YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,306
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Post by YL on Jul 4, 2021 8:12:50 GMT
Even on Electoral Calculus's figures Earley & Woodley isn't a safe Tory seat. They give Labour an 18% chance of winning it and the estimated majority is 13%; that's Tory leaning marginal not safe Tory.
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Post by Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells on Jul 4, 2021 10:06:55 GMT
Earley and Woodley is not a safe new Tory seat. Electoral Calculus is a terrible estimator of seat outcomes. It contains 5 safe or strong Labour wards (Whitley, Church, Shinfield North, Bulmershe and Whitegates and Maiden Erleigh), both at local and general election level. The other wards produced the vast majority of the LD vote in Wokingham in 2019. Which wards would your Reading NW and Reading SE contain? Mid Berks will probably be safe Tory yes, but the wards taken out of Newbury make that seat a much better target for the LDs. I don't think its accurate to describe Shinfield North or Bulmershe & Whitegates as 'Strong Labour', they're swing wards. Maiden Erleigh is more Tory than these and would only go Labour in a very good year - hardly the definition of 'strong Labour'. I agree that 'Safe Tory' is probably not the best description for this 'Earley & Woodley' but it is a seat where they'd have a very clear advantage against a fairly split opposition, though future trends could make it more vulnerable. The most likely chance of them losing in the short term IMO would be the Lib Dems beating Labour into second and heavily squeezing their vote in the subsequent election. Shinfield North is fair, but B and W has had Labour councillors more often than Conservatives, so I think it’s fair to put that one in a strongly Labour column. Maiden Erleigh is Conservative at local level over split opposition, even saying that a lot of the Liberal vote there is tactical from Labour voters. It contains a large percentage of the Uni of Reading halls and students are famously known to not be particularly enthusiastic about voting in local elections. I disagree with the Conservatives having a clear advantage, but I agree with the Lib Dems being the clear contender, their main issue will be getting people in Church and Woolley to vote for them.
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Post by islington on Jul 4, 2021 10:53:22 GMT
I hadn't originally intended to make a submission in this region but on reflection, I think I probably shall. My aim will be to rejig Surrey and Hants in accordance with the plan I posted on Friday, which I think keeps the best features of the BCE plan whilst respecting the Surrey-Berks border; and as for Berks and Bucks, I'll go for the plan I posted way back on 2 Apr (the non-Silchester version). Among other things this maintains an east-west split in Reading, addressing some of the concerns expressed in recent posts and generally shifting fewer electors than in the BCE scheme.
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Post by greenhert on Jul 4, 2021 11:46:26 GMT
Looking at the notional results on Electoral Calculus (even though they should be taken with a pinch of salt), the arrangements for Reading and the surrounding area are more like a gerrymander than anything else, given that they create one safe Labour seat with significant change to existing seats, a safe Conservative seat from a marginal Conservative seat (Mid Berkshire can be considered the successor to Reading West) and a safe new Conservative seat with considerable parts of Reading East. Better is Reading North West (comprising the majority of Reading UA) and Reading South East (more sensibly drawn than Earley & Woodley and resulting in less change to the Maidenhead constituency). Earley and Woodley is not a safe new Tory seat. Electoral Calculus is a terrible estimator of seat outcomes. It contains 5 safe or strong Labour wards (Whitley, Church, Shinfield North, Bulmershe and Whitegates and Maiden Erleigh), both at local and general election level. The other wards produced the vast majority of the LD vote in Wokingham in 2019. Which wards would your Reading NW and Reading SE contain? Mid Berks will probably be safe Tory yes, but the wards taken out of Newbury make that seat a much better target for the LDs. Reading North West: All wards in Reading UA except the wards of Church, Katesgrove, Park, Redlands, and Whitley. Reading South East: The Reading wards of Church, Katesgrove, Park, Redlands, and Whitley and the Wokingham wards of Bulmershe & Whitegates, Hawkedon, Hillside, Loddon, Maiden Erlegh, and South Lake. If only the boundaries of Reading would be expanded to cover its true area!
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YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,306
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Post by YL on Jul 4, 2021 12:24:10 GMT
Reading North West: All wards in Reading UA except the wards of Church, Katesgrove, Park, Redlands, and Whitley. Reading South East: The Reading wards of Church, Katesgrove, Park, Redlands, and Whitley and the Wokingham wards of Bulmershe & Whitegates, Hawkedon, Hillside, Loddon, Maiden Erlegh, and South Lake. All very well, and that's almost what I had in my version of the "Silchester" approach (I had Shinfield North in the SE seat as well), but what's your proposal for the rest of Berkshire and which county boundaries are you crossing?
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Post by bjornhattan on Jul 4, 2021 12:25:42 GMT
Earley and Woodley is not a safe new Tory seat. Electoral Calculus is a terrible estimator of seat outcomes. It contains 5 safe or strong Labour wards (Whitley, Church, Shinfield North, Bulmershe and Whitegates and Maiden Erleigh), both at local and general election level. The other wards produced the vast majority of the LD vote in Wokingham in 2019. Which wards would your Reading NW and Reading SE contain? Mid Berks will probably be safe Tory yes, but the wards taken out of Newbury make that seat a much better target for the LDs. Reading North West: All wards in Reading UA except the wards of Church, Katesgrove, Park, Redlands, and Whitley. Reading South East: The Reading wards of Church, Katesgrove, Park, Redlands, and Whitley and the Wokingham wards of Bulmershe & Whitegates, Hawkedon, Hillside, Loddon, Maiden Erlegh, and South Lake. If only the boundaries of Reading would be expanded to cover its true area! In theory that'd be nice, but you'd be left with two councils with rather small populations. Rump Wokingham can probably be combined with Bracknell Forest (they share a Further Education college and are geographically close), though Twyford and particularly Wargrave/Remenham would be better off in Windsor and Maidenhead. Rump West Berkshire is a bigger problem - it might just about be viable but my preferred solution would see it annex the Vale of White Horse (except those areas most intertwined with Oxford - so roughly anything east of a line from Abingdon to Farmoor).
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Post by greenhert on Jul 4, 2021 12:55:23 GMT
Reading North West: All wards in Reading UA except the wards of Church, Katesgrove, Park, Redlands, and Whitley. Reading South East: The Reading wards of Church, Katesgrove, Park, Redlands, and Whitley and the Wokingham wards of Bulmershe & Whitegates, Hawkedon, Hillside, Loddon, Maiden Erlegh, and South Lake. All very well, and that's almost what I had in my version of the "Silchester" approach (I had Shinfield North in the SE seat as well), but what's your proposal for the rest of Berkshire and which county boundaries are you crossing? Berkshire and Hampshire. Surrey does not need its border crossed, and certainly not by two constituencies!
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YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,306
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Post by YL on Jul 4, 2021 13:15:46 GMT
Berkshire and Hampshire. Surrey does not need its border crossed, and certainly not by two constituencies! So are you going to submit a "Silchester" map to the BCE?
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Post by Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells on Jul 4, 2021 22:48:02 GMT
Reading North West: All wards in Reading UA except the wards of Church, Katesgrove, Park, Redlands, and Whitley. Reading South East: The Reading wards of Church, Katesgrove, Park, Redlands, and Whitley and the Wokingham wards of Bulmershe & Whitegates, Hawkedon, Hillside, Loddon, Maiden Erlegh, and South Lake. If only the boundaries of Reading would be expanded to cover its true area! In theory that'd be nice, but you'd be left with two councils with rather small populations. Rump Wokingham can probably be combined with Bracknell Forest (they share a Further Education college and are geographically close), though Twyford and particularly Wargrave/Remenham would be better off in Windsor and Maidenhead. Rump West Berkshire is a bigger problem - it might just about be viable but my preferred solution would see it annex the Vale of White Horse (except those areas most intertwined with Oxford - so roughly anything east of a line from Abingdon to Farmoor). Exactly the same as what I think, except Hurst would need to be moved into the RBWM due to its’ greater ties to Twyford (in comparison to Woky) and also the whole of Ascot too. Burnham, Iver Heath/Richings Park(Iver station), Farnham Common,Stoke Poges and Taplow should be moved into Slough to bring that up to size. Remember to add Purley, Holybrook, Calcot and Tilehurst in West Berks into Reading too, these are core areas of the town, but not Theale, which is a sizeable village with a separate identity. You have to remember to take the former Berks part of South Oxon into the new unitary too, otherwise you leave Wallingford and half of Didcot in Oxon,
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Post by Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells on Jul 4, 2021 23:11:01 GMT
Earley and Woodley is not a safe new Tory seat. Electoral Calculus is a terrible estimator of seat outcomes. It contains 5 safe or strong Labour wards (Whitley, Church, Shinfield North, Bulmershe and Whitegates and Maiden Erleigh), both at local and general election level. The other wards produced the vast majority of the LD vote in Wokingham in 2019. Which wards would your Reading NW and Reading SE contain? Mid Berks will probably be safe Tory yes, but the wards taken out of Newbury make that seat a much better target for the LDs. Reading North West: All wards in Reading UA except the wards of Church, Katesgrove, Park, Redlands, and Whitley. Reading South East: The Reading wards of Church, Katesgrove, Park, Redlands, and Whitley and the Wokingham wards of Bulmershe & Whitegates, Hawkedon, Hillside, Loddon, Maiden Erlegh, and South Lake. If only the boundaries of Reading would be expanded to cover its true area! As someone who is Cav(ersham) born and bred, I know the northside doesn’t have very good links with the west end, due to the absence of any crossings, foot or vehicles, from Caversham Bridge west to Pangbourne, a good 7 miles upstream (and that doesn’t even take HGVs, next crossing west of Cav bridge is the Wallingford bypass for them!) It also leaves Tilehurst, Purley and Calcot out in the cold, which means integral parts of the Ding are out of a Reading constituency. The Newbury constituency west of that is massively oversized as it is, adding 35k electors from RW will make that worse, a Hungerford and Wantage constituency wouldn’t even fix that mess. You’d end up splitting Newbury and Thatcham with either the Vale or Andover (both atrocious constituencies😱). “Mid Berks” (Reading West or Tilehurst would do better here as the constituency is neither in the geographical or population centre of Berks) is the best out of a not great bunch as you at least unite all of Reading in one seat and not too much people in the surrounding country, no part of Thatchbury in that seat 🤣.
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Post by islington on Jul 8, 2021 16:57:48 GMT
This comes under the heading of 'maybe we're not so clever as we think', or even 'maybe the BCE aren't complete duffers after all' ... But it strikes me, having seen the BCE's excellent Epsom seat and nearly-excellent Reigate, that if we wanted to put Aldershot in with Surrey (which I still think beats the idea than the BCE came up with), then the following would have been a better map for the rest of the county than anything devised by our collective ingenuity.
Too late now, of course.
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YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,306
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Post by YL on Jul 9, 2021 8:12:20 GMT
“Mid Berks” (Reading West or Tilehurst would do better here as the constituency is neither in the geographical or population centre of Berks) is the best out of a not great bunch as you at least unite all of Reading in one seat and not too much people in the surrounding country, no part of Thatchbury in that seat 🤣. If you think in terms of a "greater Reading" the BCE's proposals make a fair amount of sense: that area is worth about two and a half constituencies, and in the initial proposals you have a "Reading South East" (Earley & Woodley), a "Reading Central" (Reading) and a "Reading West & Aldermaston" ("Mid Berkshire"). I suggested "Tilehurst" as an alternative name for "Mid Berkshire" to the BCE.
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Post by Disgusted Of Tunbridge Wells on Jul 9, 2021 9:23:56 GMT
“Mid Berks” (Reading West or Tilehurst would do better here as the constituency is neither in the geographical or population centre of Berks) is the best out of a not great bunch as you at least unite all of Reading in one seat and not too much people in the surrounding country, no part of Thatchbury in that seat 🤣. If you think in terms of a "greater Reading" the BCE's proposals make a fair amount of sense: that area is worth about two and a half constituencies, and in the initial proposals you have a "Reading South East" (Earley & Woodley), a "Reading Central" (Reading) and a "Reading West & Aldermaston" ("Mid Berkshire"). I suggested "Tilehurst" as an alternative name for "Mid Berkshire" to the BCE. I entirely agree, not many residents live in the country West Berks end of the seat anyway, so I would have no issues calling it Tilehurst as that's where the biggest chunk of the seat is. It could even be called Reading West still as the majority of electors come from Tilehurst, Calcot, Southcote and West Reading, which is considered to be Reading proper by every good Biscuitman/woman. Reading South East is fine,Earley and Woodley is a stupid name when it contains the entirety of Whitley as well (Whitley and Church wards of RBC, plus "Shinfield North" ward of WBC, which has had nothing to do with Shinfield for quite some years now). Reading Central also fine, although your description of it just being Reading on its own is complete pitchfork bait to any Cav/Coley/Emmer Green residents, the Ding is kind of like a big town made up of 7 smaller centres (Cav, Woodley ,Earley/Lower Earley, Whitley, Coley and Tilehurst) and Reading town centre as the cementing business district with the more recently built suburbs like Calcot and Bulmershe as infill between the traditional centres and the town centre, a bit like Stoke I suppose. To prove my point, look at the number of objections to the cluster fuck of a new Thames ward for RBC the Boundary Commission had to create, none of them came from the Bell Tower area in the ward on the Reading side of the Thames, but the Caversham side, because Cav has an independent identity. The Central qualifier solves that as does Tilehurst and RSE names, because, similarly to above, Whitley residents will be very confused to hear that they live in either Earley or Woodley, Tilehurst/Purley/Calcot/Beansheaf/West Reading/Southcote residents would think of Mid Berks of being somewhere between Reading and Maidenhead too!
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jul 9, 2021 10:40:09 GMT
Do you need to choose between the two options? Why not call the eastern and western seats Reading Woodley (or Earley if you prefer) and Reading Tilehurst?
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Post by greenhert on Jul 9, 2021 21:11:52 GMT
Do you need to choose between the two options? Why not call the eastern and western seats Reading Woodley (or Earley if you prefer) and Reading Tilehurst? Also good as long as the Reading proposal is renamed Reading Central. "Greater Reading" has a similar problem to Milton Keynes-too large for two seats but too small for three, meaning an awkward part-Reading/part-rural Berkshire seat of some kind (Mid Berkshire in the BCE's initial proposals) is sadly unavoidable.
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Post by greenhert on Jul 13, 2021 18:00:15 GMT
Interestingly, the proposed Reading constituency is very similar to the Reading North constituency of 1974-83 and Earley & Woodley is very similar to the Reading South constituency of 1974-83.
Reading should be renamed Reading North thus.
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Post by islington on Jul 28, 2021 17:13:58 GMT
Interestingly, the proposed Reading constituency is very similar to the Reading North constituency of 1974-83 and Earley & Woodley is very similar to the Reading South constituency of 1974-83. Reading should be renamed Reading North thus. Well, let's hope the BCE's Reading plans won't be troubling us too much longer.
To that end (among others), I've now submitted my South East plans: BCE 72184.
That's it for today.
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Post by evergreenadam on Jul 31, 2021 18:44:09 GMT
Has anyone submitted a plan which successfully creates an urban Maidstone seat?
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Post by Merseymike on Jul 31, 2021 19:09:44 GMT
Has anyone submitted a plan which successfully creates an urban Maidstone seat? The Liberal Democrats?
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jul 31, 2021 19:10:58 GMT
I'm working on one as we speak
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