Let the great boundary rejig commence

[You kip if you want to...]

Anyone with more experience of this fancy telling me if this would've been workable to avoid Mersey Banks?



Birkenhead - 74,264
Moels and Wallasey - 76,171
Wirral South and West Kirby - 76,871

[joevsimp]

for some reason, I spent most of today thinking they'd called it Mersey Shore  

Your proposal doesn't look too far away from the status quo, I'm sure some would oppose it, but its better than that monster,

[minionofmidas]

The Mersey thing was apparently drawn as the only way to avoid splitting Chester... why is that worth more than avoiding splitting Ellesmere Port?

[You kip if you want to...]

for some reason, I spent most of today thinking they'd called it Mersey Shore  

Wonder how many people in the Commission office said that before they settled on the God-awful "Mersey Banks".

And yeah, as close to the status quo would be what they should be aiming for though, surely? With my map, we'd have a safe Labour (Birkenhead) a fairly safe Labour seat (Lab majority slashed compared to the current Wallasey constituency) and a marginal seat leaning Tory (Wirral South).

And in terms of candidates, only McVey would struggle, and she would've won my South seat in 2010 anyway - compared to McGovern, Miller and God knows who else laying a claim to the Banks seat which'd be difficult to represent anyway, what, with all that swimming back and forth.

The Mersey thing was apparently drawn as the only way to avoid splitting Chester... why is that worth more than avoiding splitting Ellesmere Port?

Literally just thought that! It's madness and it has knock on effects for miles beyond the Banks proposal as well. Surely it'll get struck down, it's worse than the Wallasey/Kirkdale/Everton one from last time.

[minionofmidas]

And yeah, as close to the status quo would be what they should be aiming for though, surely?

No. That's excised from the rules as a one-off for this review only.
Of course, that didn't stop them discussing how they kept constituencies roughly or exactly alike in those parts of the country where it's easier to do (don't blame'em) or even where they at least kept 3/4 together in Birmingham's four-ward seats (lol), and with no regard to whether existing constituencies actually made sense or not (which ought to have been the point of the rules change. They kept Corby as is, lol.)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Mersey thing was apparently drawn as the only way to avoid splitting Chester... why is that worth more than avoiding splitting Ellesmere Port?

Especially as Chester has always been split; part of the city (at least as a functional unit) is in Flintshire.

[You kip if you want to...]

And yeah, as close to the status quo would be what they should be aiming for though, surely?

No. That's excised from the rules as a one-off for this review only.
Of course, that didn't stop them discussing how they kept constituencies roughly or exactly alike in those parts of the country where it's easier to do (don't blame'em) or even where they at least kept 3/4 together in Birmingham's four-ward seats (lol), and with no regard to whether existing constituencies actually made sense or not (which ought to have been the point of the rules change. They kept Corby as is, lol.)

And they've made York Outer look worse.

[minionofmidas]

After reading the introductory part with two part-York constituencies, I figured "ah, probably sort of back to pre-2010 then". Wrong guess...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Oh, yeah. There will be no constituency named for Salford. Which is a city.

[You kip if you want to...]

Oh, yeah. There will be no constituency named for Salford. Which is a city.

It's like they got the work experience lad in the office to do it.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ah, where would cartoonists be without that plum pudding?



(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Caricature_gillray_plumpudding.jpg)

[afleitch]

UKPollingreport has done a Rawlings and Thrasher style notional calculation

Eastern CON -1 LAB-1 LIB 0
South West CON 0 LAB 0 LIB -2
South East CON +1 LAB 0 LIB-1 GRN-1
London CON +1 LAB-5 LIB-1
East Midlands CON 0, LAB-2 LIB 0
West Midlands CON -1, LAB -4 LIB 0
North West CON -3, LAB -2, LIB -2
North East CON -1, LAB -1, LIB -1
Yorkshire and Humber CON -1, LAB -3, LIB 0

Total CON -5
        LAB -18
        LIB - 7
        GRN -1


The Boundary Commission for Scotland appears has 'given away' the council groupings used by annoucing their public hearing dates.

[doktorb]

Ah really? What info have they given?

[afleitch]

Ah really? What info have they given?

http://www.bcomm-scotland.gov.uk/6th_westminster/initial_proposals/public_hearings/

[minionofmidas]

Ah really? What info have they given?

http://www.bcomm-scotland.gov.uk/6th_westminster/initial_proposals/public_hearings/

As these groupings don't make much sense otherwise... presumably, yeah.

[afleitch]

Ah really? What info have they given?

http://www.bcomm-scotland.gov.uk/6th_westminster/initial_proposals/public_hearings/

As these groupings don't make much sense otherwise... presumably, yeah.

Looking at the quota's though, I'm thinking there may be more to it. The Highlands/Grampian grouping hs a quota of 7.51, which whether it's 7 or 8 seats ends up above or below quota.

[minionofmidas]

Ah really? What info have they given?

http://www.bcomm-scotland.gov.uk/6th_westminster/initial_proposals/public_hearings/

As these groupings don't make much sense otherwise... presumably, yeah.

Looking at the quota's though, I'm thinking there may be more to it. The Highlands/Grampian grouping hs a quota of 7.51, which whether it's 7 or 8 seats ends up above or below quota.

One of these is the empty parts of Highlands seats essentially prescribed by the legislation. Sum the others, if they're all workable and collectively round down by .5... (oh wait, the Northern and Western Isles seats are also not excised from the quota, right? How much above the remnant-of-Scotland average can they go? 1000?)

[Bacon King]

Wow, horrible horrible map.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Wow, horrible horrible map.

If a man from the state of Georgia can say this, then it must be as terrible as we've all been saying!

[doktorb]

Looking at all the regions now, I think some will be completely changed, not a single proposal will remain

There are some regions where I suspect the changes will be only minimal or not changed at all - I'm going to predict that Eastern England, East Midlands and North East England are falling in this last category.

[MaxQue]

Ah, where would cartoonists be without that plum pudding?



(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Caricature_gillray_plumpudding.jpg)

What is supposed to be that thing?
It has a rather strange shape, if it is supposed to be a plum pudding.

[joevsimp]

Ah, where would cartoonists be without that plum pudding?



(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Caricature_gillray_plumpudding.jpg)

What is supposed to be that thing?
It has a rather strange shape, if it is supposed to be a plum pudding.

It's supposed to be a combination of:

a plumb pudding
a turkey voting for christmas
Nick Clegg
the LibDems' logo



also, the guardian has been caricaturing Cameron as an angrysausage since before the election, no idea why, makes him look more like Andrew Br*ns

[minionofmidas]

Looking at all the regions now, I think some will be completely changed, not a single proposal will remain

There are some regions where I suspect the changes will be only minimal or not changed at all - I'm going to predict that Eastern England, East Midlands and North East England are falling in this last category.

North East? Seriously? That map is atrocious.

I've been playing around with Cheshire... it is certainly possible to keep Chester together without splitting Ellesmere Port. Chester constituency would have to jut out to Eddisbury, though. It seems to be impossible to keep both Chester and Ellesmere Port together, and not split wards, without doing the random-Mersey-cross thing, though. Of course, they did that and split Ellesmere Port.

[YL]

Looking at all the regions now, I think some will be completely changed, not a single proposal will remain

There are some regions where I suspect the changes will be only minimal or not changed at all - I'm going to predict that Eastern England, East Midlands and North East England are falling in this last category.

I think a few proposals in Yorkshire and the Humber will survive: the Doncaster seats, Scarborough & Whitby, perhaps Rother Valley and the East Riding/N Lincs/NE Lincs proposals (though I'm not sure about some of the names there).  Elsewhere little deserves to survive (there are a few individual seats which are OK but they're often surrounded by ones which are not) though I fear it may if they don't bite the ward splitting bullet.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Looking at all the regions now, I think some will be completely changed, not a single proposal will remain

There are some regions where I suspect the changes will be only minimal or not changed at all - I'm going to predict that Eastern England, East Midlands and North East England are falling in this last category.

North East? Seriously? That map is atrocious.

Yeah, Consett & Barnard Castle is one of the very worst constituencies they've drawn and things aren't that much better elsewhere. The seeming conscious effort to keep Beith in his seat is irritating as well.