David Boothroyd's election website

[greenhert]

I have tried viewing David Boothroyd's election website (www.election.demon.co.uk) but whenever I now try, I get a message saying "This site can't be reached" with "DNS_Probe_Finished_NXDomain" underneath.

Has this website been taken down? I cannot access it on my phone either.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

Surprised it's lasted this long.

Demon Internet ceased to exist in 2016 and the owners said the residuary registration was closing earlier this year.

www.theregister.com/2020/04/15/namesco_demon_subdomain/

[Andrew_S]

I regret that it's not available because it was a useful reference website for many years. I think it had information that wasn't available elsewhere such as European constituency election results for the UK. Someone may have put those on Wikipedia recently.

[Pete Whitehead]

Yes I discovered this a few weeks ago when I was looking for some old ward boundary maps of Westminster. I managed to find it on the Web archive. The European election results were particularly useful on there (along with the description of the various boundaries of European seats). Also the GLC results

[Pete Whitehead]

Apart from the great utility of that site, it has a certain sentimental value as it is one of the first (if not the first) major psephological resources I discovered in the early (for me) days of the internet - at least as long ago as the beginning of this century, possibly even earlier. I do remember also belonging to a Yahoo group on UK elections around that time but there was very little activity there. The administrator of said group was one Harry Hayfield

[pragmaticidealist]

We'll be fucked when the Wayback Machine goes down.

[Harry Hayfield]

Dec 17, 2020 14:40:05 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Apart from the great utility of that site, it has a certain sentimental value as it is one of the first (if not the first) major psephological resources I discovered in the early (for me) days of the internet - at least as long ago as the beginning of this century, possibly even earlier. I do remember also belonging to a Yahoo group on UK elections around that time but there was very little activity there. The administrator of said group was one Harry Hayfield

Well, now that YAHOO has finished with Groups altogether (which came as a blow to a large number of groups) I carried on with something similar on Facebook, but during this time when I am standing for the regional list I have given that to a friend from North Carolina who has an interest in UK politics to look after until after the election. I did, however, and hope that Davıd Boothroyd will not be that upset, did download the composition of the proposed 1999 European Parliament constituencies (if they had been held on FPTP) and used it to construct a spreadsheet that showed that in an FPTP election the Conservatives would have won 51 seats, Labour won have won 28 seats, the SNP three seats, Plaid Cymru two seats, and the three NI seats going as they did. (Change on reality: Con +15, Lab -1, Lib Dem -10, UKIP -3, Green -2, SNP +1, Plaid equal)

[therealriga]

Dec 17, 2020 14:40:05 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Apart from the great utility of that site, it has a certain sentimental value as it is one of the first (if not the first) major psephological resources I discovered in the early (for me) days of the internet - at least as long ago as the beginning of this century, possibly even earlier. I do remember also belonging to a Yahoo group on UK elections around that time but there was very little activity there. The administrator of said group was one Harry Hayfield

Out of curiosity, what was the yahoo group? I was active on a few of those yahoo groups/clubs too and remember Harry H from those days, but not as an admin. Paul Staines was also active there in his pre-Guido days. I remember them being reasonably active 2000-2002 but after that they just fizzled out. The switch from yahoo clubs to yahoo groups made them somehow harder to follow and other options became available.

[Pete Whitehead]

Dec 24, 2020 21:54:32 GMT therealriga said:

Dec 17, 2020 14:40:05 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Apart from the great utility of that site, it has a certain sentimental value as it is one of the first (if not the first) major psephological resources I discovered in the early (for me) days of the internet - at least as long ago as the beginning of this century, possibly even earlier. I do remember also belonging to a Yahoo group on UK elections around that time but there was very little activity there. The administrator of said group was one Harry Hayfield

Out of curiosity, what was the yahoo group? I was active on a few of those yahoo groups/clubs too and remember Harry H from those days, but not as an admin. Paul Staines was also active there in his pre-Guido days. I remember them being reasonably active 2000-2002 but after that they just fizzled out. The switch from yahoo clubs to yahoo groups made them somehow harder to follow and other options became available.

Evidently it was ukelect2005 - I had to search ancient emails on a little used account. I thought there was one earlier than that

[Deleted]

A website I visited regularly. A great loss, David.