Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Association of British Counties

Association of British Counties

Ladies and gentlemen, I offer you the Association of British Counties, a pressure group which wants to restore the "historic" counties of Britain such as The Kingdom of Fife Fife. Google finds <1000 hits, of which their website is top and Wikipedia second. Google News finds no hits. I am a Briton with a strong interest in politics and not only have I never heard of them, I had never heard of the much more widely discussed County Watch either, which is probably an indication of just how effective their campaigning has been to date. The fact that Russell Grant is president is probably the most notable thing about them. The chances of their campaign succeeding are this: zero. They are a political King Canute. And one which has achieved, to date, no obvious outside notice. Be quick, the website apparently doesn't usually work after midnight GMT! Just zis Guy you know? 19:15, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Keep - I agree with practically all your comments - it does seem to be a decidedly unsuccessful organisation, and it does hold an unusual and extreme POV. In all likelihood, they will never make a dent on British politics. However, none of these are sufficient causes for deletion! There are many articles on unsuccessful political campaigns, and political campiagns almost by definiton are POV.

As regards notability, I have seen their material quoted fairly widely in the regional media (especially in Saddleworth, one of their favourite battlegrounds). The ABC are also mentioned with amazing frequency on the Talk page of any article referring to the counties of the UK - if nothing else, it's worth keeping just so there's a reference for people reading any of these talk pages.

If you look through the category Lobbying Groups, you could apply your argument to a lot of other such articles - I think it would be unfair to get rid of the article on the British Weights and Measures Association, for example, but it has as much standing as the one in question here.

Overall; let it stand to demonstrate what the organisation is, and why it won't feature too heavily in British politics in the future! Aquilina 19:44, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I understand your points, but there is a much more significant group, County Watch. This bunch appear to have scored virtually no media attention, membership is "unknown", and there is absolutely no evidence of notability. There are significant lobbying groups on this issue, but this is not one of them. Their website is probably hosted out of somebody's house on an ADSL line. They get fewer oogles than I do - in fact, if this is more than one man and his dog I can't find any evidence to prove it! Just zis Guy you know? 00:28, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

• Weak keep but Strong cleanup if kept. I don't know much about this sort of low-level British politics, but the article's been around for eighteen months now, and while it only has a few hundred Google hits, they seem to come from a relatively diverse and meaningful set of sites (links from the BBC, etc.), so I'm going to be generous and guess they're probably a bit more notable than the web gives them credit for. But the article needs fixing, without question. --Aaron 20:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep I've heard of 'em. Jcuk 23:10, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. I agree with nominator's assessment of this organisation and yes they have a snowball's chance in hell there's effectively zero chance of this organisation's agenda being fulfilled. However, I do not think these points are either necessary or sufficient reasons to delete. The organisation has managed to get mentions on academics' web pages, here for example, was referred to in Hansard, and on the letters page of The Telegraph. Sliggy 00:23, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

... By poking around at the Hansard link I give above I see that they are perhaps more effective than I first thought. The 1994 debate in which the AofBC was mentioned was on a bill, given a first reading in the Commons, that would have put many of this group's ideas into law.... Presumably the bill got spiked later. Sliggy 00:32, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, I checked out the references. They are: an add-it-yourself directory, a letter in the Telegraph, and a namecheck by one MP. There is no dispute that a small movement exists to promote the "historic" counties, but there are other more significant organisations doing this as well. I still cannot find a single reliable secondary source from which to verify the data in this article, and the number of genuinely significant organisations whose website is only available before midnight GMT is vanishingly small. We do not know the membership, we do know that they score zero on Google News and under a thousand Googles. Where is the evidence that this group is of any importance? Just zis Guy you know? 11:19, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

• Keep. Yes, they have a snow ball chance in hell of succeeding, but the article should be kept for the reasons above. --Bduke 02:31, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

See the comment above - one add-it-yourself directory, one namecheck by one MP, one letter in the Telegraph (I've had about thirty published in the national press). Just zis Guy you know? 11:19, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Keep they are an umbrella organisation for many other organisations such as Friends of Real Lancashire. They have had plenty of successes such as getting the Royal Mail to add traditional county information to their Postcode Address File; They are constantly involved in government plans for local government reorganisation and ceremonial arrangements; The size of the membership is completely and utterly irrelevant, and the fact that they don't display this information on their web site is of no consequence whatsoever and is probably in line with the Data Protection Act. Comparing ABC with County Watch is laughable. County Watch is a relatively new collection of five or so individuals who hit the headlines by using direct action, whereas the ABC have been around for much longer and are involved in lower-profile government lobbying. Owain (talk) 12:26, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep An organisation's success does not determine whether it stays or goes. If the facts on the page are accurate, without constantly falling victim to the typical revert-wars, then it deserves to be included 65.57.241.181 14:56, 3 March 2006 (UTC)