The BBC Non-Manchester Productions thread

Well you could then count the whole of the West Midlands? Counting Wigan, Bolton etc as Manchester isn't really meaningful.

indeed - Manchester is a City, Greater Manchester is the county.

Incidentally I did like Salford Uni's slogan a few years back - "A Greater Manchester University"

I know what you mean as I was born in Bolton, Lancashire and not Bolton, Greater Manchester.

Unfortunately it is the "London" effect nowadays as people no longer use the Greater bit of the name. Also as such Manchester does and will have greater power/influence over it county neighbours (btw, Wigan, Leigh and Bolton are NOT direct neighbours to Manchester as ity of Salford is in the way - thank goodness) - such as AGMA (association of greater manchester authorities), First Manchester, Stagecoach Manchester, Arriva Manchester (although arriva in Bolton is actually Arriva Liverpool!), GMPTE/A, Greater Manchester Fire Service, GMP, etc etc and lets not forget the upsominc Congestion Charge will affect more than those who actually live within "Greater Manchester"

Of course by which assumptions the City of Manchester is bigger than the City of London. Which is of course a major flaw in most of these "which is the largest city" arguments. Where does it stop? It's a bigger issue in these Metropolitan areas where many conurbations are lumped together as one.

Come on, how can you say Birmingham is better than Manchester? People pay money on the M6 toll just to avoid it! Culturally Manchester is England's 2nd city, and you'd be hard pushed to find better nightlife excluding London.

According to Manchester, everything that comes from Manchester is wonderful, and anything else is ****. Best thing to come out of Manchester was THE SMITHS. Apart from that, hmm..

Sorry, disagree, The Smiths were ****, as are Oasis.

Greater Manchester doesn't exist as a county anymore. Manchester is in Lancashire, as are Bolton, Wigan and Salford. Warrington, on the other hand, is in Cheshire.

Greater Manchester USED to be a county which included Bolton, Wigan and Salford but was disbanded. Its a bit like Cheshire. Soon Ellesmere Port will be in East Cheshire and Chester will be in Chester with West Cheshire. All confusing...

Please tell me how Ellesmere Port will be in East Cheshire, when it is literally down the road from Chester? :

Although why this topic is having a Manchester Vs Birmingham arguement that has little do with TV is beyond me.

It's a shame though that the Midlands has seen a decline in National output with the closure of Central at Broad St and Lenton Lane and BBC Pebble Mill being shut aswell, as both companies provided some excellent programmes for their own channels.

Saying that if in Manchester we didn't have any long standing comissions (most notably Coronation Street) then Granada would have probably bit the dust years ago.

Complete bollocks. Manchester is not in Lancashire. It USED to be in Lancashire. Greater Manchester County Council was abolished in 1986, and so its districts (the metropolitan boroughs) are now effectively unitary authority areas; however, the metropolitan county continues to exist in law and as a geographic frame of reference. The same applies to the other Metropolitan counties.

You are wrong. Greater Manchester still exists as a county although not as a political unit because the County Council was disbanded in 1988.

There has been an inconsistent approach to how unitary authorities are treated regarding their county, political and ceremonial status.

Unlike when other urban amalgamations such as 'Cleveland County Council' were abolished and separated into unitary authorities, the constituent areas returned to their former ceremonial counties (ie Stockton to Durham, Middlesbrough to North Yorkshire). The same wasn't applied to Greater Manchester on its abolition in the 1980s, the Greater Manchester County remained, and still does.

However, when Plymouth and Torbay became unitary authorities in 1998 they simply remained within the ceremonial county of Devon whilst gaining political independence from the county council.

Manchester is not part of Lancashire, even for ceremonial purposes. For postal purposes some of the metropolitan boroughs within GMC (Stockport, Trafford, Warrington etc) have always retained “Cheshire” as part of their address, but it was unnecessary.

East Cheshire is not going to be a County, it will be a unitary authority within the ceremonial county of Cheshire.

Well that's more to do with the stubbornness of the residents than anything else. They should really have used "Greater Manchester" but the southern end didn't want to loose their posh claim to Cheshire. And Warrington's in Cheshire anyway, though was formally in Lancashire.