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Post by islington on Jul 31, 2020 10:09:59 GMT
Sorry, for some reason when I open 'Create Post' I'm not being offered the option to add attachments. That was in Firefox, but when I tried it in Safari I had the same issue.
So I'll have to describe the plan instead of posting a map.
Some considerable way upthread I posted a plan that treated Staffs together with Stoke and Dudley for 15 seats, with Walsall and Wolverhampton treated together for five seats. But the latter was far from easy; my own best plan was awful, but YL kindly suggested an alternative that was a marked improvement, although (as I'm sure he'd agree) still far from satisfactory.
But Adrian's plan encouraged me to take another look at Wolverhampton and I've come up with the following, on which I'd welcome comments. It involves another boundary-crossing, with Brownhills popped out of Walsall to be treated with Lichfield and Tamworth LAs. But since my previous plan treated those two authorities together for two whole seats, adding Brownhills doesn't have any knock-on effects for the rest of Staffs.
From east to west, then:
Tamworth - 73346 The existing seat minus Shenstone and Lt Aston and plus Whittington and Alrewas. Lichfield - 75715 The rest of Lichfield LA plus Brownhills. Walsall North - 74879 The current seat minus Short Heath and Willenhall S and plus Rushall, Pelsall and Aldridge N. Walsall South and Aldridge - 69552 The current seat minus the Darlaston wards and plus Aldridge C and Streetley. Walsall West and Bilston - 75253 Remaining wards of Walsall plus the Bilston and Wednesbury wards from Wolverhampton: could be called Bilston & Darlaston or something like that.
Wolverhampton East - 70865 Remaining wards of Wolverhampton not in the preceding seat or the following one. Wolverhampton West - 69704 Existing W'ton SW seat plus Oxley.
This is a much better-looking arrangement for Wolverhampton, plus there's now only one seat crossing the W'ton-Walsall boundary. But a significant drawback is the exclusion of Willenhall N ward from the cross-border seat. The plan also separates Aldridge N from Aldridge C, although the bulk of Aldridge is clearly in the latter ward. And of course there's now an additional border-crossing between W Mids met county and Staffs.
The key question is whether these drawbacks are a price worth paying for the huge improvement in the treatment of Wolverhampton.
Apologies again for my inability to post a map.
Edited to add: I've just seen the administrator's announcement explaining why attachments have been disabled. Could someone recommend me an alternative image-sharing arrangement please?
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Post by islington on Jul 31, 2020 10:59:41 GMT
Or, if you don't mind crossing the W'ton/Walsall border twice, you can have the Bushbury wards, Failings Park, Heath Town, the Wednesburys, Willenhall S and Short Heath = Wolverhampton North East and Willenhall = 72986; and everything else = Wolverhampton South East and Darlaston = 73132.
Edited to add: I think on reflection that despite the additional boundary crossing this latter arrangement is probably better as being more respectful of the existing pattern of constituencies. It makes it clearer that the seat to disappear from this currently over-represented area is Aldridge-Brownhills, which is split three ways with Brownhills added to Lichfield and the remainder absorbed by the two Walsall seats, which both shuffle eastwards to allow the under-sized Wolverhampton seats to expand.
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Post by Andrew_S on Jul 31, 2020 10:59:44 GMT
Lichfield and Brownhills don't go together that well although these days there probably isn't much difference in how they vote in general elections.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2020 11:08:10 GMT
AdminSTB has confirmed that be because we're at the storage limit for images on the forum, the function is only available for moderators.
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Post by islington on Jul 31, 2020 13:28:36 GMT
Lichfield and Brownhills don't go together that well although these days there probably isn't much difference in how they vote in general elections. The trouble is that if Lichfield (or conceivably Tamworth) is going to 'borrow' a Walsall ward the only other realistic candidate is Streetley, and so far I can't get that arrangement to work so well. Walsall S has to be a 7-ward seat and the trick is to keep it above the lower limit; being able to include a largish ward like Streetley is very helpful with this.
And what you find, once you detach a ward from Walsall, is that all sorts of possibilities then open up for creating five seats in the rest of Walsall + W'ton, especially in W'ton itself which was previously intractable. For instance, I'm now looking at putting the Darlastons, Willenhall S and Short Heath (all from Walsall) with the Wednesburys, Heath Town and E Park = Wolverhampton E & Darlaston = 73151, which leaves the remaining wards to be divided in a manner that's so obvious I'm not even going to spell it out into Wolverhampton N = 69949 and S = 72722. This is less respectful of current boundaries but, on the other hand, involves only one W'ton/Walsall boundary crossing. And many other combinations are now possible. |
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Post by bjornhattan on Jul 31, 2020 13:33:57 GMT
AdminSTB has confirmed that be because we're at the storage limit for images on the forum, the function is only available for moderators. Yes, unfortunately we've had to bring this in. You'll need to use an external image hosting site (of which there are several) and link it in. If anyone has trouble with this do let me know and I'll try to lend a hand. |
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
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Post by Adrian on Jul 31, 2020 15:59:59 GMT
Adrian, you could put Quarry Bank and Netherton in your Halesowen seat with the Kingswinford wards switching to Dudley. Then you'd keep Stourbridge together. I know this results in an awkward shape for Halesowen but there are connecting roads and do you want to strain out this gnat only a page or two after you swallowed the camel of Lancaster & Fleetwood? But more excitingly (well, I'm excited), your plan for this area has encouraged me to take another look at Wolverhampton, with results that I'll post in a moment.
Hm. I suppose that as long as you included "Dudley South" in the name it'd be okay. I'll do a blog post about it to garner some opinions. p.s. Lancaster & Fleetwood is a perfectly cromulent constituency. |
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
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Post by Adrian on Jul 31, 2020 16:04:04 GMT
Edited to add: I've just seen the administrator's announcement explaining why attachments have been disabled. Could someone recommend me an alternative image-sharing arrangement please?
An easy option is to open a Twitter account specifically for this purpose. Linking to Twitter posts is straightforward. |
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
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Post by Adrian on Jul 31, 2020 16:12:16 GMT
AdminSTB has confirmed that be because we're at the storage limit for images on the forum, the function is only available for moderators. Yes, unfortunately we've had to bring this in. You'll need to use an external image hosting site (of which there are several) and link it in. If anyone has trouble with this do let me know and I'll try to lend a hand. I thought I'd sent a message to admin about this but it seems to have disappeared in the ether. Obviously it'd be good to free up some file space for posters to add interesting/useful pictures to posts, so I'm happy to delete the maps I've recently uploaded. (Perhaps we should've been warned not to upload them.) If everyone agrees, it might be easier for admin to use the site dashboard to delete all user-drawn maps that have been uploaded to the site. |
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Post by islington on Jul 31, 2020 16:47:11 GMT
Or how about applying a cut-off date so that all maps posted before (say) 30 Jun 2019 are removed?
That would get rid of zombie maps, which I'm sure no one ever looks at, and I presume would free some space.
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Post by islington on Jul 31, 2020 16:50:15 GMT
Edited to add: I've just seen the administrator's announcement explaining why attachments have been disabled. Could someone recommend me an alternative image-sharing arrangement please?
An easy option is to open a Twitter account specifically for this purpose. Linking to Twitter posts is straightforward. I've always veered away from Twitter but I suppose, as you say, I could open an account just for this.
Is it as simple as taking a screenshot and loading it onto the Twitter account?
(Sorry if this is a terribly naive question.)
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Post by 🏴☠️ Neath West 🏴☠️ on Jul 31, 2020 16:58:24 GMT
An easy option is to open a Twitter account specifically for this purpose. Linking to Twitter posts is straightforward. I've always veered away from Twitter but I suppose, as you say, I could open an account just for this.
Is it as simple as taking a screenshot and loading it onto the Twitter account?
(Sorry if this is a terribly naive question.)
May I recommend imgbb.com/ – you don't need to open any account to use it. |
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Post by islington on Jul 31, 2020 17:05:04 GMT
Give it a try ...
Voila!
(But other forum members have to click on the link.)
This is the most recent version, i.e. with a W'Ton N, W'ton S, W'ton E & Darlaston.
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Post by 🏴☠️ Neath West 🏴☠️ on Jul 31, 2020 17:08:16 GMT
On-topic, I would observe that Dudley, Wolverhampton, and South Staffordshire should work easily enough for 7 consitutencies – three wholly within Dudley, two wholly within Wolverhampton, and two cross-boundary ones.
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Post by minionofmidas on Jul 31, 2020 17:16:03 GMT
Here's a 15 seat Cheshire: 1. Wallasey 69103 2. Birkenhead 74300 3. Wirral Deeside 71303 4. Bebington & Great Sutton 71243 5. Ellesmere Port & Halton Lea 72745 6. Halton 69428 7. Warrington South 71452 8. Warrington North 71592 9. Wilmslow & Lymm 69738 10. Macclesfield 69390 11. Congleton 74865 12. Crewe 72325 13. Nantwich & Eddisbury 71160 14. Northwich 73037 15. City of Chester 71041 The Wirral arrangement is that suggested by Khunanup . I'm not entirely convinced by it if I'm honest: the Wallasey split is a problem and both Ellesmere Port constituencies are ugly. However I don't think this is too bad away from the Wirral and Ellesmere Port.
The funny thing is that this arrangement for Wirral West allows Upton to be split between Birkenhead and Wallasey instead, keeping both constituencies otherwise unchanged.
I also rearranged Runcorn here; several other options are available. One remaining issue I see is the Chester Zoo ward (not its proper name). It can actually go into Chester which is then near the upper limit, nonetheless nothing else can be removed, and you're pretty much wrecking your chances of creating a 15 whole seat map of the area by including it with Chester.
Rest of the map as in your plan. I don't think there's much room for improvement.
Another idea I played with to resurrect my no splitting Ellesmere Port proposal was a Chester North (most of it, actually) & Neston seat. While it works reasonably as a seat, the knockon effects are seriously ugly.
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Post by minionofmidas on Jul 31, 2020 17:18:51 GMT
Give it a try ...
Voila!
(But other forum members have to click on the link.)
This is the most recent version, i.e. with a W'Ton N, W'ton S, W'ton E & Darlaston.
But Walsall West & Wednesbury sounds so much nicer than the rather clunky Wolverhampton East & Darlaston!
Try this address entry format.
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Post by 🏴☠️ Neath West 🏴☠️ on Jul 31, 2020 17:26:46 GMT
In fact, here's a quick and dirty go at Staffordshire:  1 Halesowen 70157 Yes 2 Dudley 71846 Yes 3 Stourbridge 70546 Yes 4 Seisdon 73925 Yes 5 Wolverhampton South East 70738 Yes 6 Wolverhampton West 76146 Yes 7 Wolverhampton North and Penkridge 71422 Yes 8 West Bromwich 73632 Yes 9 Rowley Regis 72907 Yes 10 Wednesbury 72703 Yes 11 Bloxwich and Brownhills 74052 Yes 12 Walsall 69160 Yes 13 Aldridge and Burntwood 74794 Yes 14 Tamworth 70262 Yes 15 Lichfield and Stone 71288 Yes 16 Burton 75475 Yes 17 Cannock 73904 Yes 18 Stafford 70543 Yes 19 Newcastle-under-Lyme 69709 Yes 20 Leek 72558 Yes 21 Stoke South 72472 Yes 22 Stoke Central 73154 Yes 23 Stoke North 69255 Yes |
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Post by greenhert on Jul 31, 2020 17:45:16 GMT
On-topic, I would observe that Dudley, Wolverhampton, and South Staffordshire should work easily enough for 7 consitutencies – three wholly within Dudley, two wholly within Wolverhampton, and two cross-boundary ones. Unfortunately this also means you have to create two cross-county Staffordshire/West Midlands constituencies instead of one, since Walsall cannot stand on its own in this plan and Sandwell needs to stand alone with 3 constituencies to itself. On the other hand, minimising the number of cross-county seats in this area by linking Wolverhampton with Walsall necessitates the creation of an awkward Penkridge constituency that wraps around Stafford and stretches to the outer reaches of Newcastle-under-Lyme. |
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Post by islington on Jul 31, 2020 18:10:54 GMT
Give it a try ...
Voila!
(But other forum members have to click on the link.)
This is the most recent version, i.e. with a W'Ton N, W'ton S, W'ton E & Darlaston.
But Walsall West & Wednesbury sounds so much nicer than the rather clunky Wolverhampton East & Darlaston!
Try this address entry format.
So sorry for my incompetence, minion, but I don't know what that means.
But I'm seriously impressed that you can upload a visible version of my map when I can't.
On topic, I'd try to minimize the number of crossings of the Staffs / W Mids border. I started with only one (treating the Kingswinford wards and Brockmoor with Staffs so the rest of Dudley could have three seats), but I now have two because putting Brownhills in with Lichfield allows much better seats in Wolverhampton. But I'd be loth to go beyond that.
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Post by johnloony on Jul 31, 2020 18:11:28 GMT
AdminSTB has confirmed that be because we're at the storage limit for images on the forum, the function is only available for moderators. I saw that message earlier, but I wasn't sure what exactly what it meant. Does it mean that we can't do a thing which has (img)something(/img) (except with sqaure brackets)? Or does it mean we can't do links to youtube stuff etc? I used to use tinypic but that is defunct now. |
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