diary of infinity

Today, as most people will (or won’t) know, is Yorkshire Day. This ancient festival dates from the mists of time, in other words the 20th Century (1975 to be exact).

Apparently Yorkshire Day was started in protest against the reorganisation of the English counties which was imposed on the this green and pleasant land by an evil London-based government in 1974, and involved moving many county boundaries (and even abolishing whole counties). For many people a change of counties was as bad as if they’d been told that they were no longer English but French. Yorkshire, Britain's biggest county, was cynically carved up into three smaller Yorkshire-lets, and some chunks at the edges hived off completely to make new soulless counties like Cleveland, a no-man's land between Yorkshire and Durham which has since been abolished after the entire population turned into flesh-eating zombies due to the forced removal of their souls during the 1974 reorganisation.

Anyway, the changes remain controversial to this day, with many august bodies refusing to acknowledge them, for instance the cricket authorities still recognise the original county boundaries when determining who is entitled to play for a county cricket team.