REAL redistricting in the Republic of Ireland

[minionofmidas]

While having nothing to do with Irish politics, I'd like to point out that there exist the towns of North, South Carolina, and Due West, South Carolina.

That's nothing compared to West East Westphalia.

My translator site renders "westliches Ostwestfalen" as "western East Westphalia" which isn't quite as ridiculous.

Which is why I wrote "West East Westphalia".

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Except that North isn't actually the Northern part of South Carolina, and isn't even named for the compass point, but for a Mr. North. Then again, Ostfalen ("Eastphalia") is long extinct as a term, and Falen ("Phalia"?) never existed, so Westphalia's relation to the West is somewhat tenuous as well.

[minionofmidas]

Hmmm... I've been thinking about doing something about Germany on British-sized constituencies recently...

Sounds interesting.  What's the current size of the Bundestag and what would it be with British-sized (English-sized and single-member I presume) constituencies?

Current size is 598, but of course there's only 299 constituencies. I was thinking of 100,000 inhabitants per seat (we're currently using citizen inhabitants as the basis, btw. Changing that would of course increase representation for major cities. Though also for South German suburbia. ) giving a little over 800 seats.

[minionofmidas]

I have a book based on Ostphalian Platt so it is not extinct .

As a historians' or linguists' specialist term, maybe not. Ask people on the street to find it on a map and you'll not get very far. 25% will say no such thing exists, and another 65% will think they misheard and that you meant to say Ostwestfalen.

[jimrtex]

The many please from Leitrim residents to end the split of their county fell on deaf ears, and the line dividing the county between Sligo-North Leitrim and Roscommon-South Leitrim was moved southeast from the River Shannon and Lough Allen to a more arbitrary boundary on seemingly largely dry land to bring the Sligo seat closer to the ideal population per TD.

The Commission received more submissions regarding Leitrim (all of which urging reunification) than on anything else. Did them no good at all. Unifying probably would have led to significant redraws but would have been doable. Reinforces the commissions lazy conservative nature.

The commission didn't appear to start off with a base assumption that counties that could have coterminous constituencies and be within an acceptable population range should have coterminous constitutuencies.  But in practice there were few cases where they could have done so and didn't, so it may well be that they did do a little bit of pencil and paper analysis when they started.  The report then is more reflective of their final conclusions, rather than any preliminary analysis.

Wicklow county is closer to 5 seats (4.94) than Wicklow constituency (5.10), but if they had excluded the small bit of Carlow then they would have had to find another constituency for the excess population of Kilkenny.  Similarly, West Meath could have been made a 3-seater (3.12), but that would have stretched the limits a bit on the Louth-Meath pairing (10.74) and forced Longford to be treated with Roscommon, Sligo, and Leitrim (7.16).

An interesting dilemna for future commissions will be the constitutional restrictions of TD's representing between 20,000 and 30,000 persons.  When the Dail was set at the current size of 166 TD's in 1980 it was right at the lower limit.   Now, it is at 25,541 per TD; and the constitutional limit is 141 to 211 TD's (the statutory limit was 164 to 168).  But going forward 15 to 20 years the constitutional limit could be reached, and future commissions could find themselves having to add a dozen TD's at a time, and making major changes even if population growth were uniform.

[minionofmidas]

The book is named "Eck freue meck". It is tales on Eastphalian language.
I bought it in Göttingen some ten years ago.
I think the term could be known in that area.

Göttingen is not in historical Eastphalia. Eastphalia was further northeast, around Brunswick and on the other side of the Lower Saxon - Saxon-Anhaltine border.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostfalen

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Btw one of thing Jas mentioned was the boring constituency names - so for Dublin I suggest this:

Dublin Central = Dublin Thoroughfare
Dublin South Central = Dublin St James'
Dublin South East = Dublin Pembroke
Dun Laoghaire = Same the same.
Dublin South = Dublin Rathdown
Dublin South West = Dublin Tallaght
Dublin Mid West = Ehmm, Dublin Suburban Hellhole ( )
Dublin West = Dublin Blanchardstown
Dublin North = Dublin Fingal
Dublin North Central = Dublin Fairview
Dublin North West = Dublin Finglas
Dublin North East = Dublin Bayside