Let the great boundary rejig commence

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Worth pointing out that Montgomery (est. 1918) isn't that historic a constituency, at least not compared to some of the other seats going by the wayside. We're losing Anglesey/Môn and Gower, after all.

[YL]

Worth pointing out that Montgomery (est. 1918) isn't that historic a constituency, at least not compared to some of the other seats going by the wayside. We're losing Anglesey/Môn and Gower, after all.

Surely, as a historic county, there's been a Montgomeryshire constituency in some form or other since way back, like Henry VIII?

Anyway, I don't see a problem with including Machynlleth in the Gwynedd seat.  The problem with the treatment of Montgomeryshire is that Glyndwr & North Powys thing, and then there's the question of what's the alternative, to which I think the answer is fragmenting Breconshire instead.

You can transfer Ystradgynlais and the surrounding area to Neath, and you can transfer a swathe of eastern Breconshire into a Monmouth and Black Mountains seat, using the links along the Usk valley as something of an excuse.  Then you can replace Glyndwr & North Powys with a Denbighshire seat which also contains St Asaph and a bit more of Wrexham district than the current proposal; I've also kept the very northernmost Powys ward in there, using the fact that part of it is historically in Denbighshire as a rather weak excuse (the real reason was to do with not wanting to remove more territory from the Powys seat in the south).  Wrexham then needs to be compensated by gaining a few wards of southern Flintshire from Alyn & Deeside.

I don't know whether this is any sort of improvement, and I haven't even considered the knock-on effects in South Wales.  However, it's quite similar to what this map (linked to by Lewis earlier) does to Powys.

[minionofmidas]

I don't know whether this is any sort of improvement, and I haven't even considered the knock-on effects in South Wales.  However, it's quite similar to what this map (linked to by Lewis earlier) does to Powys.

That Merthyr Cynon seat is oversized and outside the tolerance, and any "minor" fix is just a random lopoff in places where you really don't want to do that. There is a problem in that the Welsh seats as a whole need to be undersized and the most logical fixes for both Cardiff (see my submission) and the North East (see Commission proposal) involve oversized seats, giving you very little room for further above-quota or even just plain ~quota seats elsewhere.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Surely, as a historic county, there's been a Montgomeryshire constituency in some form or other since way back, like Henry VIII?

Yeah, but they only put the towns back in in the 1917 review.

[dadge]

My initial reaction was that the Commission hasn't done too bad a job with Wales. Here are my doodlings: ukelect.wordpress.com/category/wales/

[YL]

My initial reaction was that the Commission hasn't done too bad a job with Wales.

By English standards, yes.  But there are definitely things that could be improved.

(I have wondered whether the relative awfulness of the English proposals is related to the fact that the English Commission had 500 or so seats to draw whereas the others had under 100.)

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I think you correctly foresaw the likely reaction to the Powys/Ceredigion link.  (Is that any worse than the Commission's Powys/Denbighshire link?  Not sure...)

The Monmouthshire Association (a historic county group) have come up with some ideas for their area.  I don't like their names much (I'm not keen on names with two compass points) and the effect of transferring Usk into the constituency formerly known as Torfaen seems to leave the Abergavenny/Monmouth/Chepstow/Llanwern constituency strangely shaped.  But they do have a good go at the Commission's "Newport West and Sirhowy Valley".

[Harry Hayfield]

My initial reaction was that the Commission hasn't done too bad a job with Wales. Here are my doodlings: ukelect.wordpress.com/category/wales/

What I am more interested in is, "Where did you get the Google Earth ward maps from?"

[YL]

What I am more interested in is, "Where did you get the Google Earth ward maps from?"

http://boundaryassistant.org/PlanBuilder.htm

[YL]

Anyway, I don't see a problem with including Machynlleth in the Gwynedd seat.  The problem with the treatment of Montgomeryshire is that Glyndwr & North Powys thing, and then there's the question of what's the alternative, to which I think the answer is fragmenting Breconshire instead.

You can transfer Ystradgynlais and the surrounding area to Neath, and you can transfer a swathe of eastern Breconshire into a Monmouth and Black Mountains seat, using the links along the Usk valley as something of an excuse.  Then you can replace Glyndwr & North Powys with a Denbighshire seat which also contains St Asaph and a bit more of Wrexham district than the current proposal; I've also kept the very northernmost Powys ward in there, using the fact that part of it is historically in Denbighshire as a rather weak excuse (the real reason was to do with not wanting to remove more territory from the Powys seat in the south).  Wrexham then needs to be compensated by gaining a few wards of southern Flintshire from Alyn & Deeside.

I don't know whether this is any sort of improvement, and I haven't even considered the knock-on effects in South Wales.  However, it's quite similar to what this map (linked to by Lewis earlier) does to Powys.

OK, it is possible to draw a South Wales map within this framework.  I'm not going to submit this or anything, but here's a way of modifying Lewis's proposal to get almost all of the Powys component out of the Denbighshire seat.

Glyndwr & North Powys gains Betws yn Rhos from Conwy; St Asaph and the areas immediately east and west from Dee Estuary or whatever you want to call it; most of Wrexham borough west of Wrexham town (I don't know exactly how best to draw the line).  Then loses all Powys wards except Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant/Llansilin (using historical links as an excuse here).  Renamed Denbighshire.

Wrexham gains four southern Flintshire wards from Alyn & Deeside as compensation.

Monmouthshire loses the Newport wards.  Gains eastern Breconshire all the way to Llangynidr, Talgarth, Hay-on-Wye.  Renamed Monmouth & the Black Mountains.  (Again, the question starts to be asked whether putting Chepstow and Hay in the same seat is really an improvement.)

Newport gains the wards which were in Monmouthshire, loses Marshfield to Islwyn.

Neath gains five wards in south-west Breconshire: Tawe-Uchaf and those to the west.  It then needs to lose territory, and the least bad options I could see were Mawr to Llanelli, Pelenna to Aberavon, and (ugliness alert) the two Glyn-neath wards to Rhondda & Aberdare.

Then you have a left-over Powys constituency consisting of the rest of Breconshire, all of Radnorshire and all of Montgomeryshire except the Machynlleth area and that one bit on the northern fringe.

This is really more to show that it can be done than a serious proposal...

[doktorb]

The Scottish and English Commissions will publish the submissions in the next two weeks.

[YL]

The Scottish and English Commissions will publish the submissions in the next two weeks.

And now the Scottish Commission have published theirs:
https://consultation.scottishboundaries.gov.uk/representations

The interface seems a bit clunky.

[doktorb]

That's being polite!

[afleitch]

That's being polite!

Best thing to do to get the feel of everything are the transcripts.

The General Records Office of Scotland also released their electorate data for December 2011. Scotland's electorate is now over 4 million.

Glasgow's electorate is up 40,100 since 2009 and Edinburgh's up just 4,900 (it's been stagnant for a while)

The quota for Scottish Parliamentary seats is now 55,969

However the number registered to vote in UK elections is just 3.94 million

[YL]

The Scottish Labour submission doesn't actually seem to make any proposals of their own.  They support the proposals in some areas, while in others (Dundee, and some of the split towns) they say that they reserve their position on counter-proposals.

The Lib Dems do have a number of counter-proposals, including one in Edinburgh which involves swapping the city centre with parts of eastern Edinburgh, a more major one in Glasgow which involves crossing the city boundary, and one including Badenoch & Strathspey rather than Nairn with Inverness and Skye.  In Fife, they want to split the Levenmouth area rather than the Howe of Fife, with the latter all staying in Cupar & St. Andrew's/North-East Fife; this seems to have a lot of support.

I couldn't find an SNP submission.  Presumably their point of view is that this review should be irrelevant.

[doktorb]

Boundary Commission for England to publish all 20,000 ish submissions received at noon tomorrow.

[minionofmidas]

20,000 ish submissions

Hah.

[doktorb]

20,000 ish submissions

Hah.

The BCE itself says 20,000, which is a suspiciously round number....

[YL]

20,000 ish submissions

Hah.

The BCE itself says 20,000, which is a suspiciously round number....

In the newsletter on their website they say "well over 22,000".  I hope they have a better web interface than the Scottish Commission so I can find the ones for my area.

[Hash]

Wow, 20k people submitted redistricting suggestions? I'm shocked you can find that many people who care enough about it.

[minionofmidas]

They can when you used to have reasonable maps and are presented with such execrable garbage.

Also, they probably counted submissions affecting several regions several times.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

I put my submission in twice by two different methods, so I wonder whether it got counted twice.  The acknowledgement email I got gave me a reference number BCE/IP/023292, so there probably were about that number of submissions overall.

But you don't have to wait until tomorrow to read what I wrote.

[Harry Hayfield]

Boundary Commission for England to publish all 20,000 ish submissions received at noon tomorrow.

I wonder if my (slightly apologetic) submission will be published about North Warwickshire which was basically "I don't like the idea of Coleshill and Water Orton being put into Meriden, but as I can't do the maths shall have to grin and bear it!"

[doktorb]

Well, congratulations, BCE, an even less well designed process than Scotland!

[YL]

Well, congratulations, BCE, an even less well designed process than Scotland!

I can't find a Lib Dem submission for Yorkshire and the Humber: is this a blunder by the Commission or by the Lib Dems?  (I can find comments in the Leeds transcript, which I can't agree with, but no actual submission.)  EDIT: the same is true of the Tories, but it isn't true for the parties in other regions.  EDIT: found them now; it looks like the BC forgot to label them as the official responses.

Anyway, not sure whether I really have time to read through the nearly 1000 Yorkshire submissions (mine among them somewhere), let alone those for the rest of the country.  There doesn't seem to be any sort of search engine to narrow them down a bit closer to home.

[Chancellor of the Duchy of Little Lever and Darcy Lever]

Labour counter-proposal for northern Greater Manchester:

BOLTON SOUTH: as per Commission's proposals.
BOLTON WEST: existing constituency plus Halliwell.
Not too bad so far.

BURY CENTRAL AND HEYWOOD: Church, East, Moorside, Redvales, Hopwood Hall, Norden, N Heywood, W Heywood, W Middleton
This will go down in Bury like a cup of cold sick.  Also, why the split of Middleton?  It's certainly not natural.  Church ward needs to be kept with Elton - Church only has half a road link with the rest of this seat.

BURY SOUTH: unchanged.
ROCHDALE: unchanged.
That's more like it.

ROSSENDALE AND RAMSBOTTOM: Elton, N Manor, Rammy, Rossendale borough.
OK, except for the fact that Elton is part of Bury and, again, only has half a road link with the rest of this seat.  Why not put Tottington here?

BOLTON NORTH AND DARRWEN: Earcroft, Marsh House, N Turton, Sudell, Sunnyhurst, Whitehall, Astley Bridge, Bradshaw, Bromley Cross, Crompton, Tonge wi' t' Hoff, Totty.

[vomiting smiley here]

This is so bad it defies explanation.  I could probably write pages and pages on why it's bad.  In fact, I probably will do.

Earcroft, Sunnyhurst, Sudell, Marsh House, Whitehall: Darwen town.  Nestled in a deep north-facing valley in the West Pennine Moors.  An adjunct to Blackburn with Blackburn postcodes, Blackburn telephone numbers and Blackburn Rovers fans.  Has about a dozen surnames.  Local accent pronounces R's.

N Turton, Bromley Cross, Bradshaw: Turton urban district as was.  Has been in a Darwen seat before.  Edgworth, Chapeltown, Egerton, Dunscar, Bromley Cross, Bradshaw, Harwood.  Transitions from wild and beautiful moorland at the top to middle-class Bolton suburbia at the bottom.  Bolton postcodes and telephone numbers.  Bolton Wanderers and Man City fans.  R's not pronounced.  Two main links with Darwen: the single track railway line under the top with one train an hour, the A666 road over the top which lives up to its devilish number with an appaling fatal accident record.  That's except if you live in Edgworth, in which case you need to take the Roman Road, which probably hasn't been resurfaced since the Coronation.  Note I didn't say which Coronation.

Tottington: over a hill from the rest of the constituency.  Middle-class adjunct to Bury and has never previously been out of a Bury seat.  Bolton telephone numbers, Bury postcodes.  Bury and Man City fans.  Road links to Bury and Ramsbottom good, to Bolton indirect, to Darwen appalling to non-existent.  On the Irwell Valley side of the hill and should be in a seat to match.

Astley Bridge, Crompton, Tonge with The Haulgh: part of Bolton proper.  Astley Bridge is middle-class, Tonge with The Hoff is white working-class and very much inner Bolton, Crompton is Asian and very much inner Bolton including part of the town centre.  Bolton telephone numbers and postcodes, Bolton Wanderers fans.  R's not pronounced.

What I'm trying to get at here is that Bolton and Darwen are two very different towns, culturally, physically - even the dialect is different - which shouldn't be in the same constituency at all.  And Tottington should never have got anywhere near this seat in the first place.