Many people today are ignorant as to which county they really live in. It isn't their fault, of course, as ignorance and misunderstanding amongst , and in some cases the deliberate falsification of the truth by, those in authority have ensured that such confusion and misconception have prevailed for, certainly, the last forty years, if not for far longer.

Potters Bar is the prime, and saddest, example of the problem of misdirected county identity and shows only too well the ignorance of people who should have known better and the arrogance and untruthfulness of those who are elected to represent, and paid to serve, the people Potters Bar. People who are motivated entirely by self-interest and self-preservation, in the pursuit of which, such things as history, heritage and truth are unimportant and expendable.

Up to 1888 our counties, at least those England, were, generally speaking, as they had been since their origin in the ninth century and one of their functions was as units of local government which was undertaken, before the introduction of county councils, by Justices of the Peace sitting at the County Quarter Sessions who conducted both the judicial and administrative functions of the county.

In 1888 Parliament enacted a Local Government Act which introduced county councils (which took over the administrative role of the Justices) and created new local government areas which they unfortunately chose to term "administrative counties" which, at that time, were generally, but not in every instance, co-terminous with the already existing counties. It was made very clear in the Act that the new "administrative counties" were to be called such in order to distinguish them from the already existing "geographical" or "historical" counties and it was, further, clearly stated that the new "administrative counties" would not affect the continued existence of the geographical counties which would "continue to exist for all purposes other than that of local government administration". A different name for the new administrative areas would have been preferable and would have avoided all the later confusion and misconception but, at the time, the distinction was clearly understood, both by the government and by everybody else, and, for a while at least, no such confusion existed.

The 1888 Act also made it perfectly clear that the new "administrative counties" had been created so that they could be altered, or abolished entirely, by future local government acts in accordance with the changing requirements of local government administration. Their creation was necessary precisely because the existing geographical counties could not be so altered or abolished; .the reason being that, as they had come into being before Parliament (or even England itself) existed and had not, therefore, been created by an Act of Parliament in the first place, there was no Act of Parliament to repeal or amend and, so, the existence of the geographical counties was beyond Parlaiment's jurisdiction.

Thus, despite all later local government acts (notably those of 1963, 1972, 1986 and 1996) which abolished some administrative counties completely and altered the geographical extent of many more, the pre-1888 geographical counties remained as they had always been and continued, and still continue, to exist for all non-local government functions, i.e ecclesiastical, judicial, military, sporting and social functions.