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Post by 🏴☠️ Neath West 🏴☠️ on Oct 19, 2022 18:23:36 GMT
The Swansea/Neath area is easily resolved within the legislation -- it has a few too many electors for most sensible configurations; moving the two wards of Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen community into the Carmarthen constituency would solve this and allow for any number of sensible configurations that would work through to eliminating the Pencoed monstrosity. If you shift the three Coedffranc wards into the Neath seat that gives you direct road and rail links with the four Swansea wards of St Thomas, Bonymaen, Llansamlet and Clydach to give you Swansea E & Neath with 75641. That leaves the remaining Swansea wards with 151413, allowing Swansea C = 74612 and Swansea W & Gower = 76801 and no need to cross the Carmarthenshire border at all. Shifting Coedffranc out of Aberavon also has the advantage of getting rid of the Pencoed polyp, which can go into Bridgend along with Sarn and the two wards east of it = 75878, with Aberavon & Ogmore = 75302. But it's too late now for this kind of large-scale surgery; all we can hope for is sticking-plaster solutions. The real trick is to ensure that both Coedffranc and Briton Ferry can get into Neath. That makes Port Talbot, Bridgend, Rhondda Cynon Taf, and Merthyr Tydfil work. |
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Post by 🏴☠️ Neath West 🏴☠️ on Oct 19, 2022 18:25:05 GMT
Well its an improvement on the Cardiff South and Penarth in the original where you could only walk to one part of it from another at low tide..... Though I’m not terribly impressed with the alternative for Cardiff either. It's a ludicrous mess. That's one of the less stupid bits of it. Sacking the commissioners and adopting a bipartisan scheme is surely preferable, given these incompetents. |
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Post by John Chanin on Oct 19, 2022 19:35:01 GMT
The Welsh Boundary Commission is off the hook. Given the political chaos right now there won’t be any reporting of these proposals - or at least just a minor paragraph.
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Post by greenhert on Oct 19, 2022 20:58:55 GMT
The Cardiff and Swansea seats are a right mess-there are much better alternatives available. The Cardiff East seat is just awful.
However, for what it is worth, the BCW's decision to extend Brecon & Radnorshire into the Neath Valley is understandable-they want to avoid creating a Montgomery & Meirionydd seat as it will constitute anti-Plaid gerrymandering, despite there being better transport links between the two parts than Montgomeryshire and Denbighshire/Wrexham, and they want to avoid breaking Montgomeryshire in half.
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Post by islington on Oct 19, 2022 21:19:33 GMT
The Cardiff and Swansea seats are a right mess-there are much better alternatives available. The Cardiff East seat is just awful. However, for what it is worth, the BCW's decision to extend Brecon & Radnorshire into the Neath Valley is understandable-they want to avoid creating a Montgomery & Meirionydd seat as it will constitute anti-Plaid gerrymandering, despite there being better transport links between the two parts than Montgomeryshire and Denbighshire/Wrexham, and they want to avoid breaking Montgomeryshire in half. I'm no particular fan of the BCW's Cardiff (although it's better than in the initial proposals); but I don't see what's so terrible about Cardiff E, surely we've all seen a lot worse.
What puzzles me, though, is why they haven't gone for something more closely based on the existing arrangement, which you can do by shifting only three Cardiff wards, and importing only one extra ward from outside the city (rather than three as in the BCW scheme).
Cardiff S & Penarth: Current seat minus Llanrumney = 70394. Cardiff C: Current seat plus Riverside = 69813. Cardiff N: Current seat minus Llandaff N and plus Llanrumney = 70054. Cardiff W: Current seat minus Riverside and plus Llandaff N and (from VoG) Dinas Powys = 70645.
Why complicate life?
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Post by greenhert on Oct 19, 2022 21:36:36 GMT
Seats essentially abolished by the proposals:
Arfon
Carmarthen West & South Pembrokeshire
Clwyd South
Cynon Valley
Newport West
Ogmore
Swansea West
Vale of Clwyd
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Post by carlton43 on Oct 19, 2022 21:38:35 GMT
Technically you can drive to Pencoed without leaving the constituency although I admit it is far from ideal. What is all this absolute bollocks about the need to drive from one bit of a constituency to another bit of it? Why on earth does that matter to a single elector ever? And of course if one was bothered about doing so (please provide even two valid or pressing reasons for doing so?) why on earth would it matter that one used a road passing through another constituency? It is hardly like going behind the iron curtain in the 1960s is it? |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Oct 19, 2022 21:42:06 GMT
Because good transport links are an indicator of community ties; if voters cannot easily drive from one place to another they are unlikely to share much community identity and should therefore not be in the same seat.
And "without leaving the constituency" is simply a convenient way measuring what those transport links are like
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Oct 19, 2022 21:49:09 GMT
The proposed Rhondda has attracted so much criticism because the "polyp" is attached by a farm track. It's not adequately connected to anything within the "sphere of influence" of Rhondda, and on a map looks clearly contrived.
The English Commission has done something similar with their proposals in Lancashire. Fake looking seats dissuade voter turnout.
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Post by mattb on Oct 19, 2022 21:53:05 GMT
I'm no particular fan of the BCW's Cardiff (although it's better than in the initial proposals); but I don't see what's so terrible about Cardiff E, surely we've all seen a lot worse. What puzzles me, though, is why they haven't gone for something more closely based on the existing arrangement, which you can do by shifting only three Cardiff wards, and importing only one extra ward from outside the city (rather than three as in the BCW scheme). Cardiff S & Penarth: Current seat minus Llanrumney = 70394. Cardiff C: Current seat plus Riverside = 69813. Cardiff N: Current seat minus Llandaff N and plus Llanrumney = 70054. Cardiff W: Current seat minus Riverside and plus Llandaff N and (from VoG) Dinas Powys = 70645. Why complicate life?
Yep - that was my version too ...  |
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haroldthepolitician
Labour
'You can be just what you want to be, Just as long as you don't try and compete with me' - Jarvis
Posts: 216 
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Post by haroldthepolitician on Oct 19, 2022 21:59:14 GMT
 This would be my proposal, note the seats around camartheshire are sligtly out of quota so a few shifts are neccesary or some wards could be split to limit the difference. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Oct 19, 2022 22:14:12 GMT
I guess this is all going to be academic yet again
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Post by Adam in Stroud on Oct 19, 2022 22:18:00 GMT
I guess this is all going to be academic yet again This is genuinely my only reason not to want a GE now. Can still imagine a new leader being installed and making it through to at least the 2023 locals. |
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Post by carlton43 on Oct 19, 2022 23:01:11 GMT
Because good transport links are an indicator of community ties; if voters cannot easily drive from one place to another they are unlikely to share much community identity and should therefore not be in the same seat. And "without leaving the constituency" is simply a convenient way measuring what those transport links are like That is just craven utter copper bottomed bollocks. It does not make one whit of difference to any voter at all. It is of importance to a small proportion of 1% of the electorate who have these sort of daft thoughts. |
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haroldthepolitician
Labour
'You can be just what you want to be, Just as long as you don't try and compete with me' - Jarvis
Posts: 216
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Post by haroldthepolitician on Oct 19, 2022 23:36:02 GMT
Because good transport links are an indicator of community ties; if voters cannot easily drive from one place to another they are unlikely to share much community identity and should therefore not be in the same seat. And "without leaving the constituency" is simply a convenient way measuring what those transport links are like That is just craven utter copper bottomed bollocks. It does not make one whit of difference to any voter at all. It is of importance to a small proportion of 1% of the electorate who have these sort of daft thoughts. It doesn't matter whether the average voters cares. An MP represents a geographical area, it's much harder to do this if you've got multiple different distinct communities. It's very obvious that if you can't even travel between 2 areas of a constituency without going into another that either a community has been split or a community has been added which has no connection to the other. |
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Post by Penddu on Oct 20, 2022 3:48:45 GMT
Ynys Mon is far better connected to the mainland than the Pencoed exclave is to Rhondda....
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cibwr
Plaid Cymru
Posts: 3,589
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Post by cibwr on Oct 20, 2022 6:39:55 GMT
Well its an improvement on the Cardiff South and Penarth in the original where you could only walk to one part of it from another at low tide..... Though I’m not terribly impressed with the alternative for Cardiff either. Broadly I think they are ok... not wonderful but ok. Much better than Newport or Swansea... |
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ilerda
Conservative
Posts: 1,098
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Post by ilerda on Oct 20, 2022 6:49:38 GMT
The Cardiff and Swansea seats are a right mess-there are much better alternatives available. The Cardiff East seat is just awful. However, for what it is worth, the BCW's decision to extend Brecon & Radnorshire into the Neath Valley is understandable-they want to avoid creating a Montgomery & Meirionydd seat as it will constitute anti-Plaid gerrymandering, despite there being better transport links between the two parts than Montgomeryshire and Denbighshire/Wrexham, and they want to avoid breaking Montgomeryshire in half. How would a Montgomery & Meirionnydd seat by anti-Plaid gerrymandering when you yourself admit there are better links between those areas than there are in the Montgomeryshire & South Denbighshire match? And that it’s reasonable to choose to not split Montgomeryshire unnecessarily. I can say with strong levels of confidence that partisan considerations will have had no bearing on the Commission’s decision here. Just because a particular decision they made happens to be more or less favourable to a particular party that absolutely does not make it gerrymandering. |
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WJ
Non-Aligned
Posts: 3,274
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Post by WJ on Oct 20, 2022 7:58:54 GMT
Crossing the Berwyns is just one of several possible necessary evils that could have been executed when it comes to Montgomeryshire. For some reason the boundary commission is implacably opposed to a border-coast seat which means that a Montgomeryshire and Merioneth seat won't fly. As it happens, there are perfectly good connections between Welshpool and Ruabon, you just have to go through Oswestry to get there. But that's just the way things are in this part of the world. To visit Chester, I need to travel via Wrexham. It's impractical or impossible to visit the Ceiriog Valley, Church Stoke or Pentreheyling without crossing the border. Plus the whole Llanymynech conundrum. What is beyond the pale though is how they've sliced up Llangollen and Corwen, as Sibboleth pointed out. |
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Post by islington on Oct 20, 2022 10:37:56 GMT
Though I’m not terribly impressed with the alternative for Cardiff either. Broadly I think they are ok... not wonderful but ok. Much better than Newport or Swansea... I don't like their Swansea but Newport reflects the decision to have seats coterminous with Monmouth and Torfaen UAs (are they called UAs in Wales?). Once you've decided that, it means that Newport E has to shift into territory currently belonging to Newport W, which means in turn that Newport W has to expand somewhere. In the initial proposals the BCW linked it with Caerphilly but there were a lot of objections to this on the grounds that Caerphilly is a large enough town to be the focus of its own constituency. This is a sensible objection and the BCW has recognized it and revised its scheme to maintain a Caerphilly seat, which means the only other way to reinforce Newport W is with smaller towns currently part of Islwyn. Personally I'd be more worried about the fact that the E Clwyd and Montgomeryshire seats extend into three authorities, which should be fixable by redrawing the boundary between the two to align with the Denbigh / Wrexham LA boundary. This will leave E Clywd slightly oversize so it can lose a border ward or two to N Clwyd, which then cedes Rhos to Bangor. So this involves a shift of only five or six wards and delivers an outcome that preserves the essentials of the BCW scheme (which, at this late stage, I think we have to do) but conforms better to LA boundaries. Edited to add: Correction: On closer scrutiny I see Bangor & Aberconwy also extends into three authorities so I'll see if I can resolve that too, without completely disrupting the BCW scheme. |
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