YL
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Post by YL on Mar 28, 2021 14:46:09 GMT
South Buckinghamshire 70,312 Wycombe 70,385 Chesham & Amersham 73,246 West Buckinghamshire 76,536 Aylesbury 75,636 Buckingham & MK West 74,137 MK South 70,562 MK North East 76,273
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Mar 28, 2021 16:27:39 GMT
Still banging that drum lol Rather this than the Silchester drum. Well it's not a drum I've banged for a while but a few points bear repeating here. First, the theoretical entitlement for ceremonial Buckinghamshire is exactly 8.00 so there is zero need to cross the boundary with another county. It has been possible for several different plausible arrangements to be offered on the new ward boundaries which do not require any ward splits and therefore no otherwise unnecessary cross county seat is needed to assist here (as it may be in eg. Wiltshire). In crossing the county boundary once in order to create your Maidenhead and Marlow seat you are forced to cross it a second time in the area in and around Slough. I don't believe that anywhere on this forum, where it has been necessary to cross a county boundary, anybody has suggested crossing that boundary in two places (possibly excepting some of the plans in relation to East and West Sussex but this has generally been regarded as a reason for rejecting such a scheme.) You are suggesting two crossings where none are necessary only in order to try and avoid one between two counties which each have an awkward entitlement, thus shifting the problem to an area where there is none. Several of us have come up with 18 seat all-Hampshire schemes and all of these have been unsatisfactory in various ways and have mostly served to demonstrate the wisdom of pairing Hampshire with a neighbouring county. In my most recent (final) plan for Hampshire and Berkshire, fully 13 of the 26 current seats in that area were completely unchanged (a couple just realigned with new ward boundaries) while most other seats had only minor changes - Maidenhead for example, which you propose to butcher here, required only the removal of one small ward. Many of these minor changes improved the situation in these seats (eg Wokingham constituency became more clearly centred on the town of Wokingham, likewise Bracknell, likewise NW Hampshire vis a vis Andover). One of the more drastically redrawn seat was hugely improved (namely the incoherent mess that is the current Romsey & Southampton North was translated into a compact urban and suburban constituency). The only valid objection to this scheme is the 'Silchester' seat itself (this is not a name I've definitely settled on) and the (your) major objection to that is that it crosses a county boundary where such a crossing is not strictly necessarily. Your answer to this is to cross another county boundary - twice - in an area where it is completely unnecessary.
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islington
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Post by islington on Mar 28, 2021 17:30:46 GMT
Rather this than the Silchester drum. Well it's not a drum I've banged for a while but a few points bear repeating here. First, the theoretical entitlement for ceremonial Buckinghamshire is exactly 8.00 so there is zero need to cross the boundary with another county. It has been possible for several different plausible arrangements to be offered on the new ward boundaries which do not require any ward splits and therefore no otherwise unnecessary cross county seat is needed to assist here (as it may be in eg. Wiltshire). In crossing the county boundary once in order to create your Maidenhead and Marlow seat you are forced to cross it a second time in the area in and around Slough. I don't believe that anywhere on this forum, where it has been necessary to cross a county boundary, anybody has suggested crossing that boundary in two places (possibly excepting some of the plans in relation to East and West Sussex but this has generally been regarded as a reason for rejecting such a scheme.) You are suggesting two crossings where none are necessary only in order to try and avoid one between two counties which each have an awkward entitlement, thus shifting the problem to an area where there is none. Several of us have come up with 18 seat all-Hampshire schemes and all of these have been unsatisfactory in various ways and have mostly served to demonstrate the wisdom of pairing Hampshire with a neighbouring county. In my most recent (final) plan for Hampshire and Berkshire, fully 13 of the 26 current seats in that area were completely unchanged (a couple just realigned with new ward boundaries) while most other seats had only minor changes - Maidenhead for example, which you propose to butcher here, required only the removal of one small ward. Many of these minor changes improved the situation in these seats (eg Wokingham constituency became more clearly centred on the town of Wokingham, likewise Bracknell, likewise NW Hampshire vis a vis Andover). One of the more drastically redrawn seat was hugely improved (namely the incoherent mess that is the current Romsey & Southampton North was translated into a compact urban and suburban constituency). The only valid objection to this scheme is the 'Silchester' seat itself (this is not a name I've definitely settled on) and the (your) major objection to that is that it crosses a county boundary where such a crossing is not strictly necessarily. Your answer to this is to cross another county boundary - twice - in an area where it is completely unnecessary.
The objection is not merely to crossing the Hants border where there is no need to do so (although this is a weighty objection in itself). The objection is also to the Silchester seat itself (I know you haven't settled on the name but let's use it for convenience). By all the criteria we normally apply, it's a terrible creation. It sprawls across a vast rural area of two counties, with no clear focus or hub. The very fact that you are seriously considering naming it after a settlement that disappeared about a millennium and a half ago ought to tell you something. It's an entirely different proposition from a cross-county seat like your Hitchin proposal, which I've completely come round to, which has a largish town right in the middle to which people naturally look as a nearby urban centre no matter which side of the county line they reside.
Concerning county boundaries: in theory they may all be equal but in practice they aren't. You've already mentioned the Sussexes and I agree that because of their long common history the boundary between them is particularly porous. One would cross it far more readily than the boundary of either Sussex with, say, Surrey or Kent. It's true that one would be very hesitant about double-crossing it, I grant you, but I think I'd probably reluctantly swallow a double-cross of the inner-Sussex border if it made for a markedly better map.
Another factor is that in areas comprising exclusively UAs, county boundaries inevitably carry less weight than they do where a two-tier county is involved. This is partly because in such an area the 'county', in the traditional sense, is no longer a functioning administrative unit, and partly because so many UAs are technically 'counties' in their own right, thus muddying the waters about what we mean by 'county' in this sort of area. I'm not saying that I'd completely ignore the traditional county in areas consisting of UAs, but I am saying that I'd also give great weight to the UA boundaries.
Here Silchester presents a further problem in that many versions of it extends into two UAs on the Berks side; meaning that, with Hants as well, three top-tier authorities are included - something we normally strive to avoid (unless it's Windsor, whereof more anon). It's true that you have an alternative Silchester that overcomes this, but in all other respects it's even worse because it then has to incorporating thousands of electors in the western suburbs of Reading, who have little or nothing in common (not even a county) with villages in rural Hants; moreover this arrangement completely disrupts the current pattern in Reading. Whereas, if you treat the three eastern Berks UAs together, the current seats in Reading require relatively little change.
Therefore, Silchester gives you the benefit (I agree) of better seats with less change in most of Hants; but the price it levies is a seat that is unsatisfactory in itself and one that presents deeply unpalatable choice between having either a seat that (uniquely) comprises parts of two UAs and an upper-tier county or one that involves only one UA but bites great chunks out of suburban Reading.
Alternatively, you can go for seats in Hants that have the acknowledged drawback of requiring a lot more change but are nevertheless all perfectly workable. And if you do this, then you also get the opportunity to make very positive changes in Bucks and west Berks compared with what would otherwise have been possible.
- You no longer have to worry about which random bits of Slough you are going to have to add to a 3-UA Windsor seat, because Windsor now extends into only two UAs and includes no part of Slough.
- It's true that bits of Slough have to be added to S Bucks but it's debatable whether this qualifies as a county-crossing because we are talking about UAs on both sides and besides, Slough was part of Bucks for hundreds of years before its relatively brief reassignment to Berks (a county that, in functional terms, no longer exists).
- These is a stronger case, as I acknowledge, for regarding the Maidenhead & Marlow seat as cross-county; but it involves UAs on both sides and it is compact, has good internal comms, and is altogether more satisfactory, as cross-county seats go, than the sprawling unfocused Silchester.
- Finally, as it now turns out the seats in Bucks itself are better under this arrangement. Chesham and Amersham stays unchanged and Wycombe comes out very nicely.
So yes, I'll keep banging this drum.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Mar 28, 2021 19:38:42 GMT
islington we've been over most of these arguments many times and there doesn't seem to be much value in going over them all again. I will though pick up on your quasi-theological attachment to Unitary Authorities and their supposed status as counties as I don't believe most reasonable people would see any essential difference between Basingstoke & Deane a two-tier district on one side of the county boundary and West Berkshire, a Unitary authority on the other. West Berkshire is obviously not a separate 'county' to Wokingham any more than Basingstoke is to Test Valley. In as much as there is any practical effect of theses differences in status, it is that an MP for this area would have fewer local authorities to deal with rather than more. Going back to Sussex again, there were I recall some plans which extended across three districts (Lewes, Mid Sussex, Horsham) and two counties meaning that an MP for that seat would have to deal with five local authorities. That would be the case here as well were Berkshire county council still a thing, so the effect of the two Berkshire councils being unitaries is that there are fewer local authorities involved. I don't say that this is a particular strength in the plan because I think the whole argument you have introduced about the status of UAs is a red herring - your objection to this seat is visceral and you are seeking rational or legalistic grounds on which to object (I actually would respect the honest, visceral opposition more). As far as the name goes, you may recall my initial naming of the seat was based partly on Tadley which is the largest town in the seat and together with Baughurst and Silchester in Hampshire and Aldermaston in Berkshire does form a natural centre to the constituency with names that would be recognisable to the man in the street. But the name is really neither here nor there. Whatever it is called there will always be many names that the boundary commission have produced in other areas at various times that are much worse (Waveney, Elmet, Langbaurgh, Castle Point... I could go on all night) Finally I don't accept that what you've proposed here creates a superior set of boundaries compared to others that have been posted here today. My own plan kept Chesham & Amersham intact. Others have plans which keep all of High Wycombe in a single seat. You have not found a way to avoid the awful mess that is Mid Bucks/West Bucks/Princes Risborough (objectively a worse seat albeit in a single county than my 'Silchester' seat) - if it did that then all the extra upheaval might be worthwhile, but it does nothing for Buckinghamshire. You fail even to keep Langley together as you acknowledge and actually have three non-contiguous Slough wards in your Beaconsfield seat and none of them are in the most obvious area to make that link which would be in the area of Burnham.
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Post by John Chanin on Mar 28, 2021 19:47:48 GMT
Reluctant as I am to intervene in a dispute between our two most formidable designers of boundaries, I have to say that Pete Whitehead clearly has the best of this argument.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Mar 28, 2021 19:55:19 GMT
Reluctant as I am to intervene in a dispute between our two most formidable designers of boundaries, I have to say that Pete Whitehead clearly has the best of this argument. I'm grateful for your support but I think you are being unfair on mattb , YL and East Anglian Lefty (amongst others)
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Post by greenhert on Mar 28, 2021 19:58:06 GMT
Reluctant as I am to intervene in a dispute between our two most formidable designers of boundaries, I have to say that Pete Whitehead clearly has the best of this argument. His plan is very similar to mine (notably shrinking Wycombe to the point where it just contains the town of High Wycombe) but neater and involves less change to eastern Buckinghamshire.
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islington
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Post by islington on Mar 28, 2021 20:34:46 GMT
Reluctant as I am to intervene in a dispute between our two most formidable designers of boundaries, I have to say that Pete Whitehead clearly has the best of this argument. His plan is very similar to mine (notably shrinking Wycombe to the point where it just contains the town of High Wycombe) but neater and involves less change to eastern Buckinghamshire. Well, even if John Chanin isn't agreeing with me it's kind of him to call me formidable. I don't think there's anything wrong with having this kind of disagreement. It's not as if we were charged with hammering out some agreed plan to which we all have to subscribe. (That would be fun ... .) The important thing is that where we disagree, we should explore the issues involved and that's what's happening here. I'm not worried if, in such a discussion, I find myself in a minority (even of one), especially when I feel confident of my ground as I do here. The focus of the argument is really on Hants rather than Bucks, but with regard to the latter county I'd point out the the plans put forward by Pete Whitehead and YL are both hampered by having to find a way of dealing with the Marlow area. Pete's answer is to trim the Wycombe seat very tightly by omitting West Wycombe and the Loudwater area, both of which really belong with the town; but at least he can keep Chesham unchanged. YL, on the other hand, shifts Marlow into S Bucks, a neat idea and one that allows a Wycombe seat including the whole town, but the price is the disruption of the otherwise satisfactory Chesham seat and a huge southward barely-connected salient for his W Bucks seat bringing it right down to the Thames.
Whereas, if you get rid of Marlow by linking it with Maidenhead, you avoid all these problems in Bucks and the county works out very tidily.
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jbp79
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Post by jbp79 on Mar 31, 2021 14:43:50 GMT
I've had a first attempt at Surrey. This is a very challenging area, especially to the north of the current Mole Valley constituency but I like the idea of a Surrey Hills constituency in theory. 1. East Surrey – 73,145. Yes 2. Reigate – 72,613. Yes 3. Epsom – 71,089. Yes 4. Surrey Heath – 72,891. Yes 5. South Surrey – 71,845. Yes 6. Farnham – 70,101. Yes 7. Surrey Hills – 70,822. Yes 8. Guildford – 69,739. Yes 9. Spelthorne – 72,897. Yes 10. Woking – 71,737. Yes 11. Runnymede – 74,115. Yes 12. Weybridge – 71,039. Yes
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johnloony
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Post by johnloony on Mar 31, 2021 14:50:50 GMT
I've had a first attempt at Surrey. This is a very challenging area, especially to the north of the current Mole Valley constituency but I like the idea of a Surrey Hills constituency in theory. 1. East Surrey – 73,145. Yes 2. Reigate – 72,613. Yes 3. Epsom – 71,089. Yes 4. Surrey Heath – 72,891. Yes 5. South Surrey – 71,845. Yes 6. Farnham – 70,101. Yes 7. Surrey Hills – 70,822. Yes 8. Guildford – 69,739. Yes 9. Spelthrone – 72,897. Yes 10. Woking – 71,737. Yes 11. Runnymede – 74,115. Yes 12. Weybridge – 71,039. Yes Number 5 has an exclave, and you can't spell throne
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ricmk
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Post by ricmk on Apr 2, 2021 13:20:24 GMT
How about this?
Roughly from north to south (don't worry too much about the names, they're only markers at this stage) -
Milton Keynes North - 70624. C MK not a spectacularly good fit but this approach requires the MK seats to be kept small. Milton Keynes South - 70247. Very much based on Bletchley. Buckingham - 70990. It seems more natural to hive off western MK, rather than Bletchley, for a link with Buckingham. (I acknowledge that MK contributes the bulk of the electors and maybe this should be recognized in the name.) Mid Buckinghamshire - 76431. What was left over. But we've seen worse. Aylesbury - 75636. Chesham and Amersham - 73015. Unchanged. Wycombe - 71769. Maidenhead and Marlow - 72282. All right, technically a cross-county seat but a very tidy and compact one and the two main towns are well linked. Hurley ward would be better placed in this seat but it's over by 74. This can be fixed, if required, by exchanging the Wooburns and Cliveden with the following seat, in which case this seat comes in at 76186.
South Buckinghamshire - 69963. Or 'Beaconsfield'. The split of Langley is unfortunate, but I think any plan is likely to carve chunks out of Slough. It's 70913 if it does the Wooburns/Cliveden swap with the previous seat.
Slough - 70939. Windsor - 76999. Amazingly, now extends to only two UAs instead of the customary three. 72145 if Hurley is removed.
Bracknell - 70098. As many plans have had it.
The effect of treating the east Berks UAs with Bucks and MK is that the rest of Berks can be treated alone for five seats (we have plenty of workable ways of doing this) and Hants gets 18.
Just to say that the MK arrangement here is better than it looks on the map, as the odd bits are all central which can go different ways. The key components would work. Although I still prefer the YL (and others) arrangement. Agree with others on Marlow and Maidenhead though. MK like that would be interesting politically, as the Tories would expect a clean sweep on current polling, but could easily lose both the North and South seats together when the tide turns. You’ve sent several of their strong areas into the Buckingham seat.
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YL
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Post by YL on Apr 2, 2021 13:44:48 GMT
I think islington actually has a point regarding Marlow: none of the options for placing it in an all-Bucks seat are ideal. Either it stays where it is, in which case a ward has to be removed elsewhere, which means splitting Beaconsfield or Gerrards Cross, or it goes into Wycombe, which means quite a bit of High Wycombe proper gets excluded, or it goes into the new seat, which also makes the western fringe of High Wycombe get excluded from the Wycombe seat. Indeed it makes me wonder whether we shouldn't just split Marlow, if not splitting it means splitting Beaconsfield or High Wycombe: then you can indeed have an unchanged Chesham & Amersham, a Beaconsfield seat which just loses Marlow ward, and a Wycombe seat which just loses Chiltern Villages. (The resulting West Buckinghamshire is a bit of a mess, though I'm not sure it's that much worse than the other takes.) My issue with the anti-"Silchester" approach is that I don't think it works out in Hampshire. It also doesn't solve the problems in Slough: you still have to split Langley.
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islington
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Post by islington on Apr 2, 2021 16:04:19 GMT
All right, everyone is telling me I'm wrong about this and maybe I am. I'm not too proud to admit the possibilty. So here's an attempt to put it to the test (with apologies in advance for a long post). I've left off the bulk of Hampshire because there, the basic point is not in dispute; I accept unreservedly that Silchester (as I'll call it for convenience) allows a far better plan. So these maps show the state of play further north: with and without Silchester at left and right respectively.
Now, I should say at the start that these are not the only possible maps. Either of them can be tweaked in various ways. But I think they show the difference between the two basic ideas. I'm hoping that others will wish to comment but let me kick off with a few points. Apart from the sheer fact of crossing the Hants border, something that should give us serious pause even if the seat itself were perfection, Silchester satisfies virtually none of the requirements we'd normally expect in drawing a seat. It is entirely lacking in any focus and, in the version drawn, it unites remote leafy villages in timeless rural Hampshire with busy, congested commuter suburbs on the western side of Reading (incidentally also forcing a major upheaval in Reading itself). You can redraw it, of course, to get rid of the Reading element, but then you are extending into three top-tier authorities (of which there is only one instance anywhere in the UK) of which one is a two-tier county (unique). Moving west, we note that the Silchester plan means that a seat (in this version Maidenhead) crosses the eastern boundary of Wokingham. I'm not really counting this as a point against the plan, because it involves less change to the current Maidenhead seat, but it means that nearly 14000 extra electors have to be accommodated compared with the non-Silchester plan, and this has consequences farther on. Next, look at Slough. The current seat has over 84000 electors and needs a severe trim. One Slough ward has already been hived off to join Windsor (meaning that the latter extends into three UAs, but at least no two-tier county is involved). If you continue this theme, you have to find over 7000 voters to remove, which probably means the small Foxborough ward plus at least one other. We've seen plans suggesting Cippenham Meadows or Chalvey, but they both take huge bites from the heart of Slough and I suggest that the least bad option is the one I've shown, even though it divides Langley and leaves Slough with an ungainly eastward salient. And once all those extra electors have been loaded into Windsor, it's too big and has to lose territory elsewhere. I've removed the Ascot ward of Bracknell Forest, although this completely divides Ascot town. So the Windsor boundary is now worse in Slough, worse in Ascot, and moreover it still extends into three UAs. In the non-Silchester plan, we don't have to find a home for all those extra Maidenhead electors so the seat can be realigned to comprise the town itself plus Marlow from Bucks. This is, of course, a cross-county seat; but in contrast with Silchester, both counties consist wholly of UAs, the two towns are closely associated, and the seat as a whole is very compact. This means that Windsor can then comprise all remaining Windsor & Maidenhead wards, plus three from Bracknell Forest including Ascot: i.e. it now involves only two LAs. Slough can now be brought down to size by shedding wards to the S Bucks (or Beaconsfield) seat, which is a cross-county arrangement only if a very technical meaning is assigned to the word 'county'. Slough was associated with Bucks for centuries and I'd wager that most Sloughites (is that a word?) would say, if asked, that that is their county. And the town's relatively brief modern association with Berks is almost meaningless given that the county no longer has any functional existence. And while it's true that Langley is doomed to be split in either arrangement, the link to the north makes a lot more sense and also leaves a better shape for the residual Slough seat. And finally, there no need for me to say anything about the benefit for the rest of Bucks of removing the Marlow area, because YL has just pointed it out.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Apr 2, 2021 16:57:05 GMT
This plan keeps Chesham & Amersham intact, keeps Beaconsfield together, keeps Marlow together. It does detach a part of High Wycombe but that is easily resolved by swapping West Wycombe for Chiltern Villages (leaving out only a very small part of the town which is in the Tylers Green & Loudwater ward). I went for the other option to avoid the extension of the West Bucks seat down to the Thames, but the wards are easily interchangeable.
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Foggy
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Post by Foggy on Apr 3, 2021 3:14:31 GMT
Having played around with the Buckinghamshire boundaries this week, like islington I'm seriously considering treating Hants/Berks/Bucks all as one big cross-county sub-region, but I might yet be able to avoid it if I nick YL or Pete's arrangement for the Milton Keynes area.
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YL
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Post by YL on Apr 3, 2021 7:24:05 GMT
I don’t think anyone’s going to suggest that “Silchester” is actually a good seat, but its Berkshire component at least is defensible: it’s the east of West Berkshire UA, essentially the parts more in the Reading sphere of influence. The Hampshire extension is annoying, but at least there is reasonable connectivity there. Rearranging the Reading seats of course goes against “minimal change” criteria, but I think the result is quite reasonable, and in some regards can be seen as better: it gives a seat wholly within Reading borough, and two wholly within the urban area, unlike the current arrangement with Pangbourne in Reading West. And any non-Silchester plan will need radical rearrangements in Hampshire, which is of course the elephant in the room. Further east I have a slightly different arrangement to islington, retaining Ascot ward of Bracknell Forest in the Windsor seat but including Binfield with Warfield in Wokingham, which of course I acknowledge gives an orphan ward. (This allows me to retain the current boundary in Woodley and to include the urbanised Shinfield North ward in Reading South East.) But the non-Silchester plan puts Bray in Windsor, when I think it really belongs in Maidenhead, so that has defects too.
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Apr 3, 2021 8:34:39 GMT
I don’t think anyone’s going to suggest that “Silchester” is actually a good seat, but its Berkshire component at least is defensible: it’s the east of West Berkshire UA, essentially the parts more in the Reading sphere of influence. The Hampshire extension is annoying, but at least there is reasonable connectivity there. Rearranging the Reading seats of course goes against “minimal change” criteria, but I think the result is quite reasonable, and in some regards can be seen as better: it gives a seat wholly within Reading borough, and two wholly within the urban area, unlike the current arrangement with Pangbourne in Reading West. And any non-Silchester plan will need radical rearrangements in Hampshire, which is of course the elephant in the room. Further east I have a slightly different arrangement to islington, retaining Ascot ward of Bracknell Forest in the Windsor seat but including Binfield with Warfield in Wokingham, which of course I acknowledge gives an orphan ward. (This allows me to retain the current boundary in Woodley and to include the urbanised Shinfield North ward in Reading South East.) But the non-Silchester plan puts Bray in Windsor, when I think it really belongs in Maidenhead, so that has defects too. But it doesn't have to do that. My plan leaves both Reading seats completely unchanged and includes instead the Western wards from Wokingham district. I know that islington objects to this on the grounds that it brings in a second Unitary authority but I don't personally think that objection is very strong (although of course the commission may agree with him)
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Post by greenhert on Apr 7, 2021 17:50:31 GMT
Regarding Oxfordshire, I seriously hope we do not end up with a plan that sees the city of Oxford being split between three seats, because that is what could happen (e.g. Blackbird Leys and Northfield Brook wards being moved into Henley a la Central Suffolk & Ipswich North to keep Henley mainly intact). Even moving Barton & Sandhills and Quarry & Risinghurst (once separate parishes to Oxford and once both in the Henley constituency) to the Henley constituency (to avoid causing connectivity problems which would result from expanding the new Bicester [& Oxford North?] seat into the northern half of Henley's territory) would cause consternation.
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Post by bjornhattan on Apr 7, 2021 21:42:33 GMT
Regarding Oxfordshire, I seriously hope we do not end up with a plan that sees the city of Oxford being split between three seats, because that is what could happen (e.g. Blackbird Leys and Northfield Brook wards being moved into Henley a la Central Suffolk & Ipswich North to keep Henley mainly intact). Even moving Barton & Sandhills and Quarry & Risinghurst (once separate parishes to Oxford and once both in the Henley constituency) to the Henley constituency (to avoid causing connectivity problems which would result from expanding the new Bicester [& Oxford North?] seat into the northern half of Henley's territory) would cause consternation. The thing you have to remember about Oxford is some of the most "inner city" areas in character are geographically right on the fringes of town. Barton, Blackbird Leys, and Wood Farm might all adjoin Henley constituency but their tower blocks and overwhelmingly working class populations make them terrible fits for a Henley constituency. Quarry and Risinghurst is a bit more reasonable, but not a move you'd make unless you had to. Along with Littlemore and Marston, Q&R is a ward where some of it could sit happily outside of an Oxford constituency but definitely not all of it. In this case, the Quarry part goes right up to central Headington, which splits that community. Some plans put all of the Headington wards into a seat with rural areas, but that won't be a Henley-based seat, that'll probably be with Thame or Bicester.
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Post by greenhert on Apr 7, 2021 22:03:32 GMT
Even moving Barton & Sandhills and Quarry & Risinghurst (once separate parishes to Oxford and once both in the Henley constituency) to the Henley constituency (to avoid causing connectivity problems which would result from expanding the new Bicester [& Oxford North?] seat into the northern half of Henley's territory) would cause consternation. The thing you have to remember about Oxford is some of the most "inner city" areas in character are geographically right on the fringes of town. Barton, Blackbird Leys, and Wood Farm might all adjoin Henley constituency but their tower blocks and overwhelmingly working class populations make them terrible fits for a Henley constituency. Quarry and Risinghurst is a bit more reasonable, but not a move you'd make unless you had to. Along with Littlemore and Marston, Q&R is a ward where some of it could sit happily outside of an Oxford constituency but definitely not all of it. In this case, the Quarry part goes right up to central Headington, which splits that community. Some plans put all of the Headington wards into a seat with rural areas, but that won't be a Henley-based seat, that'll probably be with Thame or Bicester. I am well aware of that, which is why I am warning this forum in case the BCE ends up recommending such plans.
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