (a) this article is unnecessary and (b) Birmingham is the 'first city', since London wouldn't even make the top 100. Since this would clearly be ridiculous, I invite you to draw the obvious conclusion that matters other than formal city boundaries and population are at stake in the question. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 11:41, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Only the Manchester supporters keep churning out this London thing, but a moment's reflection would show what utter tripe it is. London has a local government called the Greater London Authority. Such conurbation-wide authorities are lacking in B'ham and Manchester. TharkunColl 11:50, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Both Greater Manchester and the West Midlands continue to exist legally as metropolitan counties, in Greater Manchester's case managed by the Association of Greater Manchester Local Authorities. London didn't have any conurbation-wide authority between 1986 and 2000 (the GLC was abolished at the same time as the metropolitan county councils of Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, and the GLA wasn't created until 2000): so according to your argument London stopped being the first city during that period? Hopefully you are beginning to understand the complexities of this issue, and why an article steering a neutral course is the only answer. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 12:00, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I fully understand the complexities of the issue, but in all cases (city, conurbation, metropolitan county), Birmingham is bigger than Manchester. The issue is only so confused because proponents of Manchester have deliberately muddied the waters. Your edit perpetuates the idea that the confusion is real, but this is really Manchester POV, because only Manchester benefit from it. TharkunColl 12:07, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

TharkunColl, will you stop banging on about population sizes. You say Manchester supporters cling to nebulous reasons for their claim that Manchester is second, but frankly the ONLY reason Birmingham is in this contest is because of the size of its population. Historically, culturally and politically Manchester has been second since about 1860. There isn't some bizarre conspiracy to "muddy the waters" over the issue; it's just that as a second city, Birmingham is an embarrassment. The article is fine. 80.5.144.236 16:18, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

That's like saying that the ONLY reason China is the most populous country on earth is because it has the most people in it. The trouble with all these subjective claims for Manchester or wherever is just that - they are subjective. For everything Manchester has going for it Birmingham could make an equally good counter claim (and your knowledge of Birmingham, by the way, is obviously rather limited). The only objective criterion is population, and this is precisely why Birmingham has been called the second city since the First World War. TharkunColl 20:45, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Sixth/Seventh

There is some disagreement about whether we claim Manchester to be the sixth or seventh most populous city in the UK (and, therefore, whether we claim Birmingham to be the first or second). While common sense says that London is obviously the largest city, I suggest that in a paragraph headed by the phrase 'based on formal city boundaries' we need to be more accurate. Greater London is not a city. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 12:02, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Unlike Manchester, which claims a status it does not deserve, Brummies, without chips on their shoulders, have no trouble accepting that they're only the second biggest city, and not the first. And this makes Manchester either seventh or third, depending on whether we go by city or conurbation. TharkunColl 12:09, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, unless the wafer-thin margin in the official ONS estimates between the conurbation-popularly-accepted-to-be-Manchester (much disputed) and the conurbation-popularly-accepted-to-be-Manchester (much disputed) is wrong, which the ONS itself admits it well could be. Then the position would be (1) London (2) Manchester (3) Birmingham. However, other British conurbations are also potential contenders: West Yorkshire and Greater Glasgow / Strathclyde. The latter in particular has a good claim to be larger. So really your posed certainty on this issue TharkunColl is a lot of hogwash. You earlier stated that you intended to redirect this page to Birmingham - are you still going to? We're waiting. MarkThomas 12:38, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

And as I've said before, to dispute the figures as published is POV and original research. For all you know they could be wrong the other way, and make B'ham even bigger. In short, we must rely on the official figures because that's what they are - official figures. If you average out their potential inaccuracies, it makes no sense to say that the figures for one or other of the conurbations is likely to be more wrong than the other one, so the result would still be the same - i.e. B'ham is bigger. TharkunColl 12:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

It's not original research, there are many articles about this in the press, etc. As regards the official figures, there are numerous ways to use statistics - for example, the figures on the article at the moment are not all the same year. The result of which conurbation is biggest would not remain the same if Manchester's population has for example grown just very slightly faster over the last few years than that of Birmingham. The gap between the conurbation populations is only very slight. MarkThomas 16:40, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I have to say I'm with TharkunColl on this one: if we're going to use the official figures then we can't second-guess them. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 17:23, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Wasn't suggesting we do Nick - but it would be useful to have the years the same, eg, all data for a given year, say, 2001 census - then we could compare like with like. MarkThomas 17:39, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Led Zeppelin

There is no mention on Led Zeppelin of LZ being a "Birmingham band" - indeed, it is very clear that they were formed in London and performed internationally from the outset. Does the fact that Plant came from Walsall and Bonham from Redditch make them a Birmingham band? I think not. MarkThomas 16:40, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

This isn't really true - For Joy Divison - Ian Curtis was born in Trafford and raised in Macclesfield and Stephen Morris was born and raised in Macclesfield. Yes Barney and Hooky are from Saltford but if you apply the same reasoning as above then are Joy Division a Manchester band?

Why pop culture?

How about the fact that Tolkien was from B'ham? TharkunColl 16:48, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually this is a sound idea, but for some reason people don't seem to think of literary figures when they compare city importance, not sure why not. MarkThomas 17:39, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Pissing contest

This article is again being spoilt by an unhelpful pissing contest. WHO CAN PISS THE HIGHEST/FURTHEST/FASTEST?! :-( Matthew 18:29, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Point taken, but tall buildings are often a source of competition between cities and as that's the subject of this article, why not include the buildings for example? WP articles are supposed to cover their subject comprehensively. MarkThomas 18:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

But at the same time they're not supposed to be original research, which is what a pissing contest turns into being. Matthew 19:10, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand your reference to original research here Matthew - if the tall building comparisons are sourced and cited, why is that original research? MarkThomas 19:32, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Because it's not a page about which buildings are tallest, it's a page about the second city of the UK. The original research comes first of all having the page argue which city is the second city, and second from deciding that tall buildings are a key factor in this argument. Matthew 21:41, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Still not clear. Why are tall buildings not a factor? I believe "original research" in Wikipedia means publishing the results of one's own thinking as fact. This is not what I was doing - I was publishing easily-checked and sourced information. Also, the page contains a discussion of many criteria as to what constitutes second city. It really just appears to be your opinion that tallest building is not an indicator of this, but it's an opinion that isn't shared by everyone worldwide - for example, there has historically been intense competition between cities like New York and Chicago to have the tallest building and it's often been seen as a badge of pride. MarkThomas 21:56, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

It's not for me to say why tall buildings aren't a factor. It's for anyone wanting to include them as a factor to cite why they are. Until this is cited it is opinion rather than fact. To thus include tall buildings as a factor without relevant citation is to publish the results of one's own thinking (the thought being that tall buildings are an important factor), thus being original research. Matthew 23:44, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

By that standard most of this article, and a good percentage of all the articles on Wikipedia, need to be dumped. You are not talking about the Wikipedia-definition of original research which I quote from Wikipedia:No original research is a term used in Wikipedia to refer to material that has not been published by a reliable source. It includes unpublished facts, arguments, concepts, statements, or theories, or any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material - clearly my tall building comparisons were accurately sourced. The issue you are referring to is the context of what material can justify Second City status. I don't think we are quoting any authoritative source on that in the article, indeed, I doubt there is such a source. So it really is a matter of opinion what is in and out - my opinion is tallest building matters, yours obviously isn't, so be it. MarkThomas 00:19, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I am talking about the Wikipedia definition of original research, and you've even quoted the pertinent part yourself - 'It includes ... any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material'. That's exactly what the uncited inclusion of tall buildings as a key factor in second-city status is ... as well as much of the rest of the article. It needs to be curtailed. Matthew 01:38, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

It wasn't uncited - I gave references for the tallest buildings. MarkThomas 01:59, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Indeed you did, but I wrote the 'uncited inclusion of tall buildings as a key factor in second-city status '. It's that tall buildings are a key factor that's uncited, not the heights of the buildings. Matthew 02:09, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, we're going round in circles. It clearly is not Original Research but "relevance to the article" you are concerned about, the two are different things. Tallest building is a common indicator of city status in many countries, which is why capitals have fights over who has the tallest. I don't have to prove that something is relevant to an article by finding a source that says it's relevant, that's ridiculous. It's for editors generally to determine if something is relevant to an article by recourse to common sense, general knowledge and background information and I'm fine with your opinion that it isn't. But you need to accept that this is your opinion and not some WP policy. Thanks. MarkThomas 02:13, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Mark, go and get a good (preferably academic-level) dictionary. Look up 'analysis' and 'synthesis', and consider the definitions in relation to the leap of logic that is 'tall buildings are a key factor in second-city status', without citation to evidence that this is the case. Then see if you still think the same. This doesn't just go for you or for tall buildings, though, but for just about the whole of the rest of the page, which especially over the last day has just been turning into a growing list of pop musicians. Matthew 11:17, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Pigeons

After exhaustive study on Google, I have concluded that Birmingham is more pigeon-oriented than Manchester. [2] MarkThomas 18:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

B'ham also has more miles of canal than Venice (and far more than any other UK city), more trees per head of population than any other UK city, and is home to the balti. And since telephone exchanges are mentioned in the article, how about pointing out that Birmingham was given the code 021 (now 0121), next in line after London's original 01. This promted the B'ham city council slogan "021 - second to none". TharkunColl 18:55, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I always wondered though if Bham really has more miles of canal than Venice, or if that's just an old story. As the old joke goes, "Birmingham has more Indian restaraunts than Bombay, more miles of canals than Venice and more pot holes than Beirut". MarkThomas 18:58, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Apparently, the council publicist who first claimed that there are more miles of canal than Venice originally made it up, but then checked up and it turned out to be true. And it is true. I've never heard the one about the pot holes and suspect that it originates from someone who doesn't know B'ham, because there aren't any to speak of. Not sure about the Indian restaurants either, since Bombay's pretty big. B'ham certainly has loads though. TharkunColl 19:03, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Potholes - they're all on my road in Dudley. You can almost get a whole car wheel into some, horizontally. Matthew 19:09, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

The Venice/Birmingham canal issue, whilst true, is also a bit of a red herring, given that the land area of Birmingham is far larger than that of Venice. As for potholes, isn't Walsall MBC even worse than Dudley MBC? Doesn't really matter here, as neither of them have any claim to "second city" status. Fingerpuppet 22:50, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

No idea about Walsall, but I've only ever driven through it on A-roads, so can't possibly speak for the quality of its council-estate roads! Matthew 23:53, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

It's also a popular myth, Venice has far more. Still, it has a certain charm. MarkThomas 23:18, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Birmingham has 35 miles, Venice 26 [3]. TharkunColl 23:55, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I expect his slide rule was stuck. C'mon. Most of the canals in Birmingham are a closed, stinking mess. I am comparing sunlit canals with gondoliers to grubby little trash-strips. MarkThomas 00:14, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

You must be thinking of Manchester's canals. In fact, those in B'ham are clean and well kept, and none are closed (I lived on a narrowboat for many years), and are now a big tourist attraction. TharkunColl 00:17, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure there's not a single piece of canal been closed in Birmingham, ever? That's quite some claim. Fingerpuppet 00:23, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Most of them have now been renovated and re-opened. Birmingham is very keen on its canals, and many places in the city centre have luxurious canalside locations. Canals also run through all the major suburbs of B'ham and the Black Country. TharkunColl 00:28, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

The more we hear of your life TC the more fascinating it gets. Have you considered publishing an autobiog? :-) MarkThomas 00:20, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

This is all a bit uncalled for, isn't it? It's nasty enough round here as it is without this. This article is about the debate regarding which is the second city not a name-calling, points-scoring, claim everything from miles around to make your favoured candidate stand out article. And that's aimed at more than one contributor on here! Fingerpuppet 00:23, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Heh, I really wasn't being nasty - I do think TharkunColl leads an interesting life by the sound of it, and I was trying to be friendly. I was just joking about the canals - of course I know that Brum has some lovely canal stretches. I'm sure TC was just joking as well about the Manchester ones. MarkThomas 00:26, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Joy Division versus Led Zeppelin

Joy Division are wholly from Salford, which is part of the Greater Manchester conurbation, and Manchester. They were formed in Manchester and did their first gigs there. They should therefore be in. Led Zepp were formed in London and played their first gigs in Sweden and only two of their members were from (outside) Birmingham and only one (Plant) from within the conurbation. (Redditch is usually classed as outside the conurbation). There is no real analogy between the two because JD were a local band whereas LZ were a super-session musicians super-group. MarkThomas 02:36, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Can we please stop having this back-and-forth 'my band lives closer to the city centre than your band' nonsense revert war? I've a good mind to simply remove all of the so-called 'evidence' from the 'Cultural factors' section entirely since all it seems to do is lead to escalating fights between editors wanting to bias the article towards Manchester or Birmingham. I've already undone an edit by TharkunColl today trying to do just that. Stop it and discuss on the talk page, or I will simply lock the article from editing. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 11:15, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

The names I added were not bands. Did you read what I wrote? It was an attempt to show how important B'ham has been. I don't know enough about Manchester to add an equivalent list. Perhaps they don't have one. TharkunColl 11:23, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I would support this removal. I feel that the article would be further improved if other sections were similarly pared down. Matthew 12:05, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

How can it possibly be bias? If Birmingham has been more important than Manchester, then to state this is not bias - it is simply the truth. The removal of such information is bias. Please put it back, and let a Manchester editor add his own equivalent. This is a valid reason for considering B'ham to be important. TharkunColl 11:26, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

While it may be the truth that these men came from Birmingham, your motives in adding their names without any consideration of similar details for Manchester are transparently to bias the article towards Birmingham, materially affecting its neutrality. While they may represent 'a valid reason for considering B'ham to be important', five minutes research in other Wikipedia articles would let you come up with an identically long list of reasons for considering Manchester to be important, so there's very little point in having them in the article. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 11:30, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

It was my intention that a Mancunian should add his own list, since I don't know enough about Manchester to make the attempt. But overall getting rid of the cultural section entirely is probably a much better idea, since it cannot be measured. But doing this removes the only serious consideration for regarding Manchester as a candidate for second city, as by all measurable criteria B'ham is bigger. The article, therefore, should state this. TharkunColl 11:37, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad you agree. I wouldn't have a problem with some brief exegesis being added to my sentence 'Partisans of both Birmingham and Manchester are able to cite numerous examples of cultural factors supporting the case of each city'; perhaps linking to Madchester and the Brum Beat, noting the existence of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Hallé Orchestra/BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, or referring to the comparable theatre scenes of the two cities. However, my concern is that in the past trying to do this has resulted in a long, long list that simpy escalates as people add more and more content trying to make the case for once city or the other: I think this is something we want to avoid. Linking to other Wikipedia articles on the cultural scenes of the two cities would be a good solution, but while Arts in Birmingham exists the content on Manchester's cultural and arts scene is merged into the main Manchester article: perhaps we could suggest it be spun out?

The article does state this: it reads that 'based on population within formal city boundaries the City of Birmingham, the most populous in England, is substantially larger than the City of Manchester' and goes on to give figures from recent censuses. In line with our main article at second city, though, it accepts that such statistics are seldom the only criteria in determining what is or isn't a 'second city'. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 12:04, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality dispute

We seem to be making some progress towards agreement. Are we in a position yet to remove the 'neutrality dispute' tag from this article? --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 12:19, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I think we're getting there. There's still elements of contests and desperate claims from both sides being generally confused by the fact that Manchester is inadequately described simply as the local government district (although it's far less than the entire conurbation claimed by some editors), and the fact that Birmingham is if anything, slightly smaller than the local government district (Sutton Coldfield springs to mind) and the Black Country and Wolverhampton have their own very strong identity.

I would leave it "as is" for the moment in case it turns back into the competition that we've seen over the last few days (and previously in the life of this article). Fingerpuppet 19:44, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Describing Manchester as "bigger" than its local government district, or Birmingham as "smaller", is pure subjectivity, and has no place in an article like this. Incidentally, if Manchester annexed the whole of Salford Metropolitan District it would still be smaller than Birmingham. TharkunColl 23:49, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

There are multiple ways of defining a city. For example, by local government district, by urban sub-area, travel-to-work areas, or by self-determination of items - for example Manchester United self-defining as belonging to Manchester (it's in Trafford MBC), or the Lowry Centre describing itself as being in Manchester (even though it's in Salford MBC). Or are you about to claim that the likes of West Bromwich don't exist as they don't have a local government district of the same name? Is its existence "pure subjectivity"? Your insistence that the entire West Midlands conurbation (or as you insist on calling it "Birmingham conurbation"), or even the West Midlands Metropolitan County (and hence Coventry) is in some way part of Birmingham - which I have already demonstrated as being false - is that not "pure subjectivity"? That's the entire point of the article - to demonstrate how there is a subjective debate on the subject.

Once again you totally miss the point. No-one is claiming that the population of Manchester is larger than that of Birmingham. There is a debate regarding the relative sizes of the two conurbation populations (which is why it's mentioned in the article), but conurbations are not cities. Fingerpuppet 00:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

You may be confusing the fact that Manchester City Centre is small due to it's tiny council. Birmingham has the largest council in England. Greater Manchester is made up of ten different local authorities and thus allowing each council to have more control on what happens locally.

It is you who are confusing two different things. The City of Manchester is much smaller than the City of Birmingham, and the Greater Manchester conurbation is smaller than the West Midlands conurbation (which, like Greater Manchester, is also divided into a number of local authorities). TharkunColl 11:24, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Isn't that a horse-before-the-cart situation? That is, the size of a council is broadly proportional to some combination of the amount of area and people that it administers, not the other way round. PS please sign your comments with four tildes! :-) Matthew 11:48, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Manchester and Greater Manchester are also not the same thing, just as Birmingham and West Midlands are not the same. In no way is, say, Wigan part of the "city" of Manchester (and it's not even part of the conurbation), even if some areas outside Manchester CC's area (such as Prestwich) could be said to be. Fingerpuppet 18:16, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

But since the government supplies figures for the conurbations (and the even larger met counties), how could any debate be other than special pleading? If we want to get subjective, then I for one would add the whole of Solihull onto the city of B'ham figures, since it's virtually a dormitory town anyway. And yes, of course West Brom exists as a town, and it presumably even has official boundaries within Sandwell MB. Are you denying that all these Black country towns are part of the same conurbation as B'ham? Interesting that you should mention Trafford MB though. If Manchester annexed both Salford MB and Trafford MB, it would still be smaller than the city of Birmingham! TharkunColl 00:38, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Have I said at any point that the Black Country towns are not part of the same conurbation as Birmingham, when clearly they are part of the same built-up area? What I have shown is that they are not part of Birmingham - something at odds with your claims that they should somehow be included as part of Birmingham. I have also demonstrated that cities can be defined in multiple ways - something that you have ignored totally.

Once again, I find myself saying the same things to you. No-one is claiming that the population of Manchester is larger than that of Birmingham. The entire point of the article is to demonstrate how there is a subjective debate about the second city.

I would be interested to know, given your stated position regarding London and the Greater London Authority, what you considered to be the second city at the point of the 1981 census. Fingerpuppet 00:55, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

And once again I find myself saying the same thing to you. At no point have I claimed that those Black Country towns are part of Birmingham (and I certainly don't need you to "show" this fact to me). But they are part of the Birmingham conurbation. Or West Midlands conurbation, if you prefer to call it that - I have avoided that designation in case it was confused with the county that also includes Coventry, which is not part of the conurbation. Actually, I think to avoid confusion I'll refer to the Manchester conurbation as SELNEC from now on, its official designation until "Greater Manchester" was invented in the early 70s. As for the 1981 census, I don't have the conurbation figures available, but I can say with assurance that the city of B'ham was massively bigger than the city of Manchester. TharkunColl 01:13, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

The official name of the conurbations are West Midlands and Greater Manchester, hence I "prefer to use" the actual names of the areas. Indeed, they have their own articles at West Midlands conurbation and Greater Manchester Urban Area. Your constant use of the phrase "Birmingham Conurbation" is certainly giving the appearance of desperate claiming of the entire conurbation for your preferred candidate. I'm well aware of SELNEC, though - personally I think that was a much better name for the area! However, the fact remains that it is not the name of the conurbation at this time.

However, you've not answered my question. Please state which UK city you believe to have been the second city at the time of the 1981 census. In fact, whilst you're at it, I'd be interested to know the same fact in your opinion at the time of the 1991 census. Fingerpuppet 09:00, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Birmingham is the answer (and I did answer your question). Also in 1991 as well. As the article states, it has been the second city since around the First World War. In fact, I was always under the impression that it became the second city of the UK in 1922, and that Dublin held the distinction before that (but I don't have the figures and might be wrong - it is just what I have heard). As for the metropolitan counties, they were only created in 1974, and whereas the conurbations themselves are real, the boundaries (and names) as chosen in 1974 are, of course, arbitrary.

That's very interesting, as you stated earlier that London was a special case based upon the existence of the Greater London Authority. If local government population size alone is the sole criteria, in line with your statements, and the GLA presents a special case for an area that does not cover the entire Greater London Urban Area and does include open land, then surely by your own logic the Metropolitan county councils, when in existence, must have been subject to the same special case. Therefore at the time of the 1981 census, Greater Manchester County was larger than West Midlands County, measured by population - therefore Birmingham by your own logic was not the second city at that point. At the time of the 1991 census, there was no pan-London authority, or Metropolitan County Councils. Therefore by your logic at that time Birmingham was "the First City", not the second city. Therefore your logic is utterly flawed, as shown by your own arguments. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fingerpuppet (talk • contribs) 16:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC).

London is always a special case I'm afraid, however irritating that fact is to the rest of us. But to say that the City of London is tiny and insignificant is utter rubbish. It may indeed have a tiny resident population, but its workforce and employees exceed one million (City of London). It is, after all, the world's biggest financial centre. But yes, I accept that if strict logic was applied then B'ham would be the first city of the UK - unfortunately, however, that designation is reserved for the capital. TharkunColl 16:22, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

And do you deny that according to your own logic, Birmingham was not the second city at the time of the 1981 census, as it was not contained within the second largest local government area based loosely upon a conurbation, based upon your own statements regarding Greater London? Fingerpuppet 17:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

The article as it stands fudges the issue of how "second city" is defined, but the truth is that the term is always used in relation to size. Only partisans of a city smaller than B'ham would seek to muddy the waters on this issue, which is why the article is currently POV and biased. TharkunColl 09:09, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

There are plenty of examples in the list over on Second city of undisputed second cities based on criteria other than size. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 12:22, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Other countries may have different criteria. The only criterion used in the UK is size. Otherwise, it would not be possible to state that such-and-and such a city was the second city between 17xx and 18xx (for example), but many such lists are available, all based on size. TharkunColl 12:34, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

'The only criterion used in the UK is size': nonsense! If this were the case, there would be no question over which of Manchester and Birmingham is the second city. Do you accept that there is debate in the country as to this issue? (If not, there are numerous references in our article that point to the existence of such debate.) --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 14:23, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, I do not accept that there is any general or serious debate on the issue - though this obviously does not prevent the issue being raised by advocates of Manchester (hence those references). Basically, not content with such well-established epithets as "Capital of the North", Manchester has in recent years sought to glorify itself even more, and has attempted to whip up an artifical controversy. In order to be the "second city" Manchester must first muddy the waters so much (by going on about the City of London, definition of conurbations, etc.) that the simple criterion of size is called into question, and then it must convince the rest of the country that it really is some cultural oasis (pun intended), some demi-paradise second only to London in terms of the diversity of interests and lifestyle of its citizens. And also that it's even possible to measure such a thing. TharkunColl 16:45, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I would like to know where this "size" claim arises - when pretty much everyone else understands the term "importance". Fingerpuppet 16:32, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

"Importance" is just as unmeasurable and subject to opinion as any other factor - except size. TharkunColl 16:45, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, there has been much talk of Wolverhampton being so big as to constitute a proper town in its own right (which I never disputed, of course). Looking at the figures, I notice that Bolton is even bigger, and yet it is still classed as part of the Greater Manchester Urban Area (and even the article mentions SELNEC by the way). I once visited an acquintance in Bolton, and in all innocence asked whether it was classed as Greater Manchester or Lancashire. His reply was along the lines of "Lancashire, if you know what's good for you!". The moral of this story is that it's always possible to arbitrarily reduce the "true" figures for each conurbation by means of such grossly subjective and anecdotal evidence. But we at Wikipedia must rely on the official figures. TharkunColl 09:39, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

You are proceeding from a false assumption - that MBCs are an accurate representation of the towns and cities that they are named after. Not so. MBCs were created to attain at least a "target population" of 250,000 rather than by any method of attempting to describe an individual town or city. A more accurate method of so doing is to look at urban sub-area populations - for which statistics are generated by the ONS, hence are "official figures". I know that you're aware of this, as you've edited List of English cities by population which uses those figures. For the record (though it does not impact on this discussion) Wolverhampton is nearly twice the size of Bolton (251,462 and 139,403 respectively).

I am well aware of Greater Manchester Urban Area as I was a major contributor to the recent rewrite. You also do not appear to aware of the meaning of "conurbation". A conurbation is a collection of towns and cities that have grown together to a single contiguous urban area - which can be defined in terms of the largest "gap" between continuous development. It is therefore not possible to reduce the population of conurbations in the manner that you are attempting to claim.

I would point out to you that no-one is claiming that Manchester = Greater Manchester as you appear to believe - simply that Manchester itself spills somewhat outside the local government boundaries in the same way as Castle Bromwich is considered to be part of the Birmingham Urban sub-area despite being within Solihull MBC.

I know it is not possible to reduce conurbations in size - but this is exactly what some advocates of Manchester seemed to be trying to do with the West Midlands, so I applied the same methods to SELNEC in order to highlight their bias. As for Manchester spilling outside its boundaries, how does one measure such a thing? I would claim the whole of Solihull for B'ham if this was really possible. Castle Bromwich, incidentally, is claimed as part of Birmingham because it actually was, until 1974 (it was technically part of Meriden rural district, but the entire area was purchased by the city council to build massive council estates on). TharkunColl 16:45, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Where has someone attempted to reduce the size of the West Midlands conurbation in size? Certainly people have pointed out that Birmingham and West Midlands conurbation are not the same thing, but no-one (despite your accusations) has even mentioned that they form a continuously built-up area. Please let me know the source of this accusation, as I can't find it at this time. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fingerpuppet (talk • contribs) 17:54, 22 January 2007 (UTC).

It was suggested, somewhere in the above mass of postings, that the Black Country does not identify itself with B'ham and so therefore should not be counted as part of the figures for B'ham. In this I agree of course - if we are just talking about the city. But if we are talking about the conurbation, then we must include the Black Country figures because it is indeed part of the same conurbation. I also pointed out that no one in the Black Country would deny that they form part of the same conurbation as B'ham. It was further stated that the Black Country-B'ham dichotomy does not exist in Greater Manchester, where a much larger proportion of the population identify with Manchester, even if they don't live within its city boundaries. I stated than any such assertion is purely a matter of opinion, and cannot be backed up by any sort of statistical evidence. I also found quotations that stated that Salfordians do not identify themselves with Manchester. I pointed out that such local rivalries and identities exist in both conurbations, which are in this sense no different from each other.

There has also been some talk of "informal" cities. I take this to mean something that is in general larger than the city council area, but smaller than the whole conurbation. A number of places have been listed as (in the poster's opinion) part of the informal city of Manchester, even though they lie in neighbouring local authorities. My response to this was that any such assertions are completely arbitrary, and further added that if such was the case then I would place the whole of Solihull in the informal city of B'ham. Salford and Trafford were mentioned as containing institutions that use the word Manchester in their title - with the presumed implication that these places could be considered part of the informal city of Manchester. In addition to the quote I found about Salfordians not identifying themselves as part of Manchester, I also pointed out that even if Manchester was merged with the metropolitan boroughs of both Salford and Trafford, it would still be smaller than the city of B'ham within its actual current boundaries. TharkunColl 19:06, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

As an aside, I believe it was a football team that was located in Trafford but used the word "Manchester" in its title. There's nothing odd about this. Isn't the Nottingham Forest ground outside the city of Nottingham? I'm not an expert on football though. TharkunColl 19:23, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Some interesting quotations

From here [4].

"Geographical terms like "Manchester", "Lancashire" or "Greater Manchester" are freely interchanged as if they all meant the same thing - much to the annoyance of the many residents of the 10 towns which now make up the Greater Metropolitan County of Manchester."

"It is little wonder that the peoples of Salford, Stockport, Oldham, Rochdale, Tameside, Trafford, Bury, Bolton and Wigan fiercely defend their right to be called Stopfordians (natives of Stockport), Ashtonians (natives of Ashton), Mancunians (natives of Manchester), or Boltonians (etc), and it is right and proper that they should. Salford, for example, was an important township when Manchester was little more than a hamlet on Salford's outskirts - Salfordians grow visibly annoyed at being called Mancunians."

So much for the much vaunted claim that the people of SELNEC (Greater Manchester) all identify themselves with "Manchester" in a way that the people of the West Midlands don't with "Birmingham". The plain and obvious fact is that local rivalries and identities exist in both conurbations, as they do anywhere else.

From a geographical point of view, however, it must also be noted that the West Midlands conurbation, surrounded on all sides by open countryside, is a far more distinct unit than SELNEC, which is submerged within a massively larger quasi-conurbation (i.e. separated by only small patches of countryside) that includes Liverpool (itself larger than Manchester, be it noted), and all sorts of other places. TharkunColl 12:34, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Once again I point out that no-one is claiming that Manchester = Greater Manchester, either for the Metropolitan County or for the Urban Area. I am not aware of anyone stating here that everyone within the SELNEC area believes that they are Mancunians, simply that the boundaries of Manchester spill out beyond the local government boundaries. No-one is attempting to claim that the population of Manchester is larger than that of Birmingham. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fingerpuppet (talk • contribs) 16:29, 22 January 2007 (UTC).

You only have to listen to BBC Radio WM for a few days to realise that people within the West Midlands are pretty patriotic about their own areas such as Dudley, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Solihull, Sutton Coldfield, etc. However, this discussion does underline that the concept of Second City is about more than just population, it is also about subjective criteria. MarkThomas 19:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Cultural factors

Cultural issues and comparisons obviously are important in the subjective evaluation of "Second City". If we can all agree to stop fighting over minutae, can I propose we extend the cultural factors section again, to include the following:

• Arts, music and literature - we should mention things such as venues, concert halls and orchestras, famous writers and artists, bands and writers.

• Key businesses and areas of financial and economic activity.

• Famous people.

• Historical importance, relative size and importance at different periods in history.

• National influence of local figures including politicians, business people and cultural leaders.

MarkThomas 19:23, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the majority of these would be helpful, and would probably encourage another bout of partisan edit warring (not necessarily amongst the same proponents as before). Anyone interested in most of these things can head to the relevant city article, as they should all be covered there. What would be helpful is an expansion of the fourth point - the history of the second city is something that is only touched on here, but we've got just over 300 years of history to cover. Matthew 20:12, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, maybe a table showing populations at different key dates such as 1750, 1801, 1831, etc? MarkThomas 22:33, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good - presumably we could get figures for each census year. Matthew 23:04, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I'd agree with that too. Do we want to use the Local Authority figures, or the Urban sub-area figures (where available)? It might well get confusing with the changes in boundaries used in the 1891 census, for example. I don't have the numbers to hand, but the figures will shrink and grow according to the boundaries used at different times. Notes on each change may well be helpful (or alternatively really confusing!) Fingerpuppet 09:41, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Umm.... I'd say that we're probably best going with whichever's the most consistent measure over time. No idea which of these figures that would be, though! In terms of the cities to cover, I think Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, and Manchester for definite should be covered as these all are or have been second city. Possibly Dublin should be in there too, given that it is mentioned in sources as being the second city of the British Empire ... though had fallen back before it became part of the UK in 1801. Matthew 12:18, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Would be happy to have a go at this and post a demo table to the talk page here, can someone help me with a simple technical query, where do I find templates for tables like this please? Thanks for any help. MarkThomas 16:04, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Casino

It's funny how someone keeps trying to add something about the new supercasino - up to this point, no one had thought casinos worth mentioning (and I still don't). By the way, the current biggest casino in the UK is in Star City, Birmingham. Interestingly, Star City is the biggest Las Vegas-style leisure complex of its kind in the whole of Europe (and will continue to remain so, even if its casino will no longer be the biggest).

The same person mentioned political parties holding conferences in Manchester (another total irrelevance, in my opinion). The Tories have recently announced their plans for a number of conferences in Birmingham. TharkunColl 20:04, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it is funny: but it looks like we're on top of keeping the article neutral and relevant. Do you understand now, though, why there were objections to your additions of arbitrary Birmingham-related facts in exactly the same manner? --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 21:31, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

As an interesting anecdote about political conferences, did you know that towns and cities wanting to host them have to submit some kind of tender, which then goes towards a shortlist to be selected from? There was a bit of fuss in The Birmingham Post after the Labour one as to why Birmingham didn't bother to tender for it, which pretty much came down to the NEC Group making more money from private-sector conferences and the council not wanting to make up the money that the NEC Group would have forgone through holding a political conference instead. Matthew 21:56, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Shakespeare was a Brummie

Dr Steve Thorne of the University of Birmingham's Department of English is one of many academics who have argued that Shakespeare spoke a Warwickshire dialect ancestral to Brummie (and which is indeed still spoken in the 15 miles or so between Birmingham and Stratford). Brummies don't need academics to tell them this, however, because it is obvious from reading Shakespeare's works that he was a local. Why are there so many lines that don't appear to rhyme? Simply because they do rhyme when spoken in a Brummie accent. Here is a very famous example from Macbeth, in which I have highlighted the words that only rhyme in Brummie:

Finger of birth-strangled babe/Ditch-delivered by a drab/Make the gruel thick and slab. TharkunColl 10:15, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

According to the leading linguistic expert on Shakespearian England, David Crystal, Shakespeare probably spoke with an accent "somewhere between Australian, Cornish, Irish and Scottish, with a dash of Yorkshire - yet bizarrely, completely intelligible if you happen to come from North Carolina." MarkThomas 15:14, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Yep, that's right - provide a link that doesn't actually lead anywhere, to make it seem as if your point was not entirely worthless. In any case, which is more likely? That Shakespeare spoke with all those diverse accents, or with the accent of his native area? The area of the Forest of Arden, Shakespeare's home and also that of Mary Arden, is nowadays almost entirely covered by Birmingham. Shocking, but true. TharkunColl 15:24, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Fixed the reference. If Shakespeare was a Brummie, why no mention of Brum in the plays? I don't recall in Macbeth for example "is this the Bull Ring I see before me" or Hamlet "alas poor Stratford Rd, I knew it well", although perhaps "Tybalt, the reason that I have to love thee" (Romeo and Juliet: III, i) is a sly reference to the Balti. MarkThomas 15:34, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Frankly, it's bollocks. Even the examples that are given, such as "voice" rhyming with "vice", is typical of Brummie. Maybe the Bull Ring isn't mentioned in Macbeth because that particular play is set in Scotland, hmmm? Just a thought. Likewise, I doubt very much that there was a Stratford Rd in Hamlet's Denmark. However... places in Birmingham are indeed mentioned by Shakespeare in his plays. Sutton Coldfield, for example, is mentioned in Henry IV Part I, Act 4, scene ii. FALSTAFF "Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry. Fill me a bottle of sack. Our soldiers shall march through. We'll to Sutton Coldfield tonight." TharkunColl 16:42, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Note: my above comment was deleted by User:Andyjsmith, for no reason that I can fathom. I have therefore restored it. TharkunColl 16:52, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

References

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by MarkThomas (talk • contribs) 15:28, 9 February 2007 (UTC).

Birmingham is the inspiration for Middle-earth

J.R.R. Tolkien, who, of course, was brought up in Birmingham, based his original conception of the Shire on his childhood home at Sarehole, Birmingham. This is not speculation - it was acknowledged by Tolkien himself in a 1966 interview (see Sarehole Mill). Furthermore, it is the only place in the world that Tolkien ever admitted as inspiration.

So, that's Tolkien for definite, and arguably Shakespeare as well for Birmingham. It would be quite difficult to think of two authors who have been more influential, certainly in the English language, anyway. Do the partisans of some other city, such as Manchester, really want to have a cultural influence section put back in this article? TharkunColl 10:26, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure this sort of thing is particularly constructive.... Matthew 13:00, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Distinctive identity

English county boroughs in 1974

The map on the right shows the county boroughs of England on the eve of local government reorganisation in 1974 (click on it to see it full size). Comparing the West Midlands and SELNEC conurbations it is immediately apparent that the outline of what became the West Midlands County is already present, whereas that for Greater Manchester County is nowhere to be seen. This clearly indicates that the West Midlands was already a genuine organic entity, whereas Greater Manchester was an artificial construct created by the local government act itself.

Furthermore, although I'm sure there are gradations of dialect descernable to locals, to my ear - and I strongly suspect to that of most people in the country - the Manchester accent sounds like a standard Lancashire accent (unlike, say, that of its slightly larger near-neighbour Liverpool, which is distinctive). The Birmingham accent, of course, is well known as a dialect distinctive to its city. It's true that outsiders often conflate it with a Black Country accent, and although to me they are different, it is also obvious that they are closely related - a family of closely related accents that are spoken within the West Midlands conurbation, and nowhere else. There is no such Greater Manchester accent (or family of accents), and it would not be possible to tell, just by accent alone, if you had crossed the boundary of the conurbation.

In short, Birmingham, and the West Midlands conurbation, have a cultural identity, and a cultural distinctiveness, unknown to the Greater Manchester area. TharkunColl 14:08, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I would refer the honourable gentleman to the Local Government Act 1958, and the fact that the changes recommended in the West Midlands were carried out before the Redcliffe-Maud Report of 1966, but the SELNEC area ones were not.

In addition, I notice that you're still claiming the entire West Midlands conurbation as part of your pro-Birmingham stance. I'd also like to point out that areas such as Cannock and Coventry has distinctly similar accent those in the West Midlands conurbation, but they are not part of the conurbation. Fingerpuppet 18:00, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Cannock is almost part of the conurbation, and will probably join with it in the not too distant future. As for Coventry, I assure you that its accent is nothing like that of Birmingham and the Black Country. And as for "claiming the entire West Midlands conurbation" - well yes, obviously, since the conurbation is precisely what I was talking about! Too many pro-Manchester people here seem to think that its okay for them to claim their entire conurbation, but deny Birmingham the right to do exactly the same. The fact is that the West Midlands conurbation is far more of a discrete, distinctive cultural entity that the amorphous mass nowadays dubbed "Greater Manchester" (but originally called by the rather more prosaic term SELNEC). You know, the more I think about it, the more it seems that this whole issue hinges on a name. Because Greater Manchester is the only metropolitan county that bears the name of its principal city, they claim the right to include the whole thing in their calculations, but deny others the exact same right. But the truth is, that the only reason Greater Manchester is called that is because it had no natural name to begin with, because it is totally artificial. SELNEC, presumably, was considered too barbarous even by the bureaucrats of the 1970s. TharkunColl 19:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Examples...

...of the name "Birmingham" being used by institutions in the West Midlands conurbation, but outside the City of Birmingham.

• Birmingham Canal Navigations is mostly located in the Black Country.
• Birmingham International Airport is in the borough of Solihull.
• Birmingham International Station is likewise in the borough of Solihull.

These are simply intended as counter examples to those mentioned by the pro-Manchester crowd, such as Manchester United. TharkunColl 19:29, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

• The BCN is so-called because the network was taken over by the Birmingham Canal company. The Birmingham Canal was so called, because one end was at Birmingham, not that the canal itself was entirely in Birmingham. Playing devil's advocate here, the Manchester Ship Canal is 99% outside the city of Manchester...
• London Gatwick, London Luton and London Stanstead are all outside London. Glasgow Airport is in Renfrewshire. Coventry Airport is in Warwickshire. Wolverhampton Airport (such that it is) is in Staffordshire. Nottingham East Midlands Airport is miles outside Nottingham. Birmingham Airport was partially in Birmingham prior to 1974, whilst Manchester Airport was partially outside Manchester until 1974.
• Birmingham International Station is the station for Birmingham International Airport, so is next door. Not exactly a great shock.

Can we stop this incessant "pissing contest" now please, it's getting really boring. Fingerpuppet 22:38, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Assay Office

There are four Assay Offices in the UK - London, Birmingham, Sheffield, and Edinburgh. TharkunColl 19:30, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

A question for the Manchester POV pushers

At what point did the term "second city" of the UK become redefined to mean something other than second largest city? How is it possible to provide historical lists of the second city between specific dates if size was not the true criterion? In short, why does this article imply that size is somehow secondary? Where is the evidence? And by evidence, I don't mean claims. That Manchester has tried to claim the status indicates nothing other than the rather tacky nature of the Manchester PR department.

The unfortunate truth is that Manchester has a grotesquely inflated image of itself. Birmingham, on the other hand, has always been rather self-effacing - which is a pity of course, but when you really are the second city, you don't need to spend loads of council taxpayers money organising polls, and such like. All very sad... TharkunColl 00:13, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Revision 106537659 by TharkunColl

TharkunColl, I just wanted to note that misrepresenting the contents of external sources in order to serve your own POV is entirely inappropriate behaviour. The first BBC story linked as a source quotes a nationwide MORI poll (commissioned, but not carried out, by Marketing Manchester). The second has nothing to do with Manchester's City Council: it refers to a claim made not by them but rather by Management Today magazine. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 10:16, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Read the articles, nothing I said was incorrect. The point I was trying to make is simply this: that Manchester's claims to second city status are based on a very small number of isolated citations, i.e., in this case, two. The first was run by a pro-Manchester group, and the second doesn't even say that Manchester is the second city! TharkunColl 10:23, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I can't believe I'm having to actually demonstrate this to you, but here we go anyway. You text read:

However, a PR group called "Marketing Manchester" claimed in 2002 that Manchester deserved the distinction, and in 2005 BBC News ran a story to the effect that Manchester, in the opinion of its own city council, may have almost caught up with Birmingham in terms of status (though not in population).

Your representation of the first BBC News story is at best a distortion: the story relates not to a claim made directly by Marketing Manchester but the results of a poll commissioned by Marketing Manchester and carried out by a reputable nationwide survey research company.

Meanwhile, your representation of the second is an outright lie, since the claim was made by a magazine entirely unrelated to Manchester, and the only mention of its City Council in the article was a reaction to the Management Today story solicited by the BBC from the council's Chief Executive.

This kind of behaviour helps nobody. It doesn't help our readers when our articles lie about the content of external sources. It doesn't help those of us who are committed to the maintenance of NPOV on this article because we have to waste our time fixing your misrepresentations. Finally, it doesn't help you, because it makes it crystal clear that your agenda in editing this article is to bias it in favour of Birmingham and that you are prepared to resort to intellectually fraudulent strategies in order to do so.

What this article needs to demonstrate is that there is a legitimate difference of opinion around the country as to which city is identified as the second one: because that is the situation in the real world. In its current revision it does demonstrate this, and it does so in a way which (in my opinion) is neutral and reasonably well-sourced (although better sources would be helpful: e.g. I found one for the 'Birmingham since the first world war' claim back when I spun this article out from Second city, but a better one would be useful). --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 10:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

What debate? The second BBC article mentioned above says that according to the magazine Management Today, Manchester may have been giving Birmingham a run for its money in terms of status, but was still less than half the size in terms of population - hardly a ringing endorsement of Manchester. So all we are left with is the poll commissioned by Marketing Manchester. Oh, and there's also this article from the New York Times from 1995 [5]. Hilariously, they had to publish a retraction (at the bottom of each page) when they realised that they'd got their facts wrong! TharkunColl 10:43, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Hollow debating point - we long ago agreed that local authority populations to which this piece refers are meaningless in reality. MarkThomas 10:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Also can we stick with removing the fact tag? I don't think there is any reasonable doubt that "Second City" is about more than just population - we really are going round and round the houses with this one. See for example the BBC debate between Manchester and Birmingham - the page eerily echoes various incarnations of our own, discussing culture, food, music, etc. BBC - Manchester v Brum. We can add sources like this but I think it's self-evident. MarkThomas 10:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

On the contrary, we have no reputable citation for the assertion that second city means anything other than second largest city. A poll commissioned by a body set up to promote Manchester can hardly be classed as an unbiased source. TharkunColl 10:49, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

We have no 'reputable citation' for the assertion that Brad Pitt is an actor. Why? Because it's obvious from context. See if you can follow this chain of reasoning. (1) Some people in the United Kingdom think that its second city is somewhere other than Birmingham (enough people, apparently, to deserve repeated reporting in the national news media). (2) But Birmingham is unquestionably the largest city in the country. (3) Well, stone me, people must be basing their perceptions on something other than population size, then! Well, I'll be!

Incidentally, as I've noted before, our page at Second city lists numerous examples of unchallenged second cities based on many criteria other than population. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 10:57, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Quite so Nick, also note the Wikipedia definition on the Second City page of what constitutes a "second city": "The second city of a country is the city that is (or was) the second-most important, usually after the capital or first city, according to some criteria." MarkThomas 11:06, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

A bunch of PR consultants and spin-doctors working for a body that exists to promote Manchester does not constitute a genuine constituency of opinion in the country. The Wikipedia definition mentioned below is irrelevant, and Wikipedia articles cannot be quoted as "evidence". Whether other countries have different ways of defining their second cities is also irrelevant, because the only method that has been used in the UK is population size. Why did someone remove the references to all those firms in the Birmingham area that use "second city" in their title? What about the BBC drama Second City Firsts set in Birmingham?

I shall ask the question again, and I hope to receive a coherent answer this time: At what point was the term "second city" redefined to mean something other than "second largest city"? If we can't get a cite for this, then the whole article is called into question. TharkunColl 12:00, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

It's a question that can be answered one of two ways. (1) With another question: what's your source for claiming that 'second city' was 'defined' to mean 'second largest city' in the first place? (I place the term 'defined' in inverted commas because it's apparent to most of us that there is no central authority defining what is and isn't a second city.) (2) Alternatively, if we accept your assumption that the term started off meaning 'second largest', which I will note again is by no means certain, then it was the point at which people started thinking that cities other than the second largest had a rational claim to second city 'status': the fact that a non-trivial amount of people think this is attested by our sources. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 12:21, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have made myself clearer. I was asking for a specific year, not more waffle. TharkunColl 12:23, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm at something of a loss to understand how you can complain about 'waffle', when you've spent the last month filling the article and this talk page with arbitrary diarrhoea.

Anyway, I answered your question promptly and clearly. As usual, it seems you're happy to press for evidence of other people's assertions but unwilling to stand up to scrutiny of your own. You may find our article at Troll (Internet) constructive reading. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 12:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Troll (n.), anyone who holds an opinion different to one's own, and argues for such. And I notice that you still haven't provided me with the year in which the definition of second city changed. It's easy to prove that it originally meant second largest city. Why else would Birmingham have got the title? TharkunColl 12:34, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't accept that there ever was such a year, because nothing I've read suggests that 'second city' was ever 'defined' to mean purely 'second largest city'. 'Second city' is a nebulous concept that, as our articles on the subject make clear, is 'defined' to mean whatever people think it mean according to some set of criteria. You are the only person involved here who is contesting that assertion, and you've certainly provided no rationale for your position except the implicit one that it is more favourable to Birmingham and your own POV. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 12:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

But Birmingham is the second largest city, and it is not POV to argue such. The only POV comes from those who take the PR posturings of Manchester seriously. TharkunColl 12:41, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Straw man. No one is claiming that Birmingham isn't the second largest city. As we've now discussed ad nauseam, though, to the extent that I am thoroughly tired of reiterating it, this doesn't de facto make it the 'second city'. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 12:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

And now TharkunColl has done a 3RR + 1 on the POV tag - do you think action should be taken on this Nick? MarkThomas 12:42, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I have re-added the POV tag twice, as it happens. But this is not the first time you've tried to get me banned. Is this how you deal with all those who hold contrary views to your own? TharkunColl 12:47, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I think he's right to say the tag should be there: there is clearly a POV dispute ongoing on the article, even if it's one that's only being sustained by his own endless repetition of the same straw men. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 12:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

That's four reverts on it within 24 hours he's done now. Surely 3RR still counts even if you are right to be doing it - and he wasn't reverting vandalism, just content opinion. MarkThomas 14:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

As I stated above, I have only added that POV tag twice, the first time after you removed it, and the second time after you removed it again. Why must you spread lies about me? And why is it suddenly okay to keep the POV tag, just because a different user says so? But in any case, here is an interesting quote from MarkThomas from a few moths ago, during a particularly offensive diatribe against Birmingham on its talk page:

"Manchester is Britain's second city; the fact that you Brummies don't like the idea on an emotional level, whilst typical, is neither here nor there. MarkThomas 12:16, 24 September 2006 (UTC)"

So much for NPOV, eh? TharkunColl 16:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

If you're claiming that MarkThomas shouldn't edit this article because he has a strongly pro-Manchester POV, then I invite you to immediately stop editing it yourself because of your strongly pro-Birmingham POV.

It is perfectly fine for people with their own strong opinions on a subject to edit an article on that subject, as long as they do so in a way that conforms to our policies. However, it's time that you realised that the standards you are so eager to apply to others need to apply to you too. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 17:34, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

It was I who was first accused of POV - I was merely pointing out that others are guilty of it too. My own POV, if that's the right term for it, is that this whole so-called "debate" has been manufactured by the Manchester PR department, and yet the article addresses it as if it were real. TharkunColl 18:30, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the edit summaries have confused you a little, Mark: TharkunColl and I had a little back-and-forth over his desire to insert a 'citation needed' ({{fact}}) tag for the sentence 'these formal city boundaries should not be regarded as the sole criterion'; then you and he another over the 'neutrality dispute' ({{pov}}) tag. They were separate incidents, though, so as he says he hasn't breached the letter of the 3RR.

However, in general I agree that revert wars over trivia are marring the history of this article a little too much: so I'll take the opportunity to suggest that we apply a notional '1RR' here and move to the talkpage after one revert. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 17:39, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Straw man - the BBC article relates to an open radio discussion between Birmingham and Manchester, not the poll. MarkThomas 10:51, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

University of Plymouth

"20th Century Local Election Results "A new series edited and produced by the LGC Elections Centre of Local Election results throughout the 20th century [6]

"Volume 4: Birmingham Votes 1911-2000 by Christopher Phillips. ISBN 0 948858 30 3

"This study of Birmingham’s local elections begins in 1911 with the ‘general election’ that followed the Greater Birmingham Act when the city’s boundaries took on most of their modern dimensions. These almost three thousand individual election results detail Birmingham’s political development. That figure includes more than 2,600 elections to the city of Birmingham council itself as well as by-elections and contests for seats on the West Midlands County Council (WMCC), in existence from 1973 to its abolition in the mid 1980s. These data for Britain’s second city provide a rich source of information about the ebb and flow of electoral opinion over a ninety-year period."

The University of Plymouth is an academic institution with no pro-Birmingham axe to grind, and is most definitely not attached to, commissioned or funded by Birmingham city council PR department. TharkunColl 09:36, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

It's just a book list on the Plymouth website - the "second city" phrase is used in the review notes of a book by a third party, nothing to do with Plymouth, and judging from the prose style is probably just a straight cut and paste job from the book's dustjacket review. MarkThomas 12:43, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Mori Poll

34%, whilst admitedly greater than 29%, is hardly an overwhelming majority. Interestingly, Manchester also beat Birmingham into third city place - by an even bigger margin (27% to 21%). What does this show I wonder? TharkunColl 10:23, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I've just noticed that the organisation that conducted this poll is called Mori North, which is actually based in... Manchester! Ho hum. Anyway, a single, isolated poll taken just after the highly publicised Manchester Commonwealth Games cannot really be regarded as good evidence, especially when compared with the unbiased, academic citations I've provided below. The poll is also flawed for another reason - if its intention was to decide between Manchester and Birmingham, then the inclusion of London and Liverpool only serves to distort the figures. That fully 15% claimed not to believe that London is the first city surely proves its tendentious and basically worthless nature. TharkunColl 10:52, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

As usual, you are entirely missing the point of this article TharkunColl. Could you confine your points to the actual context of the article please. This article is not entitled "Second most populous city of the UK". The points you make on the poll are therefore entirely pointless in the context of this article. Even that aside, your points are distortions of the facts. The poll shows only 6% subjectively not thinking that London is first - the remainder must be don't knows and in any poll there are always a number of don't knows. In fact, the poll is ringing confirmation of the point of this page, which is that the concept of "second city" is subjective and that a thumping majority from all over Britain (except in the West Midlands where the popular local myth of "second city-hood" for Birmingham persists) believe this to be Manchester. Therefore the point of this article is confirmed. I believe we should remove the fact tag from the top of the page immediately. Do any other editors apart from TC disagree? I further propose that the constant blocking manouevres of this one editor no longer be allowed to wreck an interesting article. MarkThomas 14:15, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I fully understand the point of this article - it was created, whether unintentionally or, more likely, intentionally, to give credence to Manchester's claim. As I've repeatedly stated, but POV-pushers such as yourself completely fail to engage with, the only reason why some people claim to believe that "second city" does not mean "second largest city" is because of Manchester's PR campaign. To be an honest discussion of the subject, the article should make this clear. Instead, it merely lists Manchester's claims. As for the poll that Manchester commissioned, how do you explain the fact that Manchester also beat Birmingham into third place - by an even bigger margin? TharkunColl 14:33, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

This is central Tharkun - you don't actually understand the point of the article at all from what you just said. The point of the article is not to "give credence" to any such claim. That would be POV. The point of the article is to explain the issue objectively and give illustrations as to why each set of "city supporters" believe what they do and what points of claim are brought forward in defence of each claim. I'm afraid you really are very, very confused about the purpose of the article. I have to say, having looked at your contributions across Wikipedia, I think this is something you often confuse - you think articles are to support a given POV, but they are not intended for that. There is no "Manchester conspiracy" amongst the editors here and equally you must stop assuming your role as an editor is to "fight for Birmingham" on this article. That is not what Wikipedia is for. The silly claims you make about the poll are irrelevant and, frankly, make you look foolish. How about taking a break from editing for, say, a few weeks to cool down? Try just reading Wikipedia for a while and not contributing to any page for 2 days. See if you can manage that? MarkThomas 14:49, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Given your self-confessed bias, without contributions from people such as myself this article could have come straight from the Manchester PR department. It is you who are spreading POV by making it seem as if Manchester's claim is equally as valid as Birmingham's, and not just a product of its marketing department. And you still haven't answered my question about why Manchester beat Birmingham into third place in the poll you like so much. TharkunColl 14:58, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

In the context of this article, it's entirely irrelevant. And also it didn't. Apart from that, a good point, well made. :-) Anyway, enough already - I know you will have the last word, but that doesn't mean anyone is interested in hearing from you again. MarkThomas 15:06, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Previous second cities

Thrasher, Michael "Magnifying Voters' Preferences: Bias in Elections to Birmingham's City Council" Journal of Interdisciplinary History - Volume 35, Number 1, Summer 2004, pp. 69-103 The MIT Press

"A special Act of Parliament and, in 1911, the Greater Birmingham Act incorporated some ... thus sealing Birmingham's status as England's second city."

Here is another academic publication describing Birmingham as the second city. For those unfamiliar with local history, the Greater Birmingham Act of 1911 trebled the size of the city, so it is to this year that its status as second city is dated. I'm guessing that the second city prior to 1911 was Glasgow - does anyone have any data? We could compile a historical list of the second cities of Britain going all the way back to Roman times, which would be a genuinely interesting and useful addition to the article. TharkunColl 10:41, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, as already discussed above - I think you may have been too busy with tiny point-scoring activities to notice. MarkThomas 12:45, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't you think that giving a list of previous second cities would be informative? Oh wait, sorry. Under your definition of second city, such a list would be impossible anyway, given its totally subjective nature. TharkunColl 14:35, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

User:MarkThomas's bias revealed in all its glory

From Talk:Birmingham, 20 September 2006:

"First off, I am certainly no weasel so there! Anyway, down to business. I did used to edit Manchester in similar terms but all the Brummies went over to that page and got rid of it. The problem I would guess is that the Mancunian:Brummie ratio on WP of people interested in editing UK-related pages is about 1:5 whereas the actual importance ratio between the two places (I would hardly glorify Birmingham by calling it a place - more of a coagulated heap of dereliction) - is about 473:11.2 - the result - chaos! Nothing makes sense on this Wikipedia thingy. Anyway, I digress. Second City. What is that exactly? Is it the second biggest by super-metrically time adjusted micro-analysed super dataanalytically assured totally confidently decided on by mega-confident statisticians of supernaturally gifted pan-paranormal weightistically giftamundod megabrainy guys in shiny government towers! Nope. It's what you think. And what most of us think is, well, (and I include all the Brummies because they secretly think it, they're longing to think it, they wish Michael Stipe or Razorlight or ELO would come and tell them) - we think that it's Manchester. That's what the surveys say. That's what the government thinks. That's what foreigners think. That's what the motorway planners (who've bypassed Birmingham with their super M6 Toll Road think and that's what generations of superbly gifted but under-financed railway engineers think. And that, fellow Wikipedians, is what you really think too, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Thank you. MarkThomas 21:11, 20 September 2006 (UTC)"

Nice eh? This is exactly the sort of anti-Birmingham attitude that caused me to start editing this grotesquely biased article in the first place. TharkunColl 14:48, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, thanks, I thought it was pretty funny. You're entitled to disagree. MarkThomas 14:52, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I actually think its very funny - but probably not for the reasons you intended. TharkunColl 15:00, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

"Yes, thanks, I thought it was pretty funny. You're entitled to disagree." - How utterly pathetic. Nick Boulevard 12:45, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I won't rise. I was satirising the Birmingham-is-second obsessives. My own POV is that is is unclear which is biggest - the difference between the conurbations of Greater-Manchester and Greater-Birmingham is hard to define and even on the "official" NS figures which are dubious as they draw a strange definition of what constitutes the conurbations, the "gap" is so small that must lie within the statistical error ranges. So unlike some, I actually believe there does exist a valid debate about this, as opposed to just taking a pro-this city or pro-that city line. MarkThomas 12:49, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Other Second Cities

I'd like to ask a simple question. Taking this outside the the remit of this article for a moment, I'd quite like TharkunColl to indicate to me which he/she considers to be the second cities of the following nations: Scotland, USA, Canada and Australia. Thanks! Fingerpuppet 20:09, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

What a strange question. Why should the practices of other countries have any bearing on this issue? Please try and remember that this article - according to its title - is about the second city of the UK, i.e. Birmingham (since about WW1, or specifically, 1911). But I shall answer your question nevertheless: I don't know and I don't care. What I do know is this - in 2002 Manchester city council comissioned a poll, with the intention of trying to claim second city status. This action was both embarrassingly grubby and blatantly dishonourable (considering the help Birmingham had given it over its Olympic bid).

For the partisans of Manchester, therefore, 2002 was the year in which "second city" was redefined as something other than second largest city (though the fact that they still bleat about "unfair" city boundaries proves that they're still not sure about this). If the Manchester claims are correct, then we can only provide a historical list of second cities in Britain until 2002, at which point the term suddenly becomes meaningless. TharkunColl 23:55, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

That's not really an answer the the question now, is it? And I'm well aware what this article is about the UK, which is why I said "taking this outside the the remit of this article for a moment", which should take it away from the Birmingham/Manchester argument. It should be a really simple question for you to answer - about five minutes of research on Wikipedia should do it for you. Fingerpuppet 01:19, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Research on Wikipedia? How do I know that those other articles haven't been hijacked by a vocal minority of POV pushers just like this one? But in any case, how is it possibly relevant what other countries do? TharkunColl 09:43, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

In which case, five minutes of research on any reputable website should do. Why are you refusing point blank to deal with a simple, polite query? As you know, I'm not in any "pro-Manchester" camp... Fingerpuppet 12:00, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I still fail to see the relevance, because each country will have differing practices, but here goes. It seems that Chicago was for a long time the USA's second city (after New York), but in recent decades has been overtaken by Los Angeles. Despite this - and presumably not wanting to take a title traditionally held by another city - Los Angeles never describes itself as the second city (even though it is). This is in total contrast to the antics of Manchester of course, because (a) it is still only half the size of Birmingham, and (b) has nevertheless tried to claim the title. All this proves is that different countries have different practices, and I seriously hope you are not going to try and draw some sort of spurious analogy here. TharkunColl 12:15, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I think Fingerpuppet is trying to probe your understanding of the subjectivity surrounding the concept of "city importance" TC, which having observed your posts for some time, many of us feel you do not quite grasp. Perhaps if you could attempt the problem that would help us advise you on where the difficulty lies? Thanks. MarkThomas 10:26, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Your condescending, smarmy tone can get quite irritating at times, you know. Do you imagine that I don't understand the pro-Manchester arguments? I understand them, and reject them for what they are - PR. TharkunColl 10:38, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Nope, you don't, as you just confirmed. You still think we are involved in a pro-this city or anti-that city debate here. We aren't. We are composing an article that covers the subject of the subjective debate about which is Britain's second city. The fact that you don't understand this, re-confirmed by your response to Fingerpuppet's questions above, indicates that in fact you have no business even trying to contribute to this article, since everything you say on it is pure POV. Why not go to blogs since that's more your type of thing and leave Wikipedia to people who get it? MarkThomas 12:40, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

It is you who don't understand the difference between a slick, manipulative marketing campaign, and the truth. This article, to be NPOV, should make it clear that Manchester's pretentions are wholly the result of its own PR campaign. TharkunColl 12:52, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

PR campaign or not, some people seem to be listening. Matthew 12:48, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Wow, this is important Matthew, thanks for locating it. Given that this latest poll clearly shows there is a debate, why don't we reference this in the article and treat it as proof there is a debate, and therefore remove the current neutral tag, which is wrong and muddle-headed anyway in the context of what the article seeks to be about. MarkThomas 12:53, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

You always jump at the chance to promote Manchester, but dismiss the academic sources I quoted above as irrelevant. Can you not comprehend that it is your POV that is distorting this article? TharkunColl 12:56, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Presenting points of view is not a failure in an article: WP:NPOV doesn't say that we shouldn't present particular points of view, rather it says that 'all significant views that have been published by a reliable source' should be represented fairly and without bias. Since a number of reliable sources suggest that a non-trivial amount of people in the United Kingdom identify Manchester as the UK's second city, that's what our article needs to say. In its current revision, that's what it does say. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 13:02, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Exactly, thanks Nick. Could editors here also check over TharkunColl's recent edit on this subject on United Kingdom which I think shows the same lack of understanding of the issue. Thanks. MarkThomas 13:06, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

This is the trouble with Wikipedia. Vocal, politicised minorities who want to push a certain agenda tend to hijack articles and distort them to their POV. You probably don't even realise that you're doing it. TharkunColl 13:10, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, I've tried to correct TCs edit on United Kingdom / Cities which as always used local authority populations as the sole basis for computation, which of course should mean London is removed as largest city, and confused figures even within that. Hopefully one day we will see some objectivity around here. MarkThomas 13:17, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

You really are determined to wreck these articles, aren't you? I used List of English cities by population which lists London first, and added the figures for Glasgow (which is not, of course, in England). TharkunColl 13:24, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

We should probably remove London then as largest city since you are using local authority populations - would another editor support TC in that? Thanks. MarkThomas 13:26, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I would not remove London, it is in first place, as the list I just linked to makes clear. Yet again you are distorting my argument in order to discredit it. TharkunColl 13:27, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Britain's second and third largest city?

At the moment, editor TharkunColl is listing Glasgow as third-largest city in the UK on United Kingdom, which is obviously wrong. He states on Talk:Second city of the United Kingdom that he is drawing figures from List of English cities by population although this page warns at the top that they disregard conurbation populations - in other words, he is basing his edit on local authority populations. These are widely disputed as being an objective guide to the size of British cities, whose built-up areas frequently exceed (significantly) local authority boundaries. Therefore can other editors take a look at this please and make adjustments? I proposed what I hoped was a more objective summary and was (against WP:CIVIL) accused by TharkinColl of "wrecking the page", which I don't think is fair - I was trying to make it objective and Wikipedian. Please review, thanks. MarkThomas 13:32, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

List of English cities by population specifically does not use local authority boundaries. Please read what it says. TharkunColl 13:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I will agree. List of English cities by population uses urban sub-area populations rather than local authorites which are contained in List of English districts by population. Urban sub-areas aren't perfect by any means, but are better than local authority districts that presume towns such as Huddersfield and West Bromwich don't exist, and that places such as Tameside and Sandwell are equivalent to towns.Fingerpuppet 18:07, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

3.7 million Americans have been abducted by aliens

This, at any rate, is according to the Roper Poll [7] conducted in 1991. Should we at Wikipedia report this as a fact - or even a serious debatable point - just because a poll says so? TharkunColl 19:34, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, maybe. :-) Which page in that report was the 3.7m figure on TC? I could only find something saying that 1.4% believed in criteria that some other group says constitute 4 out of 5 markers for possible abduction. Still, in the context of this article, I can only hope that more Brummies than Mancs have been abducted since the last census. MarkThomas 20:05, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

The figure is quoted in the article Abduction phenomenon. TharkunColl 20:19, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Cross-quoting - the Wikipedia article you quote is in turn quoting an external poll which you said earlier was the original source. Yet in that actual source it does not make the claim that the Wikipedia page says it does. All very entertaining knockabout stuff! I think someone should correct the WP article, well spotted, it's a bogus interpretation. MarkThomas 21:27, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

No, of course we shouldn't report is as fact -- because there's no reliable evidence from reputable sources of it having happened. We should report, however, that 3.7 million Americans believe they have been abducted by aliens (i.e. without editorialising): which is exactly what our article at Abduction phenomenon does. Similarly, our article here should state that a non-trivial amount of people in the United Kingdom identify Manchester as the UK's second city: because that's what sources indicate. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 00:04, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

So, to pursue the analogy, we can certainly report that a non-trivial amount of people in the UK believe Manchester to be the second city, even though it's actually less than half the size of Birmingham. TharkunColl 00:08, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. This is exactly what our article currently states. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 00:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Alan Whicker: unimpeachable authority

I happened to watch the BBC2 programme Comedy Map of Britain earlier [8], which turned out to be about Wales and Birmingham. In it, Alan Whicker, the presenter, described Birmingham as Britain's "second city". I hope we can all agree that this is absolutely, unequivocally, and unquestionably definitive. TharkunColl 23:56, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Look, you are clearly trolling now and I am becoming more than a little fed up of you wasting the time of those of us who are here to write a good encyclopaedia. I am of course prepared to accept your argument that Alan Whicker's position is 'absolutely, unequivocally, and unquestionably definitive': but only if you are prepared to accept that my next-door-neighbour Mr Osborne's position that Manchester is the second city is also 'absolutely, unequivocally, and unquestionably definitive', since there's just as much reason to take his word on the matter as Mr Whicker's. --ⁿɡ͡b Nick Boalch\^talk 00:07, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I happen to know that Mr Osbourne would never say such a thing. TharkunColl 00:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, well, I could easily find someone to say that they thought that Ely was the second city, and again there would be just as much reason to take their word as anyone else's. However, that would result in a trivial number of people in total. Now, if I could persuade lots of people to say that as an unprompted response to a question, then it's worthy of mention here, no matter how I was to achieve it. Fingerpuppet 09:09, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Ely is certainly important. However, from personal headcount research in Spain amongst the expat Brits, I have reason to believe that Murcia is the second city of Britain. :-) MarkThomas 10:23, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Is that a typo for Mercia? In which case I wholly agree with you. TharkunColl 10:29, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Eurostat data

The Eurostat data for urban area populations is based on ONS data, so the recent rv to my edit by the usual suspect, TharkunColl, is both innapropriate, wrong and POV. I ask other editors to review and correct his auto-revert policy to anything he happens not to like. Thanks. MarkThomas 18:01, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I reverted your edit because it assumes that an urban area is equal to a city. It's not - this would need to be explained if the figures are to be used, and the figures would also need to be stated with the source cited. Like User:Fingerpuppet I'm not convinced that urban areas or conurbation size mean a great deal unless there's a conurbation-wide government or some other link in place too, such as the Greater London Authority. Matthew 18:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

But that's the whole point Matthew - the LUZ is a better definition of a city since it uses standard criteria. And it is sourced - the page referenced has extensive sources. I'm sorry, but this is getting silly - we already discuss the differences between different definitions of city further down the page! MarkThomas 18:13, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

If it is based on ONS data, then how come it contradicts it? The ONS data is official for the UK, that Euro-thing is simply an attempt to gather data for the whole of Europe from wildly different sources of infinately variable reliability, then harmonise it using some arcane fudging. Which is more likely to be trustworthy? TharkunColl 18:18, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh sure, you know more than the hundreds of professional statisticians who have worked for years on this at the ONS and Eurostat so you are well placed to comment! It isn't a fudge, it's a new standard (LUZ) for describing urban areas that is both more compelling (because it is about built up areas) and more comparable (because it standardises counting methods) than previous methods. It uses ONS ward and local area data to develop the system. Anyway, I'm not surprised to hear that you disregard EU methods given your statements on Talk:European Union that the EU is a Nazi institution. Perhaps we need to hear from some slightly more objective editors? I do fully realise that your chosen technique is to snowjob every discussion and revert any change so as to drive other editors out through sheer frustration. MarkThomas 18:30, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

It, and the ONS data, are definitions of an urban areas, nothing more. Manchester (the city) in no way has 2.2m inhabitants, nor does Birmingham (the city) in any way have 2.3m inhabitants, let alone the even larger figures from whatever it is Eurostat's doing with the ONS's figures. Matthew 18:23, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Figures for local authorities (which you refer to Matthew) are not a good guide to city size, since many built up cities spread beyond them. Birmingham is somewhat unusual within Britain and the world generally in that the LA boundary nearly co-incides with the built-up area, and this skews the results. We've discussed this many times before - I know you TharkunColl resents anything he sees as "diminishing" Birmingham - but that isn't what this is about. It's about using standard candles to give an objective statistical viewpoint, which is what Wikipedia is all about. MarkThomas 18:30, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

And we already have them in the ONS figures, which are both official, are obviously more reliable. As for Birmingham coinciding with its boundaries, or whatever you were talking about, this is once again the "unfair boundaries" argument that Manchester supporters always come out with when all else fails. It is pure, unadulterated POV. If you are going to claim that, then it is obvious that the whole of Solihull should be in Birmingham. And Smethwick. And lots of other places. And indeed the whole built up area, i.e. the conurbation. TharkunColl 18:38, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

The boundaries are inaccurate and Manchester does come out disproportionately small. But under the conurbation figures or urban-area figures, both cities come out grossly oversized. Matthew 18:42, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

But are multiple sets of misleading figures really better than one set of misleading figures? I think everyone's agreed that the city of Manchester is bigger than the 439k people ascribed to the City of Manchester, whereas Birmingham's 1m is about right, so even this wrong set of data is at least approximately half right. Over 2m for the populations of either of these cities is just silly. Matthew 18:40, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

How can it be said that Manchester is "bigger" than its city (if we're not talking conurbations)? Where does the line between Manchester and Salford really lie, if not on the city boundary? How can such a thing possibly be quantified without gross POV? TharkunColl 18:45, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Not sure - perhaps by reference to boundaries before they were redrawn in the 1970s? Tough question, really! Matthew 18:56, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Happy for the page to explain the different figures - we already have descriptions of the problem, I was adding an edit explaining how the Eurostat and ONS people have co-operated to solve this problem... MarkThomas 18:43, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

What problem? The "problem" that Manchester never seems to come out in second place? TharkunColl 18:54, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Something that I think definitely needs to go in, if conurbations are to be included, is an explanation of why two measures of in theory the same conurbations come out with different figures. It's unintuitive otherwise. Matthew 18:56, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Either we don't use conurbations at all (this article, after all is entitled "second city", not "second conurbation"), or we use the official ONS figures. I wouldn't trust those Euro figures as far as I could throw them. TharkunColl 19:01, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

It's irrelevant if TharkunColl "trusts" figures or not - what matters is their objectivity. MarkThomas 21:05, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Let me put it another way, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley, West Bromwich et al are not part of Birmingham. Stockport, Wigan, Bolton, Rochdale, Bury and Oldham are not part of Manchester. I think everyone other than TharkunColl agrees that there are some areas in some surrounding authorities are colloquially part of Manchester, though the whole conurbation is not. I would suggest that pretty much everyone will also agree that Castle Bromwich is colloqually part of Birmingham (and indeed is considered part of the Birmingham Urban Sub-area), whilst perhaps Sutton Coldfield is not. Mentioning the sizes of the conurbations (which are collections of cities and towns, not cities in their own rights) is an essential part of the article. Attempting to make it sound as if the entire conurbations are equal to the largest cities in each is utterly false. Fingerpuppet 21:25, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

How about Salford? Is that "part of" Manchester? TharkunColl 22:22, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's precisely what the new "LUZ" concept is for Fingerpuppet - it is a scientific, determined attempt to have a new definition of urban areas that aims to meet people's common view that a "city" is not just whatever local authority boundaries it happens to have, but it's continuously built-up area - and that the shorthand for "conurbation" names which we often use technically - "West Midlands", "Greater Manchester" - is most commonly known to the layperson by their city names. Most people saying "Manchester" or "Leeds" do not of course just mean "the precise number of people living within the local authority area officially bearing that name". They mean "the urbanity of Leeds". They mean the urban region. That's what the LUZ does. It really is a very significant development because it meets common perceptions in a scientific way. See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography where it looks like editors are interested in using the Eurostat data across all UK cities. MarkThomas 21:31, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

So can you explain why those figures differ from the ONS ones, to be found on the official government report [9]? Why is LUZ to be trusted over the ONS? TharkunColl 22:22, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, there seems to be an editor who agrees that the city-level figures (and not LUZ figures) would be permissible. And I'm unclear on why, in an article of UK focus, European figures are to be preferred over the official UK figures. Going back to what User:Fingerpuppet said, the conurbation is not equivalant to a city; rather, a conurbation is a collection of cities and towns. I've certainly never come across anyone who has used Leeds to refer to Bradford, Manchester to refer to Bolton, or Birmingham to refer to Wolverhampton. This doesn't mean that the conurbations are irrelevant in this, but it's certainly false to equate the conurbations with the cities. NB, Fingerpuppet, the people who I know that live in Sutton think of it like Edgbaston - a posh bit of Birmingham - but I can see why it might be considered a separate place. Matthew 22:23, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Since this article is entitled "second city", then use of the city figures is surely the proper thing to to. It is only the Manchester supporters who seem determined to block this at every turn, for the pretty obvious reason that Manchester is actually quite small. Maybe, had not places like Salford been in the way, Manchester would have expanded more than it did - but we are not dealing in what ifs here, just the facts as they are. If they want to claim Salford as part of the informal city then a similarly solid case could be made for including Solihull with Birmingham. But, as I've pointed out before, even if Manchester annexed the metropolitan boroughs of both Salford and Trafford, it would still be smaller than what Birmingham is now. TharkunColl 22:35, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not exactly convinced by this LUZ business at all. It looks remarkably like conurbations to me, rather than cities themselves. How is this data to be used across all UK cities when most of them aren't represented in the LUZ data list? How can you use the Eurostat data mentioned for the population of, say, Bradford or Sunderland? As for Sutton Coldfield, I mention it as it was only put into the Birmingham local authority area in 1974 as it could not achieve the MBC target population of 250,000, and is considered a separate Urban Sub-area by the ONS. Of course, as I know precisely one person who lives in Sutton Coldfield I'm not working from the largest of datasets! Fingerpuppet 22:44, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I know Sutton quite well, and it has the atmosphere of an affluent, outer suburb. And it's by no means the most recent area to be added to Birmingham - in 1995 the city gained Frankley [10]. Birmingham is actually still expanding. TharkunColl 22:52, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

We seem to be back to a tedious punch-up between your dedication to rectifying some perceived slight to Birmingham and your concept of Manchester supporters which exists only in your head. Has it ever dawned on you that Wikipedia is not for point scoring on your POV? Er, no apparently. You seem to be winning in your game of making other editors give up, I'll give you that. MarkThomas 22:55, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Strange as it may seem, I am only interested in representing the truth. But your self-confessed anti-Birmingham POV (see Talk:Birmingham) doesn't allow you to see this. TharkunColl 22:59, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

second city?

I see there has been a lot of discussion/argument over how to define what is the second city. However, surely the name says it all? The 'second city' must be a city, & anything used to define it must relate to what is in the city. Therefore any comparisons between Birmingham & Manchester should be based on 'City of Birmingham' & 'City of Manchester'. There is some interesting information on City status in the United Kingdom, where in 1911 population seems to have been the most important consideration. The City of Birmingham has a population of 1,001,200 (2005 estimate), The metropolitan borough of Manchester, which has city status, has a population of 441,200 During the Victorian era, the population of Birmingham grew rapidly to well over half a million[9] and Birmingham became the second largest population centre in England and the third in Britain after Glasgow and then London. --r-c-h-w 08:00, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Economic importance: Birmingham is a major financial and administrative centre. The city's central business district has the largest concentration of administrative and private sector office-based employment in England outside Central London.

today the city employs 108,000 in banking, finance and insurance - exceeded in the UK only by Westminster and the City of London.[23] Birmingham has particular strengths in accountancy and commercial law, with the Birmingham Law Society having over 300 member firms.

With major facilities such as the International Convention Centre and National Exhibition Centre the Birmingham area accounts for 42% of the UK conference and exhibition trade

With an annual turnover of £2.2bn, Birmingham city centre is the UK's second largest retail centre,[28] with the country's busiest shopping centre - the Bull Ring with 36m visitors per year,[29] and its third largest department store - House of Fraser (formerly Rackhams)

Political importance: Birmingham City Council is the largest local authority in the UK. Following a reorganisation of boundaries in June 2004 it has 120 councillors representing just under one million people, in 40 wards.

Birmingham's ten parliamentary constituencies

Manchester City Council is the local authority for the metropolitan borough of Manchester. The borough is divided into 32 wards, which elect a total of 96 councillors,

There are five UK Parliamentary constituencies which cover the City of Manchester

Interestingly, with regards to the population size, the following figures come from National Statistics, & show the population change since 1991 to 2001: Birmingham -27400 (-2.7%) [11] Manchester -39900 (-9.2%) [12]

--r-c-h-w 08:25, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Birmingham is the largest of England's core cities, & was a founding member of Eurocities, along with Barcelona, Frankfurt, Lyon, Milan & Rotterdam. Birmingham is twinned with 2 of these cities, & Barcelona & Rotterdam are the 2nd cities in their respective countries. The Eurocities site [13] shows that the population of Birmingham was approx 2.3 times greater than that of Manchester at the time of their figures. Birmingham is also listed as being a member of nearly twice as many working groups as Manchester.

Birmingham is also twinned with the following cities, which are either known as, or are, the 2nd cities in their countries: Lyon, Milan & Chicago

--r-c-h-w 11:28, 16 May 2007 (UTC)