Let the great boundary rejig commence

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Remind me, what's John Hemming's majority these days?

3,002 (7.3). Which turns into a small Labour lead if you swap Acocks Green for Shard End. And anything coming in from Bordesley Green would be extremely bad for him, though hard to calculate.

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Does Salford proper really need to be split into three?

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I'll be commenting later today

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Market Drayton & other naming particles 76,409
Shawbury, The Meres, Saint Martin's and points east, two and a half random rural Cheshire wards as described earlier

Would it wreck the figures to reunite St Martins with Weston Rhyn? Or, alternatively, add them to whatever constituency Chirk is in

No, but, seriously... the splitting of the two was an extremely stupid decision made by the boundary commissars. They don't belong in different constituencies.

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Severn Valley would be a much better fit than Clee; the latter should probably not be in a different constituency to Ludlow. But, yeah, this seems like a pretty logical constituency on the whole. What are you doing about the Corvedale ward? It also includes the Apedale, which was in South Shropshire district, not Bridgnorth.

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Given that 'Derbyshire Dales' managed to become a constituency name at the last review, I get the impression that some tool would nominate 'Shropshire Hills'. But I think Shropshire West (the name of a pre-1918 constituency) would the name the commission would prefer, though there might be demands to preserve the name of Ludlow.

Anyway, it's pretty absurd but no more absurd than the existing Ludlow constituency, tbh. Does Clun have much to do (or in common) with Oswestry? No. But it doesn't have anything to do with Bridgnorth either. And arguments about historical continuity (something I'm generally favourably disposed towards) obviously don't count when you decide to impose 5% limits on things and go for a big cut in the number of MPs.

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The Potteries (defined as Stoke and Newcastle-under-Lyme) will not go into three seats and will not fill four; there's no way to avoid that.

One alternative would be to create three totally Potteries seats (say (just examples as I've not played with the figures) a NuL extending to Kidsgrove, a Stoke North extending as far as Bentilee and a Stoke South (a name that I'd like kept as it was for many years represented by one of the best people ever elected to the Commons) that's sort of Hanley-to-Longton) and then put the less 'pure' Potteries bits in with some other Staffordshire constituency.

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Uh, yeah. I meant to add that bit, yeah. More genuinely suburban wards like Trentham & Hanford.

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Love the cat box thing, fwiw.

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People on the Isle of Wight have, however, consistently expressed a desire not to be paired with the mainland.

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I'm not sure if cutting up the Gower (which seems to be preordained from that post) is a good idea.

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I'm not sure if cutting up the Gower (which seems to be preordained from that post) is a good idea.

Got a better one? Which 18,000 electors would you most like to be seen drawn into Dyfed? I'm open to suggestions, you know.

Brecon is the obvious area, I think. Ystradgynlais has ties to the upper Amman Valley, while the rural east of the county has ties to Llandovery. Transport links between Brecon itself and Llandovery are fairly good (better than between Brecon and much of the rest of Powys), if you have to go that far.

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I'll have to make a map to see how bad this will all be (because any map of Wales based on these rules will be bad. It's a question of least-badness, I think).

Hmmm... coming down from the north though, the Syniadau proposals work out fairly (seemingly) reasonable there too.

Except for the part where there's no direct road links between Bangor and the Conwy Valley, of course, but who cares. Still a community of interest comparative Welshness when compared to Llandudno, Colwyn Bay et al.

Couldn't you extend the Island/Bangor constituency to the Llanberis area instead? You would then have the bulk of the Caernarfonshire slate towns in the same constituency and avoid the insanity of having the Conwy Valley in the same constituency as Anglesey. I'm not sure if the figures work, though. Obviously the Conwy Valley remains a problem, but then it's been a problem for boundary reviews since the 1940s.

I'm probably not being very helpful

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(I'll comment on rest later)

How are you trying to split Cardiff? Have you tried a return to the pattern of the 1950-1970 split?

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Cardiff North 79,094
Gains Llanrumney, Pentwyn, Cyncoed; loses Gabalfa, Llandaf North
Cardiff South East 73,239
Compared to current S & Penarth, loses Llanrumney, Grangetown, Penarth; gains Adamsdown, Plasnewydd, Penylan, Cathays
Cardiff West 74,114
Gains Grangetown, Gabalfa, Llandaf North; loses Creigiau/St Fagans, Radyr & Morganstown, Pentyrch.

Llanrumney should be in SE, Penylan certainly shouldn't be. About half of Rumney is in Llanrumney ward, while Roath Park is split between Cyncoed and Penylan.

More later.

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Yeah, well, f*** the rules. Bah.

You could always split Penylan. The A48 is a reasonably clear boundary between Penylan and Roath Park. Or you could give the Old St. Mellons (about a third of the ward) part of Pontprennau/Old St. Mellons to SE.

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That's because of the use of STV.

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That's because of the use of STV.

Nyes... the previous single-member wards were smaller of course, but the current wards elect three or four councillors, not much different from Birmingham. It's just that there are fewer councillors. If the council were larger the STV wards would be smaller.

Ah, but were it not for STV there wouldn't be so many councillors per ward.

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That's because of the use of STV.

Nyes... the previous single-member wards were smaller of course, but the current wards elect three or four councillors, not much different from Birmingham. It's just that there are fewer councillors. If the council were larger the STV wards would be smaller.

Ah, but were it not for STV there wouldn't be so many councillors per ward.

When did they introduce STV in Birmingham again, care to remind me?

They didn't? I meant that wards in Glasgow wouldn't be the size they are if it wasn't for STV. The size of the wards in Birmingham has nothing to do with the population of the city, so much as because of tradition.

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The government has decreed that the Isle of Wight will be given two constituencies entirely on the Isle of Wight. Given the general direction of policy, I don't quite see how that can be justified on anything other than partisan grounds.

People on the Island that I can see when I stick my head out of my window will probably be less than amused.

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Just abolish the whole uberstrict quota crap. Because crap is what it is.

Won't happen until the government realises that it won't be as electorally beneficial to them as they've deluded themselves into believing...

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There'll still be a "bias" to Labour with the caps. Turnout will still be lower in Liverpool than in the Shires, meaning that it'll take less raw votes to elect a Labour MP. Simple thinking really.

Actually - as I've shown here and other places before - there was very little sign of this mystical 'bias' in 2010. What is true is that it's easier for Labour to win a majority than the Tories, something that won't change just because of these new and idiotic rules (even though that's the intention).

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That explains it, then. IIRC there is a bridge over the Menai as well

I hear that they're both fairly well known.

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Overall I'd say better than some other attempts, but there are some constituencies which... um... yeah. Take the one I'd be living in; Gwynedd & Machynlleth. Which would stretch from Y Felinheli to just west of Newtown.

Though, with the new rules, I suppose we should resign ourselves to an unusually large crop of stupidly drawn constituencies. More, I suspect, than the 1983 map.

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Overall I'd say better than some other attempts, but there are some constituencies which... um... yeah. Take the one I'd be living in; Gwynedd & Machynlleth. Which would stretch from Y Felinheli to just west of Newtown.

Out of interest, what would be a better plan there (within the rules)?  Conwy Valley around Llanrwst and Betws-y-Coed instead of the Powys bit (if that works)?

I've not checked the figures yet (keep meaning to, but, you know) but I suspect the best solution might be to go for a further (and more drastic) split of Meirionnydd.

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The Anglesey and Gwynedd council areas have just over 10,000 too few electors between them for two constituencies.  Presumably two constituencies will be formed which are based in those areas, so between them they have to collect some electorate from neighbouring areas.  Democratic Audit use parts of Conwy to boost the Anglesey/Bangor seat, and parts of Powys to boost the Caernarfon/Llŷn/Meirionnydd one.  So are you basically suggesting that part of Meirionnydd is left out of the latter (meaning it doesn't spread so far south) and where would it extend to instead?

I've no idea because I've not looked over the figures (I should do though. Have you a link?). Maybe my idea doesn't fit in with the new rules of idiocy; I mostly thought of it because it's been proposed in the past (at least for local government boundaries). You could actually split Meirionnydd in three if necessary; Bala could rejoin Corwen with wherever that area ends up, the north of the county could go in an enlarged version of the old Caernarfon seat and the south in whatever Mid Wales monstrosity is required by the rules. But that's really just idle speculation.

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MPs have been queing up like students on exam day waiting for their results

Some leaks are coming out from this (as they would)

Gloucester city centre moved into Forest of Dean

Lolwut? Lolwhy?

A twisted tribute to Pennies From Heaven?

But, yeah. This boundary review is going to be beyond terrible. I look forward to pathetic squawking from people who supported the whole stupid process right up until the point they saw the new boundaries for their area.