In a period of financial crisis, the Post Office was able to alter many of its postal counties in accordance with the 1965 and 1974 reforms, but not all. The two major exceptions were Greater London and Greater Manchester. Greater London was not adopted in 1965, since, according to the Post Office at the time, it would have been too expensive to do so, while it gave as its reason for not adopting Greater Manchester the ambiguity of the name with the Manchester post town. Perhaps as a result of this, the ancient counties appear not to have fallen completely out of use for locating places in Greater Manchester, along with areas of Greater London that are not part of the London post town. It is common for people to speak of "Uxbridge, Middlesex", "Dagenham, Essex" or "Bromley, Kent" (which are outside the London postal district), but much less so to speak of "Brixton, Surrey", "Greenwich, Kent", or "West Ham, Essex" (which are inside it).