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Post by ccoleman on Jul 21, 2024 17:32:11 GMT
I would consider the likes of Colchester, Canterbury, Durham, York, Oxford, Norwich, Cambridge etc as university cities - all relatively small places where the universities loom much larger in most aspects.
I wouldn't consider the likes of Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham, Liverpool etc as university cities - they are major cities in their own right.
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batman
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Post by batman on Jul 21, 2024 17:41:53 GMT
They are university cities, but not in the same sense. I remember Robert Waller saying in a profile of the Colchester constituency some elections ago that Colchester is both a garrison & a university city (town it was then) which, according to him, created a bit of an edge on a Saturday night in the pubs of the town centre.
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Foggy
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Post by Foggy on Jul 22, 2024 1:26:37 GMT
Post 1992, the upgrade of the Polytechnics and other Colleges has made the term University Cities almost meaningless. Do University constituencies behave very differently to others? Probably yes. But you could say much the same about constituencies with League football teams (one Conservative MP out of 92 teams). No one seems to talk about football constituencies. Aside from that definition being anglocentric, there are two other reasons such a definition would be silly: there's little evidence that housing a professional football team causes voters to behave differently at elections, and whereas the higher education sector has kept expanding over the decades, the number of Football League clubs has remained at an arbitrary fixed figure since 1950. |
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john07
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Post by john07 on Jul 22, 2024 2:38:30 GMT
Post 1992, the upgrade of the Polytechnics and other Colleges has made the term University Cities almost meaningless. Do University constituencies behave very differently to others? Probably yes. But you could say much the same about constituencies with League football teams (one Conservative MP out of 92 teams). No one seems to talk about football constituencies. Aside from that definition being anglocentric, there are two other reasons such a definition would be silly: there's little evidence that housing a professional football team causes voters to behave differently at elections, and whereas the higher education sector has kept expanding over the decades, the number of Football League clubs has remained at an arbitrary fixed figure since 1950. You have answered your own question there. The number of Universities has continually expanded to the extent that there are very few significant population centres throughout Great Britain without some sort of University campus. The point I was making which you are (deliberately?) trying to avoid is that while a University town/city might have been easy to identify in the 1950s, it is less clear-cut today. If the term University town is to have any electoral significance it is important to identify how to define such. Cambridge, Durham, St Andrews, York, Canterbury, etc. yes. The likes of Bolton, Wolverhampton, Sunderland, etc. probably no. There are some that are not easy to call. Edinburgh has four (or five) universities in and around a middle sized city. Manchester similarly with a smaller city has two very large universities and a third just over the border in Salford. |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jul 23, 2024 10:45:32 GMT
How much longer will this seat survive in its current state? The council have just signed off 3,500 new homes for Whitstable alone, and its electorate is already very high. In practice it's probably also quite likely to change because it's easy for Kent to gain additional constituencies because it's such a large area already and because it's got a lot of seats nearby that are awkward and would probably be adjusted by such a review, causing knock-on consequences it would probably be in the middle of. They are university cities, but not in the same sense. I remember Robert Waller saying in a profile of the Colchester constituency some elections ago that Colchester is both a garrison & a university city (town it was then) which, according to him, created a bit of an edge on a Saturday night in the pubs of the town centre. I don't think the students ever had much to do with it - the squaddies would happily fight anybody and everybody, including each other, and if somebody else was making trouble with them it was more likely to be a local trying to build a reputation as a hard man than a student. Then again, I also wouldn't count it as a university city - students are a significant portion of the population of Greenstead and to a certain extent in New Town and environs, but elsewhere they're more not particularly visible. It's a city with a university, but not one defined by it. |
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The Bishop
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Post by The Bishop on Jul 23, 2024 11:04:51 GMT
I'm not sure he or the relevant Party figures had much option. Unlike Lord Cashman, Rosie Duffield is an official Labour Party candidate whether Keir Starmer agrees with her or not on certain issues, and a candidate for a seat which cannot yet be deemed safe to boot. Even if Starmer agrees more with Cashman or Duffield on these issues, personal insults of this kind against official Labour candidates in a general election campaign are asking for trouble, and in this case receiving it. I am sure that he will get the Whip back in due course if he does not reoffend. But it is important that insults against official Party candidates of this kind are not tolerated, otherwise it's basically writing the opposition's leaflets for them. However, this seat is a seat that is sure to be lost for Labour she in inevitably defects to the Party of Women once Starmer gets sick of her blackmailing. The easier way would have been to drop her like Shaheen as she is a high-defection risk. Labour getting a big majority has massively decreased her salience, and made it easier for Starmer to dispose of her if she continues to be a total PITA. Though the problem of Duffield having so many vociferous and influential cheerleaders in the media would still be there. |
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Post by londonseal80 on Jul 24, 2024 19:55:25 GMT
I would consider the likes of Colchester, Canterbury, Durham, York, Oxford, Norwich, Cambridge etc as university cities - all relatively small places where the universities loom much larger in most aspects. I wouldn't consider the likes of Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham, Liverpool etc as university cities - they are major cities in their own right. One thing I have noticed about Canterbury that is different to some of the other university cities, it seems at the moment to be a lot safer than say the likes of Colchester and Cambridge. Going on news reports despite its posh gentile reputation Cambridge seems to have a fair few knife crime murders in recent years. Which makes me think they are parts of the city that are more like Croydon than say Richmond upon Thames. |
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nodealbrexiteer
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Post by nodealbrexiteer on Jul 24, 2024 19:57:26 GMT
However, this seat is a seat that is sure to be lost for Labour she in inevitably defects to the Party of Women once Starmer gets sick of her blackmailing. The easier way would have been to drop her like Shaheen as she is a high-defection risk. Labour getting a big majority has massively decreased her salience, and made it easier for Starmer to dispose of her if she continues to be a total PITA. Though the problem of Duffield having so many vociferous and influential cheerleaders in the media would still be there. not sure she is PITA! |
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Post by ccoleman on Jul 24, 2024 22:11:44 GMT
I would consider the likes of Colchester, Canterbury, Durham, York, Oxford, Norwich, Cambridge etc as university cities - all relatively small places where the universities loom much larger in most aspects. I wouldn't consider the likes of Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham, Liverpool etc as university cities - they are major cities in their own right. One thing I have noticed about Canterbury that is different to some of the other university cities, it seems at the moment to be a lot safer than say the likes of Colchester and Cambridge. Going on news reports despite its posh gentile reputation Cambridge seems to have a fair few knife crime murders in recent years. Which makes me think they are parts of the city that are more like Croydon than say Richmond upon Thames. I don’t know enough about any of those places to comment on that unfortunately. Crime in general does seem a bit rampant across the country though, even in posh towns/cities. That’s one thing I’d like the new Labour government to seriously tackle. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Jul 25, 2024 10:16:04 GMT
I would consider the likes of Colchester, Canterbury, Durham, York, Oxford, Norwich, Cambridge etc as university cities - all relatively small places where the universities loom much larger in most aspects. I wouldn't consider the likes of Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham, Liverpool etc as university cities - they are major cities in their own right. One thing I have noticed about Canterbury that is different to some of the other university cities, it seems at the moment to be a lot safer than say the likes of Colchester and Cambridge. Going on news reports despite its posh gentile reputation Cambridge seems to have a fair few knife crime murders in recent years. Which makes me think they are parts of the city that are more like Croydon than say Richmond upon Thames. It's not just posh gentiles who go to Cambridge ( batman went there for example). Seriously though, there are plenty of rough parts of Cambridge and always have been - Colchester likewise. Of course in Colchester you have the squaddie element which contributes to the roughness - that used to be a factor in Cambridge too but I'm not sure that is the case so much now nearby barracks like Oakington have closed. Plus you have the farm boys pouring into these places on friday and saturday night as well. I'm sure most of this is as true of Canterbury as well but that is also somewhat less of a garrison town these days. Not that this would account specifically for knife crime as opposed to general rambunctiousness. But some of the demographic elements that do dominate that kind of activity have long had a small but non-negligible presence in Cambridge. |
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jul 25, 2024 20:36:47 GMT
Without wishing to minimise the seriousness of those (fairly unusual) crimes, even the rougher bits of Cambridge are never going to be mistaken for Croydon.
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Post by londonseal80 on Jul 26, 2024 12:07:48 GMT
Without wishing to minimise the seriousness of those (fairly unusual) crimes, even the rougher bits of Cambridge are never going to be mistaken for Croydon. True, Cambridge political map is far more Haringey/Islington than Croydon, so should be more compared to those boroughs 😂 Going back to Canterbury the Labour gain in 2017 has to be one of most surprising ever. The majority in 2015 was still decent and Labour only had about 2 or 3 seats on the local council about similar number of Lib Dem’s and the rest were Conservatives (not even Residents). |
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