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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Sept 10, 2017 12:45:54 GMT
So I see. Any suggestions for an alternative host? Some of us use Imgur, see if that works out for you. Thanks. Have edited accordingly. I've also taken a look at Norfolk and Suffolk. Both could stand alone, but only with difficulty, particularly in Suffolk (though it might be easier if the review is delayed for a few years, given long-term trends.) Pairing them actually makes it easier to create a minimum change map. Six constituencies are within quota (NW Norfolk; North Norfolk; Great Yarmouth; Norwich South; South Suffolk; Ipswich) and all could remain unchanged. Broadland is a little too large and Norwich South a little too small, but if you move the two Drayton wards then both should work and that's all the change you need in the northern half of county. South Norfolk needs to lose around 10,000 electors, so it definitely needs to lose East and Old Costessey and depending on exact electorates elsewhere you might want to move Cringleford. Mid Norfolk then needs to gain those wards, re-align to new ward boundaries in Breckland and lose around 20,000 electors. The easiest way to do that is to lose most of its territory west of Dereham to SW Norfolk. SW Norfolk then gets within the allowable range by losing Thetford and environs, which go into a Suffolk seat. Thetford could either be combined with the entirety of Forest Heath district and a few wards from the north of St Edmundsbury, or with St Edmundsbury as far south as Bury St Edmunds. The former is neater and has better internal links, the latter means that the cross-border seat would only take in wards from two authorities and minimises change to West Suffolk. It's also slightly easier to be certain the numbers work in the former case, but I suspect either is fine. Either solution leaves a lot of electors in the Stowmarket portion of the current Bury St Edmunds constituency, and the easiest thing to do with them is to combine them with the North Ipswich part of Central Suffolk & North Ipswich. This creates a relatively sensible constituency along the A14, instead of the current rurban mess. Both Waveney and Suffolk Coastal are a little too large, and hence both need to lose the rural bits of Waveney district, which have to be picked up by the successor to CS&NI. If you try to keep Kesgrave in it, it winds up adopting an absurd T-shape, so instead it's better to shift that into Suffolk Coastal and make a more compact rural north Suffolk seat. So on a map, that would look something like this:
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Post by minionofmidas on Sept 10, 2017 12:51:57 GMT
Not everyone accepts the existence of 4 nations anyway! What about the Cornish? All 5 nations of the UK should get an equal number of seats at Westminster. [/ducks, hides] Anyways, simultaneously good news and hilarious if true (apparently not quite certain yet?) And it seems we're going to see the revised recommendations before they're scrapped? Excellent, excellent. Ganz großes Kino.
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Post by jigger on Sept 10, 2017 13:03:49 GMT
Cornwall is an integral part of England. Just look at the 2011 Census figures - a clear majority of Cornish residents regard themselves as English (and English only as well for that matter).
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Post by minionofmidas on Sept 10, 2017 13:13:37 GMT
Cornwall is an integral part of England. Just look at the 2011 Census figures - a clear majority of Cornish residents regard themselves as English (and English only as well for that matter). Cornwall is very much both a part of England and a separate not-England. As such, clearly the only way to satisfy my previous troll suggestion is to give a quarter of the seats each to Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall, and England incl. Cornwall, and leave the rest of England unrepresented. -_- Nvm. I'll stop now.
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Post by John Chanin on Sept 10, 2017 14:51:31 GMT
Some of us use Imgur, see if that works out for you. Thanks. Have edited accordingly. I've also taken a look at Norfolk and Suffolk. Both could stand alone, but only with difficulty, particularly in Suffolk (though it might be easier if the review is delayed for a few years, given long-term trends.) Pairing them actually makes it easier to create a minimum change map. Six constituencies are within quota (NW Norfolk; North Norfolk; Great Yarmouth; Norwich South; South Suffolk; Ipswich) and all could remain unchanged. Broadland is a little too large and Norwich South a little too small, but if you move the two Drayton wards then both should work and that's all the change you need in the northern half of county. South Norfolk needs to lose around 10,000 electors, so it definitely needs to lose East and Old Costessey and depending on exact electorates elsewhere you might want to move Cringleford. Mid Norfolk then needs to gain those wards, re-align to new ward boundaries in Breckland and lose around 20,000 electors. The easiest way to do that is to lose most of its territory west of Dereham to SW Norfolk. SW Norfolk then gets within the allowable range by losing Thetford and environs, which go into a Suffolk seat. Thetford could either be combined with the entirety of Forest Heath district and a few wards from the north of St Edmundsbury, or with St Edmundsbury as far south as Bury St Edmunds. The former is neater and has better internal links, the latter means that the cross-border seat would only take in wards from two authorities and minimises change to West Suffolk. It's also slightly easier to be certain the numbers work in the former case, but I suspect either is fine. Either solution leaves a lot of electors in the Stowmarket portion of the current Bury St Edmunds constituency, and the easiest thing to do with them is to combine them with the North Ipswich part of Central Suffolk & North Ipswich. This creates a relatively sensible constituency along the A14, instead of the current rurban mess. Both Waveney and Suffolk Coastal are a little too large, and hence both need to lose the rural bits of Waveney district, which have to be picked up by the successor to CS&NI. If you try to keep Kesgrave in it, it winds up adopting an absurd T-shape, so instead it's better to shift that into Suffolk Coastal and make a more compact rural north Suffolk seat. I like this a lot.
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Post by mrpastelito on Sept 10, 2017 21:50:44 GMT
Not everyone accepts the existence of 4 nations anyway! What about the Cornish? All 5 nations of the UK should get an equal number of seats at Westminster. [/ducks, hides] Anyways, simultaneously good news and hilarious if true (apparently not quite certain yet?) And it seems we're going to see the revised recommendations before they're scrapped? Excellent, excellent. Ganz großes Kino. The more Cornish MPs the better - if only to campaign for better transport links to Devon.
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Post by finsobruce on Sept 10, 2017 22:07:42 GMT
All 5 nations of the UK should get an equal number of seats at Westminster. [/ducks, hides] Anyways, simultaneously good news and hilarious if true (apparently not quite certain yet?) And it seems we're going to see the revised recommendations before they're scrapped? Excellent, excellent. Ganz großes Kino. The more Cornish MPs the better - if only to campaign for better transport links to Devon. suddenly I hear troops massing on both sides of the Tamar......
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Sept 10, 2017 22:07:47 GMT
I haven't got time to put the entire spreadsheet on here this morning, so I'll start with eastern England: Essex: 18.38 Suffolk: 7.67 Norfolk: 9.31 Cambridgeshire: 8.06 Hertfordshire: 11.61 Bedfordshire: 6.28 Cambridgeshire easily stands alone, and there are enough seats in Essex that it can stand alone without too much difficulty. Mathematically you could 8 to Suffolk and 9 to Norfolk, but it's a little tight and it may not be possible by the time the new freeze date comes, so pairing them for 17 is probably more realistic. The maths is even tighter with Herts and Beds, so a pairing for 18 there is logical on the numbers.The new seat in Cambridgeshire is likely to appear somewhere along the A14 corridor between Cambridge and Huntingdon. If you consider Suffolk alone then you've got a lot of leeway about where the extra seat appears, but if you combine it with Norfolk then your cross-border seat either needs to cross around Thetford or around Diss. Ideally I'd cross the Beds-Herts border south of Luton, but if you're short of electors then it may have to be done north of Hitchin instead.I've been giving this some thought as you'd expect. It's frustrating trying to do this without knowing the ward figures but obviously one can get an idea from the 2016 figures. As far as crossing the Herts-Beds boundary goes, you can only take one ward from South of Luton before you start dividing Luton or Dunstable (OK you could take Eaton Bray as well but it doesn't look good) - so essentially that's Caddington with 7-7.5k electors. That's going to fit quite nicely into what I'd always envisaged as the 12th Herts seat which would include Berkhamsted and Tring together with the northen rural wards of Dacorum together with Harpenden, Redbourn and Wheathampstead (Sandridge would probably need to be added to St Albans to compensate for the loss of B&PH). Hemel would lose all three of its current outlying wards but gain Bovingdon, Flaunden & Chipperfield - the numbers look quite tight for that (only 66,811 on 2016 figures) so I really hope that works. Watford is going to need one other ward and Leavesden is the obvious choice which leaves the whole of the rest of Three Rivers to be joined by Kings Langley - the numbers are even lower there so that may not work. If not you're going to have to include Leavesden and cast around elsewhere for another ward for Watford. Hertsmere's electorate has grown well so it looks like it could just about afford to lose Bushey North - if the new ward boundaries are used then this would work quite well (see here www.lgbce.org.uk/__data/assets/image/0019/33571/Hertsmere_Launch_SummaryMap_DraftRecs-SMALL.jpg)Welwyn Hatifield, Broxbourne and Stevenage can all be unchanged so Hitchin and Letchworth/Baldock get reunited. There's no doubt that Arlesley and/or Stotfold could fit well enough in that seat but I'm not sure there's room for the numbers (these being large wards) as you'd also need to include the rural North Herts wards South and West of Hitchin. So if Bedfordshire can accomodate them I'd leave them in, probably adding Stotfold to MId Beds which in turn loses Toddington, BArton, Woburn wtc to South Beds (South Beds loses either Dunstable or Houghton Regis to Luton North in the now familiar pattern and Saints and Barnfield move to Luton South). Bedford could be unchanged as it stands but might need to take another ward (eg Elstow) simply as the average electorate for the remainder of Bedfordshire would be so much higher if only Caddington is removed. There's then another problem. With Broxbourne, WH and Stevenage all being unchanged there's a kind of wall beyond which there aren't enough voters for two whole seats - basically the East Herts district and the six easternmost wards of North Herts. Once you take Bishops Stortford out of Hertford & Stortford (which you have to) you're going to have to add most of the rural wards north of Hertford and Ware (basically everything except Buntinford, Braughing and Little Hadham). That means that the final seat (a heavily redrawn NE Herts, or Bishops Stortford & Royston or whatever) is well short of voters. Now you could add Stotfold to that seat but it really doesn't fit well there. A better solution presents itself by crossing into Essex. While I'm instinctively against unnecessary cross county seats, it seems that adding a half dozen wards in and around Stansted would work quite well here. It would have the added benefit of bringing the average seat size for the 18 Essex seats nearer to the quota which should make the job there easier. Obviously without detailed ward electorates there isn;t much point posting detailed maps etc and in any case I only have a now useless Photobucket account currently, but these are my initial thoughts
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 10, 2017 23:04:21 GMT
A fairly hideous plan for SW London with 5% tolerance. Unfortunately, Wandsworth's wards are just the wrong size. Twickenham - loses Twickenham Riverside Kingston & Surbiton - loses Norbiton Richmond Park - swaps the above for East Sheen, Barnes, Mortlake & Barnes Common Putney - swaps the 3 Richmond wards for Southfields Battersea - swaps Balham for Wandsworth Common Tooting - swaps Earlsfield and Wandsworth Common for Balham and Colliers Wood Wimbledon - swaps Southfields and Earlsfield for Abbey and Merton Park Mitcham & Morden - swaps Abbey and Merton Park for Colliers Wood Sutton & Cheam - unchanged Carshalton & Wallington - unchanged Some nice changes for Wandsworth and Wimbledon Conservatives there. Putney goes back to being very safe, Battersea and Wimbledon both get stronger. West Hill fits better into Wimbledon than Southfields, but it'd be a bit raggedy having EF and WH in the same seat and not SF. I live in Southfields area, but sneak into East Putney ward so would be right on the boundary between the Putney / Barnes and Wimbledon. Also only a couple of streets from Battersea so would be right in the centre of it all.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Sept 10, 2017 23:24:41 GMT
I think in the South East its going to make sense to treat the Thames Valley area as a single review area with 23 seats as both Berks and Oxon look tight for a whole new seat each - county boundaries are fluid here anyway so it makes perfect sense to put a bit of Langley in with Beaconsfield. I'm reckoning you can keep five Oxfordshire seats entirely North of the Thames (but for the annoying Wittenhams situation) - also a unified Oxford seat but with large chunks hived off from the East into a new Bicester & Headington (not sure how well this would work now though with the higher overall electorate for the city)
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iain
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Post by iain on Sept 10, 2017 23:53:35 GMT
I think you can also do Oxford with Oxford East losing a little (probably just Carfax) to OxWAb, which could then lose it's Cherwell wards. That'd probably be attractive to the commission - keeps existing seats, but taking the tri-district seat down to two.
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jamie
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Post by jamie on Sept 11, 2017 10:17:57 GMT
Will be interesting to see the electorate figures for the student/transient wards which were redrawn since 2015. Newcastle in particular is interesting as they have created some tiny wards (still with 3 councillors) which they forecast to grow rapidly, sometimes double in electorate. Presumably the registration surge this year will exacerbate this. The cut-off date for the boundary review could also be important as a lot of student accommodation is being built in the city centre, so June 2017 vs December 2017 could have a big difference in electorate figures for a few wards.
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The Bishop
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Post by The Bishop on Sept 11, 2017 10:39:30 GMT
Not everyone accepts the existence of 4 nations anyway! What about the Cornish? All 5 nations of the UK should get an equal number of seats at Westminster. [/ducks, hides] Anyways, simultaneously good news and hilarious if true ( apparently not quite certain yet?) And it seems we're going to see the revised recommendations before they're scrapped? Excellent, excellent. Ganz großes Kino. Not formally confirmed, no. But it is noticeable this latest report did not elicit even a perfunctory denial.
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iain
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Post by iain on Sept 11, 2017 10:50:09 GMT
Seen as the Lib Dems are the party with most to lose from a boundary review, I've taken a quick look at what might happen to us with a 5% tolerance. Scotland in particular is sketchy.
Orkney & Shetland - protected (neutral) Twickenham - loses a ward (neutral) Bath - needs to gain a ward, probably Bathavon South (moderately unhelpful) Dunbartonshire East - who knows Norfolk North - unchanged (neutral) Kingston & Surbiton - loses a ward, probably Norbiton (moderately unhelpful) Caithness - needs to expand into Ross, probably notionally flips it, but hardly the end of the world (moderately unhelpful) Edinburgh West - stays pretty much the same (neutral) Eastbourne - loses Willingdon (helpful) Carshalton - unchanged (neutral) Westmorland - possibly ripped apart, though Farron may be able to survive it (unhelpful) OxWAb - also a possibility of being ripped up (as Pete shows above), but a likely change of moving into Oxford and losing Kidlington (helpful)
NE Fife - needs to expand down into Fife (unhelpful) Richmond Park - takes a ward from each of Twickenham and Kingston, loses three of its own (helpful) Ceredigion - bringing in parts of Pembrokeshire makes it a 4 way marginal (unhelpful) St Ives - needs to expand a very small amount (moderately unhelpful) Sheffield Hallam - realigns to new ward boundaries (moderately unhelpful) Cheltenham - loses a ward, maybe Pittville, or could regain the two Tewkesbury wards and lose the 3 Charlton Kings wards (helpful - latter option would hurt in a notional, help in reality) Devon North - needs to lose a little bit in the south (moderately helpful) Cheadle - could stay the same, but likely to lose Stepping Hill and gain Davenport (unhelpful in a notional, could be good in reality) Leeds North West - could probably swap Headingley for Horsforth (unhelpful in a notional, probably helpful in reality) but likely to be ripped up Lewes - likely swaps a ward near Brighton for Willingdon (neutral) St Albans - not sure, seem to be lots of options here, but core of seat will be unchanged Southport - unchanged (neutral) Wells - may become more Mendip-focussed, but Somerset's extra seat makes it hard to tell Hazel Grove - likely gains Stepping Hill, though could be Manor (helpful) Cornwall North - probably needs to lose a couple of wards (neutral)
Basically it doesn't look too bad at all. In our current state we are very vulnerable to our seats being pulled apart / having new bits tacked on, but this looks okay, and helps us in a fair few places. Certainly it is far better than the current review.
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jamie
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Post by jamie on Sept 11, 2017 20:10:24 GMT
Just checked Brighton and it looks like Caroline will keep her seat. Hove is near the top of quota, Brighton Pavilion is right at the top of the quota, while Brighton Kemptown is just below. Regency is currently 6171 so may well be still be the right size to move from Pavilion to Kemptown. If not, they may need to trade smaller and bigger ward somewhere, or Kemptown take in another ward from Lewes. Ultimately, Brighton Pavilion shouldn't be ripped apart and should remain strongly notionally Green
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iain
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Post by iain on Sept 11, 2017 20:21:41 GMT
Just checked Brighton and it looks like Caroline will keep her seat. Hove is near the top of quota, Brighton Pavilion is right at the top of the quota, while Brighton Kemptown is just below. Regency is currently 6171 so may well be still be the right size to move from Pavilion to Kemptown. If not, they may need to trade smaller and bigger ward somewhere, or Kemptown take in another ward from Lewes. Ultimately, Brighton Pavilion shouldn't be ripped apart and should remain strongly notionally Green I think Kemptown could just take in Kingston (IIRC - the west of Lewes town ward) from Lewes, then Lewes can take Willingdon, bringing Eastbourne in quota. Nice and neat.
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Foggy
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Post by Foggy on Sept 11, 2017 20:55:06 GMT
Wells - may become more Mendip-focussed, but Somerset's extra seat makes it hard to tell Yes, a 'leftovers' seat does often mess things up. A realigned constituency based on Mendip district could be useful, but if it takes in any part of BANES then Lib Dem tactical votes will be harder to find. Goodness knows what happens to my end of the constituency in that case, mind. I think it would be safely blue for the time being anyway.
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iain
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Post by iain on Sept 11, 2017 21:04:12 GMT
Wells - may become more Mendip-focussed, but Somerset's extra seat makes it hard to tell Yes, a 'leftovers' seat does often mess things up. A realigned constituency based on Mendip district could be useful, but if it takes in any part of BANES then Lib Dem tactical votes will be harder to find. Goodness knows what happens to my end of the constituency in that case, mind. I think it would be safely blue for the time being anyway. B&NES can be self-contained - Bath just needs to take a bit from NE Somerset. North Somerset, though, needs to be combined with Somerset.
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Post by mattb on Sept 11, 2017 21:20:20 GMT
I'd always envisaged as the 12th Herts seat which would include Berkhamsted and Tring together with the northen rural wards of Dacorum together with Harpenden, Redbourn and Wheathampstead (Sandridge would probably need to be added to St Albans to compensate for the loss of B&PH). Hemel would lose all three of its current outlying wards but gain Bovingdon, Flaunden & Chipperfield - the numbers look quite tight for that (only 66,811 on 2016 figures) so I really hope that works. Watford is going to need one other ward and Leavesden is the obvious choice which leaves the whole of the rest of Three Rivers to be joined by Kings Langley - the numbers are even lower there so that may not work. If not you're going to have to include Leavesden and cast around elsewhere for another ward for Watford. Hertsmere's electorate has grown well so it looks like it could just about afford to lose Bushey North - if the new ward boundaries are used then this would work quite well Agree with all that - and the Bushey N option for Watford presumably means those two seats co-terminous with the two authorities; which in turn means I think Three Rivers can stand alone with one seat? Then Kings Langley can stay in Hemel which makes the numbers much less tight.
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Foggy
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Post by Foggy on Sept 11, 2017 21:48:00 GMT
Yes, a 'leftovers' seat does often mess things up. A realigned constituency based on Mendip district could be useful, but if it takes in any part of BANES then Lib Dem tactical votes will be harder to find. Goodness knows what happens to my end of the constituency in that case, mind. I think it would be safely blue for the time being anyway. B&NES can be self-contained - Bath just needs to take a bit from NE Somerset. North Somerset, though, needs to be combined with Somerset. Interesting – that's the reverse of the case at both abandoned reviews... but it suits me better in terms of community links across the River Axe.
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