Let the great boundary rejig commence

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*"Doesn't look good for Tim Farron" according to Paul Waugh

What, they haven't drawn Barrow & Kendal or something, have they?

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Let's have a very quick competition. In which preserved county (or whatever) will the worst horror be drawn? I might post the winner a stupid postcard or something.

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It will be impossible to decide as there will be very many deserving claimants.

Do I win?

If there isn't a clear winner, then, yeah.

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Rumours Hazel Blears has lost hers....

There has to be a seat centred around Salford proper, so I don't see how that can be true. Unless things are even more insane than seems likely.

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What a bunch of incompetent fyckwits.

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I wonder how the many cheerleaders for this idiocy are feeling right now.

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For blankness, go to Neighbourhood Statistics (just google it). Then Map Viewer. Then remember how to screenshot.

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For blankness, go to Neighbourhood Statistics (just google it). Then Map Viewer. Then remember how to screenshot.

I'll get round to updating 'The Map' at some point.

You should probably include a warning for our eyes or something. Some of these constituencies are quite, quite special.

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If it helps that's how 2002 felt to me. To such an extent it made me detached. I only care about the Holyrood arragement and don't particularly care what happens up here next month. You'll probably feel the same with Wales when that monstrosity is unveiled :/

I'm really dreading what they draw for my part of the world, put it that way... can we rule out the horrible possibility of Anglesey being split?

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EDIT; I wonder if they did split Anglesey, the boundary would go right down the middle of the bridge.

Which bridge? There are two, and that's the reason why I'm suddenly quite worried... if you decided that the Menai wasn't a particular important geographical barrier in the grand scheme of things, you could split the Island along the general line of the A55, throwing the southern half (including Holyhead) with wherever Caernarfon ends up and the northern half wherever Bangor happens to be drawn.

An alternative is bad as well: a Menai constituency. That is, the Island... and all the wards on the south bank of the Menai.

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STV anyone?

I prefer open lists, but, yeah. Anything but this.

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But is it to be applauded? They've managed to get the numbers to work out right, sure. But this isn't a psephological-wank exercise of the sort that we enjoy a fair bit here, it's the real thing.

Of course given the rules and all that we really shouldn't be terribly surprised by any of this. Even if we all are.

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I can understand people not liking Salford much, but it's clear that it ought to form the base of a constituency in its own right.

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Looks like they've done things Baxter-style. Though I'd question the validity of any set of notionals to some of these monsters, because the rules of the game change when certain places get put in potentially marginal constituencies.

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Remind me never to read the Guardian comment pages on such things ever again.

It's a thing of twisted beauty, is it not? I especially love the bits when people start randomly screaming about immigrants.

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It's the CONSPIRACEE brigade that get me. Apparently it was Cameron who chose to count only registered voters rather than it being anything to do with the Representation of the People Act several generations ago. Or it's the 'bankers'; they even seem to get the blame for crap telly.

Oh, by their standards that stuff is pretty tame... it's a little bit embarrassing though. There are enough decent lefty arguments against this whole thing without needed to resort to bizarre and rambling conspiracy theories.

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Eventually you read one too many especially idiotic comments threads and, you know. I actually registered because of the idiots who comment on telly threads.

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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.

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

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Ah, where would cartoonists be without that plum pudding?



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

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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!

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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.

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Swing calculations can't really do that.

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The Dumfries seat is excellent, actually. Galloway-Carrick-Cumnock isn't bad either.

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The inevitable result of a more politicised procedure is a more politicised procedure.

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I don't like what the Tories did either, but I don't think it justifies proposing silly gerrymanders.  [NB the only example I've actually seen is "North West Cheshire", which is truly, truly, horrible.  But maybe things elsewhere aren't as bad as is being made out.]

Oh, I'm not trying to justify that kind of thing. It's just that it isn't even slightly surprising and we can expect more of it from everyone when there's a possible 'need' to do so.