Birmingham hearing report part 2
After the party submissions, which took the first 90 minutes, there were a couple of real people, and me, and I was feeling quite positive about the day. But then the torrent of politicians began, mostly carefully co-ordinated, so that it was the Tories till teatime and then Labour.
Mrs Fitch was unhappy that Hollywood will be in the Redditch seat, breaking the "social construct" in the Bromsgrove borough, and was convinced that if only all the immigrants in Redditch were added to the electoral roll it woould have enough voters for an MP of its own.
A man from Wylde Green complained that although he didn't live in Sutton he did have a Sutton postcode so his street should be in the Sutton seat.
Andrew Mitchell MP paid a flying visit to ask the AC to get "Royal" added in front of "Sutton Coldfield". Since I'm a pleb, I disagree.
Now came a succession of Tories all with the same message: Put Tyburn in Erdington, Stockland Green (SG) in Perry Barr and Aston in Ladywood. Now this suggestion has some merit, especially as a quick fix for the Ladywood Thing, but the more it went on, this succession of parrots, it became more and more obvious that there must be an ulterior motive for wanting this change. I'm no expert but I'm guessing that Tyburn is a more Tory ward than SG?
Actually, I call them parrots, but some effort was made at pretense - sometimes it wasn't obvious till the speaker was halfway through their speech that they were just saying the same thing as the person before. There was a sad example where an old chap got a bit confused and RP and another Tory had to prompt him.
Cllr Alden led off. He claimed that SG is "clearly separated from Erdington by the A4040." <But apparently it isn't clearly separated from Perry Barr by the M6...
I quizzed him as to whether he'd keep SG in Erdington if it was possible to do so, but he said no. <!
Cllr Sambrook said he was pleased to have Pheasey and Oscott together, launching into a list of half-truths about Pheasey people shopping on Hawthorn Road and Pheasey kids going to Great Barr School (to which I wanted to shout "but not if they can help it") etc. (He didn't mention Perry Beeches School though, because that's not in the ward.) The Commission loves being given these kind of details, true or otherwise, because they like to quote them when justifying decisions. (Nice to meet Gary finally and have a chat.)
Cllr Jenkins, who represents Four Oaks, added his support to the Tories' Erdington proposals. "Pheasey has a Birmingham postcode." <Guess what, so has my arse.
Chris Richards (Aldridge-Brownhills) spoke in favour of adding Bloxwich to the seat and removing Pheasey. "Pheasey and Kingstanding have housing stock of the same vintage." Blah.
Mike Wood MP spoke in support of the Tory plan to split Brierley Hill ward along the railway, with one half going in a West Dudley seat going up to Sedgley. "It's better to split a small number of wards than to break up natural communities, otherwise the process is reduced to a mathematical formula."
(It does stick in the craw a bit to think that they're only proposing a split ward for partisan purposes.) He said that there was cross-party agreement, but I think the agreement is really about keeping the Gornal wards together rather than the details of the Tory plan.
Cllr Harley (Dudley) spoke in support of his party's Dudley proposals, and against the commission's plan to split Halesowen.
Labour
Jess Phillips MP started off by saying "What we have in Birmingham we will have to make the best of" (and when I quizzed her about this she seemed a little perturbed and accused me of putting words in her mouth...) She said she was conducting a survey in Sheldon about its being in a Solihull seat with Chelmsley Wood and so far 60% were okay with, though many did not understand the process. Otherwise, the Yardley proposals are "not entirely controversial".
Sandra Jenkinson OBE (Labour) from Billesley made perhaps the best speech of the day, even if I disagreed with quite a bit of it. (Excerpts) "The process is flawed, based on a lack of understanding of the role of MPs. It should be working to bring Mps closer to voters, rather than playing a numbers game. Changes to representation push people further away from participation. It becomes a case of 'catch yourr MP as they go past'. Awareness takes time." Somewhere amongst it all was support for Labour's position.
Steve McCabe MP pointed out (to gasps from the gallery) that getting from Halesowen to Selly Oak "requires at least two bus journeys", but I'm not sure what Labour's counterproposal is, if there is one. He went on a bit about "balanced constituencies, in terms of socio-economic indicators", and quoted the lovely Ted Cantle that "we should guard against creating segregated communities", which I guess was a set-up for what Richard Burden said later. Then there was stuff about bus routes and parks and whatnot to justify adding Kings Norton and Sparkhill to Brandwood. He wasn't very impressed when I accused him of being a mite disingenuous.
Cllr Bateman (Wton) spoke in favour of BCE proposals (as did Tory MP Emma Reynolds), opining that Wednesfield and Willenhall "go together like strawberries and cream" and that "the opportunity to get their name checked in parliament is worth a lot of money."
Richard Burden MP started by lying that the boundary commission "has done its best" in Birmingham. (Later he lied again, claiming that the strange way the proposals had turned out was "not the commission's doing, but arithmetic.")
He went on that intially he'd been disappointed "but then I started to think about the proposals" and how they would mix ethnic groups. He noted that the percentages of ethnic voters are: Northfield 14%, Hall Green 60% (I think - it was something like that). He said he is "not convinced that reinforcing those divisions in the configuration of seats is a good thing" so the commission's proposals have merit after all. And that it'd be wrong to amend the Northfield proposal because it would be "not right to leave Northfield monocultural." (!!)
He was supported by the Labour woman who followed him (I didn't get her name) who talked about Northfield being a "disproportionately white constituency" and that the proposed seat up to Moseley would form a "coherent extended neighbourhood".
Anyway, enough, it was 6 pm so I got the bus home for tea.
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