Homely's UK Maps Thread

[YL]

Surprised. I expected a Tower Hamlets ward up there.

Tower Hamlets' most heavily Muslim ward (St Dunstans and Stepney Green, 48.7% Muslim) is only no. 41 on the list. Your surprise is due to the fact that even though Tower Hamlets' Muslim population is almost twice that of Bradford's (in percentage terms), Bradford's Muslims are heavily concentrated in a few central-city wards, while the (mostly Bangladeshi) population of Tower Hamlets is spread relatively evenly throughout the borough. Due to white flight and the legacy of post-industrialism, many Northern cities have huge racial, religious and linguistic disparities between homogeneous populations living in very close proximity to each other.

Yes.  Also, it's worth remembering that the "City of Bradford Metropolitan District" contains a lot of areas no-one really thinks of as part of Bradford: the Muslim population of Bradford proper will be higher than that in the district (even taking Keighley into account).

[YL]

Two reasons not mentioned yet for the lack of any Tower Hamlets wards on the list: firstly, creeping gentrification in parts of the borough; secondly, London wards are generally larger.

Compared with Lancashire yes, but not compared with the Yorkshire Mets.  In particular, Kirklees wards are huge, which may help explain why no Dewsbury ward appears on the list.

[YL]

These are the 15 English wards with the highest Muslim population:

Rank	% Muslim	Ward	City
1	85.3%	BASTWELL	Blackburn
2	77.7%	SHEAR BROW	Blackburn
3	77.3%	WASHWOOD HEATH	Birmingham
4	76.3%	DANESHOUSE WITH STONEYHULME	Burnley
5	76.1%	TOLLER	Bradford
6	75.0%	MANNINGHAM	Bradford
7	73.9%	BORDESLEY GREEN	Birmingham
8	72.8%	BRADFORD MOOR	Bradford
9	70.2%	SPARKBROOK	Birmingham
10	69.8%	WHITEFIELD	Pendle
11	69.6%	SPINNEY HILLS	Leicester
12	68.9%	AUDLEY	Blackburn
13	68.2%	WERNETH	Oldham
14	67.1%	MILKSTONE AND DEEPLISH	Rochdale
15	64.7%	PARK	Halifax

The highest Muslim population in a Greater London ward is 50.4% - Green Street West in Newham - and comes in at no. 36 on the list for the whole of England.

And as of the last set of elections in 2012, how many of them have a Respect councillor and how many of them in 2012 were Labour GAIN from Respect?

Only Manningham and Bradford Moor voted Respect in 2012.  (Toller probably would have done too had Respect not messed up their nomination.)  Of the others, a perusal of Andrew Teale's website suggests that Sparkbrook is the only one Respect have ever won.  In fact some of them (including all three Blackburn wards) have never even had a Respect candidate.

[YL]

The religion questions were not the same, unfortunately.  In Scotland the question was "What religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?"  In England and Wales it was "What is your religion?"

[YL]

The religion questions were not the same, unfortunately.  In Scotland the question was "What religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?"  In England and Wales it was "What is your religion?"

Yet you still get a stark result in Wales even with that.

The England/Scotland border stands out considerably more on that map than the England/Wales one, the Valleys concentration notwithstanding.  Of course it is a culturally sharper border, but I'm still a bit suspicious (and the effect is in the direction I'd expect if the difference in the questions were partly responsible).

[YL]

Though some patterns are still interesting: if you look at that map, note that the very low rates are almost all minority-heavy (to a given definition of minority: Catholics very much included). Places with large student populations tend too have high rates. New Towns often have slightly higher rates than surrounding areas. And once you drill down to ward level in some places other things of interest can some up.

Do you know why Ribble Valley and Hambleton (the latter in particular standing out from its North Yorkshire neighbours) have such low figures?

The range of figures among the large English cities is curious.  Here are the "No religion" percentages for the eight Core Cities, plus four more:

Bristol 37.4
Nottingham 35.0
Hull 34.8
Sheffield 31.2
Newcastle 28.3
Leeds 28.2
Manchester 25.3
Coventry 23.0
Leicester 22.8
Bradford 20.7
Birmingham 19.3
Liverpool 17.7

Now, no doubt most of this can be explained by the point you made about minorities, and comparisons also have to be treated carefully because some of these (in particular all of the top three) have tightly drawn boundaries whereas others (especially Leeds and Bradford, which take in a number of separate towns) don't.

(As an experiment, I've just calculated some figures for a more tightly drawn version of Sheffield, excluding the three wards in Penistone & Stocksbridge constituency and also the three wards in the south-east annexed from Derbyshire in the late 1960s.  Muslim goes up from 7.7% to 9.4%, Christian down from 52.5% to 49.7%, and No Religion up from 31.2% to 32.0%.)

[YL]

Do you know why Ribble Valley and Hambledon (the latter in particular standing out from its North Yorkshire neighbours) have such low figures?

The remnants of recusancy?

That did occur to me, but was Hambleton a strong area for recusancy compared with its neighbours?

[YL]

Hambleton's figures are very similar to those in Richmondshire and Ryedale: it's just one of the eternal issues with mapping data at work.

If that's true there's a mistake in the map: the two Rs are in the 20-25% category, but Hambleton is only 10-15%.