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Post by islington on Jul 16, 2020 19:05:38 GMT
After all, we've been through the whole of England and we've established that it's possible to draw up 542 seats, all within the magic 5%, with no car crashes and not a single ward split. This strongly suggests (but doesn't prove, of course) that the same outcome will be possible when we see the March 2020 numbers and (where applicable) the new wards. We have established no such thing. I've saved a map that, at least in my view, satisfies this test.
I'm not saying it's perfect, but every seat is legal and contiguous and, at the very least, passes the Lancaster-and-Fleetwood test. (As in, "Well, admittedly Seat X isn't great, but it's better than Lancaster & Fleetwood.")
I had very severe reservations about the slightly different (but equally horrible) versions of the Barnet seat devised by Kevin Larkin and myself - but even these weren't as bad as L&F. And then, of course, mattb came to the rescue with a far better approach to this part of London.
Elsewhere, I've adopted (with thanks) your proposed Wolves N & Willenhall, which obviously isn't great either but it's a big improvement on anything I managed in this area and it's far, far better than L&F. My contention is that if Wolves N & Willenhall is the least satisfactory seat in the plan, then the plan as a whole is not that bad.
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YL
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Post by YL on Jul 16, 2020 20:15:41 GMT
We have established no such thing. I've saved a map that, at least in my view, satisfies this test. I'm not saying it's perfect, but every seat is legal and contiguous and, at the very least, passes the Lancaster-and-Fleetwood test. (As in, "Well, admittedly Seat X isn't great, but it's better than Lancaster & Fleetwood.") I had very severe reservations about the slightly different (but equally horrible) versions of the Barnet seat devised by Kevin Larkin and myself - but even these weren't as bad as L&F. And then, of course, mattb came to the rescue with a far better approach to this part of London. Elsewhere, I've adopted (with thanks) your proposed Wolves N & Willenhall, which obviously isn't great either but it's a big improvement on anything I managed in this area and it's far, far better than L&F. My contention is that if Wolves N & Willenhall is the least satisfactory seat in the plan, then the plan as a whole is not that bad.
Your "Leeds NE" is up there with those, and there are also real issues on the Wirral and in adjoining parts of Cheshire, while a non-split Greater Manchester is perhaps not as bad as Lancaster & Fleetwood (mistakes in the past shouldn't justify making them in the future, anyway) but still feels distinctly awkward. Fundamentally I do not accept the implied premise of non-splitters that just because some of us happen to live in places with large wards we should be prepared to accept artificial seats which tack on areas with no real connection just because it's the only way to make the numbers work without splits. It so happens that under this quota my own area probably gets away with it (and my current constituency may actually be able to be retained just with re-alignment to the new ward boundaries) and so won't have to share an MP with villages the other side of Penistone. But not everywhere is so lucky, most obviously parts of Leeds. And you know, I find it difficult to believe that if you lived in Leeds, Sheffield or Birmingham you wouldn't feel the same way.
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European Lefty
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Post by European Lefty on Jul 16, 2020 20:20:05 GMT
Parliamentary constituencies are meat to reflect community identity and ensure that every part of the country has a voice standing up for it in parliament. If we're going to sacrifice that by drawing nonsense constituencies containing vastly different areas with little or no connection purely for the sake of not splitting divisions for a lower level of government - which can be arbitrary and nonsensical in themselves - then there is no argument left in favour of keeping FPTP.
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European Lefty
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Post by European Lefty on Jul 16, 2020 20:56:00 GMT
If only someone could create a dedicated website that allowed you to create constituency maps ... To be fair, although Plan Builder is an awesome tool, it's not necessarily the best way of presenting one's preferred plan to others. Using Google Maps has a few advantages: one is that you can show the actual boundaries in places that you've split wards; another is that it's interactive in a way that a screenshot from PB isn't; and another is that you can annotate the seats with information. Example: www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1uqlgR6_V01Q023524AzUZWA2EijxAoSKHow did you manage to create it? I assume you imported data from somewhere but I can't work out how.
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Post by Wisconsin on Jul 16, 2020 21:07:49 GMT
So, given that (relative) equality of electorates is surely a good thing, and that ward-splitting is not desirable in itself, if you can produce a cogent and reasonable plan within the 5% limit and without splits, what is the case for relaxing these constraints? [/div]
Â
[/quote] It’s not a constraint in the applicable law. Statute lists five factors with no indicator that respecting wards are more important than the others.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jul 17, 2020 7:56:58 GMT
It is certainly true that in most places ward-splitting can be avoided, but I'm not sure that really removes the cause for concern, it just emphasises how badly designed the process for designing new constituencies is.
We know that there are specific authorities where if you don't split wards you end up with ridiculous lines, if you can find a viable arrangement at all. The BCE will find this out once they spend an hour looking at those authorities. A sensible process would allow them to acknowledge this at the outset and designate areas where they believe a ward split is necessary and consult locally to find out where the best place to do this is. You could borrow quite easily from the LGBCE's methods to achieve this.
Fundamentally, the issue is that the controlling legislation was hurriedly produced with very little outside input and that the government have assumed all suggestions to modify it are partisan plots. Some of them obviously are, but equally some of them are good-faith attempts to actually improve a bad bit of law and the dismissiveness does not help.
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Post by islington on Jul 17, 2020 13:07:23 GMT
Apologies in advance for what may be a long post.
- The Holy Grail (1): I get a feeling that ward-splitting has begun to attain a talismanic status for some posters: that if only this one thing were to be conceded, everything would fall into place. But where's the evidence for this? I'd like to offer two pieces of counter-evidence, namely the BCS proposals for the two zombie reviews of 2013 and 2018. Both of these split wards all over Scotland, sometimes in an apparently arbitrary manner (the 2018 plan contained at least one minutely detailed description of a proposed boundary running along the rear of back gardens of houses in a certain street). One might assume, given this degree of ward-splitting, that the plan would comprise beautifully drawn seats keeping towns and communities together and with good internal links. But the reality was so far from this that it was possible (I did it) to draw a plan with no ward splits at all that was certainly no worse than the BCS scheme and (I would argue) was actually substantially better in many respects. This doesn't prove, of course, that a ward-split plan is necessarily bad; but it does show that a willingness to split wards is no guarantee of a satisfactory scheme.
- The Holy Grail (2): Similar comments apply to a relaxation of the 5% tolerance. The counter-evidence here is the current map, or the map emerging from any previous review. The current map gives us not only Lancaster & Fleetwood but also Wharfedale in Shipley, Middlesbrough S & Cleveland E, Wyre & Preston N, Dukinfield in Denton & Reddish, Sale cut in half, and that's just from a quick glance at the three northern regions. I'm sure the list could be extended substantially by checking the rest of the country, or examining the outcome of any previous periodic review. So a more relaxed tolerance is also far from guaranteeing a better map.
- Justifying a ward split: I'm not saying a ward split can never be justified, but I'd like to suggest a process for doing so. This is, first of all, to draw the very best map you can without any ward splits; and only then, to set out which ward you'd like to split and explain the advantages of the resulting map compared with your best non-split map. This means that the benefit from the ward split is clearly demonstrated and I suggest it is more persuasive than simply assuming from the outset that ward splits will be needed.
- Non-split 2019 map not final: While I feel I have a non-split map for all England that contains no car crashes, I'd like to stress that I don't regard it as final. Indeed, there are a number of areas I'm not entirely happy with and if this were the actual review, rather than a dry run, I'd invest time in seeking to refine the plan. Other members of this forum would doubtless go through a similar process with their own ideas and, as we shared our thinking, I'm sure there would be important improvements. So, please remember that the plan you're criticizing is a first or second draft, not a finished product. But given that we are, at this stage, only batting in the nets (so to speak), I'm not sure it's worth putting in too much more effort to perfect the plan - all that's necessary, at this stage, is to show that it can be achieved to a reasonable overall standard. There will be time enough later on, when we have the March 2020 figures and (where applicable) the new wards, to strive to achieve not merely an adequate map but the best possible map.
- Leeds: Let me pick up on YL's comments about Leeds. I concede his local knowledge but even so, I'm struggling to see that the seats I've suggested are as bad as he says. The Otley seat, combining the Wharfedale elements of Leeds and Bradford, was recommended by a number of forum members when we were discussing the 2018 review; while Batley and Morley reestablishes a link that existed for 65 years 1918-1983. Of seats wholly within Leeds, there's a batch of 14 wards that make up 3 seats but if you don't like the way I've done it, there are other options available. (FWIW I kept Bramley in Leeds W, which puts Farnley in Pudsey; and to keep the city centre together I put Lt London and Hunslet wards in the same seat. I concede that this approach means leaving Beeston out on something of a limb in Leeds W - although less so, I suggest, than Guiseley in the existing Pudsey seat, which seems to be regarded as acceptable. But if you feel that Beeston really doesn't fit in Leeds W you have the option, if you don't mind splitting the city centre, of swapping it with Lt London; and this allows the further option, if you want, of swapping Bramley and Farnley.) YL particularly criticized my suggested Leeds NE, and it's because I think of this as essentially a Leeds seat that I included Roundhay to ground it definitely within the city. But if this is a wrong approach, you can trade Roundhay for Alwoodley so that Leeds N then lies wholly within the A6120 Ring Road and Leeds NE wholly outside; and you might then rename the latter as Wetherby to make it more palatable to the two Harrogate wards included in it (and for similar reasons it might also be politic to keep the name of Elmet & Rothwell for the seat I called Leeds SE). I stress that I'm not advocating for or against any of these options; I'm simply pointing out that they are available and you need to examine all the possibilities before resorting to ward splits.
- Manchester: I agree. If this were the real thing I'd look seriously at my boundaries here. My current plan gives as much respect as possible to the city boundary so that I swap only one ward in and one out, both in the south of the city. The result is two long, thin, north-south aligned seats in north/central Manchester and two further seats on a similar alignment on the other side of the city boundary in Tameside and Oldham. But I see that other posters have crossed the city boundary in this area and this might well allow more compact and logical seats. If I were batting in the middle, rather than in the nets, I'd certainly invest some effort here. But even so, I still maintain that none of the seats I have in this area can be described as a car crash.
- On YL's final point, if I lived in Birmingham I'd be rejoicing in having got rid of elections by thirds. If I lived in Sheffield or Leeds I'd be campaigning to get rid of them. All-up elections provide better local accountability by requiring the council as a whole to submit itself to the voters, and they work well with smaller wards allowing communities to be represented at a more granular level than the 3-member 15000-voter leviathans we see in Leeds and Sheffield at present. But so long as these monster wards exist, I think I'd accept that they are, like wards elsewhere, the building-blocks for drawing constituencies and I'd point out that people were aware of this likely use when the wards were defined and presumably took it into account. (Indeed, it is my understanding that Sheffield has 28 wards precisely in order to accommodate its anticipated split into five-and-a-half seats.)
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Post by John Chanin on Jul 17, 2020 13:23:29 GMT
I agree with most of this post, particularly the bit quoted below. My views have evolved as a result of working much harder at the last 2 zombie reviews, and looking at others’ suggestions here, and what the Boundary Commissions actually do. Justifying a ward split: I'm not saying a ward split can never be justified, but I'd like to suggest a process for doing so. This is, first of all, to draw the very best map you can without any ward splits; and only then, to set out which ward you'd like to split and explain the advantages of the resulting map compared with your best non-split map. This means that the benefit from the ward split is clearly demonstrated and I suggest it is more persuasive than simply assuming from the outset that ward splits will be needed. Having said which I will be specifically looking at whether a better map can be produced by ward splitting in the problem areas of Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, and West Midlands. London with its smaller wards, and generally arbitrary borough boundaries is less of a problem.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jul 17, 2020 14:55:22 GMT
I continue to think that the biggest problem is actually the cross-county seats, both because they're the thing that people most dislike and because it makes it more difficult to take a sensible approach to ward-splitting.
In the initial phase of the review, assign seats to individual counties or groups of counties. Ideally I'd eliminate cross-county seats entirely and base the 5% off the county average, but if not there are at least a finite number of sensible county pairings, so this shouldn't be that controversial.
Then try to assign seats to them, and if you can't get anything sensible look at ward-splitting then. This would give you a system that was simpler, more predictable, easier for people to engage with (as you wouldn't need a regional counter-proposal), likely to be less controversial locally and where even if you got bad seats they'd be traditionally bad.
Ultimately, cross-county constituencies are just a consequence of Oxfordshire just missing out on a seventh seat at the Fifth Review and Cameron therefore jumping to the conclusion that cross-county seats would remove a bias towards Labour. Given the patterns of housebuilding since and changes in electoral coalitions, the underlying situation no longer applies. It's only government stubbornness preventing a reconsideration.
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Post by islington on Jul 17, 2020 16:05:08 GMT
What's the definition of a 'cross-county' seat, please?
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Post by finsobruce on Jul 17, 2020 16:35:54 GMT
What's the definition of a 'cross-county' seat, please? One you can run across in an afternoon?
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jul 17, 2020 16:43:54 GMT
What's the definition of a 'cross-county' seat, please? A seat crossing a county boundary. Quite what counts as a county - does a metropolitan county count? How about Humberside or Avon? London boroughs? - is a whole different argument, but I do think it's mucheasier to work with smaller subunits.
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YL
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Post by YL on Jul 17, 2020 16:59:23 GMT
What's the definition of a 'cross-county' seat, please? A seat crossing a county boundary. Quite what counts as a county - does a metropolitan county count? How about Humberside or Avon? London boroughs? - is a whole different argument, but I do think it's mucheasier to work with smaller subunits. The answer should, IMO, be ceremonial counties/lieutenancies, so not Humberside or Avon but the East Riding and re-expanded Lincolnshire, Somerset and Gloucestershire plus the City and County of Bristol. However, they're not included in the legal criteria, so we're left with administrative counties, and that includes most unitaries as separate counties. A lot of these are really too small to be separate review areas, so I'd take the approach of forming groups of counties/unitaries and allocating seats to them. Met boroughs have similar powers to unitaries so I tend to treat them as pseudo-counties.
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
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Post by Adrian on Jul 17, 2020 20:48:12 GMT
To be fair, although Plan Builder is an awesome tool, it's not necessarily the best way of presenting one's preferred plan to others. Using Google Maps has a few advantages: one is that you can show the actual boundaries in places that you've split wards; another is that it's interactive in a way that a screenshot from PB isn't; and another is that you can annotate the seats with information. Example: www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1uqlgR6_V01Q023524AzUZWA2EijxAoSKHow did you manage to create it? I assume you imported data from somewhere but I can't work out how. It was a couple of years ago now, so my memory's a bit sketchy, but I downloaded the boundary file (from the OS, I presume) and then uploaded it into Google Maps - that's the red lines. Then I drew the constituency boundaries (blue lines) freehand on top - this is a bit time-consuming but isn't too hard if you have Google Maps and Plan Builder side by side. Finally I added the labels and info.
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
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Post by Adrian on Jul 17, 2020 21:18:44 GMT
Just to briefly repeat my objections to the BCE's approach, which islington is our local cheerleader for.
1. Constituencies have traditionally been based on counties and boroughs, and they should continue to be so. As far as I can tell most MPs are of the same opinion.
2. The 5% rule makes it difficult to achieve this by only using wards as building blocks.
3. Therefore there should be much less adherence to their use. (cf. Scotland)
The attitude of "We CAN create 650 seats by using whole wards so we MUST" is anathema to me. For decades the Commission rightly pointed out that the redistribution is NOT a numbers game; although the numbers are now more important, other considerations, including respect for county and borough boundaries, and a desire to keep communities together, are to be held dear.
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Post by Daft H'a'porth A'peth A'pith on Jul 17, 2020 22:07:01 GMT
Tradition is great, but changes can bring new traditions that can be just as great.
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Post by minionofmidas on Jul 18, 2020 5:18:32 GMT
Just to briefly repeat my objections to the BCE's approach, which islington is our local cheerleader for. 1. Constituencies have traditionally been based on counties and boroughs, and they should continue to be so. As far as I can tell most MPs are of the same opinion. 2. The 5% rule makes it difficult to achieve this by only using wards as building blocks. 3. Therefore there should be much less adherence to their use. (cf. Scotland) The attitude of "We CAN create 650 seats by using whole wards so we MUST" is anathema to me. For decades the Commission rightly pointed out that the redistribution is NOT a numbers game; although the numbers are now more important, other considerations, including respect for county and borough boundaries, and a desire to keep communities together, are to be held dear. the commission's approach also involves giving much greater, though necessarily very haphazardly applied, weight to existing constituencies; an assumption that all existing constituencies are welldesigned unless proven by newly submitted evidence not to be; and an unwillingness to rethink proposed constituencies that work for their area just because they wreck things elsewhere (after all, it's unfair to their residents to do so at the very last revision). All of which islington doesn't do, and all of which more or less worked as long as there wasn't a tight nonnegotiable target corridor, but doesn't with the current rules. That's why the Commission can be counted on to once again produce a disaster unless put on a completely different footing.
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Post by minionofmidas on Jul 18, 2020 8:34:05 GMT
Addendum: and it's going to be easier - and cheaper - to change the mo on ward splits than on the whole approach.
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Post by greenchristian on Jul 22, 2020 18:39:30 GMT
Just to briefly repeat my objections to the BCE's approach, which islington is our local cheerleader for. 1. Constituencies have traditionally been based on counties and boroughs, and they should continue to be so. As far as I can tell most MPs are of the same opinion. 2. The 5% rule makes it difficult to achieve this by only using wards as building blocks. 3. Therefore there should be much less adherence to their use. (cf. Scotland) The attitude of "We CAN create 650 seats by using whole wards so we MUST" is anathema to me. For decades the Commission rightly pointed out that the redistribution is NOT a numbers game; although the numbers are now more important, other considerations, including respect for county and borough boundaries, and a desire to keep communities together, are to be held dear. the commission's approach also involves giving much greater, though necessarily very haphazardly applied, weight to existing constituencies; an assumption that all existing constituencies are welldesigned unless proven by newly submitted evidence not to be; and an unwillingness to rethink proposed constituencies that work for their area just because they wreck things elsewhere (after all, it's unfair to their residents to do so at the very last revision). All of which islington doesn't do, and all of which more or less worked as long as there wasn't a tight nonnegotiable target corridor, but doesn't with the current rules. That's why the Commission can be counted on to once again produce a disaster unless put on a completely different footing. And even when they existing constituencies are well-designed, the desire to keep them as is can cause major car-crashes. In their initial plan for zombie review 2 all the problems in Coventry, Warwickshire, and Solihull (and associated knock-on effects on Birmingham and Worcestershire) were caused by trying to keep Coventry North East as is, when it was the only existing seat in that area which was within quota.
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Post by andrewteale on Jul 22, 2020 21:04:17 GMT
the commission's approach also involves giving much greater, though necessarily very haphazardly applied, weight to existing constituencies; an assumption that all existing constituencies are welldesigned unless proven by newly submitted evidence not to be; and an unwillingness to rethink proposed constituencies that work for their area just because they wreck things elsewhere (after all, it's unfair to their residents to do so at the very last revision). All of which islington doesn't do, and all of which more or less worked as long as there wasn't a tight nonnegotiable target corridor, but doesn't with the current rules. That's why the Commission can be counted on to once again produce a disaster unless put on a completely different footing. And even when they existing constituencies are well-designed, the desire to keep them as is can cause major car-crashes. In their initial plan for zombie review 2 all the problems in Coventry, Warwickshire, and Solihull (and associated knock-on effects on Birmingham and Worcestershire) were caused by trying to keep Coventry North East as is, when it was the only existing seat in that area which was within quota. A similar thing happened in the initial recommendations for Zombie Review 1 with an attempt to keep Bury South unchanged. It resulted in carnage for miles around.
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