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Post by finsobruce on Oct 17, 2017 11:02:44 GMT
Gosh, what have they done to Herefordshire!? A music hall song which deserves to be better known. |
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Post by greenchristian on Oct 17, 2017 15:27:51 GMT
Just had first quick look and it looks much better. They've followed people's advice on Warwickshire, for example. And there are split wards?! It appears that sanity prevails in at least part of the report. Gosh, what have they done to Herefordshire!? Something horrible, because nobody could agree on what to do instead of their initial proposals. |
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Post by crossinthebox on Oct 17, 2017 18:17:15 GMT
Outside of the Met County, they’ve done well. The Met outside Birmingham is okay. Birmingham is still pretty crap. Evesham and South Warwickshire is no more! It truly was a horror show. |
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Post by AdminSTB on Oct 17, 2017 19:15:47 GMT
New Telford looks Labour to me.
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Post by islington on Oct 17, 2017 19:30:22 GMT
Outside of the Met County, they’ve done well. The Met outside Birmingham is okay. Birmingham is still pretty crap. It's not that bad. At least each of the Brum seats stands in some kind of clear geographical relationship to the city as a whole, in contrast to the initial proposals where seats meandered randomly across the city. The split wards are unnecessary, though. All they had to do was fit eleven seats into the four Black Country boroughs plus Oscott and Handsworth Wood and minus Soho & Victoria. I'm pretty sure that somewhere upthread we already have a workable non-split way of doing this. |
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Post by greenchristian on Oct 17, 2017 19:35:04 GMT
Interesting that they describe the Shropshire/Telford and Wrekin seat as being "cross-county" in the introductory blurb.
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Post by safc26 on Oct 17, 2017 19:44:46 GMT
Outside of the Met County, they’ve done well. The Met outside Birmingham is okay. Birmingham is still pretty crap. It's not that bad. At least each of the Brum seats stands in some kind of clear geographical relationship to the city as a whole, in contrast to the initial proposals where seats meandered randomly across the city. The split wards are unnecessary, though. All they had to do was fit eleven seats into the four Black Country boroughs plus Oscott and Handsworth Wood and minus Soho & Victoria. I'm pretty sure that somewhere upthread we already have a workable non-split way of doing this. Err... have you seen Birmingham Yardley (which doesn't have Yardley in it) and Walsall and Oscott? They are the definition of Meandering. And in the case of Birmingham Yardley they could not have put wards with more disparate needs and demographics together if they tried. On the assumption they won't go back on their decision to hive off Solihull I think they have to split wards in East Birmingham to make it vaguely represent local ties. At the moment I have come up with: Stechford and Yardley North, Sheldon, Shard End and South Yardley plus polling district E08000025 CMF from Hodge Hill = 71,160 and Hodge Hill (minus the above district), Washwood Heath, Nechells and Bordesley Green = 71,370 This will not impact any other constituency. |
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Foggy
Non-Aligned
Yn Ennill Yma
Posts: 6,144 
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Post by Foggy on Oct 17, 2017 19:56:12 GMT
Interesting that they describe the Shropshire/Telford and Wrekin seat as being "cross-county" in the introductory blurb. Interesting because it is incorrect, yes. |
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Post by islington on Oct 18, 2017 9:43:05 GMT
It's not that bad. At least each of the Brum seats stands in some kind of clear geographical relationship to the city as a whole, in contrast to the initial proposals where seats meandered randomly across the city. The split wards are unnecessary, though. All they had to do was fit eleven seats into the four Black Country boroughs plus Oscott and Handsworth Wood and minus Soho & Victoria. I'm pretty sure that somewhere upthread we already have a workable non-split way of doing this. Err... have you seen Birmingham Yardley (which doesn't have Yardley in it) and Walsall and Oscott? They are the definition of Meandering. And in the case of Birmingham Yardley they could not have put wards with more disparate needs and demographics together if they tried. On the assumption they won't go back on their decision to hive off Solihull I think they have to split wards in East Birmingham to make it vaguely represent local ties. At the moment I have come up with: Stechford and Yardley North, Sheldon, Shard End and South Yardley plus polling district E08000025 CMF from Hodge Hill = 71,160 and Hodge Hill (minus the above district), Washwood Heath, Nechells and Bordesley Green = 71,370 This will not impact any other constituency. I agree that 'Yardley' isn't a sensible name for it; I'd suggest reviving 'Small Heath' or, if you want to go farther back in time, there was a 'Bordesley' seat 1885-1918. But leaving the name aside, I'm sticking to my guns on 'not that bad'. It's true that it links areas of different character but that's hardly a crime in itself; and the whole thing, despite its slightly awkward appearance, is more or less held together by the Coventry Road. Essentially the BCE's problem on the east side of Birmingham is that they've wasted all their large wards on Hall Green and have left themselves with an eight-ward area that's only barely big enough for two legal seats. The plan they've come up with is probably the best (only?) one available, but if you throw the four Hall Green wards into the mix then other arrangements become possible. As for Oscott, I still think that treating it with wards from Walsall is a good practical solution to a tricky problem; although I'd have preferred a link with Aldridge rather than with Walsall town. As for the ward splits in Sandwell and Dudley: the BCE's problem here was to allocate eleven seats to the four Black Country boroughs plus two Brum wards (Oscott and Handsworth Wood) and minus one Sandwell ward (Soho & Victoria). I've now checked and, as I thought, it is indeed possible to do this without splits. It's not particularly pretty; but I'd argue that the BCE's version, with splits, also isn't very pretty. And the non-split plan has five seats within a single borough compared with four in the BCE's splitting version. So in my view the splits aren't necessary. |
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Post by John Chanin on Oct 18, 2017 10:21:06 GMT
I've now had a look at the West Midlands in detail. The revisions in Warwickshire/Coventry/Worcestershire/Herefordshire/Shropshire/Staffordshire are largely sensible and not dissimilar to my proposals (I even get a couple of name checks). Putting Rubery into Northfield is a brainwave that I hadn't thought of, and solves a Worcestershire problem as well as a Birmingham problem. The urban area is continuous here.
Who'd have thought though that they would do ward splits in the Black Country but not in Birmingham! Despite the ward splits it is still very messy. Netherton & Woodside in Halesowen & Rowley Regis, and the split of Dudley town, putting St Thomas into the misnamed Warley seat, are both very nasty. But despite my proposals to give Birmingham 9 seats on its own with ward splits, I don't object to the inclusion of the Smethwick ward of Soho & Victoria into Ladywood, or the split of St Pauls ward. Oldbury ward doesn't really fit wherever you put it.
Carving off Oscott into a Walsall seat, and detaching Pleck from the rest of Walsall proper is miserable. The ward split in Oscott, proposed by me and many others would have made a much better solution.
The BCE have managed to keep Great Barr together, but the inclusion of Handsworth Wood in this West Bromwich seat is not good and has forced them to split Greets Green & Lyng, and move Greets Green, definitely part of West Bromwich proper, into the Tipton/Darlaston/Wednesbury seat, although this seat itself makes decent sense.
Within Birmingham I'd have to say the proposals are a considerable improvement, if you are not going to split wards, despite the strange "Yardley" seat. The rest of the seats are really quite sensible.
I reckon this map can still be improved on, now that the BCE has conceded ward splits, but there are still unavoidable problems. However only minor changes are usually made at the second consultation phase, and since the review probably won't be implemented, it doesn't seem worth making a new submission. |
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Post by woollyliberal on Oct 18, 2017 12:31:07 GMT
Essentially the BCE's problem on the east side of Birmingham is that they've wasted all their large wards on Hall Green and have left themselves with an eight-ward area that's only barely big enough for two legal seats. Pretty much. Edgbaston and Selly Oak is made of 5 "small" wards, putting it at the top end of the band. Hall Green is made of 4 larger wards. The result is two constituencies at the lower end of acceptable. It is the fault of rigid size limits and large ward sizes. Future reviews will use the newer smaller wards and so won't have the same problems. |
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
Posts: 1,742
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Post by Adrian on Oct 22, 2017 21:55:31 GMT
My first go at my second counterproposal. Four split wards: 3 in Brum and 1 in Dudley.
Aldridge, Brownhills & Bloxwich 76572
Walsall 73255
West Bromwich & Perry Barr 76523
Erdington 73557*
Hodge Hill 77643* (includes Castle Vale DLC DLG DLH)
Birmingham Central* 77926
Small Heath 77267* (includes Bordesley Green CTH CTI CTJ CTK)
Hall Green 72658*
Kings Norton 71831* (includes Swanshurst Park DEG)
Northfield 75118
Edgbaston & Warley South 76863
Warley North 71590
Wednesbury, Tipton & Darlaston 72803
Dudley 78270*
Stourbridge 72591* (includes Brockmoor J05 J06 J07)
Halesowen & Cradley Heath 78132
Puts Pleck back into Walsall. Tidies up Erdington. Creates a more sensible successor Yardley seat (even if we can't really call it Yardley). Restores the Hall Green seat. Good inner-city seat. Reunites Smethwick. Puts St Thomas's and Netherton back into Dudley. Puts Friar Park back into Wednesbury.
I'm not especially proud of the West Bromwich & Perry Barr seat, especially as thanks to the vagaries of ward boundaries it reaches to within a few feet of the Villa Ground, but I prefer a single double orphan to two single orphans, and there is continuous development across the borough border in the Hamstead area. It might be possible to call the seat Sandwell Valley (cf. Richmond Park)...
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cibwr
Plaid Cymru
Posts: 3,599
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Post by cibwr on Oct 29, 2017 10:33:44 GMT
Well some villages in Shropshire did suggest being moved into Powys
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YL
Non-Aligned
Either Labour leaning or Lib Dem leaning but not sure which
Posts: 4,915
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Post by YL on Nov 4, 2017 9:16:30 GMT
I find it very strange that they decided not to split wards in Birmingham, where there was a fair amount of support for doing so and there are a number of problems caused by not doing so, yet ended up splitting two wards in Sandwell. It's not as if the Sandwell map is particularly good: there are lots of border crossings, and in particular the way that the "Warley" and Darlaston & Tipton constituencies encroach on the cores of Dudley and Walsall respectively isn't very satisfactory.
The problem in east Birmingham seems to be the Sheldon ward, which has an electorate much lower than the other east Birmingham wards and so is quite hard to fit into a four ward constituency; in particular I think it's impossible to make a legal constituency including Sheldon and the two wards with "Yardley" in the name without either splitting wards or crossing the city boundary. I note that if you transfer Hall Green ward itself into "Brandwood" instead of Moseley & King's Heath, you can create a reasonably coherent looking constituency out of the remaining three Hall Green wards (Moseley, Springfield, Sparkbrook) and Nechells; you can then maintain the Commission's proposed Hodge Hill and have "Yardley" itself retain Acock's Green instead of adding Nechells. But you're still splitting Yardley itself, and people who know the city better than I do will probably point out something ridiculous...
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
Posts: 1,742
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Post by Adrian on Nov 4, 2017 12:12:08 GMT
Combining Moseley/Sparkhill with Nechells wouldn't be popular.
As far as the ward splitting is concerned, Sandwell is a victim of the process. Not only is it in the middle of the area, so very prone to border-crossing, the Commission dealt with it last, thereby making it the poor relation of the process. They had said that ward-splitting might be allowed if the knock-on effects of not splitting wards were messy. What they've done in the West Midlands is the opposite: they've failed to split wards in Birmingham, thereby making a mess, thereby necessitating splitting wards in Sandwell.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Nov 7, 2017 23:18:59 GMT
Also, they had more submissions from Birmingham than from Sandwell. If you're drawing boundaries and somewhere has to get the shitty end of the stick, it's pretty much always the area that's least likely to respond to a consultation.
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
Posts: 1,742
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Post by Adrian on Nov 10, 2017 15:06:49 GMT
Wolverhampton West 76,806
Bushbury, Wednesfield & Willenhall 77,706
Bilston & Coseley 73,652
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
Posts: 1,742
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Post by Adrian on Nov 14, 2017 16:23:08 GMT
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Post by greatkingrat on Sept 10, 2018 12:43:10 GMT
Final recommendations
No changes at all apart from
Birmingham Brandwood renamed to Birmingham Kings Heath
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Adrian
Co-operative Party
Posts: 1,742
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Post by Adrian on Sept 10, 2018 13:26:38 GMT
Final recommendations No changes at all apart from Birmingham Brandwood renamed to Birmingham Kings Heath I'm pretty angry - Birmingham and the Black Country are now a parliamentary dogs dinner, with seats that might be acceptable in Texas but are a travesty in the UK. If I ever meet Margaret Gilmore I shall tell her she's a *****. |
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