Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 23, 2024 16:34:04 GMT
My Grandad (born in 1921) liked to call Blackpool 'Gomorrah'. It has never exactly been known as an especially salubrious place, even in its long distant heyday.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 23, 2024 15:07:43 GMT
All indications at present are that their vote is likely to be fairly evenly distributed, which tends not to be rewarded by FPTP.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 23, 2024 13:56:30 GMT
When speaking the norm is just to add 'the urban' before or 'conurbation' after 'West Midlands' if referring to the conurbation. It's hardly a major issue, especially as the broader West Midlands is just a statistical entity and as the old and not loved West Midlands 'county' exists only for this rather silly post and for ceremonial purposes. The police area is also the met county. We have far too many police forces in this country. It is perhaps mildly surprising that the widespread use of 'West Midlands' managed to survive the automatic addition for a while of 'Serious Crime Squad'.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 23, 2024 13:50:19 GMT
When speaking the norm is just to add 'the urban' before or 'conurbation' after 'West Midlands' if referring to the conurbation. It's hardly a major issue, especially as the broader West Midlands is just a statistical entity and as the old and not loved West Midlands 'county' exists only for this rather silly post and for ceremonial purposes.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 23, 2024 13:28:41 GMT
An article in this weeks Economist puts Barnsley North as the most likely seat for a Reform gain. Yes, because they are using 2019 BxP votes and little else. Apart from current Reform support (inasmuch as it is a real phenomenon as opposed to just a polling artefact) not mapping that well onto Brexit Party strength at all, the latter didn't even stand in half the country at the last GE! Yes, it's a statistical artefact rather than anything meaningful. It's just not going to be possible to simply project from the last GE on to the forthcoming one for any party...
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 20, 2024 11:45:53 GMT
As this is a psephological forum, I should also note that Bangor was where the political historian Duncan Tanner was based until his untimely death in (Christ, was it that long ago?) 2010. Political Change and the Labour Party 1900–1918 is still very much the book for answers to some of the knottier questions around voting habits and political preferences in the first two decades of the twentieth century.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 19, 2024 22:48:12 GMT
Apparently Mark Francois nearly was selected for that by-election which would have been an interesting fit for that constituency. Let’s just say they probably wouldn’t have needed recounts in 2017 if he stood there… or, parallel universe, he wouldn’t have been as much of a rabid Brexiteer, but then again it’s highly unlikely he would have caught the mood of Kensington, being a ‘safe seat’, just as Cooper as an ardent remainer almost lost her ‘safe seat’ in 2019. He couldn't have stood there in 2017 as the constituency was abolished in 2010. He might well have been adopted for the new Kensington constituency, of course. This is not a pedantic point.
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Sibboleth
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India
Apr 19, 2024 20:13:28 GMT
Post by Sibboleth on Apr 19, 2024 20:13:28 GMT
Charges were dropped in the end of course, but the business with his late wife, specifically how she came to be so, always does leave something of a bad smell.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 19, 2024 12:41:32 GMT
It can actually be easier for someone with no local ties to maintain an address in the constituency than someone local, who may well live on the constituency boundary or just outside the constituency.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 19, 2024 12:30:43 GMT
Constituency boundaries have always been rather arbitrary in some cases, became more so after 1983 and are about to become more so again. Wider definitions of 'local areas' are also rarely formal in practice: counties? The rather silly present 'ceremonial counties'? Metropolitan areas - but how defined?
In any case the political effect if something like this could somehow be imposed and enforced might not be to your liking. Perhaps the most significant example of a comparatively local candidate being selected by a local party as a backlash against perceived parachuters also on the shortlist would be Sedgefield before the 1983 General Election...
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 17, 2024 23:04:41 GMT
David Cameron tried to be selected for the 1999 Kensington and Chelsea by-election Apparently Mark Francois nearly was selected for that by-election which would have been an interesting fit for that constituency. It would have been fine with him. It was fine with Alan Clark. A constituency that can put up with Alan Clark can put up with anyone.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 17, 2024 13:15:56 GMT
Liberalism has cracked up and scattered so widely since its collapse as a coherent political movement a century ago that strong arguments both for and against this policy can be grounded, if one choses, in the liberal tradition.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 16, 2024 16:02:00 GMT
Never forget:
'1. Liz is mad'
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 13, 2024 13:46:32 GMT
And why was the perfectly reasonable name Mid Staffordshire not suggested or chosen? Well, it isn't in the middle of the county however defined. But it could easily have been West Staffs.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 12, 2024 19:32:31 GMT
Just to clear this one up: Ladywood 1918-50 Ladywood 1950-55 Ladywood 1955-74 Ladywood 1974-83 The Boundary Commission love the name, but arguing for meaningful continuity is... tricky.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 8, 2024 14:31:51 GMT
This may be related to Bajaj allegedly being assaulted in a car park by another Conservative councillor.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 7, 2024 22:26:12 GMT
In Pennies from Heaven, Arthur and his doppelgänger the Accordion Man first meet each other in Gloucester, which is also the location of the music shop that Arthur tries to flog sheet music for popular songs to.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 7, 2024 13:44:20 GMT
Often a big problem in even quite large provincial towns away from major postindustrial concentrations, let alone in the countryside.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 6, 2024 19:18:50 GMT
It and Pentlands were safe in a Kensington and Chelsea way until the Tories died and were replaced by non-Tories. I think reliably Tory is the term rather than safe Tory. Yes. It's a category of constituency that no longer really exists as voting habits have become more volatile, but you can't understand postwar elections (especially) without reference to it. Interestingly, of course, it was also an important category in the Late Victorian and Edwardian era, but (like now) very much gone by the 1920s and 30s with a few odd exceptions such as Merioneth.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Apr 5, 2024 16:40:39 GMT
There were also some against-the-grain losses and tight calls in local elections, which got people jittery.
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