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Post by La Fontaine on Apr 9, 2016 19:28:44 GMT
North Tyneside is the daftest name in the north east. It comprises only half the borough and is frequently wrongly called Tyneside North by those who think there is a council area called Tyneside. The rest of the borough is called Tynemouth. North Tyneside could easily be called Wallsend, which was a constituency for many years.
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Foggy
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Post by Foggy on Apr 9, 2016 21:36:27 GMT
The original guidance after the reforms of the 1880s indicated that seats should be named after an "important town or place" within them. I see no reason why this should not be the case with chiefly rural seats today. There is some scope for naming them after two different towns, but that should be the maximum – no commas please.
The Commission has also been inconsistent across various modern reviews about whether or not it should be immediately obvious where a constituency is located for someone following the election in a different party of the country. They insist on 'Isle of Wight West' rather than simply 'Wight West', let permit the likes of 'Broxtowe' and 'Stone'! For this reason, I believe that using the names of 1970s local authority abominations or geographical features is hideous and should be avoided.
In urban areas, either stick to compass points or random wards, so we don't end up with nonsense like 'Sheffield Heeley' and 'Sheffield South East'. With the former style, only use one suburb, meaning 'Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough' is out too (call it 'Sheffield Owlerton' as a compromise). Sorry to pick on that particular city, but it is quite a mess at the moment.
'Central' after a city name can be employed under both schemes. However, 'Central' with a county name should be avoided, and the use of 'Mid' anywhere at all ought to be outright forbidden in the primary legislation (as a complete word, so 'Middlesbrough' would still be fine). Just call Mid Sussex 'Haywards Heath' as it's the most central of the three main settlements in that constituency.
The distinction between 'borough' and 'county' constituencies should be brought to an end. Compass points should appear after the place name in both types of seat. There should be a definitive country-wide decision on whether to use ampersands or the word 'and' as well, because I haven't even been consistent with it across this post!
Where a city has become entitled to four and a half seats through understandable urban flight, there must be a neater solution found to cross-border constituencies than the present awkward-sounding 'Garston & Halewood' and 'Blackley & Broughton'.
Ah, Broughton reminds me to make another point. For common place names, they should just be used at most to refer to one settlement, and only then where it is clearly the better known of all the places. For example, I associate Broughton most with the town in North Wales and don't think the Lancashire one is particularly famous. That means a choice needs to be made between 'Sutton Coldfield' and 'Sutton and Cheam'. The Stoke-on-Trent seats are fine, but not rubbish like 'Filton and Bradley Stoke'. 'Richmondshire' can be distinguished from 'Richmond-upon-Thames' (currently 'Richmond Park') without the use of brackets.
'Newport' should only refer to the city in South Wales. 'Rainham' should refer to the town in Kent because I've at least heard of via the Rainham End at football's Priestfield Stadium. 'Wellington' and 'Easington' should not be used at all. I don't care if the latter's been the name of a seat in County Durham for donkey's years – there's a town just down the coast with exactly the same name and that's enough of a recipe for confusion in my book.
[NB. If my own proposals sometimes appear to differ from my tastes, it's because I'm aware of the Commission's desire for minimal change when it comes to nomenclature as well as the boundaries themselves.]
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Apr 9, 2016 21:44:31 GMT
I think any 'Mid' seat should instead be renamed 'Things That Were Left Over at the End'.
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Post by mrhell on Apr 9, 2016 22:16:43 GMT
I think any 'Mid' seat should instead be renamed 'Things That Were Left Over at the End'. Not North, South, East or West but somewhere in between.
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Foggy
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Post by Foggy on Apr 9, 2016 22:47:02 GMT
The map posted by ntyuk1707 in another thread on this sub-forum makes me realise I forgot about the alarmingly high number of rivers with the same name in this country. I mean, I mentioned 'geographical features' but didn't get around to river names in particular. We could end up with a 'Deeside' in all three constituent countries of Great Britain. I think that any river whose name is not unique within the UK should not form part of any constituency name. Thus, 'Stratford-on-Avon' is out as a possible constituency name because of both Stratford in London and the fact that there are two other Avons in England, one of which is not too far away and reasonably well-known. Strangely enough, I don't mind 'Liverpool Riverside' at all, probably as it doesn't specify on which river the seat lies.
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Post by krollo on Apr 9, 2016 23:12:59 GMT
My general feeling is that constituency names should clarify as effectively as is reasonable the seat's nature to a fairly intelligent Briton from the other end of the country. As such, I don't feel that rigid rules are the way to go. In some cases, city's divisions will be more effectively relayed by compass points; in others suburbs will be sufficiently well known to lend their names to seats.
Equally, general rules like avoiding confusion between similarly named places and going with the largest town(s) in a given seat for the overall name are normally reasonable rules. For the sake of example, take St Ives - there are bigger towns with the same name (Cambs) and bigger towns in the seat itself (Penzance).
Yet these rules need not always be followed too closely. Disallowing the name Stratford-upon-Avon is a tad silly, since the place is sufficiently well known that neither the London suburb nor the other Avons are likely to provoke any serious confusion, and in any case it is by far the dominant settlement in its seat. And in some cases naming a seat after smaller settlements, or other geographical landmarks, may be justified. I don't think something like 'Land's End' to replace St Ives would be too silly, since I imagine most people would have a clearer idea of its whereabouts than either of St Ives or Penzance.
Besides, allowing a little creativity is no bad thing. We've seen what an obsession with rules over constituency sizes has done, and we don't want to needlessly drive ourselves into a corner.
Eddisbury is still a bit shit though.
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piperdave
SNP
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Post by piperdave on Apr 9, 2016 23:28:48 GMT
A lot of very reasonable recommendations. I'd like to add one of my own pet peeves from the last review. Any settlement that is divided among constituencies and has its name included in both/all constituency names, will have its name first thus making sure they come together alphabetically. That means I would have Hamilton East & Lanark and Hamilton West & Rutherglen rather than it being back to front.
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Post by lancastrian on Apr 9, 2016 23:31:45 GMT
The original guidance after the reforms of the 1880s indicated that seats should be named after an "important town or place" within them. I see no reason why this should not be the case with chiefly rural seats today. There is some scope for naming them after two different towns, but that should be the maximum – no commas please. The Commission has also been inconsistent across various modern reviews about whether or not it should be immediately obvious where a constituency is located for someone following the election in a different party of the country. They insist on 'Isle of Wight West' rather than simply 'Wight West', let permit the likes of 'Broxtowe' and 'Stone'! For this reason, I believe that using the names of 1970s local authority abominations or geographical features is hideous and should be avoided. Where a city has become entitled to four and a half seats through understandable urban flight, there must be a neater solution found to cross-border constituencies than the present awkward-sounding 'Garston & Halewood' and 'Blackley & Broughton'. Ah, Broughton reminds me to make another point. For common place names, they should just be used at most to refer to one settlement, and only then where it is clearly the better known of all the places. For example, I associate Broughton most with the town in North Wales and don't think the Lancashire one is particularly famous. 'Newport' should only refer to the city in South Wales. 'Rainham' should refer to the town in Kent because I've at least heard of via the Rainham End at football's Priestfield Stadium. 'Wellington' and 'Easington' should not be used at all. I don't care if the latter's been the name of a seat in County Durham for donkey's years – there's a town just down the coast with exactly the same name and that's enough of a recipe for confusion in my book. 'Stone' is the result of naming a rural seat after it's main settlement, which no-one has heard of anyway. The alternative is probably Mid Staffs. Blackley and Broughton needs the Manchester prefix. Do any of the residents object to this, or is it just Salford politicians or Commission policy? Easington(place) is in Easington(constituency) isn't it? (Albeit not a very big part) Broughton, to me, is firstly a village north of Preston, and after that could be either part of Manchester or the place with the Airbus factory. You say Rainham is in Kent, I'd say Havering/East London/Essex. How does the commission decide? Should constituency names represent local areas, or help someone from the other end of the country find it? Personally I'd say the former, which includes geographical features and 1974 creations providing the locals actually agree on them (e.g, I don't know them well, but Kirklees and Three Rivers seem particularly nebulous collections of places and names). Many of the 1970s council names were chosen because the area has no single dominant town, and after 40 years now better represents the area to locals than the name of any towns (without challenging Inverness etc for longest name). Further Calderdale, Fylde, Rossendale etc are valid geographical descriptions of whole constituencies/boroughs more so than any single town would be. If we had Clitheroe, Leek, Matlock and Brighouse constituencies to go with Stone would anyone really have a better idea where they were, given the small size of the towns and the geographical extents of the constituencies? (Those constituencies are currently named after a 1974 creation or geographical feature giving a good idea of location to anyone with knowledge of British geography)
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johnloony
Conservative
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Post by johnloony on Apr 10, 2016 4:03:45 GMT
1. Get rid of the distinction in names of county constituencies and borough constituencies. Journalists, politicians and psephologists almost always refer to "Cornwall North" anyway, not "North Cornwall". The compass point should be after the name, in all cases.
2. Use simple compass points in all cases where it is suitable. Get rid of the annoying self-important constituency names which are currently used in Plymouth, Southampton, Brighton etc.
3. Use more often county-based names. For example: the constituency currently called "Ludlow" actually covers two medium-sized towns (Ludlow and Bridgnorth, both of which have a population of about 11,000) and a large part of the area of Shropshire, with dozens of villages. It should simply be called "Shropshire South". It is illogical to single out one of the two main towns without the other.
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Post by La Fontaine on Apr 10, 2016 6:51:30 GMT
Richmond also includes Northallerton, which is the larger town, as well as being the county town of North Yorkshire. "Northallerton & Richmond" should be the name, which gets rid of the brackets.
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YL
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Post by YL on Apr 10, 2016 8:18:17 GMT
In urban areas, either stick to compass points or random wards, so we don't end up with nonsense like 'Sheffield Heeley' and 'Sheffield South East'. With the former style, only use one suburb, meaning 'Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough' is out too (call it 'Sheffield Owlerton' as a compromise). Sorry to pick on that particular city, but it is quite a mess at the moment. South East should be Attercliffe; the 2010 boundary changes were actually quite minor, Attercliffe is still in the seat (though not central within it) and it's still the clear descendant of the Sheffield Attercliffe seat which has existed since 1885. As for B&H, I don't actually mind the double name, which describes the seat quite well (and better than "Sheffield North" would IMO), but if you don't like it, I'd just stick with Brightside; again, it's the clear descendant of a seat of that name which has existed since 1885. I agree entirely that "Blackley & Broughton" is an abomination. What's wrong with "Filton & Sadly BrokeBradley Stoke", though? What else would you call it, "Bristol Parkway"?
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Post by swindonlad on Apr 10, 2016 8:38:51 GMT
1. Get rid of the distinction in names of county constituencies and borough constituencies. Journalists, politicians and psephologists almost always refer to "Cornwall North" anyway, not "North Cornwall". The compass point should be after the name, in all cases. Totally agree, almost no one gets the name of my home constituency correct, South Swindon - it's nearly always referred to as Swindon South. Does have some advantages as it's a county seat one can spend more & the difference in appointments
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The Bishop
Labour
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Post by The Bishop on Apr 10, 2016 9:01:40 GMT
What's wrong with "Filton & Sadly BrokeBradley Stoke", though? What else would you call it, "Bristol Parkway"? I quite like that suggestion, tbh.
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Post by Penddu on Apr 10, 2016 9:49:00 GMT
My pet hate: Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire....should be West Carmarthenshire & South Pembrokeshire...or strictly speaking Gorllewin Gaerfyrddin & South Pembrokeshire
(BCW guidance sayes that predominantlyy welsh speaking areas should have welsh name.
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Post by andrewteale on Apr 10, 2016 10:36:42 GMT
Perhaps the real answer to this is to disambiguate town names. We can have Newport-on-Usk, Newport-on-Medina, Newport-on-Mease... Broughton-on-Dee, Broughton-on-Irwell, Broughton-in-Amounderness and so on.
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Post by greatkingrat on Apr 10, 2016 11:55:16 GMT
And while there are more Welsh speakers in Carmarthenshire than Pembrokeshire, I wouldn't say it was a predominantly Welsh speaking area.
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Post by carlton43 on Apr 10, 2016 12:03:32 GMT
I wish to speak up for old historic names like Ludlow and Richmond and want to retain them. I don't like dual names such as Filton and Bradley Stoke as no one out of the area has heard of either of them. As to Scotland the long names are a complete nonsense with Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey being possibly the stupidest of all. Inverness would be fine. Always go for simplicity, obvious recognition, historic continuity and brevity.
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Post by islington on Apr 10, 2016 12:39:53 GMT
Always go for simplicity, obvious recognition, historic continuity and brevity. This. The words 'nail' and 'head' spring to mind.
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Post by minionofmidas on Apr 10, 2016 13:21:17 GMT
I think any 'Mid' seat should instead be renamed 'Things That Were Left Over at the End'. Not North, South, East or West but somewhere in between. Or just "Remainder of".
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Post by carlton43 on Apr 10, 2016 13:42:28 GMT
Perhaps the real answer to this is to disambiguate town names. We can have Newport-on-Usk, Newport-on-Medina, Newport-on-Mease... Broughton-on-Dee, Broughton-on-Irwell, Broughton-in-Amounderness and so on. It only matters if two or more constituencies are affected. Newport has two seats so it must be the one in Wales from size. There is only one Broughton used and best in all cases of Broughton to use another name as no one knows where any of them are.
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