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Post by Foggy on Feb 17, 2018 23:37:03 GMT
Near the top-right corner of that poll, is it predicting a woeful 22% turnout?! I think that is undecided voters Ah, that would explain the question marks and be a lot less worrying. It would almost make sense as a turnout estimate for a European election, though (sadly).
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Feb 16, 2018 2:03:50 GMT
Post by Foggy on Feb 16, 2018 2:03:50 GMT
No candidates from either Labour or Liberals in Hebden Bridge - a different time alright. Dare I say it seems more of a Green place these days, if anything, based on what I've heard?
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Post by Foggy on Feb 14, 2018 13:06:45 GMT
Haven't seen that combination of words in a long time Since February 9th a year ago, to be precise. Last time ever? According to the preview, it actually occurred in a Lancs County Council division in Burnley last May, but that victory a year ago must've been the last time it happened at a by-election.
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Post by Foggy on Feb 14, 2018 1:05:43 GMT
Near the top-right corner of that poll, is it predicting a woeful 22% turnout?!
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Post by Foggy on Feb 14, 2018 1:04:32 GMT
A decent effort, but quite apart from the points others have already raised, I simply will not accept the continued division of Sussex until such time as that county competes as two separate teams in the County Championship. By that argument Yorkshire should be a single county. (Shouldn't we be doing this over in the Redrawn Local Government Boundaries thread?) (Yes, we should.) True, you can't always go by cricketing counties, but the Ridings still go back a lot further than the arbitrary West-East distinction in Sussex. The exact demarcation of the borders since the split have been less than consistent too!
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Post by Foggy on Feb 13, 2018 20:29:24 GMT
My revised proposals for local government in England. Unitary status for the largest cities (with extended boundaries covering all or most of the urban area) and the historic counties which were abolished in 1974. "Tyne and Wear" reduced to become "Tyneside" and an extended "Cleveland" becomes "Teesside". Within the shire counties I would have urban districts/rural districts with a minimum population of 20,000 each. The metropolitan counties would be more or less same as the arrangements pre-1986. A decent effort, but quite apart from the points others have already raised, I simply will not accept the continued division of Sussex until such time as that county competes as two separate teams in the County Championship. I believe some estimates around the time of the AV referendum suggested that the Lib Dems could've won more seats than the Conservatives in 1997 through tactical voting (though I'm sceptical about the methodology there), but I think you're correct in saying that STV would not have anything like the same effect. I've also heard that AV would've given the Conservatives a bigger majority in 2015 with UKIP 2nd preferences. Yes, I can well believe that this would have been the case (after the Lib Dems had been the ones agitating for AV 4 years earlier!) even if only 40% or so of UKIP's first-preference votes had flowed to the Tories.
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Post by Foggy on Feb 13, 2018 20:26:15 GMT
This is my tweek of mirrorme's England What does your map have to do with a character from South Park who has a nervous twitch due to a caffeine addiction?
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Post by Foggy on Feb 12, 2018 2:02:10 GMT
Apparently there was a large amount of tactical anti-Tory vote in 1997, this could've really distorted things if all Labour and Lib Dem voters put the other party as their second preference. There was indeed anti-Conservative tactical voting, but it wouldn't have been enough to put Lib Dems ahead of the Conservative Party under STV. It might have been closer under AV. P.S. This is the map I got for 1997 That's a lovely map, but I've removed it from the quote for reasons of space. Would the Speaker have been automatically re-elected – as in Ireland – under this scenario? I suspect Betty Boothroyd was popular enough that she'd have been fairly safe anyway. I believe some estimates around the time of the AV referendum suggested that the Lib Dems could've won more seats than the Conservatives in 1997 through tactical voting (though I'm sceptical about the methodology there), but I think you're correct in saying that STV would not have anything like the same effect.
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Post by Foggy on Feb 12, 2018 1:07:26 GMT
Neither Nice Matin nor Télé Monte Carlo look to be reporting any results yet. I'm afraid I don't know of any other reliable Monégasque sources.
It appears that candidates in the principality have to be at least 25, and that newly-naturalised citizens have to wait a further 5 years in order to be able to stand. Double-jobbing with membership of the (single) municipal council in Monaco seems to be allowed.
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Post by Foggy on Feb 8, 2018 0:51:44 GMT
Weymouth and Portland has an all-party administration (I think it's had one since the 1970s). The portfolio holders are currently made up of five Conservatives (including the council leader), three Labour, two Liberal Democrats, and one UK Independence Party. But? What?...Huh? Who do they blame when things go to pot? Not good for democracy imo. You've clearly never lived in an Austrian Bundesland where Proporz rules the roost. Closer to home, the 'consociational' power-sharing arrangment in Northern Ireland (when it's actually up and functioning) has the same problem of unclear lines of accountability.
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Post by Foggy on Feb 8, 2018 0:48:04 GMT
This would be correct. Actually Liverpool at the time was sometimes referred to as the capital of North Wales.And I'm sure there are plenty out there who would gladly offload it onto us... Not only that, the senior men's Welsh football team has of course been known to play 'home' matches at Anfield too!
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Post by Foggy on Feb 8, 2018 0:12:50 GMT
That link still refers to Milton Keynes City FC as a 'local organisation'. Maybe they mean this one. "The club was founded in 1986 as Milton Keynes City Youth FC before changing it's [ sic] name to Milton Keynes City FC in 2005" Sneaky, but it's good to see that there's still a club with than moniker knocking about. I was thinking of the previous two clubs by that name which both went bust.
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Post by Foggy on Feb 7, 2018 23:46:28 GMT
Sandwell, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Walsall? plus Liverpool, Wirral, Salford, Stockport, Bury, Rochdale, North Tyneside, South Tyneside Liverpool and Salford are the only ones of those that make even the slightest bit of sense to me. The rest should all quite self-evidently have parishes. It doesn't stop them implying that MK is a city. All, and I mean all, of their publicity for anything describes it as 'the new city', 'Britain's fastest growing (new) city' (actually they've not done they for a while) etc. They encourage the local media to refer to 'the city', locals refer to going 'up the city' and so on. Its very odd. I once got told that 'the charter' referred to it as a city to which my response was 'well, if it did then we'd be a city, and we aren't.' I was on a course last week which was attended by people from the other side of the country who believed that Milton Keynes was a city. So they may get into trouble for saying it explicitly, but their marketing department is doing a good job of implying it. Pretty much: This is not a city: Milton KeynesThat link still refers to Milton Keynes City FC as a 'local organisation'. Gateshead has one parish: Lamesley. The other one, Birtley, abolished itself a few years ago. Also, Elgin is generally known as a city, but isn't. Its football team is Elgin City. It has no council. I believe this is the case for Brechin as well. Red Dwarf once posed the trick trivia question 'who knocked Swansea City out of the 1967 FA Cup?' The catch is that the club was still called Swansea Town AFC (who were knocked out that year by Burnley, incidentally) at the time.
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Post by Foggy on Feb 7, 2018 0:40:20 GMT
During the speeches I couldn't help but notice that the new AM looks and sounds a lot like a guy from Shotton with whom I studied German at Bangor. All right, so the 'sounds' part of that observation shouldn't come as a surprise. That is about the most interesting take I have on what was a comfortable hold for the incumbent party in the end. Now we'll see how well the rookie gets along with Carwyn and friends down in Cardiff Bay...
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Post by Foggy on Feb 7, 2018 0:31:37 GMT
I think 'Met Districts' should probably have ceased to be a valid distinction once the 'Metropolitan County' councils were abolished in the 1980s. It's all very confusing. In general I reckon what should make the difference is whether or not the local authority has any parished areas (which would technically make Birmingham and Westminster districts, to name but two problematic examples). Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and Sheffield would also be districts by that measure. Only 12 of the 36 Metropolitan districts have no parishes. I knew about the examples you cite in Yorkshire, but I'm astonished to find just how many parishes there are in Newcastle upon Tyne (I guess that clearly makes it a district after all!) and I'd never heard of Ringway being a separate village either.
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Post by Foggy on Feb 6, 2018 20:57:40 GMT
City Councils are authorities that cover areas granted 'city status' by the monarch of the day by letters patent, irrespective of the actual functions of the local authority concerned. Currently, Chichester, Ely, Hereford, Lichfield, Ripon, Salisbury, Truro and Wells are all styled as city councils, despite having the powers and status of a parish council. Oh I know - and actually some are cities by virtue of being recognised as such since "time immemorial". It's just that there are no Met Districts that are neither Borough nor City. Hereford was of course downgraded in the tinkering of the 1990s. In Wales you have St Asaph and St Davids which are cities with only the responsibilities of a community council, alongside the Great City of Bangor. I think 'Met Districts' should probably have ceased to be a valid distinction once the 'Metropolitan County' councils were abolished in the 1980s. It's all very confusing. In general I reckon what should make the difference is whether or not the local authority has any parished areas (which would technically make Birmingham and Westminster districts, to name but two problematic examples). My local district council has sometimes referred to its chair as the First Citizen, but never the mayor (and yet Cambridgeshire now has a 'mayor' to complicate matters further).
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Post by Foggy on Feb 6, 2018 9:12:31 GMT
AV if you must (same for the other excepted seats in Scotland), but as I said I really don't think STV is a sensible option for a country that's far larger than Malta and has a much higher population than Tasmania. Under an additional member system, the Island would be good for one direct seat.
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Post by Foggy on Feb 6, 2018 8:52:41 GMT
... and here are the workings for the seat sizes. It's... really not as bad as it could be in places, but there are exhibits there which demonstrate perfectly why STV isn't the way to go for nationwide elections in this country. You've gone trans-Solent, for starters! Of the three seats I've voted in at general elections, two here (the Somerset CC area and a Brighton & Hove-Lewes-Eastbourne constituency) are coherent and the other only looks slightly off due to the inclusion of Clwyd West... which, without looking at the spreadsheet, I guess is necessary to make the figures work.
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Post by Foggy on Feb 6, 2018 1:00:55 GMT
"Ham" as place-name suffix is generally "southern" (being anglo-saxon) rather than e.g. "by" which is "northern" and Old Norse. Which rather neatly dovetails with the "where is the north?" discussion, corroborating the idea that it starts in Northants. indeed, there are placenames in Scandinavia today which end in -by, including Brondby in Denmark (Peter Schmeichel's club before he joined Manchester United). *Brøndby
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Post by Foggy on Feb 5, 2018 0:49:45 GMT
Incidentally I can't quite get my head round Higham Ferrers being in Northamptonshire. That name sounds like it belongs in Devon, or maybe Dorset... West Country, anyway, not the bloody East Midlands. I agree that Higham Ferrers sounds out of place in Northants, but it wouldn't seem right around these parts either. I think it should be located 'higher' up the road from South Woodham Ferrers in Essex, in a posher and more remote part of that county.
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