Greater Nottingham has gone!

It hasn’t really – it’s been here a very long time – and I am guessing that it will be here for quite a bit longer.

But it has been banned by Councillor Kay Cutts, leader at Nottinghamshire County Council. It is apparently now to be known as “Core City Area”.

But I foresee a problem here. We already have “Core Cities”. They are a network of England’s major regional cities: Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield. It’s great that we are a core city – but we seem to have just lost our identity in one foul swoop. Or we are sharing our identity with Brummies, Scousers and Geordies.

Sorry, but I don’t think this is going to work.

Perhaps Nottinghamshire County Council is up for a rebrand – “Core City Area County Council”? And I presume we are dropping Nottingham from the City Council too…

Apparently you can’t mention ‘conurbation‘ either.

This is all supposed to make things easy – and distinguish between Nottingham City and the outlying boroughs – Beeston, Arnold, Hucknall, Carlton and West Bridgford. I hadn’t thought that there was any confusion. The form part of “Greater” Nottingham. Actually they are not “core”, which implies at the centre?

Alan Rhodes, leader of the opposition described the ‘ruling’ as “bureaucratic nonsense”. I’m with him on this one.

I would have thought that the energy ought to be expended elsewhere at the moment. Like on the budget?