YL
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Post by YL on Feb 20, 2022 10:02:16 GMT
Oxfordshire pitchfork watch:
The main area where there are objections is the area of West Oxfordshire which the BCE propose putting into the Bicester constituency: Stonesfield & Tackley ward has over 100 comments and there are plenty in most of the other wards affected as well. There are also a few objections from the area south of the Thames proposed to be added to Witney and some from the area of West Oxfordshire proposed in Banbury, but nothing like on the same scale.
One other feature of the comments is that quite a few people are arguing for the name of the Henley constituency to be changed, with suggestions including "Henley & Thame" and "South East Oxfordshire". This is one of those occasions where it's easy to see what people are getting at in that Henley is a relatively small town in a corner of the constituency, but the constituency has had this name and fairly similar boundaries for a very long time.
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Post by evergreenadam on Feb 20, 2022 20:35:35 GMT
It would doubtless horrify locals but I have to say I would find a map like this, with a Slough North and a Slough South, rather aesthetically pleasing. And potentially interesting electorally!
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European Lefty
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Post by European Lefty on Feb 20, 2022 21:39:02 GMT
Oxfordshire pitchfork watch: The main area where there are objections is the area of West Oxfordshire which the BCE propose putting into the Bicester constituency: Stonesfield & Tackley ward has over 100 comments and there are plenty in most of the other wards affected as well. There are also a few objections from the area south of the Thames proposed to be added to Witney and some from the area of West Oxfordshire proposed in Banbury, but nothing like on the same scale. One other feature of the comments is that quite a few people are arguing for the name of the Henley constituency to be changed, with suggestions including "Henley & Thame" and "South East Oxfordshire". This is one of those occasions where it's easy to see what people are getting at in that Henley is a relatively small town in a corner of the constituency, but the constituency has had this name and fairly similar boundaries for a very long time. I said as soon as I saw it that Eynsham in with Bicester would inspire riots. Not that I can see a reasonable alternative that doesn't bugger everything else up
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Post by gerrardwinstanley on Feb 20, 2022 22:58:11 GMT
Oxfordshire pitchfork watch: The main area where there are objections is the area of West Oxfordshire which the BCE propose putting into the Bicester constituency: Stonesfield & Tackley ward has over 100 comments and there are plenty in most of the other wards affected as well. There are also a few objections from the area south of the Thames proposed to be added to Witney and some from the area of West Oxfordshire proposed in Banbury, but nothing like on the same scale. One other feature of the comments is that quite a few people are arguing for the name of the Henley constituency to be changed, with suggestions including "Henley & Thame" and "South East Oxfordshire". This is one of those occasions where it's easy to see what people are getting at in that Henley is a relatively small town in a corner of the constituency, but the constituency has had this name and fairly similar boundaries for a very long time. I said as soon as I saw it that Eynsham in with Bicester would inspire riots. Not that I can see a reasonable alternative that doesn't bugger everything else up I posted this a little while back, but it is possible to do, without huge consequences: - Return Sandford and the Wittenhams to Henley (if you really wanted to, you could split the ward to keep the Wittenhams in Wantage and Didcot; this wouldn't affect quota) - Add Forest Hill and Holton, and Charlbury and Finstock to the Bicester seat - Give Eynsham and Cassington back, and North Leigh to Witney - Milton-under-Wychwood, and Ascott and Shipton can go into Banbury - Then Kingston Bagpuize (or the Stanford ward) goes with Wantage and Didcot
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YL
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Post by YL on Feb 21, 2022 7:54:13 GMT
I said as soon as I saw it that Eynsham in with Bicester would inspire riots. Not that I can see a reasonable alternative that doesn't bugger everything else up I posted this a little while back, but it is possible to do, without huge consequences: - Return Sandford and the Wittenhams to Henley (if you really wanted to, you could split the ward to keep the Wittenhams in Wantage and Didcot; this wouldn't affect quota) - Add Forest Hill and Holton, and Charlbury and Finstock to the Bicester seat - Give Eynsham and Cassington back, and North Leigh to Witney - Milton-under-Wychwood, and Ascott and Shipton can go into Banbury - Then Kingston Bagpuize (or the Stanford ward) goes with Wantage and Didcot If your main priority is Eynsham that works, but I'm not sure Charlbury would be so much happier in a Bicester seat where it's out on a limb than Eynsham is. I think my instinct would be to accept the provisional boundaries but to change the name of the Bicester seat to be inclusive of the West Oxfordshire component; I originally suggested "Bicester & Woodstock" but of course there are other ways of doing it. My original Oxfordshire plan only had one West Oxon ward (Woodstock & Bladon) in with Bicester and did not have the Witney seat crossing the Thames, but its Banbury seat came very close to Bicester and the Henley/Wantage boundary in the Didcot area was awkward.
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Post by islington on Feb 21, 2022 10:59:27 GMT
I posted this a little while back, but it is possible to do, without huge consequences: - Return Sandford and the Wittenhams to Henley (if you really wanted to, you could split the ward to keep the Wittenhams in Wantage and Didcot; this wouldn't affect quota) - Add Forest Hill and Holton, and Charlbury and Finstock to the Bicester seat - Give Eynsham and Cassington back, and North Leigh to Witney - Milton-under-Wychwood, and Ascott and Shipton can go into Banbury - Then Kingston Bagpuize (or the Stanford ward) goes with Wantage and Didcot If your main priority is Eynsham that works, but I'm not sure Charlbury would be so much happier in a Bicester seat where it's out on a limb than Eynsham is. I think my instinct would be to accept the provisional boundaries but to change the name of the Bicester seat to be inclusive of the West Oxfordshire component; I originally suggested "Bicester & Woodstock" but of course there are other ways of doing it. My original Oxfordshire plan only had one West Oxon ward (Woodstock & Bladon) in with Bicester and did not have the Witney seat crossing the Thames, but its Banbury seat came very close to Bicester and the Henley/Wantage boundary in the Didcot area was awkward. I agree. Trying to get Eynsford out of the Bicester seat just creates worse problems elsewhere. All I can suggest, if it helps mollify Eynsford at all, is calling the seat 'Mid Oxfordshire' instead. (This also supports my continuing mission to ensure that every county in England contains a 'Mid' seat.) I can see a decent argument for keeping Sandford in Henley, but the best way to do that would be to retain Marcham in Wantage to keep it in range after the loss of Sandford. OxW&A is then too small, but this can be fixed if it exchanges Hinksey Pk and Holywell wards with Oxford E. This gives us: Henley 73581; Wantage 71071; OxW&A 69955; OxE 71854 and significantly fewer electors moved overall than in the BCE scheme. Everything else as per the BCE except for possibly renaming Bicester as Mid Oxon.
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Post by bjornhattan on Feb 21, 2022 12:24:56 GMT
I posted this a little while back, but it is possible to do, without huge consequences: - Return Sandford and the Wittenhams to Henley (if you really wanted to, you could split the ward to keep the Wittenhams in Wantage and Didcot; this wouldn't affect quota) - Add Forest Hill and Holton, and Charlbury and Finstock to the Bicester seat - Give Eynsham and Cassington back, and North Leigh to Witney - Milton-under-Wychwood, and Ascott and Shipton can go into Banbury - Then Kingston Bagpuize (or the Stanford ward) goes with Wantage and Didcot If your main priority is Eynsham that works, but I'm not sure Charlbury would be so much happier in a Bicester seat where it's out on a limb than Eynsham is. I think my instinct would be to accept the provisional boundaries but to change the name of the Bicester seat to be inclusive of the West Oxfordshire component; I originally suggested "Bicester & Woodstock" but of course there are other ways of doing it. My original Oxfordshire plan only had one West Oxon ward (Woodstock & Bladon) in with Bicester and did not have the Witney seat crossing the Thames, but its Banbury seat came very close to Bicester and the Henley/Wantage boundary in the Didcot area was awkward. Incorporating Woodstock in the name would definitely be sensible. Not only does it mean both districts are represented in the name, but also there are historical precedents. Between 1885 and 1918 a Woodstock constituency existed which was essentially the proposed Bicester constituency plus Witney and Carterton.
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Post by gerrardwinstanley on Feb 22, 2022 8:19:57 GMT
If your main priority is Eynsham that works, but I'm not sure Charlbury would be so much happier in a Bicester seat where it's out on a limb than Eynsham is. I think my instinct would be to accept the provisional boundaries but to change the name of the Bicester seat to be inclusive of the West Oxfordshire component; I originally suggested "Bicester & Woodstock" but of course there are other ways of doing it. My original Oxfordshire plan only had one West Oxon ward (Woodstock & Bladon) in with Bicester and did not have the Witney seat crossing the Thames, but its Banbury seat came very close to Bicester and the Henley/Wantage boundary in the Didcot area was awkward. Incorporating Woodstock in the name would definitely be sensible. Not only does it mean both districts are represented in the name, but also there are historical precedents. Between 1885 and 1918 a Woodstock constituency existed which was essentially the proposed Bicester constituency plus Witney and Carterton. Is anyone going to suggest it at the next consultation stage?
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YL
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Post by YL on Feb 22, 2022 9:00:48 GMT
Incorporating Woodstock in the name would definitely be sensible. Not only does it mean both districts are represented in the name, but also there are historical precedents. Between 1885 and 1918 a Woodstock constituency existed which was essentially the proposed Bicester constituency plus Witney and Carterton. Is anyone going to suggest it at the next consultation stage? I already did at the first.
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Post by gerrardwinstanley on Feb 22, 2022 9:21:44 GMT
Is anyone going to suggest it at the next consultation stage? I already did at the first. Ah, that's great! Maybe I'll make a comment supporting your suggestion at the next stage; hopefully more voices will help.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Feb 22, 2022 9:45:27 GMT
If you want to do a Berks-Bucks seat, I think you have to seize the pitchfork by the head and put Stoke Poges & Wexham in with Slough. This lets Windsor gain Langley St Mary's (reuniting Langley and avoiding the need to cross into Surrey) and means that Beaconsfield can otherwise stay unchanged (as can Chesham & Amersham.) Wycombe is then as the BCE has it, Princes Risborough gains Hazlemere and Great Brickhill and in MK you chuck the centre in with Bletchley. Plus it would really annoy the residents of South Buckinghamshire, and that has to count for something. I've mapped this out: Bracknell 70247 Maidenhead 73463 Windosr & Slough East 69783 Slough 76209 Beaconsfield 70728 Chesham & Amersham 73015 Wycombe 71769 Mid Buckinghamshire 76431 Aylesbury 75636 Buckingham & MK West 70990 Bletchley & MK Central 70184 MK North 70538 I think there's definite merit in this approach, but I suspect there's room for improvement. Issues in no particular order of seriousness: - Ascot is split
- Ideally I'd rather have Hazlemere in with Wycombe, but Chiltern Villages sits awkwardly in Mid Bucks. Could possibly be solved by giving Beaconsfield to C&A, Great Missenden to Mid Bucks, Hazlemere to Wycombe and Chiltern villages to 'Beaconsfield', but that makes the latter seat quite thin
- Great Brickhill is an ugly salient. The south of the ward fits fine, the north of it doesn't but I don't think there's a good case for ward-splitting
- Needing to include Great Brickhill in Mid Bucks means all 3 MK seats have to be small, which reduces your options. This option avoids splitting any of the Central MK, Bletchley or Shenley areas between seats, but the split between Danesborough & Walton and Monkston isn't great
- This also creates a safe(ish) seat for Labour in MK. I don't have a problem with that, but it means there's even less chance of the BCE going for it than there would be in the abstract. If anybody can think of a way to keep Great Brickhill in an MK seat, I could use the initial proposals which most responses seemed reasonably happy about.
I'm toying with the idea of submitting this as a response, but if anybody would like to improve it then I'm all ears.
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ricmk
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Post by ricmk on Feb 22, 2022 10:14:48 GMT
Interesting. I am not convinced that it would fly with the BCE given you are working against a quota of 8.00 for Bucks and I'm not sure any of the 8 are terrible. Should Bucks really have to solve Berkshire's problems when it hasn't caused any of them? You'll surely need a better name than 'Windsor and Slough East' to get taken seriously too. Windsor and Langley perhaps?
Great Brickhill is fiercely independent, even from Bow Brickhill and Little Brickhill (in the Danesborough and Walton ward) and there's the authority boundary so I wouldn't worry there.
I also think the Danesborough/Monkston split isn't as bad on the ground as on the map - the Brickhills Wavendon and Woburn Sands really wanted a single member rural ward and don't like being in with the urban bits (Old Farm Park, Browns Wood, Caldecotte) anyway but the LGBCE weren't interested. However it puts that very Tory ward into an otherwise urban Labour seat so you'd get a huge reaction based on the politics. You'd also face the wrath from Stony Stratford of being placed in Buckingham again, which was huge and an election issue last time, and a whole new set of pitchforks from Bradwell ward which is a core city ward next to CMK. I think this would be seen as a partisan proposal to create a Labour seat in MK, albeit I'm surprised that Labour didn't propose something like that - I would have and I came up with an early draft for MK that looked like that.
Finally, name those MK seats MK North, MK South, and MK West and Buckingham (not Buckingham and MK West.) Most of the comments from MK this time were about the awful names, and those are much safer.
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Post by islington on Feb 22, 2022 10:21:41 GMT
If you want to do a Berks-Bucks seat, I think you have to seize the pitchfork by the head and put Stoke Poges & Wexham in with Slough. This lets Windsor gain Langley St Mary's (reuniting Langley and avoiding the need to cross into Surrey) and means that Beaconsfield can otherwise stay unchanged (as can Chesham & Amersham.) Wycombe is then as the BCE has it, Princes Risborough gains Hazlemere and Great Brickhill and in MK you chuck the centre in with Bletchley. Plus it would really annoy the residents of South Buckinghamshire, and that has to count for something. I've mapped this out: Bracknell 70247 Maidenhead 73463 Windosr & Slough East 69783 Slough 76209 Beaconsfield 70728 Chesham & Amersham 73015 Wycombe 71769 Mid Buckinghamshire 76431 Aylesbury 75636 Buckingham & MK West 70990 Bletchley & MK Central 70184 MK North 70538 I think there's definite merit in this approach, but I suspect there's room for improvement. Issues in no particular order of seriousness: - Ascot is split
- Ideally I'd rather have Hazlemere in with Wycombe, but Chiltern Villages sits awkwardly in Mid Bucks. Could possibly be solved by giving Beaconsfield to C&A, Great Missenden to Mid Bucks, Hazlemere to Wycombe and Chiltern villages to 'Beaconsfield', but that makes the latter seat quite thin
- Great Brickhill is an ugly salient. The south of the ward fits fine, the north of it doesn't but I don't think there's a good case for ward-splitting
- Needing to include Great Brickhill in Mid Bucks means all 3 MK seats have to be small, which reduces your options. This option avoids splitting any of the Central MK, Bletchley or Shenley areas between seats, but the split between Danesborough & Walton and Monkston isn't great
- This also creates a safe(ish) seat for Labour in MK. I don't have a problem with that, but it means there's even less chance of the BCE going for it than there would be in the abstract. If anybody can think of a way to keep Great Brickhill in an MK seat, I could use the initial proposals which most responses seemed reasonably happy about.
I'm toying with the idea of submitting this as a response, but if anybody would like to improve it then I'm all ears. That's not a bad scheme but I'll still be advocating the Maidenhead/Marlow solution, which means hiving off Slough wards on the northern side, to go in with Beaconsfield, rather than on the southern side to go in with Windsor. It has the drawback of splitting Langley (which your scheme deftly avoids) but on the other hand residents of Stoke Poges won't be outraged and the further advantage is that Ascot isn't split. Regarding MK, I quite like this solution and if it's the best available, the BCE should not be influenced by electoral considerations and I'm naive enough to expect it wouldn't be. An alternative is to exchange Monkston and Central, which shifts fewer electors but leaves Central out on something of a limb in the MKN seat. But I do support the fundamental approach of assigning 12 seats to the three east Berks UAs + Bucks + MK. However, if you want to take this approach, don't forget you have to rejig Surrey to accommodate Egham. I favour doing this in a way that avoids the split of Reigate in the BCE's otherwise not-bad Surrey scheme. My submission: www.bcereviews.org.uk/node/72184/view
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Feb 22, 2022 10:29:55 GMT
I think I have a solution to Great Brickhill, which I don't like but would probably be acceptable to the BCE - use the Initial Proposals for MK, then split Chiltern Ridges ward to get Princes Risborough up to size. I think it's a totally unnecessary split, but it wouldn't be asking them to do anything they didn't already want to.
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Post by islington on Feb 22, 2022 10:34:52 GMT
Interesting. I am not convinced that it would fly with the BCE given you are working against a quota of 8.00 for Bucks and I'm not sure any of the 8 are terrible. Should Bucks really have to solve Berkshire's problems when it hasn't caused any of them? You'll surely need a better name than 'Windsor and Slough East' to get taken seriously too. Windsor and Langley perhaps? Great Brickhill is fiercely independent, even from Bow Brickhill and Little Brickhill (in the Danesborough and Walton ward) and there's the authority boundary so I wouldn't worry there. I also think the Danesborough/Monkston split isn't as bad on the ground as on the map - the Brickhills Wavendon and Woburn Sands really wanted a single member rural ward and don't like being in with the urban bits (Old Farm Park, Browns Wood, Caldecotte) anyway but the LGBCE weren't interested. However it puts that very Tory ward into an otherwise urban Labour seat so you'd get a huge reaction based on the politics. You'd also face the wrath from Stony Stratford of being placed in Buckingham again, which was huge and an election issue last time, and a whole new set of pitchforks from Bradwell ward which is a core city ward next to CMK. I think this would be seen as a partisan proposal to create a Labour seat in MK, albeit I'm surprised that Labour didn't propose something like that - I would have and I came up with an early draft for MK that looked like that. Finally, name those MK seats MK North, MK South, and MK West and Buckingham (not Buckingham and MK West.) Most of the comments from MK this time were about the awful names, and those are much safer. There has been a constituency called Buckingham since 1542. Not 'Buckingham and X' or 'X and Buckingham' - just Buckingham. Even prior to 1983 when it included the whole of MK it was still Buckingham tout court. So that's 480 years as a constituency name, and counting. Do you really want to set yourself up against that much history?
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Post by islington on Feb 22, 2022 10:42:50 GMT
Interesting. I am not convinced that it would fly with the BCE given you are working against a quota of 8.00 for Bucks and I'm not sure any of the 8 are terrible. Should Bucks really have to solve Berkshire's problems when it hasn't caused any of them? You'll surely need a better name than 'Windsor and Slough East' to get taken seriously too. Windsor and Langley perhaps? Great Brickhill is fiercely independent, even from Bow Brickhill and Little Brickhill (in the Danesborough and Walton ward) and there's the authority boundary so I wouldn't worry there. I also think the Danesborough/Monkston split isn't as bad on the ground as on the map - the Brickhills Wavendon and Woburn Sands really wanted a single member rural ward and don't like being in with the urban bits (Old Farm Park, Browns Wood, Caldecotte) anyway but the LGBCE weren't interested. However it puts that very Tory ward into an otherwise urban Labour seat so you'd get a huge reaction based on the politics. You'd also face the wrath from Stony Stratford of being placed in Buckingham again, which was huge and an election issue last time, and a whole new set of pitchforks from Bradwell ward which is a core city ward next to CMK. I think this would be seen as a partisan proposal to create a Labour seat in MK, albeit I'm surprised that Labour didn't propose something like that - I would have and I came up with an early draft for MK that looked like that. Finally, name those MK seats MK North, MK South, and MK West and Buckingham (not Buckingham and MK West.) Most of the comments from MK this time were about the awful names, and those are much safer. On the more substantive point here, I agree that the 8.00 entitlement for Bucks/MK is very tempting but my reason for crossing the border with Berks is not only to solve the Berks issues (although it does this quite well) but also to allow a better solution in Bucks, avoiding the split of Beaconsfield Old Town and keeping C&A intact. As a bonus it also puts Egham in a Surrey seat where it belongs, and the ripple effect of this allows Reigate town to be kept together instead of having a ward hived off as in the BCE scheme.
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ricmk
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Post by ricmk on Feb 22, 2022 11:21:06 GMT
Interesting. I am not convinced that it would fly with the BCE given you are working against a quota of 8.00 for Bucks and I'm not sure any of the 8 are terrible. Should Bucks really have to solve Berkshire's problems when it hasn't caused any of them? You'll surely need a better name than 'Windsor and Slough East' to get taken seriously too. Windsor and Langley perhaps? Great Brickhill is fiercely independent, even from Bow Brickhill and Little Brickhill (in the Danesborough and Walton ward) and there's the authority boundary so I wouldn't worry there. I also think the Danesborough/Monkston split isn't as bad on the ground as on the map - the Brickhills Wavendon and Woburn Sands really wanted a single member rural ward and don't like being in with the urban bits (Old Farm Park, Browns Wood, Caldecotte) anyway but the LGBCE weren't interested. However it puts that very Tory ward into an otherwise urban Labour seat so you'd get a huge reaction based on the politics. You'd also face the wrath from Stony Stratford of being placed in Buckingham again, which was huge and an election issue last time, and a whole new set of pitchforks from Bradwell ward which is a core city ward next to CMK. I think this would be seen as a partisan proposal to create a Labour seat in MK, albeit I'm surprised that Labour didn't propose something like that - I would have and I came up with an early draft for MK that looked like that. Finally, name those MK seats MK North, MK South, and MK West and Buckingham (not Buckingham and MK West.) Most of the comments from MK this time were about the awful names, and those are much safer. On the more substantive point here, I agree that the 8.00 entitlement for Bucks/MK is very tempting but my reason for crossing the border with Berks is not only to solve the Berks issues (although it does this quite well) but also to allow a better solution in Bucks, avoiding the split of Beaconsfield Old Town and keeping C&A intact. As a bonus it also puts Egham in a Surrey seat where it belongs, and the ripple effect of this allows Reigate town to be kept together instead of having a ward hived off as in the BCE scheme. Yep if I've understood the knock-ons correctly it's an elegant solution to take a hit in some of Bucks for big wins in S Bucks & wider. Will the BCE buy it? That's the golden question. As for the naming, I don't take the Putin approach! There's a big push to rename the current proposal "Bletchley and Buckingham" as it's 57:43 - the seat as drafted is 65:35 and will be desperately unpopular with the entirety of the 65 - so trying to name based on the 35 would be more fuel on the fire in my view.
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European Lefty
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Post by European Lefty on Feb 22, 2022 11:25:49 GMT
Interesting. I am not convinced that it would fly with the BCE given you are working against a quota of 8.00 for Bucks and I'm not sure any of the 8 are terrible. Should Bucks really have to solve Berkshire's problems when it hasn't caused any of them? You'll surely need a better name than 'Windsor and Slough East' to get taken seriously too. Windsor and Langley perhaps? Great Brickhill is fiercely independent, even from Bow Brickhill and Little Brickhill (in the Danesborough and Walton ward) and there's the authority boundary so I wouldn't worry there. I also think the Danesborough/Monkston split isn't as bad on the ground as on the map - the Brickhills Wavendon and Woburn Sands really wanted a single member rural ward and don't like being in with the urban bits (Old Farm Park, Browns Wood, Caldecotte) anyway but the LGBCE weren't interested. However it puts that very Tory ward into an otherwise urban Labour seat so you'd get a huge reaction based on the politics. You'd also face the wrath from Stony Stratford of being placed in Buckingham again, which was huge and an election issue last time, and a whole new set of pitchforks from Bradwell ward which is a core city ward next to CMK. I think this would be seen as a partisan proposal to create a Labour seat in MK, albeit I'm surprised that Labour didn't propose something like that - I would have and I came up with an early draft for MK that looked like that. Finally, name those MK seats MK North, MK South, and MK West and Buckingham (not Buckingham and MK West.) Most of the comments from MK this time were about the awful names, and those are much safer. There has been a constituency called Buckingham since 1542. Not 'Buckingham and X' or 'X and Buckingham' - just Buckingham. Even prior to 1983 when it included the whole of MK it was still Buckingham tout court. So that's 480 years as a constituency name, and counting. Do you really want to set yourself up against that much history? Who cares? A constituency name should accurately reflect the area covered by the constituency, not what it was called in the past
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YL
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Post by YL on Feb 22, 2022 11:25:58 GMT
There has been a constituency called Buckingham since 1542. Not 'Buckingham and X' or 'X and Buckingham' - just Buckingham. Even prior to 1983 when it included the whole of MK it was still Buckingham tout court. So that's 480 years as a constituency name, and counting. Do you really want to set yourself up against that much history? 1983, and even more so 1969 when the last set of boundaries where all of MK was in a seat called "Buckingham" was drawn up, is a very long time ago in the context of the development of Milton Keynes. It seems crazy for me for the MK component of the Bucks council/MK cross-boundary constituency not to be acknowledged in the name.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Feb 22, 2022 11:34:54 GMT
My view is that the BCE are never going to buy Marlow & Maidenhead, as the Thames is just too obvious a boundary. I think Slough makes more sense as it used to be in Buckinghamshire anyway and the boundary on the ground is so clearly ludicrous, though there's no doubt it would cause no end of whining. However, for the idea to fly you need to demonstrate that the proposed arrangement is unsuitable for Egham and also that a rearrangement allows a better cross-border seat between Surrey and Hampshire. I'm not personally convinced by islington's cross-border seat but I'll need to have a play around and see if I can come up with something I like better.
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