Let the great boundary rejig commence

[Sibboleth]

But is it to be applauded? They've managed to get the numbers to work out right, sure. But this isn't a psephological-wank exercise of the sort that we enjoy a fair bit here, it's the real thing.

Of course given the rules and all that we really shouldn't be terribly surprised by any of this. Even if we all are.

[afleitch]

But is it to be applauded? They've managed to get the numbers to work out right, sure. But this isn't a psephological-wank exercise of the sort that we enjoy a fair bit here, it's the real thing.

Of course given the rules and all that we really shouldn't be terribly surprised by any of this. Even if we all are.

I think that's what will hurt them. They did it in Scotland; got all the numbers right, patted themselves on the back and were rightfully shafted by the Commissioner who recommended 80% of it was thrown out. They will have to justify why they choose not to split any wards and on what basis they did so especially when set against the other criteria. I don't think they will be able to justify it making this a wasted exercise.

[afleitch]

Great, and now the website has crashed.

[Die-hard Clockworkfan]

Right, just got in.

Some thoughts in the Salfordshire/East Lancs area:

There are several ways you can cross the Lancs/Gt Mcr boundary that work.  Whitworth/Rochdale is good as long as you only go as far as Whitworth - Bacup belongs in a Rossendale seat, Rawtenstall definitely belongs in a Rossendale seat.  They would have done better to try and unify Rossendale in one seat and leave the two Rochdale seats alone.

There's not a lot of connection between Bury and Bradshaw - there's a great big hill in the way.  Splitting Bradshaw from Bromley Cross makes no sense.

The proposed seats in Bolton are mad.  The general idea of having North and South seats is fairly strong, but putting Breightmet in South isn't.  Horwich is now split straight down the middle.

Darwen and Haslingden  It would have been better to split Blackburn.

Apart from that I do like the east Lancs seats - drawing urban seats along the M65 is a strong idea.

Manchester Central should be 'Cities of Salford and Manchester'.  Salford really has got shafted and they're not going to like the names at all.

[afleitch]

Still down for me. There's always the morning

[Sibboleth]

I can understand people not liking Salford much, but it's clear that it ought to form the base of a constituency in its own right.

[joevsimp]

here is my slightly rushed map of Greater London, any mistakes let me know
I draw particular attention to Camden and Regents Park, Hampstead and Kilburn, and Chingford and Edmonton

[doktorb]

I've just booked myself a seat at the two meetings I need to get to

[afleitch]

Northern Ireland's proposals are out. Quite sensible geographically. Demographically though...

[ObserverIE]

Northern Ireland's proposals are out. Quite sensible geographically. Demographically though...

from Nicholas Whyte's site http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1816829.html.

Unnecessary fiddling with Newry/Armagh, South Down and Upper Bann, all of which are already within the quota and don't need to be changed.

I'd go with a different set of wards to add to Fermanagh/South Tyrone, and "Mid Ulster" is a better name than "Mid Tyrone".

The one really daft seat is Mid Antrim. Ballymena has much better communication links with Antrim town to its south than to Larne. East Antrim could largely be left intact with the addition of an area around Ballyclare, and with the rural area to the south of Antrim town being added to Lagan Valley instead.

In Belfast, the Lagan might make a more natural boundary between the new South East and South West, with attendant shuffling around of wards in Castlereagh and Lisburn.

The casualties will be the SDLP in Belfast South and the DUP in the old East L'Derry (once you take out Coleraine town and points east you remove the Unionist majority in the seat).

[Bro-mentum]

The only thing of note I've noticed so far from looking at my local area is that every single ward in the 'Brighton Pavilion and Hove' consistuency has at least one Green councillor (since May this year)..

It's also fairly obvious where Tory MPs Mike Weatherly and Simon Kirby might respectively stand, in 'Brighton & Hove North' and 'Lewes and Brighton East' (where Norman Baker may presumably be defending).

[Bro-mentum]

Map of boundaries from Guardian datablog: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2011/sep/13/boundary-changes-constituency-map

[afleitch]

Map of boundaries from Guardian datablog: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2011/sep/13/boundary-changes-constituency-map

Nifty map. Not so sure of the figures though.

[Sibboleth]

Looks like they've done things Baxter-style. Though I'd question the validity of any set of notionals to some of these monsters, because the rules of the game change when certain places get put in potentially marginal constituencies.

[YL]

Northern Ireland's proposals are out. Quite sensible geographically. Demographically though...

from Nicholas Whyte's site http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1816829.html.

Unnecessary fiddling with Newry/Armagh, South Down and Upper Bann, all of which are already within the quota and don't need to be changed.

I'd go with a different set of wards to add to Fermanagh/South Tyrone, and "Mid Ulster" is a better name than "Mid Tyrone".

The one really daft seat is Mid Antrim. Ballymena has much better communication links with Antrim town to its south than to Larne. East Antrim could largely be left intact with the addition of an area around Ballyclare, and with the rural area to the south of Antrim town being added to Lagan Valley instead.

In Belfast, the Lagan might make a more natural boundary between the new South East and South West, with attendant shuffling around of wards in Castlereagh and Lisburn.

The casualties will be the SDLP in Belfast South and the DUP in the old East L'Derry (once you take out Coleraine town and points east you remove the Unionist majority in the seat).

Compared with the monstrosities in England, where it actually looks to me as if the Commission didn't like the new rules and decided to show what was wrong with them, Northern Ireland has got off fairly lightly.

[afleitch]

Remind me never to read the Guardian comment pages on such things ever again.

[Sibboleth]

Remind me never to read the Guardian comment pages on such things ever again.

It's a thing of twisted beauty, is it not? I especially love the bits when people start randomly screaming about immigrants.

[afleitch]

Remind me never to read the Guardian comment pages on such things ever again.

It's a thing of twisted beauty, is it not? I especially love the bits when people start randomly screaming about immigrants.

It's the CONSPIRACEE brigade that get me. Apparently it was Cameron who chose to count only registered voters rather than it being anything to do with the Representation of the People Act several generations ago. Or it's the 'bankers'; they even seem to get the blame for crap telly.

The biggest shock however was stumbling across a familiar face in the comments section

[Sibboleth]

It's the CONSPIRACEE brigade that get me. Apparently it was Cameron who chose to count only registered voters rather than it being anything to do with the Representation of the People Act several generations ago. Or it's the 'bankers'; they even seem to get the blame for crap telly.

Oh, by their standards that stuff is pretty tame... it's a little bit embarrassing though. There are enough decent lefty arguments against this whole thing without needed to resort to bizarre and rambling conspiracy theories.

The biggest shock however was stumbling across a familiar face in the comments section

Eventually you read one too many especially idiotic comments threads and, you know. I actually registered because of the idiots who comment on telly threads.

[joevsimp]

Map of boundaries from Guardian datablog: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2011/sep/13/boundary-changes-constituency-map

Nifty map. Not so sure of the figures though.

well quite, they've got Labour winning a seat that's represented by 17 Green cllrs and one tory

My aunt and uncle's new seat is the hilarious Billaricay and Gt Dunmow, for the love of all things holy, why did they think that was a good idea,

[afleitch]

Oh, by their standards that stuff is pretty tame... it's a little bit embarrassing though. There are enough decent lefty arguments against this whole thing without needed to resort to bizarre and rambling conspiracy theories.

Like this gem from Emily Thornberry MP

"In my constituency the problems are stark. Nearly 80,000 adults live in Islington South and Finsbury – but when the new boundaries were drawn up fewer than 67,000 "counted". Because the 8,000 Europeans who live in Islington can't vote in general elections, they were ignored. Many who come from outside the Commonwealth or aren't on the electoral register weren't counted either. The government shouldn't pretend these people don't need an MP, and they deserve to be counted as my constituents."

[You kip if you want to...]

Stoke's a mess.

[Vasall des Midas]

Northern Ireland's proposals are out. Quite sensible geographically. Demographically though...

from Nicholas Whyte's site http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1816829.html.

Unnecessary fiddling with Newry/Armagh, South Down and Upper Bann, all of which are already within the quota and don't need to be changed.

I'd go with a different set of wards to add to Fermanagh/South Tyrone, and "Mid Ulster" is a better name than "Mid Tyrone".

The one really daft seat is Mid Antrim. Ballymena has much better communication links with Antrim town to its south than to Larne. East Antrim could largely be left intact with the addition of an area around Ballyclare, and with the rural area to the south of Antrim town being added to Lagan Valley instead.

In Belfast, the Lagan might make a more natural boundary between the new South East and South West, with attendant shuffling around of wards in Castlereagh and Lisburn.

The casualties will be the SDLP in Belfast South and the DUP in the old East L'Derry (once you take out Coleraine town and points east you remove the Unionist majority in the seat).

"Glenshane"? Heh. A seat named after an executed outlaw.

[Vasall des Midas]

Oh, by their standards that stuff is pretty tame... it's a little bit embarrassing though. There are enough decent lefty arguments against this whole thing without needed to resort to bizarre and rambling conspiracy theories.

Like this gem from Emily Thornberry MP

"In my constituency the problems are stark. Nearly 80,000 adults live in Islington South and Finsbury – but when the new boundaries were drawn up fewer than 67,000 "counted". Because the 8,000 Europeans who live in Islington can't vote in general elections, they were ignored. Many who come from outside the Commonwealth or aren't on the electoral register weren't counted either. The government shouldn't pretend these people don't need an MP, and they deserve to be counted as my constituents."

Well, she's right.

It does affect only certain types of areas, by no means all Labour-voting inner city areas, and it hasn't been made an issue of in the past. But maybe it should be addressed, in the reform this deform will hopefully lead to eventually.

[joevsimp]

Oh, by their standards that stuff is pretty tame... it's a little bit embarrassing though. There are enough decent lefty arguments against this whole thing without needed to resort to bizarre and rambling conspiracy theories.

Like this gem from Emily Thornberry MP

"In my constituency the problems are stark. Nearly 80,000 adults live in Islington South and Finsbury – but when the new boundaries were drawn up fewer than 67,000 "counted". Because the 8,000 Europeans who live in Islington can't vote in general elections, they were ignored. Many who come from outside the Commonwealth or aren't on the electoral register weren't counted either. The government shouldn't pretend these people don't need an MP, and they deserve to be counted as my constituents."

Well, she's right.

It does affect only certain types of areas, by no means all Labour-voting inner city areas, and it hasn't been made an issue of in the past. But maybe it should be addressed, in the reform this deform will hopefully lead to eventually.

I don't see why we can't do like america does and have a review every ten years when the census comes out (without all the partisan rediculousness obv.)