English local elections 2011

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Excellent stuff

And I've just finished something...

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Donny!

Like all Yorkshire metropolitan districts, Doncaster includes much more than the town that it's named for. Most are old mining towns, and these can be divided into an approximate geographical order; the Dearne Valley (or at least the part of it in Donny borough), the cluster north of Donny most of which are relatively new (Askern, Adwick le Street, Bentley, etc) and which form the core of Ed Miliband's constituency, and the rest some of which (like Rossington) are isolated from the rest of the coalfield. Of course there are some non-industrial, and rather staid, towns here and there, the best known of which is Tickhill.

Anyways, local politics in Donny is seriously fycked up, but then you all knew that anyway.

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What are the Torie areas in Doncaster like?

Middle class, basically, though in different ways. Finningley includes the bits of Bessacarr that aren't inside the old CB boundary (Bessacarr is a very large and very middle class post-war suburban 'village') and various small commuter settlements, Torne Valley is dominated by Tickhill and Bawtry (which are ancient - and quite rich - market towns) and other smaller places now mostly given over to commuters, while Sprotborough is dominated by middle class (but much more humdrum) Donny suburbs. Read that clockwise. Anyways, none are especially rural, despite the size of some of them. If I remember correctly, the ward in Donny with the most farmers is actually Askern...

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This is true. And Donny outgrew the boundaries of its CB a long time ago. Of course the issue with Wakey is its status as the capital of the West Riding. You know that the HQ of West Yorkshire Police is there?

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One issue is that Labour's organisation at the grassroots level was more-or-less completely ignored under a certain previous leader who may possibly have been the MP for a constituency in East Durham. For a good example of undernomination probably costing seats, check out the results for the Forest Dean (though only the Forest wards). These elections were really just phase one of rebuilding in many districts.

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If Stoke is anything to go by they'll vote to scrap it.

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Southampton...



It's probably fair to say that the ideological gulf between the parties is now wider in Southampton than almost anywhere else in the country. As most British posters will know, the Tory council (elected in a massive 1968-style landslide in 2008) has been at war with its employees for a while now, while Soton Labour has mostly been on the party's Left since the early 1980s. This has produced levels of polarisation in local politics there not seen for decades; the LibDems, once an important player in local politics, have been bundled into irrelevance and saw their vote collapse and all their seats up for election lost, almost as if Soton were Rochdale or somewhere. The elections next year - which will probably see a change in administration as the councillors elected in 2008 are up - will almost certainly be unusually high profile.

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How does Soton Labour differ from Labour as a whole?

The general default setting (in terms of internal Labour politics and all that) seems to be soft Left rather than traditional Right. I suspect that that mostly reflects the fact that Whitehead and Denham have been the Party's public faces in the city for nearly thirty years.

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I'm not sure of the details and haven't followed things all that closely. I know they want things resolved via ACAS, which (IIRC) is what the unions want and what the council doesn't.

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"Eager for sheep"? Have you gone all Newzealander on us?

This is our team name for the upcoming European Quiz Championships.  (We wanted Cymdeithas Cwis Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch but it won't fit on the leaderboard.)  Blame the guy in my sig.

You could have shortened it to Llanfairpwll for such purposes?

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Telford & Wrekin as a sort of New Year present. I can explain just about everything. But, damn, is that pretty.

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Telford & Wrekin People's Association. Local populist outfit that started as a movement against parking charges in Dawley. Includes (or perhaps that ought to be included? They may have dissolved since May; I don't actually know) a fascinating mix of people, from Trots, local busybodies and people who could be described as crypto-fascist without any serious risk of libel. There was a degree of crossover activity and membership (I think) with UKIP. They won a seat off Labour in Dawley Magna ward in 2006 and won the other two seats there in 2007 (and polled very well in some other parts of Telford, including some areas not even in Dawley), but crashed and burned in May.

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Slightly odd map from tehwiki which shows the different towns within Telford.

Pink = Wellington, Dark Grey = Dawley*, Brown = Madeley, Dark Green = Oakengates, Blue = Hadley, Ketley and Leegomery, Blue Grey = Donnington, Light Green = The Rock, Orange = Admaston (which is functionally part of Wellington), Light Blue = Broseley, Red = Shifnal (what the hell is that doing on the map?), and Yellow = places where there was nowt before the New Town. Including the 'town centre' and related hellholes, but also the rather posh suburb of Priorslee. Broseley and Shifnal are not covered by T&W (stupidly in the case of Broseley), while it also includes some areas that are clearly not part of Telford, notably the Newport area (the posh town in the north of the election maps).

*Though the south-eastern bit is really Stirchley.

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The roughest city in the known universe, or 'Salford' as it's known to locals:



As astonishing as it may seem from the above maps, the LibDems were defending multiple seats in the city.

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Yeah, not a single close ward. Purely ritualistic elections ahoy!

Kersal is an interesting one; as well as including a massive Hasidic community, it is also very middle class (especially for Salford) though leaning professional rather than managerial (unlike the solid block of blue out west). Still can't decide whether it's Tory strength in that part of the conurbation that's the weird thing, or that Labour held the ward throughout 2006-2008.

Elsewhere the only odd thing (given the overall picture) is Tory weakness just north of Eccles which is comparatively prosperous, but that can be explained by (now former) LibDem strength.

No, not quite true. A fairly good showing for the LibDem candidate in Worsley.