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Post by lennon on Jan 5, 2016 16:39:22 GMT
I had a thought this morning. Whilst everyone is offering comments on the shadow cabinet reshuffle here we are talking about constituencies. Are we a little bit sad? No, the Boundary Commission will probably have completed their review before Corbyn completes the reshuffle. As I saw in another place 'Chilcot is asking when the Reshuffle will be complete and couldn't it be hurried up a bit...'
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jan 5, 2016 17:30:09 GMT
I had a thought this morning. Whilst everyone is offering comments on the shadow cabinet reshuffle here we are talking about constituencies. Are we a little bit sad? Yes. But we don't let it bother us.
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YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,310
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Post by YL on Jan 6, 2016 20:41:40 GMT
I think the English Commission will follow the example of the Scottish one during the zombie review. Wards will be the starting point but splitting will take place when necessary to achieve a reasonable constituency design. If they can also incorporate pending ward boundary changes (ie. confirmed in secondary legislation but not in practical effect), then that would be a very forward thinking approach. So forward thinking for the British approach to boundary reviews that I may need a sit down and a cuppa to recover from the shock! I hope you're right, and the bit about polling districts in those minutes gives cause for optimism at least on the first point. However, new ward boundaries may not follow old polling district boundaries (the Sheffield ones certainly don't) and I don't know whether they'll be using updated polling districts...
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Post by johnloony on Jan 18, 2016 11:50:43 GMT
I've just had a 1-hour long rambling conversation with somebody (independent of the BCE itself) who was talking about "systems" and a lot of gibberish. It was quite a long-winded discussion of my life and interests and how I did the last boundary review, but the essence of it seemed to be that it was a long-winded way of me telling the BCE to split wards, and him asking me if it would worthwhile for them to make a new computerised map-making thingy which probably only a few hundred people will use. Has anybody else had similar conversations with the review people? When I was called, the man said it was only the second interview he had done so far.
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Jan 18, 2016 13:08:15 GMT
Spoke to them last week. The interviewer had done several previous talks and gave me some rough feedback (unprompted, but only after I'd happened to mention something other people had said). For instance I talked about how it was a bit of a faff to go between the maps and the spreadsheets to tot up the electorate figures, and said that the boundaryassistant website had managed to automate it quite well. He then said other people had made the remark but then tried to persuade me that it wouldn't be value for money for the BCE to do its own version, as the only people who would use it were the experts who knew how to do it anyway.
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J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
Posts: 13,656
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Post by J.G.Harston on Jan 18, 2016 13:33:20 GMT
I've just had a 1-hour long rambling conversation with somebody (independent of the BCE itself) who was talking about "systems" and a lot of gibberish. It was quite a long-winded discussion of my life and interests and how I did the last boundary review, but the essence of it seemed to be that it was a long-winded way of me telling the BCE to split wards, and him asking me if it would worthwhile for them to make a new computerised map-making thingy which probably only a few hundred people will use. Has anybody else had similar conversations with the review people? When I was called, the man said it was only the second interview he had done so far. I've emailed them several times saying that it's impossible for me to know in advance if I'll be at home during the day as I only get my work schedule 24 hours in advance, so just phone me and if I'm at home I'l answer. They keep replying asking me to specify a day and time for them to phone me. As with you, I'm expecting to go the long way around the houses to get it through to them that they should allow split wards where appropriate. (Prioritise local authority boundaries over ward boundaries in the cases where a) it will ensure a local authority can be covered by a whole or near-whole number of constituencies, b) ward electorates are not a whole (or near-whole) submultiple of constituency electorates. Eg: 7xLeeds, 5xSheffield.) I'm at home today because I knackered my car on Friday and I'm waiting for the garage to phone me to say they've put the correct amount of oil in it and replaced the brake pads.
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Post by greenchristian on Jan 24, 2016 20:15:31 GMT
Has anybody else had similar conversations with the review people? When I was called, the man said it was only the second interview he had done so far. I've emailed them several times saying that it's impossible for me to know in advance if I'll be at home during the day as I only get my work schedule 24 hours in advance, so just phone me and if I'm at home I'l answer. They keep replying asking me to specify a day and time for them to phone me. As with you, I'm expecting to go the long way around the houses to get it through to them that they should allow split wards where appropriate. (Prioritise local authority boundaries over ward boundaries in the cases where a) it will ensure a local authority can be covered by a whole or near-whole number of constituencies, b) ward electorates are not a whole (or near-whole) submultiple of constituency electorates. Eg: 7xLeeds, 5xSheffield.) I'm at home today because I knackered my car on Friday and I'm waiting for the garage to phone me to say they've put the correct amount of oil in it and replaced the brake pads. You should add c) particularly in urban areas where ward boundaries (tend to) cut across natural communities.
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
Posts: 1,726
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Post by Adrian on Mar 1, 2016 22:10:17 GMT
I told the guy that the maps last time were pretty useless for everyone, especially ordinary folks. The large-scale ones are too tightly framed for people to visualise alternatives, and the regional ones are (a) at a too low level of detail and (b) mind-blowing. Ergo, the Commission should revert to using counties as base units. I also pointed out that the favouritism towards Con/Lab/LD representations gives most ordinary folk the impression that it's a closed shop.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2016 22:18:05 GMT
I told the guy that the maps last time were pretty useless for everyone, especially ordinary folks. The large-scale ones are too tightly framed for people to visualise alternatives, and the regional ones are (a) at a too low level of detail and (b) mind-blowing. Ergo, the Commission should revert to using counties as base units. I also pointed out that the favouritism towards Con/Lab/LD representations gives most ordinary folk the impression that it's a closed shop. The current rules make it almost impossible for counties to be used as base units.
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
Posts: 1,726
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Post by Adrian on Mar 2, 2016 18:34:49 GMT
Not at all. By that I don't mean that counties shouldn't be paired/grouped if necessary; only that counties should be the starting point.
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Post by greatkingrat on Mar 2, 2016 18:37:29 GMT
How is that any different from what happens now? They already review counties separately where possible.
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Harry Hayfield
Green
Cavalier Gentleman (as in 17th century Cavalier)
Posts: 2,764
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Post by Harry Hayfield on Mar 4, 2016 16:14:43 GMT
It's lovely to see all these discussions about these new seats that we are making in order to complement or angrily bash the Boundary Commissions with, however I am having a problem, namely Boundary Assistant (with 11 constituencies created) is now running so slowly I am being to wonder whether it might be a better idea to download every single ward in the whole of the country to Google Earth and create them there. So I tweeted that question to the Boundary Commissions and Scotland came back saying that they will be using SHP files. The question is "What on earth is a SHP file and now can I convert them into KMZ / KML files?"
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Post by lennon on Mar 4, 2016 16:50:25 GMT
It's lovely to see all these discussions about these new seats that we are making in order to complement or angrily bash the Boundary Commissions with, however I am having a problem, namely Boundary Assistant (with 11 constituencies created) is now running so slowly I am being to wonder whether it might be a better idea to download every single ward in the whole of the country to Google Earth and create them there. So I tweeted that question to the Boundary Commissions and Scotland came back saying that they will be using SHP files. The question is "What on earth is a SHP file and now can I convert them into KMZ / KML files?" SHP is a Shapefile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapefile) - Open (ie non-proprietary) Format I believe. shape2earth.com/ might be of use.
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Harry Hayfield
Green
Cavalier Gentleman (as in 17th century Cavalier)
Posts: 2,764
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Post by Harry Hayfield on Mar 4, 2016 18:53:10 GMT
It's lovely to see all these discussions about these new seats that we are making in order to complement or angrily bash the Boundary Commissions with, however I am having a problem, namely Boundary Assistant (with 11 constituencies created) is now running so slowly I am being to wonder whether it might be a better idea to download every single ward in the whole of the country to Google Earth and create them there. So I tweeted that question to the Boundary Commissions and Scotland came back saying that they will be using SHP files. The question is "What on earth is a SHP file and now can I convert them into KMZ / KML files?" SHP is a Shapefile (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapefile) - Open (ie non-proprietary) Format I believe. shape2earth.com/ might be of use. Thank you for the explanation and the website suggestion. It all looks very promising indeed.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2016 22:18:20 GMT
Downloading every single ward onto Google Earth would render most laptops useless. You must have a very powerful piece of kit, Harry.
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Harry Hayfield
Green
Cavalier Gentleman (as in 17th century Cavalier)
Posts: 2,764
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Post by Harry Hayfield on Mar 5, 2016 9:34:20 GMT
This is what I am referring to by "downloading every ward". The map was generated by a SHP file I found that listed every Welsh ward which is why I was looking for a SHP to KML / KMZ converter. The version online is just a demo (and can only map up to 500 wards) but as you can see from this the resultant map gives a good indication of what could be made.
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