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Post by Pete Whitehead on Oct 8, 2016 20:06:26 GMT
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Oct 8, 2016 20:21:54 GMT
Have you checked for compliance with the 12,000 square kilometre rule?
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Post by greatkingrat on Oct 8, 2016 20:31:31 GMT
That Caithness constituency is too large. In order to comply with the area limit, you either have to split wards, or split Inverness.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Oct 8, 2016 20:34:21 GMT
Have you checked for compliance with the 12,000 square kilometre rule? No cos I wasn't sure what the limit was. That's bollocks
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Oct 8, 2016 20:37:40 GMT
There's no figures on Boundary Assistant - only for the existing seats, Wonder if that Argyll, Bute & Skye seat migth be over that limit too
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Oct 8, 2016 20:39:42 GMT
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iain
Lib Dem
Posts: 10,717
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Post by iain on Oct 8, 2016 20:40:16 GMT
There's no figures on Boundary Assistant - only for the existing seats, Wonder if that Argyll, Bute & Skye seat migth be over that limit too Pretty sure it is
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Post by lancastrian on Oct 8, 2016 20:50:01 GMT
I've not taken all that much interest in Scotland hitherto - apologies if all this has been done before but I couldn't trawl through 15 pages. Obviously the Scottish commission will quite rightly be splitting wards, but for a bit of fun I wanted to see if it was possible to do a complete plan without splitting wards. It isn't as I don't think any possible combination in Edinburgh enables this but apart from splitting one ward there (moving a small part of Southside/Newington to Edinburgh East) I have a plan that looks quite neat in parts. I'm certainly quite pleased with everything North of the Tay and aprt from the necessary split ward in Edinburgh, Lothian and the Borders works well. The Glasgow area is inevitably pretty hideous but most of the rest of the Central belt not too bad You can have Edinburgh with no splits. Edinburgh North (78096)- Forth, Leith, Leith Walk, Craigentinny Edinburgh Central (78260)- City Centre, Meadows, Southside, Sighthill Edinburgh West (78289)- Almond, Corstorphine, Drum Brae, Inverleith Edinburgh South (77044)- Colinton, Liberton, Fountainbridge, Portobello West Lothian ? (73770)- Pentland Hills, Livingston East, Broxburn, Bathgate, Linlithgow Livingston (71048)- rest of West Lothian. Almond is bigger than Pentland Hills, but it doesn't seem to work with Pentland Hills, despite the extra wiggle room.
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Oct 8, 2016 20:50:38 GMT
There's no figures on Boundary Assistant - only for the existing seats, Wonder if that Argyll, Bute & Skye seat migth be over that limit too Pretty sure it is 13,263.91 square kilometres.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Oct 8, 2016 20:56:35 GMT
I've not taken all that much interest in Scotland hitherto - apologies if all this has been done before but I couldn't trawl through 15 pages. Obviously the Scottish commission will quite rightly be splitting wards, but for a bit of fun I wanted to see if it was possible to do a complete plan without splitting wards. It isn't as I don't think any possible combination in Edinburgh enables this but apart from splitting one ward there (moving a small part of Southside/Newington to Edinburgh East) I have a plan that looks quite neat in parts. I'm certainly quite pleased with everything North of the Tay and aprt from the necessary split ward in Edinburgh, Lothian and the Borders works well. The Glasgow area is inevitably pretty hideous but most of the rest of the Central belt not too bad You can have Edinburgh with no splits. Edinburgh North (78096)- Forth, Leith, Leith Walk, Craigentinny Edinburgh Central (78260)- City Centre, Meadows, Southside, Sighthill Edinburgh West (78289)- Almond, Corstorphine, Drum Brae, Inverleith Edinburgh South (77044)- Colinton, Liberton, Fountainbridge, Portobello West Lothian ? (73770)- Pentland Hills, Livingston East, Broxburn, Bathgate, Linlithgow Livingston (71048)- rest of West Lothian. Almond is bigger than Pentland Hills, but it doesn't seem to work with Pentland Hills, despite the extra wiggle room. And I thought I'd tried everything! I think I shall return to a contented state of not taking much interest in Scotland. Silly rules about physical size, antiquated privileges for under populated islands and awful over-sized wards make the whole thing a nightmare. And it's not as if the place is electorally interesting at the moment anyway
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
Posts: 1,726
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Post by Adrian on Oct 8, 2016 22:04:21 GMT
Can't you avoid splitting Inverness by tweaking the zombie review's proposals? You also don't then need to take a bit off Moray. As for the names of the Highland seats, I can't really think of anything better than "Northern Highlands", but "Highlands South" is not a good name as that area doesn't contain any of what I'd think of as the southern Highlands. (Highland council area is not the same as "the Highlands".) "Inverness-shire" isn't too cumbersome and isn't terribly inaccurate, though some people in Nairn and Wester Ross might complain. I think the BCS won't split Inverness, but I'm happy with it. As far as names are concerned, the trend in Scotland (and maybe elsewhere) seems to have been towards ever longer constituency names, and it's starting to get a bit ridiculous imo. I'm sure I'm not the first person to have this idea, but wouldn't it make sense for the Western Isles seat to include the Inner Hebrides as well? (And change the seat name to The Hebrides, obv.) That would bring the electorate into line with the Orkney/Shetland seat, and free up a bit of electoral space in the Highlands.
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
Posts: 1,726
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Post by Adrian on Oct 8, 2016 22:28:15 GMT
Boundary porn! I'm interested now in who had the most say in the final decision. In hindsight, you wonder whether the final decision to have so many districts was the right one. The trend is towards larger districts to save money, and it's hard to see how people would've been massively inconvenienced by, for example, having a whole-Ayrshire authority.
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Post by islington on Oct 9, 2016 9:45:51 GMT
I've no doubt everyone's attention is elsewhere (and very reasonably), but having come so far, I am ploughing on to the end. Let me conclude Scotland. SC-J (Edinburgh, W Lothian): 456507 = 6.11 = 6Edinburgh (4.40) needs to be paired and given that E Lothian can stand by itself and Midlothian can partner Borders for 2 seats, the linking with W Lothian is a natural one. But the actual boundaries gave me more trouble than almost anywhere else in the country. Edinburgh consists of 17 wards of almost Glaswegian proportions; W Lothian has 9, somewhat smaller although still large by most standards. So we have 26 wards for 6 seats. I don't think a 3-ward seat is feasible in Edinburgh, or a 6-ward seat in W Lothian, so that means that if ward splits are to be avoided, it has to be two seats of 5 wards (consisting of the 9 WL wards plus one from Edinburgh) and four seats of 4 wards (the remaining 16 wards of Edinburgh). Two Edinburgh wards border on WL, so the obvious way to do this is to link WL with the larger of these (Almond), which gives us: WL + Almond = 147904 = 1.98 = 2; and the rest of Edinburgh = 308603 = 4.13 = 4. Encouragingly (or so I thought), WL + Almond divides beautifully into two; and surely (I fondly imagined), the remaining 16 wards, although on the large side for four seats, would yield some workable combination. Well, maybe they do. But if so, I failed to find it. In the end I was reduced to trying something apparently crazy: increasing the size imbalance still further by linking WL with the smaller of the two bordering wards (Pentland Hills) instead. This gives: WL + Pentland = 144818 = 1.94; rest of Edinburgh = 311689 = 4.17. It's a sign of desperation that I even considered this; surely (especially at the Edinburgh end) it could never work. But amazingly, it did. EDINBURGH CENTRAL - 78260. Now, I know this doesn't look good on the map. And I know that in at least one case (E Duns), I rejected a seat on this ground despite local advice to the contrary. But this is a different case, because this seat makes much more sense on the ground than might be imagined from its (frankly) eccentric appearance. Three of the wards (Centre, Meadows and Southside) work together perfectly well; what makes the seat look strange is the fourth ward, Sighthill/Gorgie, which forms a long spur to the west. But there is a good reason for this ward's elongated shape - it follows the A70 / A71, one of the city's main arteries, and this road runs the whole length of the ward and connects directly with the city centre at the eastern end. So if you get past the shape on the map to look at the street pattern beneath, I'd argue that this is a perfectly workable combination. EDINBURGH NORTH - 78096 EDINBURGH SOUTH - 77044. Another seat with something of a spur, but much less dramatic than that of Edinburgh C. EDINBURGH WEST - 78289. This is a perfectly reasonable seat although there might be a case for calling it 'NW' rather than just 'W'. It will be noted how all the Edinburgh seats are well above average size: one of 77000 and the other three all above 78000. LINLITHGOW - 73770. Linking WL with Pentland ward also, of course, completely wrecks the nice division that can be achieved if it is linked with Almond. The arrangement set out here is the only legal one I can find. This is an awkward seat in itself; moreover, it includes substantial eastern parts of Livingston New Town. LIVINGSTON - 71048. This includes the main part of the New Town and the original Livingston village; the boundary separating it from its eastern suburbs is at least a clean one, following the A899 dual carriageway. Note that this is the smallest seat in mainland GB, only 17 above the legal minimum. SC-K (E Lothian): 76153 = 1.02 = 1Absolutely nothing to see here. EAST LOTHIAN - 76153 SC-L (Midlothian, Borders): 150636 = 2.01 = 2I've added Galashiels ward to Midlothian. This seems the most natural, but it does take rather a bite out of the Borders seat. The other possibility is Tweeddale West, which results in a better Borders seat but would add Peebles to the list of unoffending towns that are severed from part of their suburbs. MIDLOTHIAN AND GALASHIELS - 75256 SCOTTISH BORDERS - 75380 And just for the sake of completeness, let me add the protected island areas. SC-M (Orkney, Shetland): 33229 = 0.44 = 1ORKNEY AND SHETLAND - 33229 SC-N (Na h-Eileanan an Iar): 20887 = 0.28 = 1NA H-EILEANAN AN IAR - 20887 I recognize that the BCS's likely approach means that non-split Scotland is a theoretical exercise only; but it's a fascinating, intricate puzzle that beats sudoku into a cocked hat, so I'm delighted that Pete Whitehead has turned his talents to it and I'd encourage him to continue. I'll post separately in a moment about Scotland generally. But on Edinburgh specifically, I agree that the scheme mentioned by Lancastrian yesterday seems to be the only way of getting six whole seats into Edinburgh / W Lothian without ward splits, and in fact I posted the identical solution back on 22 Jun (see above, with map). I should also mention that ASV came up with a non-split version that links Edinburgh with Midlothian rather than W Lothian (scroll back to 22 Jun, p8). It's actually a better scheme, so far as Edinburgh itself is concerned, but the Midlothian/Pentland seat isn't very satisfactory and the overall effect is to load too many electors into southern Scotland, thus forcing some horrible boundaries elsewhere.
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Post by islington on Oct 9, 2016 10:38:21 GMT
I've not taken all that much interest in Scotland hitherto - apologies if all this has been done before but I couldn't trawl through 15 pages. Obviously the Scottish commission will quite rightly be splitting wards, but for a bit of fun I wanted to see if it was possible to do a complete plan without splitting wards. It isn't as I don't think any possible combination in Edinburgh enables this but apart from splitting one ward there (moving a small part of Southside/Newington to Edinburgh East) I have a plan that looks quite neat in parts. I'm certainly quite pleased with everything North of the Tay and aprt from the necessary split ward in Edinburgh, Lothian and the Borders works well. The Glasgow area is inevitably pretty hideous but most of the rest of the Central belt not too bad Pete - Some nice stuff here. A few comments, if I may, on your plan and the subsequent discussion. In the first place, the area limit is 13000 sq km, not 12000. The significance of 12000 sq km is that the requirement to come within 5% of the UK average electorate does not apply to a constituency exceeding this size. I must pay tribute to ASV, who was the first to post a non-split Scotland (back on 22 Jun, see p8). His plan wasn't legal because it included at least one seat over 13000 sq km, but it inspired me to try to arrive at a scheme of my own that would keep everything with the permitted range in terms of area as well as electorate. I also wanted to avoid 3-area seats if at all possible, and I'm pleased to say I was able to come up with a scheme with no car crashes, no ward splits, no 3-area seats, and nothing above 13000 sq km. In fact, there was only one seat above 12000 sq km and that had an electorate within the usual range, so there was no need to invoke the special exemption allowed to such a seat. I did, however, have to allow myself a modicum of town-splitting, and in the end I ended up with approximately 9 across Scotland (the exact number depends on the precise definition of a town split). Most of these, I felt, were't too bad - e.g. they were of towns that are really Glasgow suburbs (Bishopbriggs, Cambuslang, Renfrew), which somehow seems less bad than splitting a free-standing town; or they hived off fringe areas of a town, whilst keeping the central area and the bulk of the town united in a seat (E Kilbride, Helensburgh, Inverness and Livingston all fall in this category); or I don't feel it's my fault (I'm pointing the finger at whoever had the bright idea of creating a Bellshill ward that includes most of the town but not its central area). The one split that really frustrated me was Ayr. I did find a way of keeping Ayr in a single seat, and into the bargain getting rid of the splits of E Kilbride and Cambuslang as well, but it involved the creation of three 3-area seats and this may be too high a price to pay. (Incidentally, when I refer to 'town splits' I obviously mean only towns that would, in principle, be small enough to fit in a single seat.) Pete's plan above, apart from the oversize problem in the Highlands, has four 3-area seats that I can see and it splits a number of towns such as Cumbernauld, Hamilton, Paisley, and Irvine. It preserves the very attractive three-ward solution for Glasgow East (much better than the straggling version of this seat in my non-split Glasgow) and it certainly delivers the goods across Scotland as a whole; reinforcing the point that, even in Scotland with its megawards, splitting is a choice rather than a necessity.
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
Posts: 1,726
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Post by Adrian on Oct 9, 2016 15:19:38 GMT
"I don't feel it's my fault (I'm pointing the finger at whoever had the bright idea of creating a Bellshill ward that includes most of the town but not its central area)"
Oh but it is your fault. It's your choice. It's a reminder of why we should not base constituencies on wards. We should base constituencies on communities, and then, as much as practicable, utilise the available ward boundaries to construct the constituency boundaries around rhe communities.
It is not-splitting that is the (unnecessary) choice.
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Post by islington on Oct 9, 2016 16:32:13 GMT
"I don't feel it's my fault (I'm pointing the finger at whoever had the bright idea of creating a Bellshill ward that includes most of the town but not its central area)" Oh but it is your fault. It's your choice. It's a reminder of why we should not base constituencies on wards. We should base constituencies on communities, and then, as much as practicable, utilise the available ward boundaries to construct the constituency boundaries around rhe communities. It is not-splitting that is the (unnecessary) choice. Adrian - Yes, you're right. It's a fair cop. I wasn't being entirely serious - I was just expressing exasperation at a piece of particularly perverse ward-drawing by someone. But I agree that non-splitting is a choice, just as much as splitting is; I just happen to think that non-splitting is the better choice, where reasonably possible. In the particular circumstances of Scotland, I quite accept that, theoretically, Community Council areas might be a more suitable unit than wards for constituency-drawing purposes, if only (a) the legislation expressly provided for it (it doesn't), and (b) the electorate data were made publicly available (they aren't). In England, though, if you want to base boundaries on pre-existing units, wards are really the only option - at least, in urban areas (you might use parishes in rural areas). And it's the point about using existing units, rather than wards as such, that really exercises me.
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Post by An Sionnach Flannbhuí on Oct 9, 2016 16:59:23 GMT
"I don't feel it's my fault (I'm pointing the finger at whoever had the bright idea of creating a Bellshill ward that includes most of the town but not its central area)" Oh but it is your fault. It's your choice. It's a reminder of why we should not base constituencies on wards. We should base constituencies on communities, and then, as much as practicable, utilise the available ward boundaries to construct the constituency boundaries around rhe communities. It is not-splitting that is the (unnecessary) choice. My comments are more addressed to England, than to Scotland, where it is obvious the Scottish Commission will split some wards as they did before. But rather than throwing this hissy-fit you need to marshall clear and logical arguments. It is clear even if you split wards you will still split some communities. So, if a split-ward plan splits communities and a whole-ward plan splits some, why is one better than the other? The legal case in 1983 said it wasn't an "exercise in accountancy" and just because one plan might comply better with some of the rules, doesn't mean it's a case for overturning the Commission. What are your "exceptional and compelling circumstances", other than "this plan is pretty nice if you split a ward" and hysterics about wards not always being perfect?
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
Posts: 1,726
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Post by Adrian on Oct 10, 2016 13:40:06 GMT
"I don't feel it's my fault (I'm pointing the finger at whoever had the bright idea of creating a Bellshill ward that includes most of the town but not its central area)" Oh but it is your fault. It's your choice. It's a reminder of why we should not base constituencies on wards. We should base constituencies on communities, and then, as much as practicable, utilise the available ward boundaries to construct the constituency boundaries around rhe communities. It is not-splitting that is the (unnecessary) choice. My comments are more addressed to England, than to Scotland, where it is obvious the Scottish Commission will split some wards as they did before. But rather than throwing this hissy-fit you need to marshall clear and logical arguments. It is clear even if you split wards you will still split some communities. So, if a split-ward plan splits communities and a whole-ward plan splits some, why is one better than the other? The legal case in 1983 said it wasn't an "exercise in accountancy" and just because one plan might comply better with some of the rules, doesn't mean it's a case for overturning the Commission. What are your "exceptional and compelling circumstances", other than "this plan is pretty nice if you split a ward" and hysterics about wards not always being perfect? First, although what was said in 1983 - that the Review is not an "exercise in accountancy", sometimes expressed as the "numbers game" - holds today in the generality, and is something I agree with, you have to remember that circumstances have changed. In 2016 there are strict legal guidelines as to how big a seat can be. No government or Commission legal case in 2016 would make the "numbers game" argument, since a numbers game is exactly what they are involved in. And it's what Islington and his acolyte ASV, and several others of you are engaged in. In 1983 wards were acceptable (if blunt) tools for use in the fulfilment of the Commission's duties. Seat electorates were flexible, so seats could be made in Birmingham, Sheffield etc. way above or way below the average size. In 2016 wards are now way too blunt to be used. They are unfit for purpose. Whichever parts of the legislation you want to respect you cannot so so in Birmingham or Sheffield by using wards. Well, the only part you can respect is constituency size, which means that a numbers game is exactly what it's become! You can see it yourself when Islington, ASV and the Commission play the game of scrabbling around for some way, any old way, to cram more than 71031 and less than 78507 between unbroken lines. No matter whether the results bear any relation to current constituencies, or local authority boundaries, or local ties. On the specifics, Islington has admitted that his Scotland plan splits 9 towns. My plan, with ward-splitting, splits Inverness and Stirling (both by choice, both town splits could be undone), Greenock/Gourock (if you consider them the same place) and takes small bites out of Paisley and East Kilbride, though both of these could be avoided if I did more ward-splitting. That's it. So it is absolutely not correct to say that it makes no difference which approach one takes. Here endeth the lesson.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 10, 2016 15:51:11 GMT
Thank you, David. Very much appreciated.
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Post by islington on Oct 10, 2016 16:52:43 GMT
My comments are more addressed to England, than to Scotland, where it is obvious the Scottish Commission will split some wards as they did before. But rather than throwing this hissy-fit you need to marshall clear and logical arguments. It is clear even if you split wards you will still split some communities. So, if a split-ward plan splits communities and a whole-ward plan splits some, why is one better than the other? The legal case in 1983 said it wasn't an "exercise in accountancy" and just because one plan might comply better with some of the rules, doesn't mean it's a case for overturning the Commission. What are your "exceptional and compelling circumstances", other than "this plan is pretty nice if you split a ward" and hysterics about wards not always being perfect? First, although what was said in 1983 - that the Review is not an "exercise in accountancy", sometimes expressed as the "numbers game" - holds today in the generality, and is something I agree with, you have to remember that circumstances have changed. In 2016 there are strict legal guidelines as to how big a seat can be. No government or Commission legal case in 2016 would make the "numbers game" argument, since a numbers game is exactly what they are involved in. And it's what Islington and his acolyte ASV, and several others of you are engaged in. In 1983 wards were acceptable (if blunt) tools for use in the fulfilment of the Commission's duties. Seat electorates were flexible, so seats could be made in Birmingham, Sheffield etc. way above or way below the average size. In 2016 wards are now way too blunt to be used. They are unfit for purpose. Whichever parts of the legislation you want to respect you cannot so so in Birmingham or Sheffield by using wards. Well, the only part you can respect is constituency size, which means that a numbers game is exactly what it's become! You can see it yourself when Islington, ASV and the Commission play the game of scrabbling around for some way, any old way, to cram more than 71031 and less than 78507 between unbroken lines. No matter whether the results bear any relation to current constituencies, or local authority boundaries, or local ties. On the specifics, Islington has admitted that his Scotland plan splits 9 towns. My plan, with ward-splitting, splits Inverness and Stirling (both by choice, both town splits could be undone), Greenock/Gourock (if you consider them the same place) and takes small bites out of Paisley and East Kilbride, though both of these could be avoided if I did more ward-splitting. That's it. So it is absolutely not correct to say that it makes no difference which approach one takes. Here endeth the lesson. And all this because I allowed myself a slightly flippant throwaway line about Bellshill ... I'm not sure Adrian and I are that far apart on this. I agree with him that strict rules on numbers mean that this process is, for better or worse, much more of an 'accountancy exercise' than it was in 1983. And I also agree (he might be surprised to hear) that this means that the case for splitting wards is stronger now than under the previous rules. But this doesn't mean that the test for ward-splitting has changed: it is still (for me, anyway) whether splitting a ward allows a plan that is a substantial improvement on the best that can be achieved without such a split. Under the old rules, with more flexibility on numbers, it was highly unlikely that this test could be met; under the new rules, with so much less elbow room, the test is much likelier to be met - in fact, I started this process on the assumption that a significant number of splits would be needed. The discovery that serviceable seats can be formed everywhere without a single ward split has come as a (very welcome) surprise to me. On town splits in Scotland: It's true that I am fessing up to 9 in my non-split plan, although most of these are subject to some extenuating circumstances such as Adrian cites for a couple of his. By far the worst is Ayr, because it splits a prominent free-standing town right down the middle. But even my division of Ayr, although pretty bad, is no worse than the treatment the BCS has meted out to Kirkintilloch or Hamilton in the current map of Scotland; and in any case, it results not from my reluctance to split wards but from my giving priority to the avoidance of three-area seats over the avoidance of town splits. If you reverse this priority, and accept three 3-area seats (while still not splitting any wards), you can get rid of the Ayr split and two other town splits without any trouble at all. And, of course, as Pete Whitehead points out, so far as Scotland is concerned it's all an academic exercise anyway because we can all but guarantee that the BCS will split wards and towns all over Scotland, and probably throw in the odd three-area seat as well. PS: I'm delighted to learn that I have an acolyte. Just what I've always wanted.
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