Foggy
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Post by Foggy on Jul 22, 2023 11:09:04 GMT
All the things listed in the previous post [EDIT: previous post but one!] that needlessly cost the taxpayer money were caused by Mr Evans resigning in a fit of pique because he'd attached himself to the cult of Johnson instead of being a Conservative for all seasons. And the last of them might not even come to pass. Will be interesting to see which of the successor seats is considered a nailed-on Tory win (albeit by somebody whose biases are well known on here) and if Mather actually contests that constituency. he's Adams not Evans. Nigel Evans remains in Parliament. Yes of course. My mind must've slipped over to the other side of the Pennines for a moment there! For all Evans' faults, I could not accuse him of being a member of the cult of Boris. Remark withdrawn.
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Post by Foggy on Jul 22, 2023 2:04:55 GMT
I wonder what happened with the constituency office for Brecon and Radnorshire in 2019? Here, the local MP and Senedd member basically share an office, so I suspect Jane Dodds and Kirsty Williams had the same arrangement for those few months.
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Post by Foggy on Jul 21, 2023 23:16:13 GMT
All the things listed in the previous post [EDIT: previous post but one!] that needlessly cost the taxpayer money were caused by Mr Evans resigning in a fit of pique because he'd attached himself to the cult of Johnson instead of being a Conservative for all seasons.
And the last of them might not even come to pass. Will be interesting to see which of the successor seats is considered a nailed-on Tory win (albeit by somebody whose biases are well known on here) and if Mather actually contests that constituency.
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Post by Foggy on Jul 21, 2023 23:12:55 GMT
Apologies if this has already been discussed somewhere in the thread but I wonder if Boris might have some regrets about not just fighting through the recall process and any by-election after this? It would certainly have given him a credibility boost He would have lost. One interesting aspect of this result is that it makes sense of some the odd disconnect between recent local and national voting habits here: Johnson had a negative personal vote. Probably not many votes, but enough. Additionally it would have been impossible to have run a relentless single-issue campaign on ULEZ as he would have been the issue. Of course a few of the other factors would still run in his favour (the Brunel students being at home, continued movement towards the Conservatives amongst Hindus perhaps due to Sunak etc) but they wouldn't have been enough alone. Had Johnson still resigned immediately and asked to contest the by-election himself, then yes, that'd have been a factor. If he'd allowed the recall petition process to play out, might the students not have been back by the time the resultant by-election actually occurred? That said, the rest of your analysis looks sound so all it would have meant is an even bigger defeat.
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Post by Foggy on Jul 21, 2023 23:09:47 GMT
There still seems to be a bit of confusion surrounding that Cardiganshire result. I've no doubt the vote totals are correct, but carolus didn't list it as a double vacancy (else I wouldn't have tried to make the 'only councillor' joke) yet two candidates have been declared elected. Was that just on oversight at this end, or has the Returning Officer erred in not drawing straws?
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Post by Foggy on Jul 21, 2023 22:33:26 GMT
Bavaria goes to the polls on the 8th October. Edit: as does Hesse. Guess who'll be in Munich that weekend? Hotel was inexpensive because it's a few days after Oktoberfest finishes. Gonna try to get a ticket for 1860 v Dynamo Dresden too.
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Post by Foggy on Jul 21, 2023 22:31:44 GMT
Failsworth goes in with Oldham W, we recreate a (much improved) version of the Heywood and Royton seat that existed 1950-1983, Spotland is in Rochdale where it belongs, almost all of Middleton is contained within a single seat, and Manchester C is completely within the city boundary. No seat extends into more than two boroughs and there's not a ward split in sight.
We definitely need a football ground-related rule added to the governing legislation before the next Review.
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Post by Foggy on Jul 21, 2023 7:38:28 GMT
Apparently I hallucinated David Heathcoat-Amory's 528-vote majority in Wells in 1997 despite actually living in the constituency at the time (I was too young to be able to vote) because according to the column, the Lib Dems actually gained it after all. Honestly, fancy including all that needless minutiae about the Two World Wars which far too many middle-aged men in this country still get tumescent about glorifying when they weren't even there, and then getting an important psephological fact regarding England's greatest county wrong. Come on, Teale: priorities in order here please! Er, and on the topic of this thread, do we have a detailed result from Worcester yet? Suddenly I'm confused. Are you saying you're actually a Lancastrian? Haha, touché. One thing I can concede with the benefit of local knowledge is that, as an Old Alfredian, I remember that yes, we did indeed consider Hugh Sexey's School to have a peculiar name.
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Post by Foggy on Jul 21, 2023 2:06:30 GMT
I’m a bit surprised people are going to such lengths as taking days of work for tonight. By-election coverage isn’t particularly riveting stuff compared to a full set of locals or a GE. I also factored in the 3rd day of the Test match and 2nd day of the British Open Not to mention the penultimate 'proper' stage of Le Tour!
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Post by Foggy on Jul 21, 2023 2:05:25 GMT
20 July:Ceredigion, Llanddewi, Brefit. 3x Ind, 2x [] Can't find the result yet, though I can't help but wonder if the winning candidate will be the only councillor in the village. [In b4 Harry fails to get the reference.]
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Post by Foggy on Jul 21, 2023 1:51:02 GMT
Apparently I hallucinated David Heathcoat-Amory's 528-vote majority in Wells in 1997 despite actually living in the constituency at the time (I was too young to be able to vote) because according to the column, the Lib Dems actually gained it after all. Honestly, fancy including all that needless minutiae about the Two World Wars which far too many middle-aged men in this country still get tumescent about glorifying when they weren't even there, and then getting an important psephological fact regarding England's greatest county wrong. Come on, Teale: priorities in order here please! Er, and on the topic of this thread, do we have a detailed result from Worcester yet?
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Post by Foggy on Jun 28, 2023 12:24:09 GMT
Henley -> Henley and Thame Mid Berkshire -> Reading West and Mid BerkshireReading -> Reading Central Milton Keynes South -> Milton Keynes Central Make it stop!
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Post by Foggy on Jun 28, 2023 12:21:43 GMT
Clearly no Commissioners are familiar with this region at all. The initial proposals were obviously 'minimum effort' and none of the big 'easy win' changes were made at the revised stage.
They've kept Tiverton & Minehead. I realise the Tories had already selected Ian Liddell-Grainger to fight it so they were clearly not expecting any major alterations at this phase of the Review... but still, come on! There are no statutory criteria for cross-county constituencies, but that one flies in the face of common sense. If you don't know the county borders then it actually looks neat on the map. Sadly it has poor internal connectivity and community links. Didn't need to exist this time (Devon can stand alone for 13 seats, the Somerset UA for 6) and probably won't survive the next review. Plus it doesn't even unite Exmoor which still has a large chunk of it in North Devon. Worst of all worlds.
Frome is very much on the eastern edge of Somerset, so there's no need for the addition of the compass direction there. 'Taunton & Wellington' is certainly unnecessary but makes sense to me, though it might confuse people who are more familiar with Wellington in Shropshire. It's similar to the former borough of Taunton Deane, so the name could be a reflection of the fact that the district council has been abolished.
I prefer the previous name for the Exmouth seat even though it's where my grandparents met and got married, so you'd think I'd be happy that it's now mentioned first. But there are precedents when it comes to nomenclature which should be abided.
There are two possible neat maps for Dorset: one involves minimal change, the other 4 seats each for the Dorset UA and 4 for BCP. Neither involves a split ward or division. Utterly baffling move there.
Wells now contains an even shorter stretch of coast which is further away from the city itself. Couldn't it just have reverted to being a landlocked seat?
Complete afterthought here then. Perhaps there's a case for not asking the Commission to Review all 9 regions simultaneously? Things really do get lost in the shuffle.
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Post by Foggy on Jun 13, 2023 23:41:15 GMT
Feijóo's successor as head of the Galician government, Alfonso Rueda, has undertaken his first Cabinet reshuffle this week. He was probably due one in the next few months anyway since single-party administrations can get away with carrying them out annually, but the timing of the snap national election call has forced his hand somewhat.
Francisco Conde is stepping down as his deputy to be the PP's lead lower house candidate for Lugo, to be replaced by Diego Calvo. Ángeles Vázquez is the new second VP of the Xunta, the first woman to hold such a position in Galicia.
Rosa Quintana is also leaving after 14 to take up the slightly riskier position of second on the list for O(u)rense, which is the only province of Galicia that is landlocked. Her most recent position in the Cabinet was as minister for... you guessed it, the sea!
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Post by Foggy on Jun 13, 2023 23:32:25 GMT
Yes, the Sonderweg was mentioned at A-level but not how far back the concept went, at least as far as I recall.
In order to find out the Austrian side of the story following the 1849 'failure', I had to wait another semester again after Mons, when I took the classes of the 'A Survey of Austrian Culture' module at the "Alpen-Adria" University in Klagenfurt.
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Post by Foggy on Jun 13, 2023 13:54:15 GMT
Thanks for the info, Georg. There's very little acknowledgement in the current Paulskirche of the lands that don't make up modern Germany but which were invited to the Convention.
It says a lot about the state of education in this country that remember seeing a brown road sign in 2001 – already armed with A* German plus a proper pass at GCSE History from OCR, seen as the toughest exam board – which boasted that the next exit on the Autobahn led to a town which was heavily involved in "Die Revolutionen von 1848" and I had absolutely no idea what that referred to.
Then at AS level, we had one lesson (maybe even a whole week?) with nods to 1870-71 unification under Bismarck and the Drei-Kaiser-Jahr of 1888, then things basically skipped ahead to 1914. Oh, and somebody mentioned Friedrich Barbarossa at one point but the teacher didn't want to dwell on that era at all. I didn't actually find out about the events of 1848-49 until I took the Connaissance du pays allemand module in Mons of all places, almost a full decade after I first spotted that motorway sign.
I've since found English sources that fill in the gaps of that particular oversight but it's still shoddy that I was never taught it properly in school, FE college or at a British university. DW's other half may or may not be pleased to hear that when I gave a talk to Bath German Society just before pandemic restrictions came in, I did as an aside lament the loss of Budweis from German-speaking territory at one point.
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Post by Foggy on Jun 9, 2023 18:23:56 GMT
After Wiltshire Council's efforts yesterday, what's up with more tweets involving strange grammar? Does anybody actually say' clinged' (which looks like it should be pronounced with a soft 'g' sound) as the past tense of 'cling'?
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Post by Foggy on Jun 8, 2023 20:59:16 GMT
On a slightly tangential note I do wonder how all these parties and organisations manage to sustain themselves when they're constantly being subsumed into bigger ones. Sumar is made up of parties and coalitions, which are made up of more parties and coalitions, which are made up of even more parties, some of which are technically themselves coalitions of ever even more parties. The eventual electoral alliance that results from these talks ought to call itself the Muñeca Matroshka list.
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Post by Foggy on May 1, 2023 1:03:28 GMT
In the absence of either of these your approach to estimating the electorate from the entry numbers for the various polling stations from the Notice of Polling Stations is the best way forward but unlikely to be 'exact', because of the following factors related to the "rolling" register provisions: 1) Inserted entries, often given a register number such as 673/1, 673/2, 1374/1 etc. These lead to an underestimation of the number of electors. 2) Deleted entries, where the RO has been notified of a death or removal. These lead to an overestimation of the number of electors. 3) The inclusion of 17 year olds awaiting their 18th birthday before becoming eligible to vote, indicated by the day/month printed before their name. These lead to an overestimation of the number of electors. Since this discussion was sparked by lack of information from a Welsh primary authority, should we not note that instances of 15-year-olds awaiting their 16th birthday would be applicable in this case (as indeed it would be for a Scottish local election)?
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Post by Foggy on Apr 22, 2023 0:42:42 GMT
I don't really see the reasoning behind the stipulation in the Scotland Act for seven list seats per region. Much nicer regions could be drawn if they could have a larger variance in electorate, with the 56 list seats apportioned between them in the same way that European seats were. That way you could have a less geographically-sprawling Highlands and Islands, and Glasgow can follow the city boundary rather than have to take in random bits of Clydebank or Giffnock. You could even fix the regions to correspond with the health board areas, or another similarly-sized set of subdivisions. Agree. You could even make the Holyrood seats always co-terminous with the Westminster ones and adjust the numbers on the list accordingly. Disagree with the second suggestion. As neat as it sounds, there's a reason it was done away with under the 2004 Act. At the moment, it would result in 59 FPTP seats to 70 proportional members. On the proposed boundaries for the next UK election, the balance would be tipped even further in favour of the additional members to make the ratio the exact reverse of what is now (i.e. 56:73 instead of 73:56), resulting in a bizarre sort of 'hyperproportionality' within each region (not to mention the awkwardness of having more "second-class" members than constituency members in the actual chamber itself – normal practice in some parts of Germany, but alien to Commonwealth jurisidictions).
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