[OSM-talk] National borders in the British Islands

[Cartinus]

On Monday 02 June 2008 10:38:59 Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> Most people ignore them because they are irrevelent to most people.
> They make no laws, have no jurisdiction. In that sense they're more
> like postcode boundaries: a fairly arbitrary division of area for the
> purposes of optimising some process.

The "waterschap" levies taxes. They do have "laws", which if you break them, 
you do get fined. There are elections for the representatives. Legally they 
are part of the Dutch administration.

See e.g.:
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterschap (Dutch)
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestuursrecht_%28Nederland%29#Bestuursorganen 
(Dutch)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_board_%28The_Netherlands%29 (English)

Just the fact that the "waterschap" mostly deals with farmers and most Dutch 
people are urbanised and don't realise what the "waterschap" is and does 
isn't making it less part of the Dutch administration.

> Another example would be the area
> covered by a power substation or gas distribution node. These are
> well-defined areas, but not interesting to people directly.
A powerstation and a gas distribution node are physical things (fenced off 
areas) and not administrative entities, so this comparison is just weird 
IMHO.

> I was
> kinda assuming that admin_level would only be for legal administrative
> boundaries, not so much any arbitrary boundary.
That is what I think too.

-- 
m.v.g.,
Cartinus