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Post by carlton43 on Feb 22, 2022 11:40:04 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? Who cares? A constituency name should accurately reflect the area covered by the constituency, not what it was called in the past Why? Far more people know of Buckingham and where it is than do MK. And tradition and continuity matter. And let us get back to short titles, preferably one word.
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Post by greenchristian on Feb 22, 2022 12:09:55 GMT
Who cares? A constituency name should accurately reflect the area covered by the constituency, not what it was called in the past Why? Far more people know of Buckingham and where it is than do MK. What makes you think that? MK is a large and very well-known place with a well-known football team whilst Buckingham is a fairly small place known only because there's a county named after it (and, by politicos, as John Bercow's constituency). Even most bankers have heard of MK (as demonstrated in the clip below).
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Post by carlton43 on Feb 22, 2022 12:29:17 GMT
Why? Far more people know of Buckingham and where it is than do MK. What makes you think that? MK is a large and very well-known place with a well-known football team whilst Buckingham is a fairly small place known only because there's a county named after it (and, by politicos, as John Bercow's constituency). Even most bankers have heard of MK (as demonstrated in the clip below).
Then we just disagree. No problem with that. But even if you were correct I would still opt strongly for retaining Buckingham and a one word title for simplicity, continuity and tradition.
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ricmk
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Post by ricmk on Feb 22, 2022 12:32:44 GMT
Why? Far more people know of Buckingham and where it is than do MK. What makes you think that? MK is a large and very well-known place with a well-known football team whilst Buckingham is a fairly small place known only because there's a county named after it (and, by politicos, as John Bercow's constituency). Even most bankers have heard of MK (as demonstrated in the clip below).
Lovely clip I think it's more than that though. Buckingham made the choice - a visionary choice - a couple of generations ago that it wouldn't be a focus for growth, but instead local growth would go into a nationally significant new town. I'm sure NIMBYism was a factor, but also a recognition that the new site was better located. Rail, road links, expansion potential, location between London-Birmingham and Cambridge-Oxford. None of which Buckingham had. And MK has thrived off getting these foundations right. Buckingham has made the choice to have a far larger neighbour with growing influence and to remain relatively static itself. One new estate - the Lace Hill estate - but the first in years I know of. And Buckingham is lovely, a charming market town with oodles of character and history, I enjoy spending time there. It's great at what it does. But it's made its choice willingly and with good reasons - so it seems daft to deny the consequences of those choices when it comes to things like constituency naming. Note that Buckinghamshire Council is based in Aylesbury, so is the Court, so is Bucks Fire Service. All natural consequences flowing from Buckingham having less influence over time.
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Post by islington on Feb 22, 2022 12:34:48 GMT
Who cares? A constituency name should accurately reflect the area covered by the constituency, not what it was called in the past Why? Far more people know of Buckingham and where it is than do MK. And tradition and continuity matter. And let us get back to short titles, preferably one word. I agree there's value in tradition and continuity. There are plenty of smallish towns whose names are, or have relatively recently been, used as the basis for constituency names even though there may be larger settlements in the seat. I don't see why Buckingham shouldn't be seen in the same way. Bosworth Brigg Broxbourne Easington Eye Gedling Harborough Huntingdon Meriden Richmond (Yorks) St Ives Totnes Wells Doubtless many others.
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Post by islington on Feb 22, 2022 12:42:03 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. Just to clarify, the reason I want to treat Egham with Surrey, apart from the fact that it's where it belongs, is that it allows a ripple effect of shifting border wards so as to allow Reigate town to be contained within a single seat, rather than having a ward hived off as the BCE proposes. What you do with Egham doesn't have any bearing on the cross-border Surrey/Hants seat.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Feb 22, 2022 14:20:13 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. Just to clarify, the reason I want to treat Egham with Surrey, apart from the fact that it's where it belongs, is that it allows a ripple effect of shifting border wards so as to allow Reigate town to be contained within a single seat, rather than having a ward hived off as the BCE proposes. What you do with Egham doesn't have any bearing on the cross-border Surrey/Hants seat. No, but how much people in Egham complain about being placed in a Berkshire seat has a lot of bearing on whether the BCE accept alternatives that don't pair Surrey and Berkshire. As for the effect on the cross-border seat, that depends where you cross. The initial proposals split Whitehill and whilst your counter-proposal avoids that, Headley still sticks out like a sore thumb. So I've been playing with alternative options, some of which do need to add Egham back into Runnymede to work. I was very pleased with the Camberley & Yateley I'd come up with until I realised that I'd forgotten Rushmoor can't stand alone. Currently trying to delude myself that a Farnham & Fleet seat is an acceptable idea.
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maxque
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Post by maxque on Feb 22, 2022 15:36:34 GMT
Why? Far more people know of Buckingham and where it is than do MK. And tradition and continuity matter. And let us get back to short titles, preferably one word. I agree there's value in tradition and continuity. There are plenty of smallish towns whose names are, or have relatively recently been, used as the basis for constituency names even though there may be larger settlements in the seat. I don't see why Buckingham shouldn't be seen in the same way. Bosworth Brigg Broxbourne Easington Eye Gedling Harborough Huntingdon Meriden Richmond (Yorks) St Ives Totnes Wells Doubtless many others. Bosworth (is proposed to be renamed Hinckley and Bosworth) Brigg (is proposed to be moved into "South Humber") Broxbourne Easington (is proposed to become Seaham and Peterlee) Eye (gone in 1983) Gedling Harborough Huntingdon Meriden Richmond (Yorks) (is proposed to become Richmond Yorks) St Ives Totnes Wells (is proposed to be renamed Wells and Mendip Hills)
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Post by carlton43 on Feb 22, 2022 16:38:01 GMT
I agree there's value in tradition and continuity. There are plenty of smallish towns whose names are, or have relatively recently been, used as the basis for constituency names even though there may be larger settlements in the seat. I don't see why Buckingham shouldn't be seen in the same way. Bosworth Brigg Broxbourne Easington Eye Gedling Harborough Huntingdon Meriden Richmond (Yorks) St Ives Totnes Wells Doubtless many others. Bosworth (is proposed to be renamed Hinckley and Bosworth) Brigg (is proposed to be moved into "South Humber") Broxbourne Easington (is proposed to become Seaham and Peterlee) Eye (gone in 1983) Gedling Harborough Huntingdon Meriden Richmond (Yorks) (is proposed to become Richmond Yorks) St Ives Totnes Wells (is proposed to be renamed Wells and Mendip Hills) Wells and Mendip Hills. Woden wept! What an utterly gormless decision. It is Wells, just Wells. We all know where it is. Hills don't vote and the descriptions aids no one and has no purpose at all.
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Post by grahammurray on Feb 22, 2022 16:48:28 GMT
Bosworth (is proposed to be renamed Hinckley and Bosworth) Brigg (is proposed to be moved into "South Humber") Broxbourne Easington (is proposed to become Seaham and Peterlee) Eye (gone in 1983) Gedling Harborough Huntingdon Meriden Richmond (Yorks) (is proposed to become Richmond Yorks) St Ives Totnes Wells (is proposed to be renamed Wells and Mendip Hills) Wells and Mendip Hills. Woden wept! What an utterly gormless decision. It is Wells, just Wells. We all know where it is. Hills don't vote and the descriptions aids no one and has no purpose at all. Wells don't vote either.
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Post by carlton43 on Feb 22, 2022 16:55:37 GMT
Wells and Mendip Hills. Woden wept! What an utterly gormless decision. It is Wells, just Wells. We all know where it is. Hills don't vote and the descriptions aids no one and has no purpose at all. Wells don't vote either. It is a known place where people live in numbers and vote. My point is to brevity, concision, tradition and continuity. Keep the names short and the same unless it is vital to change. Adding Mendip Hills is long-winded grandstanding utter nonsense.
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Post by grahammurray on Feb 22, 2022 17:39:37 GMT
It is a known place where people live in numbers and vote. My point is to brevity, concision, tradition and continuity. Keep the names short and the same unless it is vital to change. Adding Adding Mendip Hills is long-winded gradstanding utter nonsense. I'd suggest resurrecting 'Old Sarum', but I wouldn't want to bring on an attack of the vapours for you by it being one word over quota.
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Post by YL on Feb 22, 2022 17:58:16 GMT
Just to clarify, the reason I want to treat Egham with Surrey, apart from the fact that it's where it belongs, is that it allows a ripple effect of shifting border wards so as to allow Reigate town to be contained within a single seat, rather than having a ward hived off as the BCE proposes. What you do with Egham doesn't have any bearing on the cross-border Surrey/Hants seat. No, but how much people in Egham complain about being placed in a Berkshire seat has a lot of bearing on whether the BCE accept alternatives that don't pair Surrey and Berkshire. As for the effect on the cross-border seat, that depends where you cross. The initial proposals split Whitehill and whilst your counter-proposal avoids that, Headley still sticks out like a sore thumb. So I've been playing with alternative options, some of which do need to add Egham back into Runnymede to work. I was very pleased with the Camberley & Yateley I'd come up with until I realised that I'd forgotten Rushmoor can't stand alone. Currently trying to delude myself that a Farnham & Fleet seat is an acceptable idea. There are a reasonable number of comments about Egham, including one from Royal Holloway, University of London, though not as many as some other areas with obviously controversial proposals, like Beaconsfield... ... or, in the parallel universe where the BCE proposed adding it to Slough, Stoke Poges.
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Post by islington on Feb 22, 2022 19:15:51 GMT
I agree there's value in tradition and continuity. There are plenty of smallish towns whose names are, or have relatively recently been, used as the basis for constituency names even though there may be larger settlements in the seat. I don't see why Buckingham shouldn't be seen in the same way. Bosworth Brigg Broxbourne Easington Eye Gedling Harborough Huntingdon Meriden Richmond (Yorks) St Ives Totnes Wells Doubtless many others. Bosworth (is proposed to be renamed Hinckley and Bosworth) Not an improvementBrigg (is proposed to be moved into "South Humber") Also definitely not an improvement. Rivers (and estuaries) don't vote. Let's hope it gets changed.Broxbourne Easington (is proposed to become Seaham and Peterlee) Why? What's wrong with Easington? It was good enough for Manny Shinwell. Edited to add: A bit of quick research reveals that from 1918 to 1950 a somewhat similar seat was called Seaham so maybe I'll let that pass. Not the 'Peterlee' bit, though.Eye (gone in 1983) Sadly yes, despite the efforts of some of us to restore it.Gedling Harborough Huntingdon Meriden Richmond (Yorks) (is proposed to become Richmond Yorks) St Ives Totnes Wells (is proposed to be renamed Wells and Mendip Hills) I wholeheartedly endorse the comments by carlton43 . And that's not something I say every day.
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Post by carlton43 on Feb 22, 2022 21:35:15 GMT
It is a known place where people live in numbers and vote. My point is to brevity, concision, tradition and continuity. Keep the names short and the same unless it is vital to change. Adding Adding Mendip Hills is long-winded gradstanding utter nonsense. I'd suggest resurrecting 'Old Sarum', but I wouldn't want to bring on an attack of the vapours for you by it being one word over quota. That is from a completely different era , under different circumstances, and for those actually acquainted with a bit of geography, in a different county. So your whole comment is gormless, and irrelevant like you and most of your comments.
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Post by carlton43 on Feb 22, 2022 21:51:54 GMT
Bosworth (is proposed to be renamed Hinckley and Bosworth) Not an improvementBrigg (is proposed to be moved into "South Humber") Also definitely not an improvement. Rivers (and estuaries) don't vote. Let's hope it gets changed.Broxbourne Easington (is proposed to become Seaham and Peterlee) Why? What's wrong with Easington? It was good enough for Manny Shinwell. Edited to add: A bit of quick research reveals that from 1918 to 1950 a somewhat similar seat was called Seaham so maybe I'll let that pass. Not the 'Peterlee' bit, though.Eye (gone in 1983) Sadly yes, despite the efforts of some of us to restore it.Gedling Harborough Huntingdon Meriden Richmond (Yorks) (is proposed to become Richmond Yorks) St Ives Totnes Wells (is proposed to be renamed Wells and Mendip Hills) I wholeheartedly endorse the comments by carlton43 . And that's not something I say every day.All sound views. I have voted during a GE in Eye constituency. And I endorse the use of that name again.
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Post by carlton43 on Feb 23, 2022 7:58:09 GMT
All sound views. I have voted during a GE in Eye constituency. And I endorse the use of that name again. Maybe you voted for John Selwyn Gummer. Yes. Despite his arrogant stand-offishness when I met him on the hustings at market day in the main square of Stowmarket and reminded him of his attempt to get Ashford when I was on the selection committee and one of the panel interviewing him. We turned him down for a another candidate that I had also rejected. Gummer just tried too hard. He had boned up on everything to do with east Kent and combed his memory for every possible association and connection to the area, and then insisted on cascading the lot on us whether we wished to hear it or no!
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Post by nodealbrexiteer on Feb 23, 2022 11:31:54 GMT
Maybe you voted for John Selwyn Gummer. Yes. Despite his arrogant stand-offishness when I met him on the hustings at market day in the main square of Stowmarket and reminded him of his attempt to get Ashford when I was on the selection committee and one of the panel interviewing him. We turned him down for a another candidate that I had also rejected. Gummer just tried too hard. He had boned up on everything to do with east Kent and combed his memory for every possible association and connection to the area, and then insisted on cascading the lot on us whether we wished to hear it or no! Each time i hear his name i just think of the beef burger fed to his daughter!
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Feb 23, 2022 14:59:08 GMT
The LD proposal for the SE is considerably more detailed than those they've done for most other reasons and is a lot more willing to make alternative suggestions, some of which are even good. Interestingly, theirs is one of the few submissions to try to retain a Fareham constituency. Unfortunately, their version of Eastleigh has very little to recommend it and their version of Winchester is clearly inferior to the initial proposals. However, it did get me thinking that nobody really seems to have proposed a compact seat to the north of Southampton, with most accepting the principle of one seat running from Swaythling to the edge of Andover and another joining Eastleigh to the eastern fringes, and a few submissions sticking a third seat into the mix. So I've come up with this counter-proposal: Fareham 72797 Hedge End 72759 Eastleigh & Southampton North 74398 Test Valley 77057 Alton & Tadley 76709 Basingstoke 70549 NE Hants 74589 E Hants 75212 Farnham & Whitehill 76006 The shortcomings ought to be reasonably obvious, but I'll run through them anyway: - Not great from a minimum change perspective
- Harewood is an orphan ward, as is Sarisbury
- Alton & Tadley is obvious leftovers (but I'm not convinced Alton & Fleet would have been better and that would have required an additional orphan ward)
On the other hand, there are strengths: - The new Eastleigh & Southampton North and TV seats are both quite cohesive
- There's enough room for manouevre you can probably split Sarisbury ward (most likely along the motorway)
- Whitehill is united
- The bits of Basingstoke that won't fit in the eponymous seat are united in the same seat
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Post by islington on Feb 23, 2022 17:49:12 GMT
The LD proposal for the SE is considerably more detailed than those they've done for most other reasons and is a lot more willing to make alternative suggestions, some of which are even good. Interestingly, theirs is one of the few submissions to try to retain a Fareham constituency. Unfortunately, their version of Eastleigh has very little to recommend it and their version of Winchester is clearly inferior to the initial proposals. However, it did get me thinking that nobody really seems to have proposed a compact seat to the north of Southampton, with most accepting the principle of one seat running from Swaythling to the edge of Andover and another joining Eastleigh to the eastern fringes, and a few submissions sticking a third seat into the mix. So I've come up with this counter-proposal: Fareham 72797 Hedge End 72759 Eastleigh & Southampton North 74398 Test Valley 77057 Alton & Tadley 76709 Basingstoke 70549 NE Hants 74589 E Hants 75212 Farnham & Whitehill 76006 The shortcomings ought to be reasonably obvious, but I'll run through them anyway: - Not great from a minimum change perspective
- Harewood is an orphan ward, as is Sarisbury
- Alton & Tadley is obvious leftovers (but I'm not convinced Alton & Fleet would have been better and that would have required an additional orphan ward)
On the other hand, there are strengths: - The new Eastleigh & Southampton North and TV seats are both quite cohesive
- There's enough room for manouevre you can probably split Sarisbury ward (most likely along the motorway)
- Whitehill is united
- The bits of Basingstoke that won't fit in the eponymous seat are united in the same seat
Coincidentally I have also been looking at Hants. The way I see it is that the BCE has in effect thrown E Hants district in with Surrey, which leaves the rest of the county to get 17 seats. Also, there's a string of seats along the south coast that are within range and that the BCE has let be: New Forest x 2, Gosport, Portsmouth x2, and Havant. So that leaves 11 seats to be fitted into the remaining area.
Here's a way of doing it that avoids ward splits and shows more respect for the current pattern than the BCE scheme.
Aldershot - 76765. As the BCE has it. I couldn't find a way of avoiding the split of Yateley. Basingstoke - 71278. Probably the best fit for the town without ward splits. Eastleigh - 74380. Very similar to the current seat: loses two of its current wards and gains one from Fareham.
Fareham - 72797. The current seat minus one ward - much less disruptive than the BCE plan in this area.
Mid Hampshire - 76937. The successor to Meon Valley: loses Horndean but expands to the west and north.
North East Hampshire - 74011. Not dissimilar to the current seat. North West Hampshire - 77045. Only 17 short of the maximum. Romsey - 76174. Loses its northern areas and swaps two wards in So'ton; gains Chandler's Ford.
Southampton Itchen - 76402. Wards in So'ton are rejigged to allow this seat to absorb one ward from Eastleigh. Southampton Test - 72438.
Winchester - 72668. This is the most substantially altered seat. It loses the Chandler's Ford area and territory on its eastern flank, while it expands westward to the border with Wilts.
Edited to add: Literally seconds after posting this I realized that Eastleigh and Mid Hants can exchange Fair Oak and Sarisbury wards, saving one orphan ward and shifting fewer electors.
Eastleigh - 76529. Mid Hampshire - 74788.
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